Thursday, March 6, 2008

Starr Wars II: Attack of the Drones

Today, one of Hillary Clinton's spokesmen, Harold Wolfson, compared Barack Obama's statement that he's going to be more critical of Hillary's record to the Whitewater investigation headed up by Kenneth Starr.

Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me, either.

Naturally when something like this happens, I look to talk radio's big guns, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck to see what they think was the motivation. I didn't find anything on Rush's website where he talked about it, but I did get to see the lovely collection of Club Gitmo wear. I listened to Hannity and he was still on the "Obama's racist Pastor" kick in between chats with guests. And Beck? I'm not sure it hit early enough for him to comment on it today, so I went 0 for 3 with the guys who get paid to comment on this sort of thing.

When I started thinking about it at first, it seemed rather disjointed. Who even remembers that much about Ken Starr these days besides the Clintons and their followers? Ah, but there's the rub! It comes down to this election, but not in the way you think.

Right now, Hillary could win the Democratic nomination by virtue of securing enough super delegates. With Obama starting to try to get Hillary's super delegates on his side, she knows she'll have to retain as many as she can while trying to attract as many of Obama's super delegates as possible. So, her campaign brings up an old boogeyman in the form of Ken Starr, hoping the super delegates who remember him flock to her to protect her from Obama's attempts to...well, to campaign against her.

The potential pitfall to this is if Democrats start to think about how weak a comparison Wolfson made. Seriously, asking about Hillary's tax returns as a means to suggest she's not being completely open about herself is akin to Ken Starr's investigation into Whitewater? That's a bit of a stretch, even for someone enamored with the prospect of a former First Lady becoming President. At some point, you can't play the "victim card" and have it work. This is one time when it definitely doesn't work when you really think about it.

Of course, you never can tell when something will work. Who would have thought Hillary crying would have helped her win New Hampshire?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, i like ur blog alot, and i wonder if you're ever gonna make new ones.
I'd like to see your take on the current Obama admin, the mid-term elections and the wikileaks drama going on.