http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=3f1c46a6-a691-4084-b04f-10880727e928Frankly, It's Shameful by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, working hard to elect John McCain.
Post Date Tuesday, April 15, 2008
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At one level, who can blame Hillary Clinton for going after Obama's mistake? Her campaign looked set to collapse, if not in Pennsylvania then shortly thereafter. Of course she capitalized on his error by accusing him of being elitist.
But something doesn't parse when a Wellesley and Yale Law School graduate whose family made $109 million since 2001 relentlessly assails a former community organizer for elitism. (McCain enthusiastically dittoed the charge Monday.) It's also disappointing that Clinton, whose husband bravely battled the National Rifle Association over a ban on assault weapons, now presents herself as a Second Amendment hero.
And not contenting herself with bashing Obama, she denigrated the last two Democratic presidential nominees, John Kerry and Al Gore, at Sunday night's CNN forum on faith.
Oh, yes, they were "very good men and men of faith." But conferring her blessing upon the crude stereotypes peddled relentlessly by Republican consultants, she then asserted that "large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to or, frankly, respect their ways of life."
That "frankly" is the most appalling word in the whole sentence. And never mind that Al Gore ran 360,000 votes ahead of Senate candidate Clinton when both were on New York's ballot in the 2000 election.
It has been sickening over the years to watch Republicans, who always rally to the aid of the country's wealthiest citizens, successfully cast themselves as pork-rind-eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists. To have the current White House occupant (Yale, Harvard Business School, son of a president) run as a good old boy should have been the final straw.
But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth.