Since Barack Obama and his surrogates have resorted to publically bashing John McCain because of properties that his wife owns, it is a clear signal that the Democratic candidate for Change is putting family members back in the crosshairs of public scrutiny.
So we can now forget about all of this “Lay off my wife” chest-puffing and get back to those nasty little conversations that don’t help Michelle Obama’s kids, while we show her how mean and cynical we all are, and remind her why, as an adult, she’s never been proud of America before now.
With that said, Michelle Obama will be speaking on the opening night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She should probably choose her words very carefully, because her immunity from public and media criticism has now expired.
UPDATE: Here’s a Florida Democrat ad that directly targets Cindy McCain. (H/T: Hot Air)
Barack Obama was unavailable for comment. He’s probably busy sending all those text messages.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Election 2008, Hypocrisy, John McCain, Michelle Obama, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs
I thought Obama was bashing McCain for not being able to tell the interviewer how many houses. It didn’t have much to do with his wife.
Red may be suffering from the same syndrome I am, to tell you the truth, Chen. I’ve never been as eager to cast slings and arrows in Senator Obama’s direction as I have been over the past couple of weeks, and a lot of that is due to our esteemed colleague’s naked attacks against the Republican nominee.
It’s tough, this aspect of dealing with a voice so diametrically opposed to the direction I had in mind for the blog…but I’m trying to work through it. Twc is obviously no different in terms of what he’s writing on the front page than what he wrote in the comments section before, but the character of the site is obviously changing (you should see my emails over the past several weeks, the GBCW ones are particularly cruel).
Obama’s campaign would scream to the high heavens under similar circumstances (they have in the past, after all), and the disingenuous retorts by his supporters when the McCain campaign uses damn near the same justification to declare certain topics “out of bounds” is severely irritating. For a campaign and a conglomerate of supporters who purported to practice such a high minded set of “New Politics”, the past couple of weeks have proven those ambitions to be pure hogwash, yet no one on the Blue side of the aisle seems to recognize that fact. Or, if they do, they reset the blinders and rock on.
We’re of an age to know better. This campaign was always going to devolve to the gutter, and the candidates on both sides are guilty of mouthing platitudes to the contrary. What I see as unfair is that Obama and his supporters seem to believe this dip in practices is solely due to a recent set of McCain advertisements, where the Democratic campaign started midway thorough the primaries casting the race card in all directions and demanding that any aspect of Obama’s past public service or personal history (Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezko) was beyond reproach, given his word on the matter.
Doesn’t work that way, and you guys obviously don’t want it to work that way in regards to McCain. The recent blossoming of “Cross in the dirt”, “Mother Theresa”, “Keating Five”, “Carol McCain”, and “Forrestal Fire” attacks are more than enough proof of it, not to mention the just-quite undernews attacks against Cindy McCain regarding her past drug abuse.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, after all. Let’s not pretend otherwise. Obama has declared his wife off-limits in a nationally televised interview, yet he wants to subtly use Cindy McCain’s wealth as an arrow against his opponent. Fine and dandy, says I…After all, Obama has used his wife on the stump quite often to date, and plans to have her address the DNC next week. That’s made her “fair game” from a campaign perspective all along, yet the McCain campaign has been admirably resistant to doing so to date. I see Red’s point in that those gloves should come off at this point.
Joe-
In addition to whatever TWC has posted, I’m sure there are even more posts on various sites about all that, and maybe even on Obama’s community blogs (oneof the least moderated out there), but I haven’t seen anything from the campaign in terms of ads or statements from Obama or Dem surrogates. And please don’t point the finger in my direction, since I’ve been relatively light on mentioning McCain at all over at the Chamber, and when I have, it’s been about his statements WRT Obama or policy. In fact, I’m as disappointed as anyone that the campaign has sunk to this level, expecially since Obama had promised to rise above it. But I suppose that with the “celebrity” ads and the daily dose of attacks coming from the fleet of hacks like Hannity appearing to have an effect on him in the polls, Obama probably feels that he better fight fire with fire rather than lose.
BTW- I think the TWC move was a good one, overall. You should see all the blogs with tumbleweeds in the comments sections, and posting the same damn things. I come here and I know I’ll find some action, and the three of you are honorable and intellectually honest. Keep it up, I say.
Sorry Chen, that was clearly out of line on my part — You’re not among those who have promulgated the dirty attacks against McCain. My apologies.
Bloggers talking trash doesn’t bother me. That’s what we do. And who listens to us, anyway? We don’t change anyone’s mind about anything. At best we give people something to talk about.
Ads on TV are a whole different matter.
By attacking McCain’s wealth, Obama is indirectly attacking Cindy McCain. Everyone knows it’s her money. Obama certainly does. And now others are jumping on the bandwagon that Obama is leading, but they are getting even more personal with direct attacks on Mrs. McCain’s wealth.
Barack Obama uses his family like human shields for his campaign. Stump speeches. Television interviews. Magazine covers. The Obama family is all over the place for our consumption. But we had better like the taste or Barack will be angered.
This has wheels if Democrats want to keep it rolling. Michelle Obama’s mouth is like a Republican gold mine.
Don’t worry about it Joe.
A reporter asked John McCain how many houses he and his wife own — a perfectly valid question. He stammered and mumbled that he would have his staff get back to the reporter on that.
Obama’s campaign picked up on McCain’s (non)answer and tied it in to McCain’s seeming obliviousness on the economy — saying frequently that all is fine, having his chief economic advisor say that we are in only a “mental recession” and “we’ve become a nation of whiners,” etc.
That is not attacking the candidate’s wife.
It just isn’t.
You have a fair point about Michelle Obama giving speeches on behalf of her husband, both during the primary campaign and at the convention. That certainly means that what she says in them is fair game. As for further attacks on her background, what she wrote in college, etc. — I don’t know how much of that is either fairly on the table or important, but I guess we’re going to find out.
I don’t think that attacking her is going to be a particularly useful strategy, but I could be wrong about that.
Cindy McCain, by the way, is the only candidate’s spouse to have taken a personal shot at the other spouse, when she very publicly stepped forward to say, at a campaign rally soon after Michelle Obama’s “first time in my adult life” comments, “I just want to say, I’ve always been proud of my country.”
Nice.
Well, I echo Chen’s distinction between what bloggers rattle on about and what the Obama campaign says and does.
I assume that I’m part of “you guys” there, but just for the record I haven’t posted anything about any of that except for a comment on the “Keating Five” scandal (in response to comments threatening great mayhem to the Obama campaign on Rezko), which I think is an absolutely legitimate topic in discussing John McCain’s career, and a comment some time ago about Cindy McCain’s publicly-acknowledged drug use and theft of drugs from her charity (when she took a shot at Mrs. Obama), which I also think is a legitimate topic to the extent that the McCain campaign, and particularly Cindy McCain herself, chooses to attack Michelle Obama for the way she has lived her life.
I have read a series of posts on Andrew Sullivan’s blog about the “Cross in the Dirt” anecdote — which was the subject of Sen. McCain’s first campaign television ad. I haven’t written anything about it. But I do think it is perfectly legitimate to look into whether it seems likely to have actually happened the way that Sen. McCain says it happened. The fact that John McCain was a POW doesn’t make him immune from the normal rules of life or politics. When he tells a story about it, particularly when he puts it front and center as the first thing he wants to tell the American electorate about himself, he should expect that people may ask whether it is true. That would be true even if he hadn’t told an outright falsehood about another moving aspect of his POW experience, which he undeniably did, in an embarrassing pander for votes in Pennsylvania earlier this summer.
I have also read the “Mother Theresa” stories and find the distortion of the (quite admirable) story of the McCain’s adoption of a destitute Bangladeshi orphan somewhat interesting as a matter of psychology but I don’t see any relevance to the campaign.
I don’t know anything at all about any “Carol McCain” or “Forrestal Fire” stories.
There’s no doubt that the campaign got personal and negative over the past three weeks or so. It seems pretty obvious to me that it was the McCain team that “went there” first with their ads and sustained commentary beginning the week that Obama was in Europe, ridiculing his “celebrity” status and the tone of some of the commentary on him as “The One,” etc. They made the decision that they needed to take him down a few pegs in order to drive up his negatives, put some doubt in the minds of voters abouit him personally, and try to blunt what they expect will be the effect of some very good speeches and enthusiastic scenes coming out of the Democratic convention.
That’s fine — they’re free to do that. I don’t really care that they “started it” — that’s politics. They’re trying to win an election. But when it comes zinging back at them: no whining!
By the way, it is kind of amusing to hear the same party that ran pretty hard — and pretty effectively — against John Forbes Kerry and “Te-REH-za” Heinz now crying out against “publicly bashing [our candidate] because of properties that his wife owns.”
What’s next — it’s really, really unfair and hurtful to mention John McCain’s $520 loafers?
Geese, gander, and sauce all around!
I want to assure you all that I always wear at least a pair of shorts when I write my posts.
Well done, twc :-)
Open season, you say?
Cindy, duck!