I am trying to change course, but I just can’t give it a break. I promise I will do better, but it’s just that I was reading these lines from an article in The Economist,
In a remarkable exercise in doublethink she claimed on one of the Sunday talk shows that “you have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don’t think either of us wants to inject race or gender in this campaign. We’re running as individuals”.
The other reason why the debate will continue is that the Clintons’ main aim at the moment is to drive up Mr Obama’s “negatives”. They desperately need to reverse polls that show that, despite his failure in New Hampshire, Mr Obama is picking up support in a large swathe of demographic groups.
This will involve attacking his political record and picking apart his personal biography (it is striking that two Clinton supporters have already brought up Mr Obama’s admitted cocaine use). None of this is likely to go down well with Americans who regard Mr Obama as one of the most talented politicians of his generation, and who hope that he will become America’s first black president.
The first part of the quote simply shows the Clintons’ love for double-talk and pretty-sounding contradictions. But the second part reminds me of how the Clintons were always so enraged whenever their characters or pasts were brought into question. And whenever that happened, they always blamed the inquiries on some “vast right-wing conspiracy” to shame and undermine them.
So if the Clintons’ goal is to now do to Obama what the Republicans tried to do to them, then I suppose, by logical deduction, there is now a “vast Clinton-wing conspiracy” against Obama. If Shakespeare were alive today.
Grave Error 