It is really difficult to avoid "playing" the gender card. And unfortunately Obama is playing the race card, albeit more subtly.

Where is Obama getting this "don't pick on me" thing? I didn't hear her say it. I have never gotten the impression that she is playing any kind of victim.

Mrs. Clinton's comments were to a most women audience at a women's college. She was speaking inspirationally to her audience.

When Bush recently spoke to the Heritage Foundation, he told them what they wanted to hear.

What's the difference.

Mrs. Clinton was right when she commented that excessive amounts of time have been devoted to her gender to bury her message.

Clinton is a woman, she has a point of view, she wears skirts and pants, she has cleavage. OK, we got that.

Is this really a story TPM.

Alright, that's it. The next time he speaks to a group of African-American young people and uses himself as an example to reach for your dreams -- much as Clinton did at Wellesley --, people can pull out the Race Card.

This is just inane, utter b.s. on the part of Obama to abandon his "Politics of Hope" and insert the very Republican "Politics of Personal Attack and Smear".

To say I'm disappointed is something of an understatement.

I would suggest that this is more noise from the right, and it's beneath TPM to even acknowledge it.

well, Hillary didn't deliberately state "i was a victim" during her Welsely speech, but she noodled all around it and had her subordinates basically say as much on her behalf. check the whole campaign, not just her exact working of one part of her speech. how weird is our country that a generally bland debate with a few areas of contention is being portrayed as this huge ganging up against one meek little girl? what the hell? these weren't personal attacks or vilifications such as the republicans use at will (vince foster, etc) - they were legitimate policy disagreements. huge mistake on Hillary's part to get sucked into this feeding frenzy. she didn't do that badly in the debate, she did her usual song and dance which already borders on being a totally pathologically untrue narrative, and got caught out there on one question not knowing exactly what she should say. would have been just a blip on the radar screen had she not sent her campaign into 'victim card damage control strategy' mode.

"hmbnancy wrote on November 2, 2007 11:02 AM:"

I agree with your comments. I am trying to figure out if TPM is running out of things to write about or is trying to distract from Obama's association with people that want to cure the gay.

As someone who was really gong ho for Obama when he came into this race, He is proving to be increasingly a disappointment. I think because of the ease with which he came into national politics, his political instincts is not well honed to the present level he currently playing at, hence many of the rocky mistakes he's been making. Quite a sad situation really.

HILLARY + MURDOCH = A BLEAK FUTURE FOR USA

Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch
loves China, is the media in China, owns(?) China,
China is Communist, China executes lots o' people...

Remember the Baby GAP story last week: 10 Yr. olds forced to work in....guess where...China.

Rupert Murdoch LOVES LOVES Hillary, FINANCES Hillary, and OWNs US MEDIA.

Rupert Murdoch is(?) China.

RUPERT + HILLARY = NO F***ING Way Will I vote for Hillary.

It's like Dick Cheney saying he no longer is involved with HALLIBURTON; Are We That, um, DUMB, to keep "buying sand sold on the beach."

Anyone have a similar take on OBAMA?
Obama's got my vote in the Primary...unless I'm missing something.

Brilliant Obama! He highlighted foreign policy differences that Hillary is trying to minimize. He deflected the "vote for Hillary because she is a woman" very deftly. He calmly, politely and forcefully put it to Clinton. It wasn't mean; it was honest and it was good campaigning.

Saying the Dems shouldn't go after each other is silly. Do you think the GOP aren't going after each other?

Greg, it's the post-debate "politics of pile-on, 6 men, one woman" stuff, NOT the Wellesley speech, that Obama's camp is referencing. The Wellesley speech I thought was good and positive, but their post-debate crybaby spin was super weak.

Her camp pretty clearly was saying that it's just a typical bunch of men ganging up on the first woman to mount a credible run for the presidency. I don't think it's remotely debateable.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said Clinton did not use the speech to try to drum up support from women voters. "She did no such thing," he said.

What?! Of course she did. It's totally disingenuous to deny it.

The point is, so what? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's a good thing to decry the glass ceiling in politics.

But to try to say that she didn't try to drum up support from female voters at Wellesley is just silly.

Of course, Clinton is saying "Don't pick on me" -- and it's disingenuous to say otherwise, based solely on her remarks at Wellesley.

Look at what Mark Penn wrote on Wednesday, in his "Politics of Pile-On" memo, which was the feature story on HillaryHub:

Senator Obama...abandoned the "politics of hope" message...Meanwhile, Senator Edwards doubled down in his effort to become the guy best known for attacking other Democrats...the rest of the pack followed suit and piled on....

Look at what Patti Solis Doyle wrote yesterday, in her fund-raising email -- also titled "The Politics of Pile-On":

On that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one. Candidates who had pledged the politics of hope practiced the politics of pile on instead. Her opponents tried a whole host of attacks on Hillary....trying to boost their falling poll numbers, [they] started attacking Hillary weeks ago on the stump. Now they're doing it in the debates. And soon they'll begin a barrage of negative TV ads and mailings in the early primary and caucus states.

Gender card, victim card, call it what you will -- Clinton's campaign is playing it, and they're playing it hard and without shame.

Obama was absolutely right to make the point about how neither he (nor his campaign) played the race card back in Iowa when the first fifteen minutes of the debate, at George Stephanopoulos' invitation, consisted of the white candidates pummeling Obama for supposedly being too dovish about Ahmandinejad.

For those of you trying to say that Hillary herself never came right out and said that the debate consisted of six men piling up on her, I have two responses. First, the little video her campaign put out that she was so proud of was accompanied by a caption from her campaign saying saying stop the politics of "pile on" and support "one strong woman." Excuse me, but many of you who are so quick to find code in other contexts seem to be having trouble seeing something that is not subtle. Imagine of Obama's campaign, after the Iowa pile on, had put out a similar video, with the caption "One strong African American." The MSM would appropriately label this "the race card," you Hillary supporters above would all gladly agree, and Obama would be marginalized.

Second, as at least one commenter above has pointed out, Mark Penn, Hillary's highest ranking campaign official -- and therefore a person who we must assume speaks for the candidate -- said unmistakably in the conference call reported on "The Hill" that six men ganged up on Hillary and that she would be using it to juice her fundraising from women supporters. Here's the link:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/campaign-call-reveals-clinton-debate-concern-2007-11-01.html

Third, check out Ruth Marcus' column in the Washington Post today. She's sympathetic to Hillary but she gets it, and says in effect: Please Hillary do not allow your campaign to cast you as the victim of a pile on; it will diminish women in the long run to play that game.

Dammit you're contradicting Atrios! How the hell are we supposed to run a massive Soros funded attack blogging conspiracy if you won't even follow the clear directive Markos layed out in his daily message memo!

You're soooo out of the club.

Great article on Salon.com about the "abandoning the politics of hope" nonsense that the Hillary heads keep repeating:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/10/30/hope/index.html

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.

Is Obama kidding?

He just did a whole TV interview based on his half-blackness.

And I recall Obama mentioning, more than once, that he was reminded he was black anytime he tried to flag a cab.

I am sick and tired of the Democratic candidates forming the usual circular firing squad to take out their front-runner. And, no, I don't give a twit about the front-runner's gender. In 2004, the Democratic candidates and media punks ganged up on Democratic front-runner Howard Dean and knocked him out of the race in Iowa. I was angry then and I am angry now.

Only Democrats pile on their front-runner and think it is "intellectual" to destroy that person's candidacy. We don't see the Republicans doing that, do we?

And guess who has inhabited the White House for most of the past four decades?

The Republicans.

They like to win.

We like to pretend we are more pious than the Republicans.

Well, as we used to say, "That piousness and ten cents will get you a pack of gum."

The Republicans are just happy to win the White House, and they will back whoever looks like a winner, but we -- oh, no -- we have to destroy our front-runner.

And give the White House and -- this time -- the Supreme Court to another Republican.

Good work, stupid Democrats.

I do NOT want to know how much Barack Obama can bash the Democratic front-runner; I want to know if he can beat the Republican front-runner (currently Rudy Giuliani) in the GENERAL ELECTION.

If Obama had any sense, he would strive to prove to Democratic voters he could win the general election against the Republican nominee (whoever he may be). Then Obama would probably pick up support within the Democratic ranks.

What I want in a Democratic candidate in the 2008 election is someone with a prayer of winning the general election and being an effective president from Day One.

All Obama is proving to me is that he can bash Hillary Clinton, but she is not the enemy; the Republicans are -- Rudy Giuliani, especially.

Obama is not saying that Clinton should not appeal to Women. But don't say you are being attacked or ganged' on because you are a Woman. What if Obama said he was being attacked becoz he is Black/biracial or whatever he is?

DISTINCTIONS.

Everyone has a tendency to ignore distinctions, sometimes not-so-subtle ones, in the effort to elevate their candidate or bring down another.

It is acceptable--and neither Hillary nor Edwards nor Obama ever gets faulted for it--for a candidate to either weave their gender or racial identity into an explanation for what motivates them to run. It is unacceptable, however, for any candidate for President, in response to criticism, to suggest that the criticism was not fair or was excessive by pointing out the race or gender of the critics--unless of course those critics are being racist or sexist in the way they make the attack in question.

Hence, Edwards is allowed to say that he's the son of a mill worker and the grandson of a turd miner. Hillary is allowed to speak about the difficulties of being taken seriously as a woman. Obama is allowed to speak of his odd childhood with a foot in two worlds, black and white.

What none of them should be able to do is what Hillary's surrogates were doing the last two or three days: Suggest that sex or gender was relevant to her no-good, perfectly awful, bad night in Philadelphia. Obama, as he pointed out, studiously avoided doing that post-Iowa. The line is between acknowledging that even in the 21st century, race and gender are still relevant, and using racial or gender status as a victim card when your supposed attackers are evincing only toughness or even meanness, but no evidence of sexism or racism.

Finally, to the person who says Obama played the race card by pointing out his difficulties in hailing a cab before he was famous, I'd remind this person that it was in direct response to the question: "Some say you are not 'black enough.' How do you respond?" How can he avoid mentioning his race in response to that question? C'mon.

[By the way, imagine the outraged outcry if Tim Russert had said to Hillary, "Some say you are not feminine enough." The question put to Obama elicited barely a peep of indignation from the same folks fulminating about Russert's sometimes inane, but never sexist, questions. The same is true of Keith Olberman, whom I admire, but who got away with no criticism for asking only Obama to comment on the Michael Vick case at the Chicago debate. Does Keith think that blacks have some special duty to upbraid the bad conduct of other blacks? Noone even asked the question]

TPM, are you kidding? She's not claiming she's a victim because of her sex, she and her campaign are saying she can take on six opponents and come out none the worse for it. I can't believe TPM is promoting this meme. As for Obama, well he just ends up looking like a pompous ass.

I fear, if Obama were to get that kind of negative attention, he would melt like the aforementioned hot house flower. It's pretty easy to appear confident when you're being pitched fairly easy home runs to bean your Opponent with. But when the fast balls start coming at you from every part of the stage and the moderators are there with a handy assist? We'll see how good he does then. (My guess is that it'll never happen as it appears to be Open Season on Hillary)

I was all for Barack Obama at the start of this long, long campaign. Remember him back then? He was a walking talking vessel of hope with a promise of a new way of conducting political discourse.

Now he's not only conducting "smash your opponent" politics but, much like the right wing, he's mischaracterizing what his opponent says.

That type of political discourse apparently appeals to many, but not to me.

So much for Barack. Go, Hillary!!

tt...

It appears you couldn't be more ignorant about Obama's background and experience if you tried!

Much like the earlier media tropes about Al Gore (lied about inventing the Internet) or John Kerry (coward and traitor), the idea of Obama as inexperienced was not merely unproven but the opposite of the truth. It scarcely mattered that the accusation of inexperience was untrue; the media made it true by force of repetition. You'll look in vain for any press who pointed out the fact that Obama has more years of experience as an elected public official than Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, or Mitt Romney. It's almost impossible to find any media reporting the fact that Obama has far more foreign policy experience than four out of the last five presidents when they were elected.

In this way, Obama was tarred by the media with a false charge of inexperience, a charge that was almost impossible to overcome. Unlike Clinton, who could overcome her negative coverage simply by being friendly, Obama had no way he could prove "experience" with a soundbite. Rather than being a media darling, Obama has seen his campaign weighted down by press accusations of inexperience.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-k-wilson/the-media-coverage-of-oba_b_70820.html

So why not stick that canard where it belongs, namely the garbage can?!?

"I didn't come out and say: `Look, I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage."

Um...Mr. Obama much as you may not have noticed, you've been granted "temporary honorary white man" status by just about everyone for your rich liberal backers to the MSM who will help you as long as you play your designated part as Clinton slayer. As long as you continue to perform as required your "temporary honorary white man" status won't be revoked. Keep dreaming brother.

Sally wrote on November 2, 2007 11:22 AM:
"I'll play it. I would rather see a woman, and this particular woman, as president than any of the wimps opposing her.

Yes, thank you. We gathered that when you used the term "gang rape" in your post after the debate.

First off,....Clinton did get picked on in the last debate but not because she was a woman,...because she is now perceived as the front runner,....where in the sport of politics the rest of the pack has to bring the leader back to them by picking apart her faults. So its part of the strategy to bring her back. She definitely didn't say "Don't pick on me" rather than she was asserting that she was strong enough to play with the boys on the playground. You could say it's playing the gender card, but pointing out the obvious doesn't necessarily give you extra points. I think it's a non-issue giving the fact as many people in this forum pointed out that she was playing to her mostly women audience. Obama made a point, by saying he's just as strong as Clinton. Now let's move on to the issues.

Ummm -

Wake up folks! Hillary DID NOT say that the boys club is picking on her. But her campaign said it over and over and over. They've suggested to the press that there will be a backlash amongst women, they've played the victim card, etc, etc, etc.

It's pathetic. It makes me want to gag. I expect sexism from the Republicans, but from the Hillary Clinton campaign? It's really quite sad.

What if Obama put out this press release?

The Politics Of Pile-On
What happens when the "politics of pile-on" replaces the "politics of hope?"

Barack comes out on top.

Despite the best efforts of six white candidates to trip him up, Senator Obama stood strong and made his case on critical issues like Iran, Iraq and Social Security. He kept his focus on the real target in this election: Republicans and the Bush Administration. Instead of going after the other white Democrats, Barack, a black man, made the argument for why change is needed and why he has the strength and experience to lead the Democratic Party in its efforts to make that change happen - specifically using the unique qualities provided by his blackness.

With each attack, Senators Edwards and Clinton undermined the central premises of their own candidacies. The sunny speeches and rosy rhetoric that once characterized their remarks has now been replaced by the kinds of jabs one typically sees from white candidates desperate to gain traction in the polls.

The American people are looking for a President who can stand strong and come out ahead under any circumstances - especially if 6 white people are attacking them at one time.

Last night, once again, that person was Barack Obama.

One strong black dude.

I'll say this one more time--he didn't accuse her playing the gender card, Matt Lauer did. Watch the video.

He pointed out the hypocrisy of running on your toughness and the first time she's call to task on her position, she claims that it is the "politics of piling on", "six guys on one woman", etc.

The upside of being the frontrunner, is everyone crows about how great you are. The downside of being the frontrunner, is everyone is gunning for you (including the media that is hyping you). Has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with being the front runner.

HRC and her campaign have made what was a marginal week, a terrible week. It happens in a primary season this long; I expect them to come out with guns blazing next week.

Grumpyoldvet:

I highly suggest you check the Congressional Record on Sept 25/26. Reid said it wouldn't be voted on for the near future. The next day (during the afternoon session), it is announced that it would be voted on, in conjunction with the Biden partition amendment. The announcement was made at 12:14. The Biden Partition Amendment vote was held at 12:16. The KLA vote was held at 12:44. If you have an issue with the scheduling, contact Reid and/or Biden. Obama couldn't have made it from NH under the circumstances and his vote wouldn't have changed the 76-22 outcome.

NCSteve, I can see where you might be confused. Sally wasn't referring to "rape" the verb, but rather "rape" the noun: a European plant of the mustard family. In the EU, political rapes have long played an important role in the formulation of agricultural policy.

There, it should all be clear now. Silly you. You see sex in everything.

Greg: "It's obviously debatable whether Hillary is saying, "Don't pick on me"; what Hillary said yesterday is that her all-girls education left her "prepared" for the "all boy's club" of politics."

Earth is round: Some disagree

Certainly somewhere there is some loon that really believes the earth is flat. So I'd have to agree with Greg. Somewhere there is a loon who is willing to debate whether Hillary saying she is "prepared" for the "all boy's club" of politics" is the same as saying "Don't pick on me." But Greg, just like the loons that say the earth is flat, such people need to be treated with ridicule and be excluded from serious discussions.

Brilliant post hadenough!

"Hey, I'm black -- who are you to use your gender status to play the victim?"

I think that is an incorrect interpretation of what he is saying. Don't put words in his mouth. Obama has strategically and effectively NOT used his race as an issue. It's smart. And my interpretation of what he is really saying is, "Keep things like race and gender out of the discussion." He's right to do so.

HRC's campaign are DEFINITELY playing the gender card,as they've reportedly long planned: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/ap_po/on_deadline_clinton_1

"Clinton's advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss internal matters, said there is a clear and long-planned strategy to fend off attacks by accusing her male rivals of gathering against her.

"The idea is to change the subject while making Clinton a sympathetic figure, especially among female voters who often feel outnumbered and bullied on the job."

The reason? To fend off the truth - her continual lack of candor and refusal to answer a direct question.

Gawd, if she reacts like this to the softballs thrown on Tuesday, what will she do if Giuliani's the candidate? Or is she saving her gladiator skills for the general election?

Gee, given the nature of the comments on this thread and a couple of other, perhaps we "girls" should go off in a corner by ourselves and discuss the actual issues.

I don't particularly care that Richardson is Latino, or that Obama is black or that Clinton is female. i care that we are in a stupid war and heading for another; that children are being denied healthcare and a competent education. I care that a bunch of Republicans are evolution-deniers, and so on.