A review brief; the Nevada Democratic party back in March agreed to setup caucus locations on the Vegas strip for the low-income shift workers, many of whom commute long distances to work and would not be able to get back home in time to caucus. Many of these people are also members of the Culinary Union. The proposal for these temporary caucus facilities was groovy until the Culinary Union endorsed Barack Obama! Immediately on the heels of the Union’s announcement, the Nevada State Education Association, whose top officials support Hillary, sued to shut down the caucus sites. However, on meet the press Hillary said her campaign had nothing to do with the lawsuit. More below the fold……
Yesterday Bill Clinton publicly came out in favor of the lawsuit which if decided in favor of the plaintiffs will have the effect of preventing thousands of people who work in the Casinos from voting. You can read the complete article on the website of The Nation over at “thenation.com”. It should be pointed out and emphasized that the rank-and-file members of the Nevada Teacher’s Union have come out strongly against the lawsuit filed by the leadership.
I am personally disgusted with Hillary’s attempts at playing the role of “Miss Innocent” in all of these political dirty trick and whisper events which always wind up being publicized as the work of some “over zealous” Clinton supporter. Also I have noticed in each case, in the aftermath of the public dust-up over some negative comment or remark directed against Barack Obama; slick willy always emerges to place himself squarely at the forefront in defense of the issue.
The tough question at this time what is the Obama organization to do? Taking the non-retaliatory high ground has never proven to be a politically effective strategy. Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign aptly demonstrated this point. All of the “race vs gender” disparaging conversation has been between some surrogate of the Clinton campaign and the publicity channels of the tabloid minded media. So upon the opening of the Nevada debate Barack and Hillary had to declare in front of MSNBC that they repudiated all negative remarks concerning race or gender and going forward they would not use them in their campaign’s messages. If the Obama campaign was not involved with tossing this dirt around, why did Barack have to take the “oath” not to do it anymore? He did it because he was asked to do it by other older highly respected African-American politicians.
A fair campaign conducted on the issues will never happen with Bill-Hill’s bid for the nomination. On the other hand, I believe that Barack envisions his campaign as simply one component of his movement, which is designed to turn this huge ship called the United States of America slowly around to finally sail in the best channel possible going forward in the 21st century. If I understand it properly, movements constructed of strong popular ideas cannot be stopped because the essence of those ideas take root in the minds of the populace. Success can be seen as the fruit of some of the concepts even start appear on the lips of the enemy.
The old adage, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones, is very applicable here to the Bill-Hill campaign, and one might wonder at their gall to ignore this axiom, considering their past heavily documented baggage (White Water, Travel-gate, impeachment in the House Chamber, etc). Barack will be fine as long as he can maintain his focus on his idea of a movement that is a new revitalized America prepared to take its place in a new 21st century world moving towards a massive global interconnection as “One World” (Wendell Willkie).
