I want Clinton to release her tax returns.

Does that make me part of the vast right-wing conspiracy?

Sign me up!

Also:

Victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim, victim.

Victim.

So nothing on the NAFTA bombshell? How about her tax returns?

My guess is that if Obama dumped $5MM into his campaign, he'd have some questions about where that money came from. Clintons do that? Nothing but rave stories about how it shows her commitment to her campaign.

And now this? Did anyone remind him about the 8 seconds of silence followed by 5 minutes of bullshit? Or George Mitchell saying that she had nothing to do with the North Ireland negotiations? Anything in her background (other than being the First Lady) uniquely prepare her to handle crisis? Demonstrates her superior judgment in a crisis? Or did you all just write this down and run back and post this nonsense verbatim?

How does she stand up to this blistering media?

All this does is remind me of Bill's impeachment. stupid move on the HRC campaign front.

I agree that reminding voters of their scandals is probably not a good idea for her. But whatever, desperation is desperation, and instead of trying to explain why she has refused to release her tax records before she wins the nomination for months now, she starts the name calling and finger pointing.

Weak defense. Hillary, release the records, I want to know who is trying to buy a presidency. Fair is fair. Obama has been completely open about his, an no one had to force him. What do you have to hide Hillary?

OK, so now after saying that McCain would make a better president than Obama, Clinton says that he's another Ken Starr. It really seems as if she's decided that if she can't win the Democratic nomination, she'd rather have the Republicans win in November.

I'm not sure this reminder of the divisiveness of the 90's works well for Hillary, even though on the surface, it plays into her frequently successful "I'm a victim" strategy. I can remember feeling sorry for the Clintons back in the 90's to a point, but I really don't want to see the polarization it ignited then replayed - whether the Clintons were (or are) right or wrong. So reminding me of Ken Starr is not excellent news for Hillary.

It's amusing that people continue to believe the Clintons care anything about the Democratic party--indeed, Democratic ideals--except as a convenient medium through which to attain power.

Democrats need to realize that Clinton would rather destroy the party in order to gain the nomination, than seek the party's interest if it meant conceding the nomination.

I mean, Jesus, she's *publically* expressed that she and JOhn McCain both would make better commanders-in-chief than her own party's rival candidate. When will Democrats wake up and smell the roses?

How F'n Ironic. The Clinton campaign must think we all have the short term memory of a rock. Does anyone, anyone at all, remember Hillary's run for the Senate?

The campaign of his (Lazios) Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized the delay, asking whether he was hiding something. The State Democratic Party even sent a young campaign worker dressed as Uncle Sam to Mr. Lazio's campaign events, to shout at him to disclose the returns.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06EFD61E31F93AA1575BC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=digg&exprod=digg

Karl Rove playbook: accuse your opponent of doing what you are doing.

This is the team that spent last week begging reporters to pursue Rezko? That's above-board politics, but when Obama wants the tax records out he's being like Ken Starr.

Reason #18,342,345 why I will never vote for this woman.

I am SO sick of politics that is all about gotcha and spin and talking points.

I think Wolfson is great! Sorry. But he hit this one out of the park. To answer it Obama is going to have to find examples of the Clinton campaign hounding him personally for information that might be damaging. I don't mind them bringing up the impeachment. Democrats who lived through that -- except for Al Gore -- remember it as the sleaziest crap the Republicans pulled to try to destroy our Party. Friends of Obama here -- if they really are friends of Obama -- often repeat the Republican attacks from back then. Bill's impeachment? Bush is the most impeachable President in the history of America. And you people trash Bill and Hillary Clinton? Ken Starr. ROFL. Zing.

http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/2008/03/flashback_hrc_once_thought_tax.html

So isn't Hillary herself a Ken Starr? I mean what does her spokesperson have to say about that? The sheer hypocrisy about this rankles me so much!

F#$K!

Sorry. I'm just frustrated.

For me, the whole point of this election was to stick a goddamn knife in the back of the partisan BS that has poisoned our government for my entire life.

Now, I see nothing but calls for Senator Obama to drag out the manure spreader and get dirty. All because the HUGE VICTORY on Tuesday (which, by any measure longer than a week, was actually a STAGGERING defeat for a candidate who lost double digit leads in the states that matter) proves that dirty politics is the only way to win.

Folks, we are getting PLAYED. Many of us know that Tuesday was actually right on target in the big picture, but we're still buying the Clinton spin that the whole game has changed and she's in control.

And if we all say that her tactics are the only way to win, SHE SURE AS HELL IS.

Back in 2000, Wolfson was demanding to see the tax returns of Hillary Clinton's rival for her Senate campaign:
"In recent months, the team has been trying to focus public scrutiny on Lazio. Wolfson himself, along with a Democratic State Committee member dressed as Uncle Sam, showed up at a Lazio event in Harlem in August, taunting Lazio with the first lady's New York property tax returns and challenging him to release his returns. In any other campaign, it might have been the candidate who seized such a photo op; but with his boss invested in preserving her dignity, it occasionally falls to Wolfson"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEEDB1739F934A2575AC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Was it a Ken Starr-like attack back then, too?

They become increasingly repugnant as the campaign progresses. It's clear they'll tear down the party and one of its brightest stars to serve their overweening ambition.

They really must be stopped.

HRC's campaign is increasingly Rovian and Nixonian in character. The way you win is the way you govern. It is a dangerous gambit that will do the nation and the Democratic Party no good.

I voted for Hillary on Super Tuesday but what a mistake that was!!! I can't take her crap or the crap of people like Howard Wolfson anymore. I am never going to vote for her again be it for President or if she runs again for the Senate in NY.
If she's the nominee, I will not vote her. I have my limits and she has vaulted past them. Enough is enough.

Episteme, how is my November vote in a swing state like Ohio (where I live) causally irrelevant to the outcome? It wouldn't take many Democratic voters sitting it out to guarantee a McCain victory there, and probably in the whole ball game.

What I want to know is, WHY is the Obama camp rolling over and taking this crap??!!?? It is time for us to go MEDIEVAL on that lying fraud of a campaign.

I think you hit the nail on the head. She does not give a whit about us or the Democratic Party. It's either her or nothing.

This campaign that I was once so enthusiastic about is becoming more disappointing by the day, and there's only one side to blame for it. If there is a god, Hillary will not be the nominee. I expect the slimeball tactics we've witnessed over the last month to come from the GOP. To see them being used by a Democrat AGAINST a Democrat - especially one this promising - is something I never thought I'd see. Sigh.

Bush is the most impeachable President in the history of America. And you people trash Bill and Hillary Clinton?

That's the defense that Hillary's supporters have to keep coming back to.

She's not as bad as Bush!

She isn't attacking Obama in any way that Rove wouldn't!

Talk about setting the bar low.

It is crap like this that make me so glad I am an independent rather than a Democrat. The Clintons, two amoral narcissists will stop at nothing to get back into the White House. The jumping the shark moment has to be when Bill appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show Tuesday morning in an obvious attempt to get Dittoheads to vote for Hillary. Totally shameless.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_030408/home.guest.html

And yet through all of this, they still can't justify why they are delaying releasing their tax returns. Not one blog has reported that they continue to dodge this question. Just the spin. Just the spin.

Seriously, how does her campaign survive under this probing by the media? I know I couldn't stand if everytime some ask me a question that exposed me for my hypocrisy, all I had to do was throw a rock in the other direction and they'd run off chasing it. My arm would be so sore....

"...and so Hillary's friends were like, 'he's a big fat hypocrite' and then Obama was all, 'nuh uh' and then Hillary was all, 'MAKE me stop attacking you!' and then Obama was like..."

Good. Fucking. Grief.

I'll be glad when the primary season is finally over, so I won't have to read or hear such juvenile coverage from CNN, TPM, etc.

Fred,

It would appear that Senator Clinton, the no experience candidate, is destroying the opposition’s credibility knowing that she can not win in '08 but leaving the door open in '12.

On another point... when will US media get involved in the "Canada Story" to clear up their false earlier stories about Canada / NAFTA? As reported on TPM this am the real campaign giving the wink / wink was Hillary's campaign. Then she had the nerve to blast Obama for acts that she must have known were her own campaign's actions.

I, a 61-year-old life long democrat - never voted for a republican in my life will have a very difficult time voting for Hillary if she wins. I may have to go with my son and vote Republican if Hillary wins. Incidentally my son was a strong, strong Bill Clinton fan back in the day. Now he can hardly contain himself with anything but pure disgust for the Clinton organization - their lies, distortions, ego, race gender wars, etc etc etc.

Just chiming in with yet another of my violations of the Reverse Clinton Rules ("the Clintons are never, ever, actually up to anything byzantine and those who say they are are repeating 'rightwing talking points'") that are mandatory on left of Franco blogs.

They are doing this because they are very much aware of how susceptable they have made themselves to this charge with their constant emination of greasy innuendo--pushed out, not coincidentally largely by Wolfson--that there is some still hidden scandal lurking in Obama's reationship if only the reporters will dig it up.

If you are Hillary's campaign and you are quite consciously re-running the Arkansas Project's strategy on your opponent in a Democratic primary, it behooves you to take the first opportunity possible to invoke the name of Ken Starr against your opponent, no matter how hard you have to strain to do it and how little the facts at hand have to do with Ken Starr.

The point here isn't to get people to think Obama is like Ken Starr or stir up the victimized women's sub-demographic. The point is to innoculate the Clinton camp from a substantive charge of Starrism by Obama's camp by making a frivilous charge of Starrism themselves.

There are laywers who do this in every lawsuit they're in. When they are doing something wrong, they rush into court and accuse the other side of doing whatever it is they are themselves doing, even though there is no real factual basis for the charge. The idea is to make what would otherwise be a serious charge look like two kids playing the "I am paper, you are glue" game. The lawyer's objective is to avoid punishment by causing the judge to throw up his hands and say "I'm not getting into the middle of this. Grow up, you two!"

In this case, of course, the "judge" is the MSM and the voters.

Er .... do they realize that there is a generation of young voters who have no or only hazy memories of Ken Starr and why he was called in ..... and what resulted. I bet 'unlaundered blue dress' means nothing to some of them. Does the Clinton campaign REALLY want to educate those voters on what having Cintons in the White House was like for the country?

I'm astonished how short-sighted some of their statements and actions are (lying to NH supporters, dissing states that 'don't matter,' not saying thank you to supporters when a primary is lost -- and bringing up Ken Starr). It's been a puzzle this whole campaign.

You Obamaites have acted like Repubs from the beginning. If not given your way you have a scorched earth policy from day one. As if the Prez was your given right, we're in the lead so just quit was your song. Well kids, that's not the song and you are playing with the adults now and we are gonna kick your asses. You want to play tough you haven't seen
tough. Your boy has not heart and a glass jaw and we are gonna knock his ass out. I for one am glad she is taking to the slimy machine of hope and bull change.....smoke and mirrors.

Why is this ridiculous sound bite / non-story featured on the front page of TPM while the NAFTA/Canada/Clinton revelation has been buried?

And away runs Billy boy.

Typical, he has no answer to your logical question, so he ducks it and runs away, just like Hillary.

The Clintons (who we can thank for bringing us many years of congressional control by Republicans and the George W. Bush presidency) should tell their Lee Atwater and Karl Rove wannabes that voters simply won't stand for this kind of "gutter" politics. To inject Ken Starr into this discussion only serves to underline how wearying and abusive the country's relationship with the Clintons has been. If Hillary wants to be seen as anything but a self-centered spoiler who is only out for herself, she needs to play by the rules and stop playing the victim card. ... release the tax returns, stop claiming she "won" Fla. and Mich., and show us she has the character to lead us. She may be a "fighter" (certainly for her own self interest) but is this really what we want?

It'll work. Camp Hillary has figured something out here. They just have to keep saying crazy things to the press and the press will relay the crazy things to everybody else.

Obama is having a hard time breaking through all the crap that Hillary is spewing out.

In a press conference during Senator Clinton's first term she visited a local hospital to talk about Health Care, (2002 I believe) I asked her if she was still believed there was "a vast right wing conspiracy" against her and her family. She gave me a scowl, moved on to the next question, and I was removed from her press list.

Ken Starr, hmmm... Oh no! There must be another blue dress!

Ken Starr... Ken Starr.... hmmm, sounds familiar... Ken St- OH YES!

Oh right, I forgot all about that. All the sleazy deals the Clintons were involved in, the whole Monica Lewinsky thing, lying under oath, being disbarred, Bill's shmegma all over Monica's dress...

Wow - thanks for reminding us all about that endless parade of sleaze. Yeah, Ken Starr sucked. In fact, he was every bit as corrupt, dishonest and slimy as the Clintons.

OK, if Hillary's flackmeisters are going to compare Obama to Ken Starr, then I'll compare Hillary to George W. Bush. This is not as far-fetched as it might seem -- here are 10 reasons why:

1) Same sense of entitlement to office (one by birthright, one by marriage-right, for lack of a better term).

2) Same willingness to go in the gutter and do whatever it takes to slime their opponents.

3) Same willingness to game the system or try to change the rules in the middle of the contest when they don't work to your advantage (see Bush in Florida, Hillary's complaints about caucuses and the Michigan/Florida situation).

4) Hiring sleazebags as their chief strategists (Rove, Penn) and tolerating incompetents in their midst (Michael Brown, Penn).

5) Both incompetent strategists and managers who are so arrogant, they fail to plan ahead (Bush in Iraq after the fall of Saddam, Hillary after Super Tuesday).

6) Associating with slimey characters (Jack Abramoff et al with Bush, Norman Hsu, Webb Hubbell et al with Hillary).

7) Supporting the war in Iraq and a belligerent posture toward Iran.

8) Weird family dynamics in which the nation pays a price for them working out their personal issues and demons (Bush trying to get back at Poppy for failing to show him love, Hillary trying to get back at Bill for failing to show her love).

9) Both obsessed with secrecy (Bush on everything, Hillary on White House records and tax returns).

10) Both refuse to ever admit a mistake (Bush on everything, Hillary on Iraq war vote).

And a bonus reason: Both of them love John McCain and would rather see him president than Barack Obama.

Yes, lets find out if Hillary has had inappropriate relations with....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxvi2EXc1Wc&NR=1

So the politics of personal destruction are fine when done to others, but not when done to Hillary.

Hillary "I will not be denied" rises.

So Wolfson is now working for McCain?

cywillis writes:

In short, his message needs to not only rise above the web of Hillfacts, least he get entangled, but reject the notion of web-weaving itself. But I would be interested to hear what other people think about such a strategy.

In my view, the issue is not so much positive/negative as offense/defense. I don't think Obama doesn't play enough offense. He tends to be reactive and usually attacks Clinton only in retaliation. This makes him look like the good guy, but it allows her to control the discourse.

Offense inevitably involves some negativity, but Obama doesn't have to engage in character attacks. He just needs to frame the debate. How might he do this? Obama has four offensive plays: hope over cynicism, judgment over experience, unity over division, and community over special interests. We've heard them all before, so he needs to find new detailed ways do demonstrate how Clinton is on the wrong side.

The tax return issue is an example. It fits under community vs. special interests b/c it shows a lack of transparency. In this vein, could he could also go after the Clinton library donors.

Under hope vs. cynicism, Obama's "Hillary will say anything to win" line was effective because it rings true. At the time, Clinton backed off, and Obama dropped the line. He should bring it back up and note examples like the phone-call ad, hypocrisy on her Nafta attacks.

The Kenneth Starr vote is perfect for unity vs. division: Clinton sees everyone as a good guy or a bad guy; if you're not with her, you're against her. Her doomed health care plan in the 90's had the same problem, as she rejected Dems who had different ideas.

Judgment vs. experience, he's got that down well on Iraq. He should keep hammering that, but he needs new angles too. Health care in the 90s--poor judgment. Hiring Mark Penn--poor judgment. Mismanagement of campaign funds--poor judgment. Etc.

If asking HRC to release her tax returns (like every other candidate has done) is a "Ken Starr"-like tactic, it sure makes you wonder what's in those tax returns. Ken Starr wouldn't be interested in mundane accounting matters....

"Dems prepare to unlease the Nuclear Option... on themselves."

Screw HRC. She's threatening to take her whole party down in flames with her. And since the GOP would win in that situation, and nominate more Alitos, she's taking the whole country down with her.

HRC is in no way entitled to the Presidency. It is not hers. It was not hers a year ago. You have to earn it. She has apparently decided that she can't do this in an above board manner, so she has to spread rumors, threaten law suits and just generally look like a spoiled brat. Screw her. I'd rather vote for Ralph Wiggum.

"The Clinton campaign this morning attacked Obama for taking a negative bent. "Sen. Obama's decision to go explicitly negative suggests that he is unable to make an affirmative case for his candidacy beyond ad hominem attacks," the campaign stated."

This is Karl Rove, pure as can be (and I believe he got it from Joe McCarthy). Do something horrible and then claim your victim is the one doing it.

I not only don't want her as the nominee, I don't even want the Clintons in the Democratic party. And considering the damage they did to the party during his administration (or don't you Clinton-lovers consider losing Congress AND the White House a bad thing?) I'm still flumoxed as to why they haven't been made persona non grata long before this.

I am not happy about this whole situation.

Three weeks ago the Rethugs were running around upset over McCain being their candiadte, they were angry and saying they would have to hold their noses to vote for him. It was hilarious reading their silly blogs and their ciomments, but unfortunately for many of us we laughed to quickly, because we may have to very same scenario before us with Hillary Clinton.

I also realy fear the Clinton Campaign is blowing it - bigtime. She is treading into unspeakable waters and feeding the GOP, including The Echo Chamber, their Talking Points for the next year, and we will loose again.

The very idea - from Day One - that this woman who is a polarizing figure across the board - not just with Rethugs but with her own Party - could ever win a general election is just ridiculous bordering on true insanity in it's least common denominator. It is so far-fetched, such chicanery, you almost wonder where the original concept came from.

Were these people in a coma during the whole Clinton - Ken Starr - Right Wing nightmare?

Just the fact that the Right Wing groups are waiting at bay in the wings with their disgusting politcal PACS, Rupert Murdoch included, to take her out is enough to not want her as our candidate. They will destroy her using her husband's past for all the world to witness - yet again, the same old story, and McCain will win.

We'll get 4 more years of McBush and Howard Wolfson and her whole team will have nothing credible to say about it and we - The Party and the country will suffer. More will die in Iraq, more of the same and she nor anyone on her campaign will have anything credible to say.

And The Party of Jefferson will be left in shambles.

I am 54 and I firmly believe the younger voters, younger than my generation for sure, are the real future of this party and they should be heard. The old guard needs to step back, take a deep breath and realize they are not serving The Party, they are serving her, which is not what this is supposed to accomplish. This is not about her, it's about America and her wingnut-attacking-another-Dem-dog-and-pony-show needs to take down their circus tent, move out of the way and allow the Dems to win in 2008.

She is not our candidate. This is not The Right Wing, we are The Left Wing. How can this woman possibly run against McBush constructively, she voted for the war.

After 2000 and all that happened how could the parties that be within the Democratic Party ever get us in this position? What a nightmare.

Oh, and Clinton officials are "flacks," but Obama has "spokesmen." Gee, I wonder if they should take that Peabody back.

Ken Starr? Ouch! The audacity!

Another score for Hillary.