336 Republicans Switch Parties in Early States to Vote Obama

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1. Danielle Clarke
   November 9, 2007 at 6:10pm

   Clinton busted planting questioners at campaign event
   http://cmondisplay.com/2007/11.....questions/

   “On Tuesday Nov. 6, the Clinton campaign stopped at a biodiesel plant in Newton as part of a weeklong series of events to introduce her new energy plan. The event was clearly intended to be as much about the press as the Iowa voters in attendance, as a large press core helped fill the small venue. Reporters from many major national news outlets came to the small Iowa town, from such media giants as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and CNN.

   After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff ‘10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. “They were canned,” she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton’s speech. “One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask],” she said.

   Clinton called on Gallo-Chasanoff after her speech to ask a question: what Clinton would do to stop the effects of global warming. Clinton began her response by noting that young people often pose this question to her before delving into the benefits of her plan.

   But the source of the question was no coincidence–at this event “they wanted a question from a college student,” Gallo-Chasanoff said. She also noted that staffers prompted Clinton to call on her and another who had been approached before the event, although Clinton used her discretion to select questions and called on people who had not been prepped before hand. Some of the questions asked were confusing and clearly off-message……”

2. Danielle Clarke
   November 9, 2007 at 6:14pm

   Hillary’s behind-the-scenes slime machine

   Here’s the piece. It’s hard to find on the site.

   The politics of hope

   Clinton said she wanted to “chat.” So why is her campaign trying to
   shame Edwards and Obama into silence?
   Tim Grieve

   Oct. 30, 2007 | We got an e-mail today from one of Hillary Clinton’s
   campaign spokesmen. It said that we “might want to check out Hillary Hub
   this morning,” and it provided a link to make it easy for us to do so.

   What we found there: a banner that says “The Politics of Hope,” video
   clips of Barack Obama and John Edwards talking about “the politics of
   hope,” and four newspaper and wire service headlines about how Obama and
   Edwards are going after Clinton.

   The implication? Attacking the views of another Democratic candidate
   means either that you’ve turned your back on the “politics of hope” or
   that you never really believed in the idea in the first place.

   But don’t just take our word for it. As we began to write this post, we
   received another e-mail message from the Clinton campaign. This one, a
   memo to “interested parties” from Clinton strategist Mark Penn,
   accuses Edwards and Obama of having “abandoned” the “politics of hope” by
   declaring that they’re “going to go negative” on the Democratic
   front-runner.

   Here’s our memo in response: Stop.

   When Obama spoke of the “politics of hope” during his speech at the
   Democratic National Convention, he did so to contrast it with what he
   called the “politics of cynicism” and the “politics of anything goes,” the
   “spin masters” and “negative ad peddlers” who would divide Americans,
   liberal against conservative, black against white, red state against
   blue.

   If Obama was suggesting that one candidate couldn’t or shouldn’t make
   it clear that he disagrees with another on matters of substance, well,
   he didn’t say that then, and he’s not saying that now.

   In an interview with the New York Times last week, Obama said he’s
   “amused” by “some of the commentary out of the Clinton camp, where every
   time we point out a difference between me and her, they say, ‘What
   happened to the politics of hope?’” It’s a “silly” question, he said. Why?
   Because, he said, “the notion that somehow changing [the] tone means
   simply that we let them say whatever they want to say or that there are no
   disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is
   obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function.”

   Nor is it the way the Clinton campaign functions. While Clinton herself
   generally — but not always — stays above the fray, the Clinton
   campaign routinely reaches out to reporters to provide information they
   might use to attack her Democratic opponents. Some of it comes in public
   statements like the Penn memo the campaign sent around today or the
   harsh, on-the-record comments Clinton spokesman Phil Singer has made about
   Edwards’ “flagging campaign” or Obama’s “same old attack politics.”

   Much more of it comes in behind-the-scenes e-mails to newspaper
   reporters and bloggers — the sorts of e-mails we get from the Clinton
   campaign but not from the Edwards or Obama camps: On the “off-chance” you
   didn’t read it, here’s a copy of a Washington Post editorial calling Obama
   “irresponsible”; just “wanted to flag this item” in which the
   Huffington Post criticizes Obama on Iran; here’s something Edwards just said
   about Iraq, and here’s something contradictory he said earlier.

   The last of those came in an off-the-record e-mail message we received
   from the Clinton campaign late last month. We’re probably breaking the
   rules in mentioning it, but we figure it’s fair game: If you’re going
   to claim that the other guys are doing something wrong in calling your
   candidate’s views into question, you don’t get to pretend that you’re
   not doing the same.

   But our larger point here isn’t that the Clinton campaign’s “politics
   of hope” argument is hypocritical — although when Penn says that
   Clinton is “defining the ‘politics of hope’ while the others are abandoning
   them,” it is. The larger point is that the Clinton campaign’s argument
   is off the mark, offensive and, ultimately, unhelpful.

   If Clinton’s Democratic challengers were attacking her with the phony
   scandals of the 1990s — the “politics of personal destruction” — or
   smearing her with the “undermining the troops” and “advocating America’s
   defeat” crap that’s the stock in trade of the GOP these days, then her
   campaign would be right to be asking about the “politics of hope.” But
   the last time we checked, Obama was criticizing Clinton for her
   positions — or lack thereof — on issues such as Social Security, Iran and
   Iraq. Moreover, he has been doing it with remarkably noninflammatory
   language. Neither his talk of “triangulation and poll-driven politics” nor
   his accusation that Clinton will “dodge and spin” to avoid answering
   questions is what we’d call incendiary. Yes, Edwards’ attacks on Clinton
   have been sharper, but they’re still miles away from the Swift-boating,
   gay-baiting, race-card-playing hardball that any Democratic nominee
   can safely expect to see in 2008.

   More to the point, isn’t this exactly the sort of debate that
   candidates and their party ought to be having along the road to the White House?
   Since 9/11, Democrats and their political allies have spent six long
   years on the receiving end of lectures about why they can’t say what
   needs to be said. Bill Maher’s criticisms of the president draw a
   watch-what-you-say warning from the White House; Tom Daschle’s concern about
   the president’s rush to war in Iraq leads the Republican speaker of the
   House to accuse him of coming “mighty close” to providing “comfort to
   our adversaries”; the president’s chief political advisor says ****
   Durbin’s comments about Guantánamo have put our troops “in even greater
   danger” than they were before — even after Durbin apologizes for saying
   what he said. Then Congressional Republicans — with some help from too
   many Democrats — turn a chance to debate America’s role in Iraq into
   an opportunity to condemn MoveOn.

   The last thing the Democratic Party needs now is somebody else — let
   alone one of its own — suggesting that open debate is somehow wrong.
   Clinton seemed to understand that point perfectly well when she announced
   her candidacy back in January. “Let’s talk, let’s chat,” she said
   then. “Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine, because the
   conversation in Washington has been just a little one-sided lately, don’t you
   think?”

   Yes, as a matter of fact, we do. But a one-sided conversation is a
   one-sided conversation, no matter who’s doing the talking. Elections are
   necessarily choices among competing candidates and competing visions. If
   Clinton can run her campaign without ever mentioning why she thinks
   she’s better than her opponents, more power to her. But mere mortals can’t
   do that, and they shouldn’t have to. If Clinton was serious about
   having a “dialogue” — if part of her own hope for America is that we’ll
   have a more open society than the one in which we’ve lived for the past
   six years — then it’s high time for her campaign to stop trying to
   shame its opponents into silence. Engage with the criticisms or ignore
   them; just don’t argue that it’s wrong to raise them in the first place.

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