Cross-posted on One Million Strong
Literally for months now, at least since David Geffen's comments in late February, the Clinton campaign has mind-numbingly repeated the same charge and relentlessly misunderstood, twisted, and confused Obama's message about a new politics. After eight months of the same, Salon.com writer Tim Grieve finally had enough of his inbox being bombarded with Clinton staffers endlessly charging, "Whatever happened to the politics of hope?"
After receiving yet another email Tuesday, Grieve snapped:
Here's our memo in response: Stop.
When Obama spoke of the "politics of hope" during his speech at the Democratic National Convention, he did so to contrast it with what he called the "politics of cynicism" and the "politics of anything goes," the "spin masters" and "negative ad peddlers" who would divide Americans, liberal against conservative, black against white, red state against blue.
If Obama was suggesting that one candidate couldn't or shouldn't make it clear that he disagrees with another on matters of substance, well, he didn't say that then, and he's not saying that now.
There is, of course, also the hypocrisy of the charge, when the Clinton campaign has been quietly sending out opposition research to reporters for months:
[T]he Clinton campaign routinely reaches out to reporters to provide information they might use to attack her Democratic opponents. Some of it comes in public statements[...]
Much more of it comes in behind-the-scenes e-mails to newspaper reporters and bloggers -- the sorts of e-mails we get from the Clinton campaign but not from the Edwards or Obama camps: On the "off-chance" you didn't read it, here's a copy of a Washington Post editorial calling Obama "irresponsible"; just "wanted to flag this item" in which the Huffington Post criticizes Obama on Iran; here's something Edwards just said about Iraq, and here's something contradictory he said earlier.
But what really bothered Grieve was not so much the hypocrisy, but rather the consequences of a Clinton camp that has been trying for months to trivialize and silence legitimate, democratic debate.
For Grieve, tired of the methods of an administration that has tried at every turn to intimidate its opponents into silence, this should not be tolerated. "Since 9/11, Democrats and their political allies have spent six long years on the receiving end of lectures about why they can't say what needs to be said." Democrats have been accused of being unpatriotic, of providing "comfort to our adversaries," and of "putting our troops in danger."
The last thing the Democratic Party needs now is somebody else -- let alone one of its own -- suggesting that open debate is somehow wrong. Clinton seemed to understand that point perfectly well when she announced her candidacy back in January. "Let's talk, let's chat," she said then. "Let's start a dialogue about your ideas and mine, because the conversation in Washington has been just a little one-sided lately, don't you think?"
Yes, as a matter of fact, we do. But a one-sided conversation is a one-sided conversation, no matter who's doing the talking. Elections are necessarily choices among competing candidates and competing visions. If Clinton can run her campaign without ever mentioning why she thinks she's better than her opponents, more power to her. But mere mortals can't do that, and they shouldn't have to. If Clinton was serious about having a "dialogue" -- if part of her own hope for America is that we'll have a more open society than the one in which we've lived for the past six years -- then it's high time for her campaign to stop trying to shame its opponents into silence. Engage with the criticisms or ignore them; just don't argue that it's wrong to raise them in the first place.
Well said.