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New Hillary Ad In Oregon Uses Tim Russert As Foil

Hillary goes up on the air in Oregon with this new spot that uses Washington pundits -- who have largely pronounced the race over -- as foils...

"In Washington they talk about who's up and who's down," the narrator says, a rather charitable (to her) description of the Washington chatter that has largely written her off.

So is this a positive spot -- a sign that Hillary recognizes the race is largely decided and has decided to lay off harsh tactics? The spot makes no mention of Obama.

It does, however, say that "she's the one" who voted against the Bush energy bill and is insisting on "health coverage for every American" -- implicit contrasts with Obama.

Still, this hardly belongs in the same category as the red-phone ad or the gas-attack spots. It would be hard to call this a negative ad.

Late Update: Hillary also has two new ads in Kentucky, which are also both positive spots. She's way ahead in that state's primary, so there isn't any obvious need to go negative against Obama.


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Her one scheduled event today is at 10 pm.

She's fading... but wants it like a nice sunset.

Ok.

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She also appropriated Obama's "been right when it mattered," which is sadly untrue when it came to the little issue of Iraq.

Still, it feels almost sad to beat up on Hillary Clinton now. Let her have her moments and finish up this race with honor.

Good for her. Now, let's get back to McCain.

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Word up.

Still, this hardly belongs in the same category as the red-phone ad or the gas-attack spots.

Indeed not. These are honorable arguments and Clinton should indeed be welcome to make them. It is thoroughly unlikely that McCain might use them against him later, given that his own health care plan contains no mandate and he dare not risk alienating his own base by reminding them that he voted against the Cheney energy bill.

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Let's call this add what it really is; a waste of friggin money.

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somebody needed a job.

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I think Josh should offer whoever made this add a position at TPM helping police the site to keep away the racist trolls.

That would be money well spent. After all, there are only so many ways I can tell people to go F themselves.

That was my thought exactly; are a Taurus by any chance? I have to waste a dime, much less possibly $200,000, LOL! Do they really think Obama supporters will help her with this unnecessary debt?

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Nope, I'm a scorpio, but by profession I'm a CPA.

That's what I said about continuing campaigning -- it's a waste of money for an organization that's already $20 million in the red. What's the ROI?

She's the one who wanted the gas tax holiday just like McCain.

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And what ever happened to that gas tax holiday, anyway? Haven't heard a peep about it since Indiana.

It was a one state pony.

VERY popular in WV polls. Seeing as they are 2nd most impoversighed state in the nation, they seem to think it's a good idea. And as income levels decline, the value of a gas tax holiday goes up.

Ahem - she wanted a gas tax holiday paid by a windfall profits tax versus being put on the national credit card. So not "just" like McCain.

A worthy point, that. As Paul Krugman put it, Clinton's plan is just stupid, not evil like McCain's.

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Of course, she was already proposing a windfall profits tax to pay for energy R&D, so I guess either that project has to go, or the Treasury does suffer.

There's both long term and short term components to her energy strategy. This was only for the short term that she was proposing it for this summer to alleviate immediate suffering at the pump. For the long term as part of her energy plan, the windfall tax would be used to fund energy innovation.

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Understood, but you can't have it both ways. Short-term or not, there's either less tax revenue or less spending on other priorities.

Meh. I don't see it as all that positive. Implying that either Obama doesn't want to or couldn't do these things - end NCLB for instance, or make health care available to every American - is disingenuous. It still speaks to the fact that Hillary is in some kind of Bizarro-World where she is The One.


At least she's not calling him a secret Muslim flag-burning elitist in this one, though.

This is a scary video from West Virginia that show just how racist and ignorant people really are...

http://www.livesteez.com/videos/watch/nvYkHm9

This is the type of ignorance and racism that is still alive and well in West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, SE Ohio and Kentucky, that I know of first-hand. It's been dying out in most other parts of the country, but it still thrives in Appalachia.
The national media likes to dance around it for some perceived fear of diminishing these people, but they really should be shamed AND exposed for what they are: ignorant racists.
The black woman in the clip, Brenda, nailed it when she said "there are too many rednecks" around there for Obama to have a chance.
Sad, but true.
Fortunately, the number of people who "think" like this is eroding rapidly.

Like I think I said in another comment elsewhere, we need to work on putting these states more in the spotlight, give them more education, more exposure, etc etc, and the racism will go away. I have stepfamily who have never conversed or had close contact with a black person in WV. They're primarily people who have not gone beyond high school, if that, and their econ situation isn't that great. Equality is the last thing on their mind when they have a 12th grade education and they sit around watching FOX news or no news at all all day. My WV stepgrandfather once told me that all the atheists should just get in a boat (just one?) and sail to some other country because america is a christian nation. And this guys' not even an evangelical, hardly even a churchgoer.

I'd have bet anything that if she had run ads like these for the past three months, she'd be ahead. People like her - actually like her - when she's positive and confident, and they dislike her - very much dislike her - when she runs negative ads and acts the victim. I wouldn't be surprised if this helps her in Oregon. Sadly, it's too little, too late.

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True enough. Look at how Obama is breaking away from her in Oregon:

http://www.pollster.com/08-OR-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

I've been thinking about that a lot this primary season. The whole Rocky/Thatcher routine always felt disgustingly artificial.

I concur, but I'll add an elitist twist: negative campaigning works best among poorly educated, low-information voters. Hillary's going negative may well have helped her among that socio-economic class. But I firmly believe it hurt her, big time, with highly educated and affluent voters.

And while highly educated and affluent may not be too large a portion of the overall Democratic electorate, I'd expect that they're overrepresented among the most important Democratic constituency in this process: the superdelegates.

Rather than encouraging them to vote for her, I believe Hillary's increasingly negative and at times racially tinged tone alienated more and more of the superdelegates, and we're seeing a little more of that every day. She won't lose the pledged delegate count by that much - 100 or 150 or so, yet she now trails overall by nearly 200, because she's now losing among supers, and it seems for every one new super she gets, Obama gets 3 or 4.

well, once in law school I brought my pet monkey Thurgood with me to class, but I dressed him up in a little suit and tie. It was really cute : )
anyway, that same day famous Critical Race Studies "scholar" Derrick Bell was visiting the school. So about two dozen people come up and say "welcome Professor Bell." And when Thurgood would start jabbering away, it would take about two to three minutes before people realized, hey! That's not Derrick Bell, that a monkey in a suit!

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Greg, ban this idiot, will you please?

I'll second that motion.

Greg Sargent

I posted this in the last blog.

Your blog will make the msm news (about which you seem so giddy) better if you have a 'report abuse function' for such trolls because it is obvious that you don't have a moderating team.

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Got no problem with this ad.

"She's the one" who claimed that she was under sniper-fire.

"She's the one" who claimed that her republican rival was better suited for the presidency than her Democratic opponent.

"She's the one" who claimed that Barack Obama wasn't a Muslim, as far as she knew.

"She's the one" who voted for the biggest foreign policy disaster in America's history.(without reading the NIE)

"She's the one" who claims that she can run the country effectively, even though her campaign has been run like a fucking lemonade stand.

"She's the one!"

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And she's got to live with it. So no need to rub it in.

New Hillary Ad In Oregon Uses Tim Russert As Foil

So does that make him a Tim foil?

;-)

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Ha! LOL!

I'm off to Best Buy to replace my keyboard!

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That was meant to be:

[rim shot]

bwahahahahaha!

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Oy!

LOL

Do you have kids, Greg? 'Cause you pun like a dad ...

It's funny you say that. As I was typing it, I thought to myself "this is exactly the sort of pun that my dad would make." So, as it happens, I am a father. Evidently there must be something about siring offspring which activates the pun-making signalling cascade in a man's brain.

Yeah, and the "Bush energy bill" actually raised taxes on oil companies after the Democrats were done with it, and gave huge subsidies for alternative energy, which is why Obama supported it. It wasn't a perfect bill, and Obama didn't craft it himself, but Obama and many others thought it did more good than harm.

And do you really want to talk about bad votes? Should we discuss which has been more disastrous, a compromise energy bill or the Iraq war? Didn't think so.

And on health care, NEITHER of your plans are universal, and mandates DO NOT WORK. Period. Typical bs from Hillary, but it is nice that she is taking on a less abrasive tone now, perhaps the sense is starting to break through.

Ruusert is a good foil.

I'm glad she's pulling back from the negativity. But if she wanted to go negative still, there actually is a reason though it might be too little too late. Her campaigns last dying gasp is to emphasize the popular vote and if she went hugely negative she might have been able to drive up Obama's negatives enough to really close in on the popular vote. Not that it matters, obviously, since it's about delegates, not votes, but I can see where someone in her campaign (Mark Penn, ugh) would make that argument. I'm glad to see she's not going that route though.

If Hillary had run this type of campaign earlier, there would be a lot less antipathy toward her that still exists with a lot of Obama supporters.

I think it's a fine ad, and a legit one. Saying, "Look, I'm great and I'm right," is a lot more positive than saying, "Look, he's lousy and he's wrong."

For one thing, it lets people fill in the precise nature of the comparison by themselves. Maybe BHO is just slightly less great and slightly less right than HRC, you know?

I agree with billysumday that if her campaign had struck this tone more consistently, it's very likely that she'd be the presumptive nominee, or at least that it would be a genuine tie. I have very mixed feelings about this, since I distinctly prefer Obama, but still have the sense that Hillary's campaign was a tragic missed opportunity.

Ah, finally. ^_^ It's nice to not be pissed off 24/7. ....Which probably wouldn't happen if I had a life. Oh well.

I do think she has a better Health Care policy, and Edwards had the only one that was truly where we should head. But between the three of them, I hope we do get some major reform. People are drowning in medical costs. I had two patient's last week say their homes are in foreclosure because they were so deep in medical debt due to cancer for one daughter and another with a sick son. They felt their children's lives were more important than saving their homes. Many of these doctors are requiring payment up front.

She's way ahead in that state's primary, so there isn't any obvious need to go negative against Obama.

She would not want more delegates? Such reasoning would only make sense in a winner-take-all context.

I guess she's finally realizing that gaining a couple more delegates in a losing candidacy isn't worth causing further damage by going negative.

Even if you ascribe really cynical motives to Hillary, this makes perfect sense. It's looking like November is going to be very good to the Democratic Party. Not only do we have a good chance of taking the White House, we're all but certain to make significant gains in both Houses of Congress.

This presents all sorts of new opportunities for Hillary Clinton, whether she stays in the Senate or she moves into the Obama Administration in some capacity.

Now, I don't think she's really that cynical, but that just makes her actions all the more logical.

She is the one but you drank the kool aid.

Anyhoo, Obama will show his new kind of politics, playing defense on w's appeasement bs.

Politics as usual.

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Presidential Punch.

♪♪♪

Exactly Gotalife - If there's anyone we should be appeasing to - it is HRC (Clinton!)

Cool aid x1000!

This election - and this USA - complete crap!

(Cool Aid)

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INteresting ad but I wonder if this will even sway a single vote. Oregon's vote-by-mail elections make it less likely that any last minute momentum can actually make a difference. But glad to see Clinton take the high road as the primary winds down.

This is just another example of "experience on day one" leading such a clueless, inept campaign.

the Harvard physics department. 62 faculty, of which:
women: 4
AAs: 0

http://www.physics.harvard.edu/people/faculty.html

Serious business, this.

This is the downside, Greg, of what happens when Washington Times' readers discover this website.
Pathetic Moonie-racists.

My students and I watched the Schick razor ad below:

http://www.spike.com/superbowl/18430

What is relevant to this thread is that the two actors with lines are playing scientists. They dress up in lab coats

and

one is Asian and

the other is a caucasian with a thick Germanic accent.

Even the most patient Socratic method questioning rarely end up with the students figure out why advertisers use these images to portray scientists.

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Not attacking Obama, attacking McCain's base (the pundits) -- sounds good to me!

Come on, sweetie.

No one has done more for Tim Russert than Barack Obama.

Broken Record Troll

Strikes again!

Good ad.

So is this a positive spot -- a sign that Hillary recognizes the race is largely decided and has decided to lay off harsh tactics? The spot makes no mention of Obama.

Yes, this is a "positive" spot. I have no problem with Hillary running ads like this. I find Hillary a much more appealing candidate in spots like this. Perhaps if her whole campaign had been of this tone, she would have done better.

But running the ad this weekend is significantly wasted, because many, perhaps most, Oregonians have already mailed their ballots. This is bad timing for running advertisements there.

What ads, if any, has Obama been running in Oregon? A quick search of Election Central didn't turn up anything other than this one and the pro-Hillary 527 ad announced yesterday. Was Obama on the air earlier?

I'm an Oregon voter. So far the newspapers say only 22% of ballots have been returned. There are drop off boxes (just like metal postal boxes) at numerous locations. My small town of 20K has two drop off locations: one is by the community pool and the other by town hall. Most Oregonians ,at this point, will be driving their ballots to one of these drop-off points. In my house we have three ballots which have yet to be returned. We have numerous primary races that have been really contentious between the Democrats so many of us are taking our time to make our decisions on these down ballot races.

It has been difficult for candidates to determine how best to spend resources given that we have this fairly new vote-by-mail system. New ads at this point could well be a waste of money but on the other hand they might pull in the "last minute" voter. I suspect a lot of people will fill out their ballot this weekend. The LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) line referred to in this ad is a big issue in Oregon. Most Oregonians are against it and Clinton has been out ahead of Obama on this issue

Obama was the first on the air with ads but this first ad that repeated endlessly was about education and didn't seem to relate to Oregon at all. Kind of strange since his brother-in-law (Michelle's brother) is the men's basketball coach at Oregon State University and you'd think they might ask him his opinion.

Oh well, Oregonians are just happy that we got some national attention from the presidential candidates for once.

I wish she would take this attack farther and to more audiences.

It is amazing how Russert, Olbermann and Matthews have acted like cheerleaders for Obama. Olbermann has more or less admitted it and Matthews has come close to do the same thing.

Russert, however, has been a coward from the start as has several others in print and on the internet who refuse to admit they tilted their coverage.

i couldn't agree with you more, chico53... the behavior of so-called "journalists" this primary season has been atrocious. i always knew that they were elitist, ratings pigs, but they have outdone themselves this time by basically telling people how to vote, what to think, and declaring all kinds of shit that they have no business declaring. i don't know how to let the air out of them, but somebody's got to smack some sort of sense into them... i'm not just defending hillary. just remember, they could turn on your favorite candidate at any moment. and don't forget how they helped the bush administration hype the lead-up to the war. they are a danger to all of us. tim russert is their leader, so popping his balloon would be ideal. nice of hillary to take a swipe at him (even if it turns out to be her last swipe this primary season.)

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You just have to keep writing to them and complaining. I do it all the time. You just keep the pressure on and let them know that they're doing a shitty job.

I sent John Roberts a real nasty email one morning after he got abusive with Bill Richardson one morning. Amazingly, he took the time to write to back and give me the behind-the-scenes story about what was going on. So some of them actually DO give a shit what viewers think. Probably not Russert, but who knows?

More power to you. I do not imagine that anyone on this board will argue that the t.v. talking heads have covered themselves in glory this season. They have proven, by and large (with honorable exceptions on PBS), to be clowns. If someone succeeds in taking Tim Russert down a notch I will cheer from the sidelines.

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So is this a positive spot -- a sign that Hillary recognizes the race is largely decided and has decided to lay off harsh tactics?

I'm guessing that more than one superdelegate has made it clear to her that she can stay in this race as long as she likes and as long as she doesn't harm the Party. But the superdelegates have the ability to shut her down if she starts attacking Obama, and I'm sure they've told her in no uncertain terms that they'll do just that.

A last minute attempt to butter up the party to overturn the delegate count?

Or has she kicked off her candidacy for VP?

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Well, I think there may be a sleeper sort of negative in her Oregon ad, i.e., the line about the natural gas pipeline.
From reading some Hillary web sites, it seems that those who are phoning Oregon voters are being reminded to be sure to tell Oregon voters that Obama is responsible should that unpopular pipeline get built through 'beautiful Oregon countryside near their beautiful coastline'. The reasoning behind this is that he voted for the Energy Bill, and that particulary pipeline could be a part of the consequences of that legislation...... though I don't think the nuanced take on this is supposed to be clarified in the phone bank talking point......instead, the talking point is more along the lines of 'do you realize that Obama is for that pipeline, and Hillary is not?'

did obama vote for cheney's freakin' energy bill or not? if he did, and it leads to an ugly pipeline on the oregon coast, then i guess he'll have to take responsibility for that, no?

are we so in love with our candidates that we absolve them of all their mistakes? if obama is going to be the next president of the united states, then i think we ought to get used to holding him accountable, right? or do we want another president like the one we have now who is never accountable for anything?

This is my thought as well. Voting for the Cheney energy bill was a mistake. I see no need to pretend otherwise. He made the wrong choice and he deserves some flak as a result. I like the man a lot; I voted for him and am presently volunteering for him in Missouri, but that does not mean that I think that we should pretend that his mistakes were not mistakes. Sen Clinton is doing us a favor in criticizing him for this mistake. It will provide an incentive for him not to make the same sort of mistake again if he is made to pay a cost for it.

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Hillary? Wow - I'd almost completely fogotten about her.

17 million people voted for Hillary. Write her off at your own risk.

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