Going Out On A Low Note (or, How Hillary Learned To Stop Worrying About Morality and Love Karl Rove)

A couple days ago a prominent Hillary supporter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, weighed in on the election and expressed her belief that Barack Obama is going to be our nominee. She also mentioned many errors Hillary has made in her campaign, including running on "experience", when she had no more (less actually) useful experience than Obama, and much less than many other candidates in the race (Richardson, Biden, Dodd, McCain, etc). She also "lamented" Hillary's decision to go negative, and to question Obama's readiness (which makes sense, since he is our only chance at winning in November, as I've said repeatedly). She said she recently called Hillary's campaign and advised them to "go out on a high note", but she says her advice was "politely dismissed".

In the last few days, we have seen exactly what the opposite of "go out on a high note" is, something closer to this:



So today it comes out that back in January, after her Iowa defeat, the Clinton campaign set out to frame Obama as unfriendly toward Israel, bordering on anti-Semitic, in order to get the politically powerful American Jewish community to turn against him. Her campaign emphasized that Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national-security adviser to Jimmy Carter, is Obama's "chief foreign policy adviser", which is a lie, as Mr. Brzezinski has in fact only advised Obama on a few occasions. The back story to this is two-fold. First, Jimmy Carter unfairly took a lot of heat from the characteristically alarmist Pro-Israel Lobby for his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which actually takes a very fair and evenhanded look at the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. Secondly, Brzezinski endorsed a 2006 article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt entitled "The Israel Lobby", which discusses the significant influence of the Pro-Israel Lobby on United States foreign policy. This article was later turned into a book, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy", which incidentally I've had the opportunity to read. It is clear from reading the book that it is painstakingly balanced, and is in absolutely no way whatsoever anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. The authors present a well researched and fair analysis of the activities of the Pro-Israel Lobby, and make sure to frame it in the context of legal and normal interest group activities, and not as some evil conspiracy of evil people. In their book, coincidentally, they write about how the Pro-Israel Lobby often reflectively attacks anyone who so much as disagrees with or looks at Israel's actions as anti-Semitic in order to silence their critics, or potential critics, or even friends who aren't hardline enough. Jimmy Carter was a victim of this, as were Mearsheimer and Walt, as was Brzezinski. So having read this book, it came as little surprise to me that the desperate Clinton campaign would stoop so low as to try to use accusations of Antisemitism (or just associations with individuals marked by their interest in research done by those interested in examining an important political institution) in order to turn the American Jewish community against Obama, while also bringing in lots of money to her campaign.

I've also previously written about Hillary's desperate search for new funding which has lead her to form FEC regulation-free swiftboating groups as well as seek even more money from the neo-conservative AIPAC lobby (which already gives her hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to buy her votes on matters relating to Israel, Iraq, Iran and weapons sales). In exchange for this, Hillary no doubt plans to sell the rest of her soul to AIPAC, in exchange for political power, just like pro-war Joe Lieberman did in 2006 in order to get over a million dollars in AIPAC cash to defeat Ned Lamont. I think we can be pretty sure we know how she will be voting for the rest of her time in the Senate.

Frankly, I'm disgusted (yet again) that Hillary would try to brand a fellow Democrat, who in all likelihood will be our presidential nominee, as an anti-Semite in order to defeat him. This, along with her repeated backstabbing of Obama on his readiness to be president, on his experience and achievements, her appalling hypocrisy in attacking his campaign tactics, exploiting fear of terrorism to her political gain, and her most recent stunt, mocking Obama's message of change like an angry child throwing a temper tantrum has truly made me embarrassed to be a Democrat. She cannot win this nomination, she couldn't beat McCain in the general even if she could beat Obama, and instead of leaving gracefully and helping the party, she is ruthlessly and shamelessly attacking our nominee. The only ones helped by her actions are the Republicans and John McCain. Her willingness to attack her own, and demean every voter who doesn't support her disgusts me, and at some point you have to ask yourself, who's side is Hillary Clinton on? She isn't doing all of this for our benefit, that you can be sure of.

Update (2/26): The issue turns up in the Ohio debate, and Hillary cynically tries to jab Obama on semantics. Pretty pathetic. It is no surprise that Hillary wouldn't defend Obama against these ridiculous accusations, as her campaign has been behind fanning them.