Senator Joe McCarthy returns from the dead! And he has reappeared in the form of Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) communication director and Clinton backer, Rick Sloan.
Edsall give the details at Huffington Post:
Clinton Backer Distributes Essay On How GOP Would Link Obama To '70s RadicalsA high-ranking labor supporter of Hillary Clinton is distributing to union leaders and to Democratic strategists a document detailing the radical activities of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, two former members of the `70s group the Weather Underground, who decades later, in Chicago, crossed paths with Barack Obama.
The document - a three-page emailed essay by Rick Sloan, communications director for the International Association of Machinists as Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) -- takes both literary and political license to outline what Sloan believes would be the thrust of a hypothetical Republican campaign against Obama focusing on his tangential connection to Ayers and Dohrn.
The goal of the essay appears to be to discredit Obama as the prospective Democratic presidential nominee.
Just far enough away from Camp Clinton that they can say, "Not us!" Will they "reject and denounce" this? Probably on the Sunday morning shows where folks like lil' Georgie are sure to bring it up!
The Clinton campaign began laying the groundwork for their Swiftboat attacks on Obama shortly before the Iowa caucus by claiming that Obama needed to be "vetted." That was how Clinon and her campaign would justify using Swiftboat-style attacks against a fellow Democrat.
While Hill and Bill and her backers have been complaining for months about media treatment of Hillary, the reality has been that none of her Democratic opponents have used Swiftboat-style attacks on her, despite the plethora of material that Republicans would be likely to draw on were she to be the nominee.
In fact, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Harold Ickes, Howard Wolfson and others have stated over and over that Hillary is a "known quantity" who has been "vetted" over the course of the last 16 years.
Really?
As I noted in a diary on March 5, Has Hillary Clinton really been "vetted" as she so often claims?
That diary details a number of highly questionable -- and potentially destructive -- issues that Republicans would no doubt use to hammer her in the general election, but that have not been used against her by Obama or any of the other Democratic candidates. Because that is not what Democrats do to fellow Democrats.
As I outlined in a little-noticed diary yesterday, The Woods Fund Board: Dastardly Communist Terrorists!, the Obama-Ayers connection is no big deal, despite what Mr. Sloan claims under the guise of the bed-wetting claim, "Karl Rove will do this!"
Even Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, no radical he, has worked closely with Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, on implementing Daley's ambitious school reform plan.
Keep in mind that Sloan works for IAMAW International President R. Thomas
Buffenbarger, the same guy who launched the vile, "latte-drinking, Prius- driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies" attack on Obama and Obama supporters at a Clinton event back in February.
I think most political observers knew that Clinton and her campaign would launch the rest of the kitchen this weekend -- tearing up the floorboards, pulling out the conduit and plumbing. hurling the final, large appliances -- but this is truly McCarthyism. And it is a new low.
I hope the superdelegates take into account the fact that Obama and his campaign have not used Swifboat-style material against Clinton. There is plenty of it.
But to play the cowardly, "Oh no! Rove will attack us" game shows just how weak and feeble her real chances are.
Note to Rick Sloan: You're a coward.
|
|
|
Permalink :: 87 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.