It's one gambit after another:

In the span of less than two weeks we've seen:

• Clinton's Communication Director promote a story about Obama's connections to "terrorists" (Wolfson's rewriting of a Politico headline, replacing the word "radicals" - end even then it was a guilt-by-association charge)
• Clinton say she and McCain are qualified to be president, but hints that Obama is not
• Hillary and Bill suggest a Clinton/Obama ticket would be awsome (Hillary saying Ohio "thinks" she should be on top.)

  To which a commentor at Carpetbagger remarked:
  
  Clinton launches new rounds of attacks on Obama’s character, judgment, and capacity, she also launches a round of positive warm hugs about his wonderful capacity to be her running mate. Both messages are out there in the political swirl with the ever-deficient media unable to sort it out and force it to make sense (or nonsense). The result is that those who want nice HIllary have a storyline to follow, while the trashing goes on unimpeded.

• Continued pressure to seat Florida and Michigan with the delegates already chosen
• Clinton Campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe charging that Samantha Power's private utterance of the "monster" word is, "the usual attack style politics that we have seen time and time again."

And now this:

Hillary: Pledged Delegates Can Switch Candidates

A few weeks ago the Clinton campaign shot down a report that they would seek to entice Barack Obama's pledged delegates into flipping over. Now the idea is being floated again — by Hillary herself.

"There are elected delegates, caucus delegates and super-delegates, all for different reasons, and they're all equal in their ability to cast their vote for whomever they choose," Hillary told Newsweek, when asked how she can win the nomination despite the current delegate math.

"Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to. This is a very carefully constructed process that goes back years, and we're going to follow the process."

Just "following the process", which, if memory serves was what the Republicans were doing when they impeached Clinton. Never mind if it was justified. If the process allows for an action, Clinton will take it if it benefits her.

She's violating what few norms still exist. And that's what the Republicans did: abuse the House-Senate reconciliation process with last-minute additions, shut out the Democrats while writing bills, pressuring K-street to abandon Democrats, abuse the filibuster (first by trying to deny it for Supreme Court nominees, then as a minority filibustering just about everything), implementation of the "unitary executive" to override professionalism within government agencies, etc. All technically allowable, but a rejection of long-standing traditions that were established to facilitate compromise and progress.


posted by Quiddity at 3/09/2008 11:33:00 PM