2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"The New, Nasty Obama Campaign" by Molly Ball at the Atlantic
The New, Nasty Obama Campaignby Molly Ball at the Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/the-new-nasty-obama-campaign/257535/
"SNIP........................................................
Many a requiem has been written for "that hopey-changey thing," as Sarah Palin so memorably dubbed it. And to be sure, much of the griping about the president's harsh tone is the disingenuous phony outrage of Republicans who would prefer not to be its targets. But as Obama embarks in earnest on his second presidential campaign, deliberately invoking the echoes of 2008 as he does so, the contrast with his old image is especially stark.
From the beginning, the president's reelection campaign has taken a brutal, no-holds-barred approach that's sharply at odds with the conciliatory image that was the central predicate of Obama's entire pre-presidential political career. Whether or not the specific issue of Bain Capital ought to be off limits -- Booker has taken pains to clarify he doesn't think it should be -- there's no denying that Obama's 2012 campaign has seized every opportunity to turn the campaign toward sharply personal attacks of a type that the 2008-vintage Obama would surely have recoiled from. From Romney's treatment of his onetime pet dog to his high-school pranks to his income-tax rate, from the "war on women" to the "war on caterpillars," from "I like being able to fire people" to "I'm not concerned about the very poor," no potential controversy has been too petty, too rhetorically overblown or too out-of-context to be exploited to the hilt.
None of this is shocking -- it's how the game is played. But Obama once ostentatiously refused to play it. In June 2007, for example, when Obama's primary campaign distributed a memo titled "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)" detailing Clinton's connections to India, Obama publicly upbraided his staff, calling it "a dumb mistake" and "unnecessarily caustic." As the New York Times put it at the time, "The memo...raised quesitons about Obama's claims that he is above attack politics, which are epitomized by secretly distributing opposition research about a rival."
These days, the Obama campaign distributes harshly critical research memos as a matter of course. And the idea that it might be any other way is viewed as pollyannaish handwringing, or worse, doing the other side's bidding.
................................................SNIP"
polichick
(37,152 posts)tosh
(4,424 posts)Thank the goddesses!!
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,975 posts)roseBudd
(8,718 posts)SoutherDem
(2,307 posts)The Republicans wrote the book on Nasty Campaigns, it was a Republican majority SCOTUS which allowed super pacs who's only purpose is to collect money and smear the opponent.
It has been Romney who spoke about his accomplishment at Bain so much I thought he had a hyphenated last name, Bain-Romney.
Just, why is it because those accomplishments are being questioned it becomes a nasty politics?
So, let me see if I understand, nothing Romney says can be challenged or it is nasty politics, right?
Yet, through out the primaries with the help of his super pac Romney utterly destroyed each opponent as they emerged.
So, if I understand, Romney get to challenge anything said by his challenger, right?
Am I missing something?
Well as far as I am concerned Obama should run the nastiest campaign in history, if those are the rules. And, it would still be clean compared to any Republican campaign I can remember.
ProfessionalLeftist
(4,982 posts)You can't fight psychopaths and bullies by being nice.
beac
(9,992 posts)undermines whatever point the author was trying to make in that rambling article.
emulatorloo
(44,268 posts)Against a lying bully who wants to strip the country of its assets so the rich can get richer.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,452 posts)"vulture capitalism" has pretty much been the entire Republican economic policy of the last 30+ years through the *clever* guise of "privatization". The buzzards are still hard at work trying to wrest control of the last major government programs still in existence (i.e. Medicare, Social Security) so that they can turn them over to their 1% buddies to help further line their pockets.
beac
(9,992 posts)aimed at Obama supporters, the "pranks" thing was extra galling.
I found the whole article absurd, but that one thing especially stood out to me.
Historic NY
(37,459 posts)Proud Liberal Dem
(24,452 posts)when their victim(s) fight back. Republicans and their "very serious" friends in the corporate media are no different. *ugh*
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)unsuspecting people on our side of the aisle would post their BS
applegrove
(118,889 posts)boxman15
(1,033 posts)I'm glad he's stopped with the "Why can't we be friends?" rhetoric and is now going after them and putting them in their place. The GOP puts party before country every fucking time, and it's great that the president is calling them out for it.
Drunken Irishman
(34,857 posts)Dukakis didn't fight back. He wanted to go 'above it all' and it bit him in the ass. Had he fought back in late spring, Bush never overcomes that 20-point deficit and he wins.