It's Her Party, And She'll Cry If She Wants To
It's difficult to figure out what Hillary Clinton hopes to gain with her spectacular temper tantrum today, directed as it is against the wrong man. After Maureen Dowd briefly achieved relevancy by relating some tough criticisms of Hillary by Hollywood mogul David Geffen, the Democratic front-runner blamed Barack Obama for his newfound Geffen support. And make no mistake, Geffen drew blood:
Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today, in which she quoted former Bill Clinton supporter David Geffen offering a few caustic comments, has incited a strong Hillary Clinton campaign attack on Geffen -- and the candidate he now favors, Sen. Barack Obama.Then Obama's team fired back.
"Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it’s troubling,” Geffen had said.
Geffen said more than that, and most of it underscores the Democratic Party's unease with her rise to presumptive frontrunner for the 2008 election. Geffen raised $18 million for Bill Clinton's two Presidential campaigns, but stopped being a fan after Bill pardoned Marc Rich and left Leonard Peltier imprisoned for killing two FBI agents. Geffen now believes that Bill Clinton is a fundamentally reckless man who provided his enemies with the ammunition they needed against his presidency. Geffen also painted Hillary as a product of her advisors, and endorsed the idea that she will be the easiest of the Democratic candidates to beat in the general election.
Hillary's campaign came out swinging -- but at Barack Obama instead of Geffen, who just finished a fundraiser for the neophyte Senator. Linking to an ABC story on Obama's expressed distaste for "slash and burn politics", Team Hillary demanded that Obama cut Geffen from his campaign, return all of the funds raised by Geffen, and apparently take monastic vows and give himself a Britney Spears haircut:
"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.
"While Democrats should engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, there is no place in our party or our politics for the kind of personal insults made by Senator Obama's principal fundraiser.
Well, the short answer is that Obama didn't make the remarks, and Geffen didn't say anything out of bounds about the public character of the Clintons. Bill did pardon Marc Rich, a financier whose wife gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill's library fund, despite a negative recommendation from his own Department of Justice and the lack of any remorse on the part of Rich. He didn't pardon Peltier -- not that Peltier deserves one -- after Geffen lobbied Bill to do so. She's tried to maintain a ridiculous pose on the Iraq war, one that certainly seems enough like lying to make Geffen's complaint reasonable.
The longer answer is that Hillary looks about ready to self-destruct. She got rattled by the loss of her exclusive connections to Hollywood, which has made clear that they will not commit solely to her. With Obama scoring big in his Tinseltown debut, Hillary understands that a major portion of her husband's contributions has just dried up. Instead of redoubling her efforts to woo the celluloid titans back to her side, she blew her stack and demanded ridiculous penance from a competitor who hadn't sinned against her.
In fact, Obama has decided to allow Hillary to look as bad as she can, issuing a classy response this evening:
My sense is that Mr. Geffen may have differences with the Clintons. That doesn’t have anything to do with our campaign… I’ve said I’ve had the utmost respect for Senator Clinton. I consider her an ally in the Senate. And will continue to consider her that way throughout the campaign…
Hillary apparently felt that the 2008 primary campaign would be little more than a coronation, and the general election a Restoration. Instead, she finds herself in the first tough election of her life, and she's starting to crack under the pressure. This reaction seems very much like the disillusionment of arrogance.
UPDATE: Most links via the indispensable Memeorandum. Also, if you want to get a good read of Geffen's comments, be sure to read Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on February 21, 2007 7:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (6)
