Gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins...Here we come to the crunch. Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history.

Americans have never reflected on their own shortcomings very well.  And so here is the first serious and  critical assessment of the Democratic primary campaign from a British observer who is scathing in his indictment of the Obama campaign and the American media--all to the detriment of the public good.

So much has been written about the Democratic primary campaign that it is exciting to come across something which captures an element of the campaign in a new way.  Andrew Stephen, US editor for the New Statemsan since 2001, does this  in last Thursday's issue of that magazine with a stunning indictment of the combined  Obama campaign and media treatment of Hillary.

A word about Andrew Stephen. He  became US Editor of the New Statesman in 2001, having been its Washington correspondent and weekly columnist since 1998. He is a regular contributor to BBC news programs and to The Sunday Times Magazine. He has also written for a variety of US newspapers including The New York Times Op-Ed pages. He came to the US in 1989 to be Washington Bureau Chief of The Observer and in 1992 was made Foreign Correspondent of the Year by the American Overseas Press Club for his coverage.

Another member of the non-US press has also commented critically on the mysogyny unleashed in this election. Nuala O'Faolain, a prominent figure in the Irish press who covered the election for the Irish Times until her untimely death from lung cancer, said she could only describe herself as "gobstruck" by it.

Here is Andrew Stephen's  take:

History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins. The chief victim has been Senator Hillary Clinton, but the ramifications could be hugely harmful for America and the world.

I am no particular fan of Clinton. Nor, I think, would friends and colleagues accuse me of being racist. But it is quite inconceivable that any leading male presidential candidate would be treated with such hatred and scorn as Clinton has been. What other senator and serious White House contender would be likened by National Public Radio's political editor, Ken Rudin, to the demoniac, knife-wielding stalker played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Or described as "a fucking whore" by Randi Rhodes, one of the foremost personalities of the supposedly liberal Air America? Would Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein fame) ever publicly declare his disgust about a male candidate's "thick ankles"? Could anybody have envisaged that a website set up specifically to oppose any other candidate would be called Citizens United Not Timid? (We do not need an acronym for that.

You know what?  We are all better than the crap that has been thrown around on MyDD today.

David Axelrod defended Hillary today on Hardball.

Think not??

I'll take you back to that fateful night in a moment.

But first, listen to strategist David Axelrod on WCCO, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, MN the night of the May 8 Indiana and North Carolina primaries. (The video is the top left "thumbnail" located just above the video player in the event the current news plays rather than the Axelrod video; you will also have to endure a short Coldstone Creamery ad).

A big chunk of sunday's talking head time was taken up by the controversial comments Hillary Clinton made earlier in a USA Today interview.

When she said "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me", many people thought she (unintentionally) slurred non-white Americans.

Did she and her team get the chance to set the record straight ??? Big time. Terry McAuliffe on Meet the press, Howard Wolfsson on Fox and probably on a lot of other shows I didn't see.
Did they take the chance. Of course not, just like with the Bosnia flare-up it looks allmost impossible for the Clinton team to admit to a mistake. They still stick to the lame excuse that Hillary was simply quoting an AP story.

So, who did explain that it was simply a bad choice of words and absolutely not an intentional playing of the race card. You've guessed it. David Axelrod.

It's quickly approaching $4.00 in our part of Maryland (just north of DC).  $3.80 last I checked and the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit $4.00 by the time the last of our primaries are done on June 3rd.  People are hurting guys and it's only going to get worse.

I'd hate to be a trucker right now.  Parts of DC were at a standstill today as truckers converged on town to demonstrate against the soaring gas prices.  They want action and they want it now (they're not alone!).  Truckers spend about $1,200 every time they fill their tanks and when you think of how much of our food and goods are moved by truck in this country, that's gonna trickle down to higher prices for everything we buy - not just gas.

Well... Hillary's just released a plan today to do something about those higher prices.  Given the eejit in the White House right now we probably won't see any action on this until she gets into the Oval Office next January, but at least she's got a plan in place and will be ready on DAY ONE to put her plan into action.

by Bud White

The Democratic Party consists of two warring factions, and the precarious coalition that forms the Party is on the verge of splitting apart. Working class whites are not naive to Obama's shenanigans. They've watched as the Obama team has smeared perhaps the most racially progressive president in our history as a racist, and they've seen Obama ridicule their concerns, faith, and culture.

The Obama campaign would like the superdelegates to believe that African Americans will revolt if Obama is not given the nomination. The more likely outcome-and this has actually been quantified, is that working-class whites will go with McCain if Hillary is not the nominee.

This is not because working class whites are racist but because Obama represents a wing of the party which encourages the trashing of poor white people, lacks an economic focus for their needs, and excuses the racist and America-hating rants of Reverend Wright.

Obama's cold-hearted tacticians aren't using these tactics because they are concerned about the plight of African Americans. They are trying to scare superdelegates about racial issues and smear the Clintons.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

Wow.  I have to admit my jaw hit the coffee table and nearly knocked my mug off when I heard David Axelrod on Face the Nation this morning.  

Bob Schieffer asked him about some recent missteps by President Clinton as he stumped for his wife on the campaign trail.  What we heard this morning was the nice guy version of David Axelrod.  The cameras were running and pointed straight at him, so of course he was going to pretend he couldn't possibly know what was in Bill's head - or heart when it came to the things he said on behalf of Hillary.  

Here's the transcript from what I could type out - take a look...

Schieffer:  What do you think about it Mr. Axelrod?  Do you think any of this has been calculated or is he just making mistakes or...?

Axelrod:  Well I can't climb into President Clinton's head and explain why he said some of the things he said - and some of them have been regrettable.  But let me say this - his wife is running for President of the United States and he is working very, very hard to try and get her elected President and to some degree that's understandable.  And uh maybe some of these indiscreet remarks can be written off to the passion he feels about trying to get his wife elected president so uh I think it should be seen in that perspective.

I do think its important for everybody in the process whether they're surrogates or the candidates themselves to be thoughtful about the things that they say because - words do have meaning and they can be disruptive and divisive and we don't need that as a party and frankly we don't need that as a country.

Here's a link to the video of the whole segment - this bit starts at about 2 minutes into it...

LINK

There has clearly been a lot of talk about race during this campaign - and, unfortunately a lot of talk about race-baiting. The common meme is that the Clinton campaign has started going negative and is using race to do so. But is that the case? Have the Clintons been playing the race card?

There have been many charges against Sen. Clinton, her husband, and members of her campaign. Several members of Clinton's campaign staff have resigned due to (purportedly) race-based controversies and the issue has become so central to the Democratic primary campaign that, when a charge of "racism" was leveled at the Obama campaign (through his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright), Sen. Obama canceled his TV news appearances to prep for a hasty address on "race and unity".

I'll tackle these two questions together, following a "scorecard" method we can assess at the end. I've come up with a baker's dozen of "race-baiting" stories and will try to determine what was actually said, how the story was spun, and who did the spinning. I'm allotting each story two or four points (which can be divvied up), depending on the impact of the story. As I type this, I'm not sure what the scorecard may look like at the end - and I may disprove my own assumptions. :unsure: Then again, I've been monitoring the coverage of the "race-baiting" fairly closely all along, so I'm doubting that I'll surprise myself much...