The crying, not the blind swordsman
It's an axiom that when you're with someone who might have a knife to watch their hands. Everybody's been watching Hillary's tears. But where do some of the things that Peggy Noonan has spotted come from?
And if we are to believe the new voice will be a softer, more conciliatory and more engaging one, how to square that with what is going on at HillaryIs44.com, a Web site that is for all intents and purposes a back door to her war room? There you will see that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon "destroy" Barack Obama in a "scandal" involving an "indicted slumlord" who is Mr. Obama's "friend of 17 years" and with whom Mr. Obama has been involved in "shady deals."
This isn't a new voice, it is the old one, the one we know too well. The item was posted on Thursday, two days after Mrs. Clinton announced her new approach.
Between sobs she is going to try to destroy Mr. Obama. She is going to try to end him. She will pay a price for it--no one likes to see the end of a dream, no one likes a dream killer. But she will pay that price to win, and try to clean up the mess later.
BTW, HillaryIs44.com has been taken down, but I saw it before it faded. The opening page was wall to wall Rezko. But it looked something like this and more. And is this another stealth hit piece?
Update
Is the dirty fight on between Hillary and Barack? Or is just another media setup?
posted by wretchardthecat at 1/11/2008 11:18:00 AM
7 Comments:
As usual, go to Google and look in the cache to see the page. How long before Google is served to remove the cached version? To paraphrase, you reveal more of yourself than you realize by who you attack - and how you attack them. While I understand that the object of your web page is to support you, I did find much of the flowery prose in support of Hillary on this site to be cloying.
I think what is happening here is that pieces of information are being seeded into the Internet where they will inevitably be discovered and then converge into one of those Internet storms. Some of this information is probably the result of individual discovery or investigative journalism. How much of it, I wonder, comes from the political machinery?
Given what I've read so far about Obamas apparent draw with the younger crowd, I have to think that their web savvy will be coupled with his political machine to leverage the Facebook, MySpace and Digg spaces this time around. Last time, the Dems outperformed the Republicans on the web in the way that they harnessed the web for donations and mobbing for support. The natural evolution to this would be to harness the social networking this time around. Edwards tried, but it seems that while he understood that, he wasn't able to pick the right person to harness it. The challenge for the Dems will be to harness the net without defaulting to the extreme elements of the party. I frequently think that the challenge for the Republicans will be to harness the web in a dynamic fashion rather than just static "web ad pages" for their sites. This time around there does seem to be more web deployment on the part of the GOP, but they need to realize that they have to deal with the blogosphere - it's not their choice whether they will or not. Reading some of what KMH and MM have had to say about roundtables with McCain it seems that he doesn't get it.
Wretchard said:
"How much of it, I wonder, comes from the political machinery?"
The timing is a bit suspect. If the intent was to damage Obama then this information should have appeared about a week before the California primary elections on 5 February and NOT through Peggy Noonan and NOT have Hillary's name all over it. Looks like black propaganda to me. Probably some moonbat being too clever for Obama's good.
Sit back and enjoy the show. This sort of devious stuff is what's driving this election (definitely NOT a simple exercise of democracy).
The HillaryIs44 website is still up.
It had "exceeded" its CPU quota when last I looked, but yes, it's back.
Wretchard -- I don't think as a practical matter that Dems can "control" their internet presence any more than Osama or Zawahari could "control" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The disadvantages of a distributed organization -- you "own" every lunatic nutcase out there but can't control or discipline him/her. Ron Paul is a good example of this (leaving aside his own lunatic/racist past or lunatic current statements).
McCain supporters in NH chanted "USA USA USA" and the MSNBC reporters were derisive of that sentiment. However there is likely far more "USA" supporters than snobbish press people.
Which is Obama's big weakness. He appeals to the Press and young people (driven by fads to find social acceptance) but neither are decisive. Young people 17-26 make up only 14% of the population. Another 14% are too young to vote. That leaves 72% who are 27 or older, far less subject to fads, and far more likely to ask "what's in it for me?"
Obama is weak, flawed because of his base which can't expand, and probably doomed. Hillary is a formidable opponent because of her organizational structure that is quite centralized.
But even HER operations will "own" any rogue element that projects the nutroots anti-Semitism, pacifism, siding with Iran, self-loathing, and anti-Patriotic elements common in the nutroots. She can't control them but will own them.
Meanwhile the relative "lack" of Republican internet presence is an advantage. Less likelihood of a "mistake" that Republicans "own."
Think of it as AQ distributed network vs. the US Army. Each has it's advantages but a centralized structure can "learn" and adapt faster than a decentralized one. Though it is more vulnerable to a strike at a central node.
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