Dear Lanny:

STFU. BTW, you're exactly the type of Democrat that we don't need any longer, you conciliatory jerk. Just. Go. Away. Please.

I notice that CNN takes the LA Times/Bloomberg poll results and concludes "McCain will be hard to beat in a general election". The manlove for McCain continues.

It's hard to criticize Lanny Davis without being accused of playing the jackass card.

Yes oh Yes. I just came from the New Republic's site reading Sean Wilentz's hit job article saying the Obama campaign has somehow managed to play the Race Card. I guess this is the Clinton campaign's last ditch strategy to save her abysmally run campaign. It's always everyone else's fault. She never accepts responsibility.

I'd like to know of a single criticism of Obama that was responded to by playing the race card.

I wish everyone would stop knocking down the Hillary camp's excuses for why they have lost the nomination. They are looking for an out, so let's give them one. My vote would be that it's the media's fault since in general they suck anyway. But, we could go with perceived racism. Whatever, as long as we can move forward now.

The Clinton campaign makes a mistake every time they trot Lanny Davis out for public consumption as a surrogate. They should know better and muzzle him.

His appearance on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook was the single worst appearance by a surrogate I have ever heard on the radio or seen on TV. Listen to his complete disdain for Frank Foer of TNR, Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, and Donna Brazile when they try to make reasonable reality-based points about the race.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/01/20080124_a_main.asp

hahahaha...not so hard...if you use the N word then you're racist...if you say he's incompetent, then you're wrong..but you can say it. However we will show you Hillary's campaign strategy and prove you're wrong...

For those who are naive enough to think that Bill and Hill have not used nuanced subtext around Obama's race or the race of some of his supporters...you need a few more years of living in the real world. They both counted on their long time relationship within the black community to quell any such observations...but hey if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...guess what?

After seeing Lanny Davis pop up on CNN and MSNBC several times, I find him to be astonishingly stupid.

He doesn't understand the difference between a voter and a delegate count in caucus states, his generalizations are incredibly flawed and his analogies are non-sense.

Are he and Stephanie "Native Clothing" Tubbs Jones the best the Clintons can do?

as the drudge picture flap fades away, i am increasingly disturbed by what happened.

so far, there is no evidence that the clinton campaign leaked that picture (drudge is not reliable unless it's confirmed by a credible 3rd party or he has air-tight proof)... but obama's campaign manager issued a scathing comment: "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election"...

as for the fact that the clinton campaign did not isssue an immediate denial i think it's reasonable that they would want to check their ranks (over 700) to see if anyone was responsible so that they didn't end up with egg on their face when they found out that some low level staffer was involved.

at this point, it's starting to look like the obama campaign over-reacted and now owes clinton an apology...

p.s. i hate lanny davis. i will never forget his shameful defense of joe lieberman in 2006.

BS.

Last night we found out Obama’s failure in the Senate on oversight for Afghanistan and NATO. This is not getting reported.

He lied when he won the Senate and said he did not have the experience to run for President and need to serve in the Senate but ran anyway.

Now we found out he is not serving in the Senate.

He chose running for President over winning in Afghanistan.

He should resign his chairman position because he is not holding hearings like Lieberman.

Lanny Davis, Mark Penn, ... need we say more about judgment and why the Clinton candidacy is a loser.

Also, we found out last night that Obama voted yes to cheney's energy bill but Clinton voted no.

Gas will reach 4 bucks a gallon, so every time you pay at the pump:.

Thank your hero Obama.

People:

What is Obama's position on the practice of signing statements ?

How about the Military Commissions Act
How about the Patriot Act
How about the Presidential Directive 51?
How about renditions?
How about the war(s) for empire and oil resource consolidation?
How about warrant less wiretapping and electronic surveillance?

Do you know? Has he said? Don't you want to know?

All of your criticisms of Clinton show you guys to be the misongynists that you are. LOL

Lanny Davis -- you might want him defending your deposition, you don't want him trying to persuade a jury. The distilled essence of backward looking beltway Clinton defenders. Ugh.

"It's Hard To Criticize Obama 'Without Being Accused Of Playing Race Card'" That because there is little of substance to attack him on other than ... playing the race or ethnic card.

Well, if the Clinton campaign needs an excuse for failure, they can use Mark Penn's outdated campaign plan and Hillary's misjudgment in relying upon it. The Clinton campaign has been criticizing Obama more or less non-stop...especially the last couple of weeks where she even resorted to mocking him. The only time, Clinton faced the race charge is with Bill Clinton's South Carolina debacle and his too cute for words flirtation with nebulous language.
Meanwhile, the Obama camp would be perfectly reasonable in leveling the same charge at Clinton only with sexism; however, this time the charge would be true. Hillary Clinton resorts to reliance on 'the boys are picking on me' so frequently that the charge has lost its power. She says that she can take the Republican hits because she's dealt with being attacked before. You'd never know it viewing her overreaction and general meltdown to any criticism in this campaign.

If we accept that it's hard to criticize Obama without being called racist, then we must also accept that it's hard to criticize Hillary without being called mysogynistic.

It's a two-way street, and trying to throw up such insubstantive buffers for your candidate of choice further obfuscates the issues.

Criticisms are criticisms -- either accept them as factual or refute them as they stand without injecting bias.

Is not Mr. Davis' opening line telltale?

Let me be, for a change, completely truthful.

Spoken like a true Clinton surrogate. Res ipsa loquitur.

We know how much Lanny Davis LOVES Joe Lieberman.

That aside, and I know it's hard to put it aside; you know what really annoyed me about Lanny Davis' diatribe this morning? He accused the NH 'Iron my shirt' guys of being Obama supporters. I live in the area. Those guys were sent by a local shock jock and had nothing to do with the Obama campaign.

Davis is right!

I wonder if TPM can manage to muster even enough objectivity to mention the new article by the esteemed historian Sean Wilentz in the latest TNR:

Misleading propaganda is hardly new in American politics --although the adoption of techniques reminiscent of past Republican and special-interest hit jobs, right down to a retread of the fictional couple, seems strangely at odds with a campaign that proclaims it will redeem the country from precisely these sorts of divisive and manipulative tactics. As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign's most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads. To a large degree, the campaign's strategists turned the primary and caucus race to their advantage when they deliberately, falsely, and successfully portrayed Clinton and her campaign as unscrupulous race-baiters--a campaign-within-the-campaign in which the worked-up flap over the Somali costume photograph is but the latest episode. While promoting Obama as a "post-racial" figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics. More than any other maneuver, this one has brought Clinton into disrepute with important portions of the Democratic Party. A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the "race card" were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students. The Clinton campaign, in fact, has not racialized the campaign, and never had any reason to do so. Rather the Obama campaign and its supporters, well-prepared to play the "race-baiter card" before the primaries began, launched it with a vengeance when Obama ran into dire straits after his losses in New Hampshire and Nevada--and thereby created a campaign myth that has turned into an incontrovertible truth among political pundits, reporters, and various Obama supporters. This development is the latest sad commentary on the malign power of the press, hyping its own favorites and tearing down those it dislikes, to create pseudo-scandals of the sort that hounded Al Gore during the 2000 campaign. It is also a commentary on how race can make American politics go haywire. Above all, it is a commentary on the cutthroat, fraudulent politics that lie at the foundation of Obama's supposedly uplifting campaign.

Lanny Davis, You Ignorant Slut.

Just yesterday your Clinton Camp was proclaiming that they were "throwing the kitchen sink" at Senator Obama.

That makes you either a racist creep, or an out of the loop moron!.

Way to play the race card, Lanny.

"first off, what's the media doing running unsubstantiated b.s. about Clinton posted on drudge? second, why was the Obama campaign so trigger-happy to condemn Clinton with nothing other than drudge's word? third, how is Clinton now responsible to disprove an unsubstantiated allegation?"

Because Obama used Politico to get talking points out, their entire crew pledge fealty to Drudge.

Let's not let the truth get in the way of a narrative.

Ooh Ooh! Don't act like racists then people won't say you're being racist!

Don't say he might be asked if he's a drug dealer.

No one asked Clinton or Bush that. Well they're white males so why would they right?

Don't go on TV and yell "Cocaine" over and over.

Don't talk about his middle name.

Don't imply that he might be an anti-Semite.

Don't talk about African-American voters who used to support you like they never did or would have.

Don't talk about Jesse Jackson unless it's relevant.

Talk about policy differences or shut the fuck up.

Easy.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304

what about the above story. Pretty interesting.

Well, Wilentz is a friend of Bill Clinton's. So I guess I think he's going to see it this way. But it really is a matter of perception. Some might see nothing wrong with the statements the campaign and their surrogates made. I actually feel it was an effort to make Obama look like the "black" candidate-- to goad them into responding and making them look like they were racially-driven. Not the "fairy tale" line, but the "shuck and jive," "Jesse Jackson," etc. You may disagree, and I'm guessing we're both reasonable people.

But Wilentz's is hardly a dispassionate analysis, no more than Lanny Davis's above.

Above all, it is a commentary on the cutthroat, fraudulent politics that lie at the foundation of Obama's supposedly uplifting campaign.

Wilentz nailed it.

When you saw him stumping for Joe Lieberman, was he with Sen. Obama? I guess you must have forgotten that business, fairs fair.

tar, clinton, obama, playing race card.

be careful when using some of the above terms when talking about the race card.

like Paddy wagon, crime, Irish
Scot-free

What exactly is the "Race Card" [other than a loaded, abused and overused phrase thrown around by mostly vapid pundits]? I mean, as I recall, the term came out of the OJ saga. At the time, I think it referred to OJ, despite his obvious money and privilege, constructing an argument that he had somehow been a victim of an LAPD conspiracy due to his race in order to appeal to a mostly black jury pool.

So how does this term now used by Davis function? I mean, how exactly is Obama playing the "race card"? Is he blaming the inherent systemic racism of society at large for his misfortune? Is he accusing other candidates of being unfair to him because of his race? Isn't his message, if anything, sort of race transcendant?

This is an excellent point, and particularly sweet in light of the fact that Lewis today is confirming that he will endorse Obama. Oops!

oh yes Mister Charlie I'll get right on that

recently on Charlie Rose several journalists were discussing the elections. After saying they were looking forward to Obama as the Dem candidate as it would make for great general election, the comment was made that the discouse would be elevated due to Obama"s race. They all generally agreed that it would be harder to attack him personally as the Reb candidate would not want to be perceived as racist. Therefore it would be more of an issues race.

i used to believe that the democrats were lucky to have 2 such qualified candidates, and that no matter who eventually won the nomination that the dems would come together and go on to win the GE... considering the mess that W has gotten us into i could see no way that the country could elect another republican. as i follow the democratic in-fighting, however, i'm starting to see how it will be possible for the republicans to win.

it's not that the dems are split between 2 candidates, but it's the ugliness that is growing between the two camps. the blame is equal and i only hope that things will heal after the nomination is official... and please don't tell me that the answer is for hillary to bow out now...

I should also point to Wilentz's stretching to tie things to Obama, like:

"Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, a black congressman--neutral in the race, but pressured by the Obama campaign arousing his constituency--felt compelled to repeat the charge that Clinton had disparaged King, and told the New York Times that "we have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics."

and

"on CNN, one of its pundits, Donna Brazile, hurled the wild charge that Clinton had likened Obama to a child. "And I will tell you," she concluded, "as an African American I find his words and his tone to be very depressing." With those kinds of remarks--"as an African American"--the race card and the race-baiter card both came back into play. Although Brazile is formally not part of Obama's campaign, her comments made their way to the South Carolina memo, offered as evidence that Clinton's comment was racially insensitive."

Hillary talks in every speech about the woman who supports her because she wants her daughters to know that they can be anything. Last night she stated that electing a woman would be a "sea change" Obama never talks about the mother who supports him because she wants her black sons to know they can be anything or the incredible obstacles that a black man running for president in this country faces. In the world there have been many female leaders since at least the 1950's. Can someone please give an example of a black leader in a country in which black people are a minority?

Right, it's fine to hold people accountable, and clearly no one can get it all right all of the time (though larger heads might assume they can), but I say what's the point of visiting a site just to trash it in the comments box? I'm not saying you shouldn't read it, but it's an odd mission you have. I occasionally read things I don't like and I appreciate a wide spectrum of opinions that I don't personally hold, but I'd have trouble being a follower of a site that I found so hopelessly biased.

As for me, I actually don't find it too biased, because if I did, I wouldn't come here. I am a serious Obama supporter (drove from VA to NH to canvass), but I have my limits on bias and inordinate displays of support. TPM is nowhere near close to that level. I think there's also a significant problem with desiring no bias at all. First, I don't think that's possible, and second, who would want to live in a world without diversity of opinion? Isn't it possible that you have good reasons for believing what you believe and I might have similarly good reasons for believing what I believe, even if those are different things altogether. One of us might have it more "right" than the other one (or it could be that each one of us has a different angle on the same truth), but that isn't to say that our individual biases render us useless.

This is sad. Lanny Davis was talking about how Bill Clinton was criticized with regard to his Iraq/Fairy Tale comment and how those words were somehow twisted into a racist narrative. (Note, Donna Brazille's diatribe combined the fairy tale twist with an evidently fabricated allegation of Bill Clinton calling Barack a kid).

Now many here have done to Davis what was done to Bill Clinton: twist the words of Davis to say something he did not say at all. When you do that, you prove his point.

I worry that this will not work in the general election. Our country as a whole is much more prejudiced than the Democratic primary voters.

Well congrats to CNN and Lou Dobbs for FINALLY reporting honestly on Obama and his empty rhetoric.

It is OBAMA and his CAMPAIGN that has consistently played the race card starting after New Hampshire when he lost.

It is clear that his connections are proven racists (against whites) Farrakhan and his pastor and his wife to name 3.