Will Obama Campaign Start Hitting Hillary Over Whitewater And Cattle Futures?
Here's something to keep an eye out for. In the wake of Hillary's Pennsylvania victory yesterday, one meme many in the political press will be eager to sound is that Obama will now be forced to go much more negative on Hillary than he has in the past.
Today's Washington Post, for instance, works very hard to get that story. The paper gets an unnamed Dem who isn't even on the Obama campaign to say that it's likely that Camp Obama will hit Hillary with Whitewater, cattle futures, and even Bill's impeachment, and then asks Obama campaign manager David Plouffe to respond to this unnamed Dem:
In the two weeks leading up to the Indiana primary, a Democratic strategist familiar with the Obama campaign said aides are likely to turn to the controversies of Bill Clinton's White House years -- Hillary Clinton's trading cattle futures, Whitewater and possibly impeachment."Everyone knows the history of the Clintons," the strategist said.
Plouffe would not say the campaign planned to address that period, but seemed open to the possibility in the future: "The Republicans certainly are going to look at those issues, the Clinton finances, the record issues. We have chosen not to go there."
I don't think it's going to happen in any meaningful sense. Obama's case that he's the high-road politician beset upon by Hillary's Lady-Macbethian efforts to tear him down would obviously be tougher to make if the Obama camp starts seriously invoking Whitewater, cattle futures, and other ghosts and goblins from the 1990s that continue to haunt the wingnut imagination.
It would also be tough to justify raising this stuff by saying that it's a case the Republicans would make against her, too. One of the Obama campaign's most effective push-backs against the Bin Laden ad and other attacks has been to point out that Hillary is employing slimy Rovian and GOP tactics against him -- push-backs that would be compromised by any systematic effort to raise the 1990s stuff.
So my bet is that Whitewater and cattle futures won't be making any serious appearance in the Dem primary.
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