Senator Clinton Became What She Beheld: The Right Wing Slime Attack Machine

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

by Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

April 20, 2008

If you are a Chicagoan, as I am, you know that Richard M. Daley is the voice of the lunch bucket working class men and women. In fact, I used to be involved actively in an advocacy issue and would talk to Daley while sitting next to him at fundraising functions, and let me tell you (they were off the record as far as details) that he's a tireless advocate for many progressive urban issues (gay rights, education, gun control, the environment, etc.), but he's also someone who can speak bluntly of the "family values" Reagan Democrat, because his heart never left the former working class Irish enclave of his birth in Chicago: the Bridgeport neighborhood. (It is now largely Mexican, Italian and Irish -- and he has long ago moved out.)

So what does Mayor Richard M. Daley have to say about the Clinton campaign's relentless attempt to smear Barack Obama with a dishonest, ludicrous "Weathermen" connection?

I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally-renowned school reform program. He is a nationally-recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois/Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.

I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40 year old battles.

The Tribune noted, "Daley accused Hillary Clinton and other critics of Obama's association with Ayers of 're-fighting 40 year old battles.' And the mayor noted that he, too 'know(s) Bill Ayers' and has 'worked with' Ayers on city education reforms."

In February, BuzzFlash was the first major progressive Internet site to lambaste the Clinton campaign for its tireless effort to employ Lee Atwater tactics -- call it one of their Willie Horton moments -- to get the media to bring up that Obama knew Ayers and sat with him on the board of the prestigious and respected Woods Fund, a charitable trust in Chicago.

We watched as Phil Singer and other lead Clinton communication staff kept pressing the Atwater style smear-by-association to the media. Singer appeared to be the point person in pressuring news outlets to bring up the non-issue of Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, having known Obama because they travel in the same Hyde Park and Chicago child advocacy circles. That's because, as we noted in February, Ayers and Dohrn have become what Clinton professes to be, distinguished and tireless advocates for children, achieving national acclaim in their fields.

In the Tribune article cited above, Singer shows up again touting the lowest form of political attack:

In a conference call with reporters today, Clinton spokesmen Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer sought to maintain that Obama’s political relationship with Ayers was more important than the decision by Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton, to commute the sentences of two of Ayers’ former Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans on terrorist related weapons charges.

Asked if Hillary Clinton had expressed any disagreement with her husband’s actions in commuting the sentences of Rosenberg and Evans, Wolfson said only that he would ask the candidate.

The New York Times ran an article the other day claiming to trace how the Obama-Ayers smear made it into the ABC Debate, but it barely mentioned the Clinton campaign, which has been pushing the attempt to tarnish Obama through Ayers almost every day for the past several weeks. It made it onto Sean Hannity, the right wing talk shows and websites, and ABC not because of the right wing fanning its gutter politics flame, but because of the Clinton campaign knowingly employing right wing sleaze tactics that Karl Rove would employ.

In fact, the Clinton campaign had a surrogate release a long "report" the other day again bringing up Ayers, but claiming it was only to point out how the right wing would use the acquaintance to attack Obama. Of course, that's a ruse to again try to imply that there's a story where Mayor Richard M. Daley, the quintessential "guy on the street" Democrat, and the Chicago Tribune don't think that there's anything to bring up.

Yes, the conservative, Bush supporting, pro-Iraq War, flag waving Chicago Tribune denounced the Clinton attacks and published an April 17th editorial about the ludicrous and unseemly effort to make Obama appear "unelectable" because he knows William Ayers:

First, you have to wonder why ABC News thought it was a good idea to have George Stephanopoulos, who was one of President Bill Clinton's highest-ranking aides, serve up questions at a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Second, you have to wonder why Stephanopoulos, who has been resurrected as a television commentator, thought to ask Obama about . . . Bill Ayers.

Obama knows Ayers, a former radical and member of the Weather Underground who is now an academic in Chicago. They met years ago. They served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which provides money for anti-poverty efforts.

Ah, we know Ayers too. And his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. If you know people in Chicago academic circles, chances are you know Ayers and Dohrn.

They have not been repentant about their days in the radical, anti-war movement in the 1960s and their time fleeing federal authorities. They should be. There is still time for them to be.

But they have done good work in Chicago—Ayers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dohrn at Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center.

So we're going to side with Mayor Richard Daley on this one.

"There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics. And one more example is the way Sen. Obama's opponents are playing guilt by association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers," Daley said Thursday. "I don't condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40-year-old battles."

Well said. Now how about getting back to the real campaign?

So now it's not just BuzzFlash bringing up in February this contemptible right wing attack style tactic by the Clinton campaign.

Senator Clinton's campaign appears to think that only it can beat the right wing attack machine by employing their reprehensible tactics against a fellow Democrat. In fact, in the case of the Ayers slander on Obama, the Clinton campaign has basically been feeding the right wing the story with a pink ribbon wrapped around it.

I don't recall an e-mail from an ardent supporter of Clinton deploring the Senator's tactics. There is some emotional blind attachment to the idea that a woman in the White House would change things, even if she is behaving in this campaign more like Karl Rove than Eleanor Roosevelt. If Karl Rove were Karla Rove would that make his methods suddenly "feminist" and worthy of support by the "Clinton sisterhood"?

Glory be, we hope not.

The bottom line is that Clinton's right wing smear campaign tactics have forced many supporters of the positive nurturing, embracing qualities of Feminism down into the gutter with a flawed candidate, whose gender is secondary to the candidate's thirst for power.

But then again, the Feminist community, of which I consider myself a member even if I am a male, is split down the middle on Clinton. Many understand that it is time for a woman to be president, but Clinton betrays many of the basic tenets of Feminism. She's a moderate war hawk, for instance, as she revealed yet again in her private and factually incorrect lacerating attack on Moveon.org and Netroots advocates. And let's not forget her hawkish record on Iraq and Iran until she started running in the Democratic primaries.

As a BuzzFlash editor noted in a recent posting, Clinton should long ago have taken heed of a statement that she made about Eleanor Roosevelt in 1995:

Eleanor Roosevelt understood that every one of us every day has choices to make about the kind of person we are and what we wish to become. You can decide to be someone who brings people together, or you can fall prey to those who wish to divide us. You can be someone who educates yourself, or you can believe that being negative is clever and being cynical is fashionable. You have a choice. -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1995, at the dedication of Eleanor Roosevelt College

In the 2008 campaign, Senator Hillary Clinton had a choice, and she chose to ignore the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Instead, she became what she so deplored in the '90s, and now her campaign is not fighting the right wing attack machine; it's feeding it.

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