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To Mark Halperin: Au Contraire, mon frére -- Joe Scarborough defends Hillary.
With all the hoopla over Mark Halperin's book Game Change in the major media, I went to read Peter Daou's account of what he saw from Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Presidential Campaign (Pacific John has an excellent article up now; go here http://alegrescorner.soapblox.... if you haven't already seen it). Daou was a senior campaign staffer, and he's the first one to come out and say flat out that this book is wrong. (Mind, I've seen many other denials since -- Howard Wolfson comes to mind -- from Hillary campaign staffers. But Mr. Daou's was the first.)
But not all members of the major media have forgotten their recent history, and some of them have been quite articulate in their defense of Hillary Clinton. The person who comes to mind, though, as having given the best defense of HRC's character to date, though, is former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough --MSNBC's "Morning Joe" himself.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Scarborough is displeased, as he says here in an article picked up by the Huffington Post:
The Washington Post news legend focused on the part of the book that personally caused me the greatest concern . . . I was most surprised by the observation of one of Hillary Clinton's top aides that the New York senator lacked the character to be President of the United States.
Scarborough points out that the 2008 primary campaign was long, grueling and unprecedented; he said that aides get grumpy and that no one should expect them to be saints. (The idea that anyone expect a political candidate to be a saint is one Scarborough has found for years to be incredibly offensive; I've watched his show.)
And Scarborough is also unpleased with the revisionist history going on by the major media, as he says here:
. . . what I saw throughout Hillary's 2008 campaign was a candidate who kept fighting back even after being badly wounded in Iowa, negligently served by her staff, and treated miserably by a biased press corps.
And then there's this quote, with emphasis added by yours truly:
. . . the Clinton campaign took one body blow after another. The media coverage was deplorable. In fact, it was so biased in some quarters that more than a few living legends of broadcast news privately shared with me the embarrassment they felt toward their own profession.
And it's obvious that Joe Scarborough has not forgotten what Hillary really did during the primaries, as he says here:
We were told that like New Hampshire, Ohio would be Hillary's Waterloo. After all, Obama was outspending her there by a margin of 4 to 1.
She still won.
Then we were told that Barack Obama's victory in Texas would seal the deal and make history.
Hillary won again, despite again being outspent 4 to 1.
Then pundits told America that West Virginia would be a battleground for the type of blue collar voters that helped put JFK on the path to the White House in 1960. If Obama won there, like another young senator, he would be on his way to the Oval Office.
But Hillary won yet again, this time by an astounding 41 points.
Joe Scarborough makes a few other comments that I found interesting about the rules for the Democratic delegates -- he leaves much out there that any PUMA/Clinton Dem would be glad to fill in for him -- but these quotes, right at the end of his piece, talk of what he sees as Hillary's character:
Character is rarely revealed in its sharpest contrast after a glorious victory. Instead, you find out what a person is made of after they sustain a soul crushing defeat. In her long, tortured march toward Denver, Hillary Clinton showed more character, more resilience, and more true grit than any presidential candidate I can recall.
And in that losing cause, Secretary Clinton served as a great example of character not only for my young daughter, but for us all. It is that type of strength that we need in our leaders now more than ever.
Amen, brother! (And might I add, if the Democratic Party had half as much integrity as does Mr. Scarborough, we'd not have this mess right now?)
cross-posted at Alegre's Corner
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NH, I know full well what you think of that, but you were _there_. You saw all the nonsense _first hand_, as a voter and activist.
I will point out what Joe Scarborough said about it, though (from the above-quoted article):
And she just kept on doing it. Which is why the DNC was wrong; they should've known HRC was the stronger candidate, and if they didn't, they should check their brains to see whether or not they're still attached. And if they did know but just didn't care -- woe betide them. Because the American public, once aroused, will show them no mercy.
There's no excuse for this, DNC. You screwed the pooch; time to pay the piper.
Thanks for sharing the information about Joe Scarborough. I was once a regular viewer of "Morning Joe", and I watched him even when I refused to watch any other offerings from the network of misogynist thought and action. However, his sidekick, the irritating Mika, put an end to my viewership. (She was just too much for me to handle in the morning.) I've been MSNBC-free ever since, and it's added years to my life I'm sure, since I'm no longer yelling at the likes of Matthews, Mika, et al.
In another post, Catfish and I shared our mistrust of this book. It gossips, but it does not give names. Game Change (IMO) is a whitewash of the Obama campaign, and the hateful tactics its leaders and followers embraced. They are never mentioned.
Halperin and Heilemann are lousey journalists; or they believe the stealing of caucuses and the horrible rules meeting in Florida aren't worth mentioning. It's one or the other. For a gossipy, tell-all book, it is amazing that there is (based on interviews and critic's comments) nothing in it about Rezko, Larry Sinclair, Rev Wright, Bill Ayers, BO supporters online, or BO foreign contributors. (I guess it was written with 2012 in mind.)
From the interviews I've seen, it has become clear to me that the book is a hate piece directed at Clinton and Palin (both possible 2012 contenders). Isn't it incredible that these two strong women still make Obama supporters nuts? Like all Obama supporters, the authors' sycophantic treatment of Obama continues to this day.
In short, I will never forget, because if I do than I will forgive. If I forgive, it means that what happened in the 2008 campaign was acceptable. It wasn't, not by any stretch of the imagination.
I was at the Huffington Post to read Peter Daou's well-written defense of Hillary Clinton, and was pleasantly surprised to see Joe Scarborough's defense as well. As Joe is the first member of the media to come out flatly _against_ this book on its merits (at least on the charge that supposedly HRC lacks the "character" to be POTUS), I wanted to point it out as well. Many Clinton Dems and PUMAs have been frustrated with the major media -- and rightly so; to have a member of the media admit the bias was horrendous is extremely helpful to read. Means not everyone has lost their flippin' minds, at any rate. ;)
I think the reason for this book isn't just to hit Hillary and Sarah Palin; I think it's also to divert attention from the health care (insurance) reform bill. (As one of the health care professionals I know said, "It's really a health _insurance_ reform bill, at best, not a health care reform bill at all.") And if this book takes attention away from that mess, good -- but if it slimes HRC and Sarah Palin in the process, so much the better (from the perspective of an Obama Admin or Campaign person, or an O-bot, or whoever might want Obama to continue to hold the White House by any means necessary.)
Obama has almost no chance of winning right now in 2012; he has a divided Democratic Party that is far from behind him (he used scorched earth tactics on _us_ and he surely hasn't tried to mend fences, either), as even his true believers are incensed by much of what he's done. And I'm convinced that their internal polling shows that HRC is the _only_ Dem with a prayer of winning in 2012; that's why they want to discredit her.
I'm with you, BJ. I will not forget, and I will never forgive.
Hillary 2012.
There's no excuse for this, DNC. You screwed the pooch; time to pay the piper.
First that so-called journalists kissed and told - that is, they admittedly used material that was given "off the record" in many cases.
Second that all the nastiness etc from the BO camp escaped their notice entirely.
He came through spotless while his former opponents were spat upon, which in my mind shows the true intent of the book is to make him bullet proof for 2012.
I think that regardless of whether this book hits the bestseller lists or not, it's going to carry what you might call "bad juju." ;)
I definitely think this book will not succeed.
There's no excuse for this, DNC. You screwed the pooch; time to pay the piper.
I want to mention that I like Joe. He was a Clinton supporter throughout the primaries.
You want to know about the NH Primary? Here is my BlueHampshire diary from back then.
http://www.bluehampshire.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3103
The Obama campaign goes Chicago
So why did I say "The Obama campaign goes Chicago"?
Civil Discourse - ERA - A Mother President - Women's Rights - Primary Reform
Excellent summation of what happened, and the rudeness and incivility of it all -- and I agree with you. There was no need for it _then_, there's no need for it _now_, and I continue to find it disgusting.
There's no excuse for this, DNC. You screwed the pooch; time to pay the piper.
one journalist who was not insisting what we were seeing was what our "lying eyes" were telling us.
And I agree. :-)
There's no excuse for this, DNC. You screwed the pooch; time to pay the piper.
has a pretty clear read on the 2 hacks who wrote this tell-all "make 2012 safe for Obama" book:
----------<snip>
I Say “Hearsay”. What Say You?
I’ve heard or watched several interviews now with “journalists” Mark Halperin and John Heilemann who wrote the latest blockbuster best seller “Game Change”. The most interesting one by far however was by Don Imus this morning (carried on the FOX Business Channel, in case you were unaware). He queried them at length about attributions they made to various people in their book, and why some attributions included quotes, while others did not. Their explanation is the reason I’ve used quotes around the term “journalists” above.
Halperin and Heilemann provided the most convoluted, tortuous explanation I’ve heard in quite a long while. It boils down to this: they didn’t want to present hearsay information as an actual quote, but they did....
Well two problems: first, “someone who heard it directly” - as opposed to someone who said it directly to you - is known as, um, hearsay.* Also known as second or third hand information. Secondly, even though they sourced Bill Clinton’s comment to Ted Kennedy from multiple sources, the only non-second hand source for that comment would have been Ted Kennedy. And he’s, um, dead. And since Ted Kennedy obviously didn’t tell either of these two “journalists” directly that Bill Clinton said that a few years ago Obama would be serving their coffee, I’d have to say that’s hearsay. Teddy might have told that story to several people, but he might have made it up: maybe to justify his decision to go with the light skinned candidate who didn’t talk with a Negro dialect.
...I’m going to have to say that this could well be an out right hit job by a couple of out-left “journalists” who might just have a, um, political agenda of their own....
* Here’s a good working definition of “hearsay” in the legal context: Oral or written testimony about an out-of-court statement attributed to someone other than the testifying person. Such evidence is generally inadmissible because the person to whom the statement is attributed cannot be cross-examined to ascertain its factual basis.
------<snip>
You raise valid points about these authors. I'm afraid some people might not read this book with their critical thinking skills engaged. I got caught up in the tale of John Edwards myself. Since so much of what they wrote about him was patently true, it was easy to believe everything was.
You mentioned the Iowa caucuses that started it all. Thinking about them is still painful for me. After all, we started this mess and I live every day wanting to apologize to the entire country. I've been trying to figure out why Hillary finished third here and have come to the conclusion that it was a combination of Edwards being a self-made man, Obama being from a neighboring state (we won't go into the issue of Illinois voters crossing the river) and Hillary being seen as the "establishment" candidate.
If it's any consolation, Obama's approval rating here in Iowa is now below 50%. Lots of buyers remorse here.