Barack Obama has just won the last 10 primaries and caucuses. As such, he now takes on front runner status for the democratic nomination.
One time front-runner Hillary Clinton isn’t happy. She waged a desperate race-baiting campaign that flopped in South Carolina but her negative campaign of personal destruction hasn’t abated. As The New York Times reports, Clinton seems willing to do or say just about anything to get nominated:
Striking a harsher new tone as she embarks on a two-week stretch that could revive or break her White House hopes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton attacked Senator Barack Obama as callow and unprepared to lead.
Speaking at Hunter College in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Obama was running on a thin resume and empty rhetoric.
“It is time to get real,” she said. “To get real about how we actually win this election and get real about the challenges facing America. It’s time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.”
Senator Obama has in truth laid out a specific and detailed progressive agenda for the nation. But the truth won’t stop the New York senator.
NBC reports on how dirty Clinton is playing:
Tom Buffenbarger president of the machinists' union (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) was the the latest in a string of Clinton junkyard dogs unleashed upon Obama. Prior to Hillary Clinton’s speech last night in Youngstown, Ohio, Buffenbarger delivered nothing short of an Obama diatribe.
While campaign introductions typically sing the praises of the upcoming candidate, Buffenbarger's speech barely mentioned Clinton until the conclusion. It was all about Obama, and it was laced with venom and ad hominems.
Buffenbarger called Obama a “thespian,” and he sarcastically referred to the junior senator from Illinois as a “wunderkind.” He compared Obama to “Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times.” And he pleaded with the crowd to boo Obama’s labor record.
Early in his speech, Buffenbarger asked, “So now we have a decision to make. Will we rely on the Harvard Law Review editor? The silver-tongued orator from Kansas, Hawaii and Illinois? The man in love with the microphone?”…..
But it was Obama supporters for whom Buffenbarger saved his most vitriolic contempt, and he proved that the Democratic Party’s coalition is nothing if not fragile. Channeling Howard Beale from the movie "Network," he yelled into the microphone, “Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius- driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet, not a fighter.”
Clinton didn’t distance herself from the remarks. All she did was thank Buffenbarger for the introduction. (HT to Jesse Lava).
Senator Obama is waging a campaign that seeks to reconcile our broken nation – a nation fighting a broken war, a nation with a broken economy - while Senator Clinton seems happily intent on tearing apart our people with the hope not that people will vote FOR her but AGAINST Obama. That’s a terrible way to win a campaign. But as the Republicans know from 1988 and 2000 it is a strategy that can work. We ought to aspire to something better in America.
Thank goodness Barack Obama does.
Related Link: Why I’m Joining Obama For America: “People of Faith for Barack”
