Hillary Swiftboats

Indeed, Hillary has learned a few things in her many years of Washington experience.

This week Sen. Clinton, seeking free press and apparently a high-profile opportunity to slander her opponent, granted an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes. In the interview Steve Kroft speaks of rumors circulating recently among Ohio voters challenging Sen. Obama patriotism. As the rumors go, Obama does not know the national anthem, "wouldn't use the Holy Bible," and is a Muslim. Kroft gives Ms. Clinton the opportunity to clear the unfounded and blatantly malicious rumors (of unknown, suspicious origin). Kroft asks Ms. Clinton if she believed that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.

Her response? “No. No. Why would I? No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know.”

It's like Swiftboating, Clintonian version. Where is Move On dot Org? Perhaps it's time for some good, old-fashion Democratic Party disciplining?

Check out Bob Herbert's Sunday New York Times Op-Ed to read more.

Hillary's Staff at Odds

Last fall I'm remember reading that the magazine GQ removed an article it was going to publish about the strife within the Hillary campaign. Her campaign threatened to prevent GQ from having their scheduled interview with Bill Clinton if they went forward with the article.

Anyway, throughout this primary cycle there have been indicators in the media that her campaign is having internal problems. Her campaign manager and deputy campaign manager were replaced not too long ago.

Today in a LA Times article, Mark Penn, Hillary's pollster and chief strategist, tried to downplay his role in the campaign. However, Howard Wolfson, Hillary's communications chief, kind of contradicts what Penn claims. The article mentions how other staff wanted a more humanizing Hillary earlier in the campaign, but Penn resisted.

Penn usually gets the blame for Hillary's failures. Last week in an article I read (I don't remember which one) Harold Ickes, Hillary's senior advisor, put much of the blame on Penn also and criticized him.

Her campaign keeps on changing slogans more than any other presidential candidate and the tension between her staff gets more media coverage than the other candidates from both parties. I don't remember ever coming across information about other candidates having problems like hers. McCain had a change in staff much earlier in his campaign, but he has bounced back since. Her campaign's internal tension has been ongoing and it doesn't seem to be helping her campaign. She went from the inevitable frontrunner to the underdog.

Hillary the "Children's Advocate?"

Hillary claims she has the experience and has fought for change throughout her career. Through Politico's Ben Smith's blog he referenced an article. The article states: "Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her '35 years of experience making change' on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients."

Further on the author indicates that at 27 she was the attorney of a man accused of rape. She used her knowledge in child development to discredit the 12 year-old girl. I know this is what some lawyers do, but I think this contradicts her current message. This article isn't getting much attention right now. I wonder if it'll get more coverage later or whether her opponents will use it against her. Right now, the popular item is Obama's picture on Drudge Report. The information online seems limitless as if something new is uncovered everyday about the candidates.

Obama is not winning amongst Latinos!

I read an article about a week ago in the New York Times that discussed the racial and gender issues that are prevalent in this upcoming election. Although this election has been heavily circled around the issue of national security, this upcoming election can be ground breakingbecause there is a possibility that an African American or a woman will become the next president of the United States of America.

This article was very interesting because it discussed the alliance the Latino community has with Bill and Hilary Clinton. The Latino community feels that Hilary will address their social issues and represent their socio-economic interests. What was even more interesting is that Bill Clinton has had a long affinity with the African American community, therefore it seems as if Hilary Clinton is winning the minoritycommunities; especially in cities like New York City. Bill Clinton made a wise decision in placing his office in Harlem, New York.

We should ask our selves if Bill Clinton's close relationship with the Africa community benefit Hilary Clinton's campaign and increase her opportunity to win the 2008 election?

Unfortunately, Obama may be negatively affected because of the lack of support that he will have from the minority communities.

Ironically, the debate tonight covered the debate of race vs. gender. Does race triumph gender?

Race or gender? Reax

An interesting read on CNN has raised some questions for me. CNN published an article discussing black women having to choose between voting their race (Obama) or their gender (Clinton) in the upcoming Democratic primaries. CNN then posted a follow-up to the article, with reader reaction. One of the more interesting reactions was from a reader who basically said that he's a white man who is counting Edwards out, meaning that he too has the "plight" of choosing between race (Clinton) and gender (Obama) when he selects a presidential candidate.

My question is this: Do you think this line of reasoning will ever take hold among voters should Edwards drop out? Will the media think this aspect of the presidential race is even worth reporting? Or is the whole issue of voting race vs. gender oversimplified? While CNN attempts to shed light on a group of voters that will play a key role in who the next Democratic presidential candidate is, does the race vs. gender thing reinforce what appears to be an underlying idea that women and minorities can't look past surface characteristics?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/21/emails.race.gender/index.html

Are Clinton and Obama making politics "cooler"?

In past years, many campaigns to get young voters out and voting such as MTV's rock the vote have been marginally successful but really failed to mobilize as many people as they'd have liked to using the "it's hip to vote" angle. Remakes of "What's Going On" and "Wake Up Everybody" by modern top 40 artists still rang in as trite and dated. There was already such a distance between the 18-21 year olds and the original versions of those songs that the the inspiration the new versions were attempting to borrow from failed to come across to the newer generations. However, it really caught my attention the other day to hear Cuban rapper Pitbull on a bootleg remix of America's #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 ("Low" by Flo Rida f/ T-Pain) saying "Me, I'm Diddy, Jay-Z, and a little bit of Biggie, gimme the Louis and I'll be out, what'chu think boy? Forget a debate, boy, they're feeling me like Obama and Hilary...."

The three conclusions that this causes me to draw on really makes me think that a more 'organic' (or 'bootleg') approach will be a more successful one if we're really going to try to mobilize youth culture using music. (1) Pitbull is trying to establish himself as an important figure by drawing comparisons between himself and hip-hop moguls/icons Diddy, Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G., and, in the same breath, says "They're feeling me like Obama and Hilary." This puts Obama and Hilary on the same level of importance (to the hip-hop audience) as several respected icons of the industry, thereby saying "Obama and Hilary are important to the hip-hop community, too." (2) Pitbull's rapping usually comes from a place that stands for the underdog and he is one of the few major Latino rappers in the game right now, so his endorsement via name-dropping of the Democratic candidates puts them in the minds of his intended audience which largely includes an urban Latino population. (3) The idea that these two figures are considered culturally relevant enough to be immortalized in song before they're even presidential candidates shows how significant this year's primaries are. He would not have included them in his lyrics if he did not think that people would still remember BOTH of them after the primaries next month.

This wasn't a political anthem and it's not a song about rocking the vote. He wasn't paid to mention them. I think there's a hip factor that Obama and Clinton possess that make them a believable part of a rap song, something that wouldn't feel as organic as name dropping a stuffy, old, rich, white heterosexual male senator from a red state.

Thanks and some recent links

Thanks to everyone who has taken the leap in the first few days. Special thanks to Richmond Communication Professor Paul Achter for his 'Its the economy' post from Friday.

I will be going over the technological medium again in class tomorrow. I would like to work with everyone to get you up and posting in week 2 of the course.

In the interim, here are some quick reads and links to keep you current on the communicative nature of the campaign:

• Peter Applebome of the New York Times asks "Is Eloquence Overrated?" and gets some interesting perspectives from prominent Communication scholars.
  
• Barack Obama made a push for 'unity' to take its place alongside 'change' as a crucial campaign theme. His speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA is an interesting effort to shift the recent campaign conversation among the Democrats. Watch the speech via c-span (using media player or read it at his website.
• Some of you noted this theme already (nice job djc), but how do delegate counts 'matter' alongside 'winning a primary or caucus?' CNN tries to make sense of Clinton's 'win' in Nevada and it opens the door to Gretchen's question of a brokered convention. As we learn how this new primary season works it will be interesting if the attention given to these primaries doesn't provide as much closure as folks anticipated. This is certainly apparent in Romney's delegate-heavy strategy.
• Still lots of divergent trends on the GOP side. Giuliani continues to struggle in the polls, despite some new ads that have caused a stir. When Chuck Norris is getting a good deal of coverage, it may be a sign that there is a long way to go before picking a nominee.
• Finally, be sure to take a quick look at the reaction from tonight's Democratic debate in South Carolina.

See you tomorrow.