cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.
former clinton supporter and current hollywood quadzillionaire david geffen started a firestorm of words between the front runners in the democratic presidential race. geffen, after a fundraiser for barack “to the future” obama, said in an interview that hillary was
an “incredibly polarizing figure,” criticized her husband’s 2001 pardon of fugitive financier marc rich and suggested that bill clinton’s personal habits would damage his wife’s campaign, hurting democratic hopes of retaking the white house next year.
“everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” geffen said of the clintons in a new york times interview published wednesday.
and so, following in a long historical precedent of the democratic circular firing squad, hillary’s team fired back immediately. but as arianna tells us (after the jump), facts get caught in the crossfire:
not long after dowd’s column hit the streets, “that machine” whirred into high gear with clinton communications director howard wolfson firing off a press release condemning geffen and urging obama to denounce him:
while senator obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign’s finance chair was viciously and personally attacking senator clinton and her husband.
if senator obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove mr. geffen from his campaign and return his money.
the thing is, geffen is not obama’s “finance chair” nor his “principal fundraiser” as wolfson also claims. indeed, as geffen told me this morning: “i have no official role in the campaign. none whatsoever.” which makes it kind of hard for obama to “remove” him.
geffen was merely one of three co-hosts of a single event — an event that is now over. obama’s actual campaign finance chair is penny pritzker of chicago. if wolfson wants to learn more about her he can read lynn sweet in the chicago sun times.
obama, for his part, refuses to back down:
“i can’t be responsible for the statements of every single individual who contributes to our campaign. i mean we’ve got thousands of people who are contributing, some who may have real differences with the other candidates,” obama said at a news conference in des moines. “it doesn’t reflect my views. they didn’t come from me or my staff, and my suspicion is that the voters of iowa are probably more concerned about what both myself and sen. clinton think about iraq, and health care and jobs”…
obama said he not had not read the full column before talking with reporters, but said it wasn’t clear to him why he should apologize for someone else’s remarks.
we’re not sure either. but considering that, along with this brou-ha-ha against obama, hillary has already accused most of the other candidates of being “soft” on terrorism, it seems like she’s wasting no time in establishing herself as the front runner…for the republicans.
meanwhile, hillary’s hissy-fit about david geffen’s snark in support of barack “to the future” obama may be already back-firing on her.
a commentor on the caucus – the nytimes political blog – expresses her disgust w/mrs. clinton:
as someone who admires senator clinton immensely, i am getting very annoyed at her campaign. please stop this nonsense — geffen was entitled to his opinion (even if he was wrong in many ways) and senator obama is not geffen. to attack obama for geffen’s comment was wrong; just like it was wrong of the obama campaign to attack clinton for ford’s comment (although i was personally happy that clinton said she appreciated ford’s apology to obama). it’s obvious to me that anyone who will listen to geffen are hillary-haters and obama fans anyway, so this attack won’t change their minds (only feed the fire). meanwhile, this attack can backfire because it will frustrate voters like me who like senator clinton but hate mud-slinging. senator clinton, if people bother taking the time to learn about her, is smart, hard-working with a long list of accomplishments. (if you disagree with me, read up on her record). her accomplishments speak for themselves and that should be enough to influence votes; mud-slinging only distracts attention away from her accomplishments. wolfson, please stop this before you self-destruct.
posted by helen
we’re not so sure ourselves about her record; she adamantly refuses to admit her 2002 vote for war w/iraq was questionable. but we do agree w/helen that this latest snit-fest does her no good in terms of looking presidential (unless you count the current occupant of the white house as an example thereof).
meanwhile, a bit of skippy-meta:
image our surprise to find out that ana marie cox, on time’s blog swampland, linked to our report on the obama-clinton opening salvo!
we take back most of what ever we said about ana marie!
but, and this speaks volumes to swampland’s effectiveness, her link to us has only produced a dozen or so hits in three hours, traffic wise. c’est la blog!
at least ana marie used actual links and cites to back up her arguments, unlike her co-blogger, jay “hey rube” carney…
