From Overkill to Meltdown

At least I hope so; I hope Hillary's oozing bile is melting her candidacy apart from the inside. Her attacks on Obama have gone from "too-much" to "totally nuts."

I. Bad Mud

The first - and I'm not making this up - is accusing Obama of having his own secret life-long plot to become president. How does Hillary know this? Well, as her campaign pointed out in a long, resourced, press release, they have proof that Obama has been planning to president ever since kindergarten.

Again, I can understand you think that I'm making that up. It sounds like a joke. After two days of the press hammering Clinton, her lead campaign troglodyte, Mark Penn, tried to claim it was a joke. It ain't. Compare the first 'proof' of the press release to the last:

12/2/2007

Twice in One Day: Senator Obama Tries Rewriting History, Again Claims He Hasn't Been Planning White House Run

At an event in Boston this evening, Senator Obama claimed for the second time today that he is "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President, contradicting statements his friends, family, staff and teachers have all made about him.

[snip]

Immediately after joining the Senate, Senator Obama started planning run for President. "'The first order of business for Senator Obama's team was charting a course for his first two years in the Senate. The game plan was to send Senator Obama into the 2007-2008 election cycle in the strongest form possible'...The final act of the plan was turning up the talk about a potential Presidential bid, which was greatly aided by his positive press and suggestions by pundits that he run for President." [U.S. News and World Report, 6/19/07 ]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.' "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07 ]

The first paragraph is opposition research; it's a bad attack, and one I'd expect from any bush-league outfit, but it fits the profile. The last paragraph follows the same format but it's completely bats**t crazy.

II. Really Bad Mud.

The second piece of Hillary meltdown overkill came out this afternoon. A bit of context first. The Washington Post has been under fire by the majority of the non-Fox news world for a story that ran last Friday on the front page that discussed the rumors of Obama being Muslim. The story topic ain't the problem... it's that the long news piece didn't actually say the magic words, that the rumors are completely false. It's a big issue, and others have been savaging the Post (including the heilige Tom Toles), so you can find out about that elsewhere.

Anyway, the false rumors about Obama have been spread by anonymous emails, much like the general mud and slime of electioneering (cf. push-polling, robo-calling, firing US Attorneys)

So, with that context, we can understand the crazy news today that an Iowa county chair for Hillary has been caught sending some of these "Obama is a Muslim" emails.

The Hillary campaign has dismissed the woman. The official statement is:

"There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics. A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated."

Note that they describe her disgusting behavior as a 'mistake,' and don't bother explaining that the rumor is false.

For those who believe that this was a mistake by the Hillary campaign, I have a great bridge to sell you.

And we've got 4 more weeks. Obama is leading in Iowa now and is climbing in New Hampshire. And Hillary may already be having her "Dean Scream" moment except that the scream is lasting for weeks.

P.S. The cartoon above ran today on the front page of the Des Moines Register