Obama Campaign Overreacting To Drudge Photo?
By 2008Central.net | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary[Republished from nonpartisan 2008Central.net]
This morning Drudge ran with a story about a picture of Obama from his visit to Somalia in 2006 (photo here). From Drudge:
With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama.
The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya.
The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.
“Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?” questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
Right away, I (and any good skeptic should) had some questions about this:
- First, is this report even true? It seems like something that would be pretty easy to corroborat. A screenshot of the forward perhaps? A name of the staffer, something…anything? No? Oh, you mean you just want us to take Drudge’s word for it? Oh, okay.
- Second, assuming it is true, what exactly does “circulated” mean? The report (and certainly the reaction of Obama’s campaign) makes it seems as though the Clinton campaign is peppering Texas and Ohio with this picture. Rather, at worst, this seems to be one staffer emailing this to another staffer.
- Third, again assuming it’s true, what exactly is the message? Is there an insinuation that Obama is some secret Muslim? No. Rather, it seems like a frustrated staffer complaining about the press coverage that Sen. Clinton has been receiving. And truth be told, it is a fair criticism (although, such an email is definitely not the most effective way to complain).
Did the Obama campaign ask these questions? Did they seek to corroborate Drudge’s report? Did they even try to figure out what was actually meant and said? No. Instead, David Plouffe issued the following response:
“On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world.”
Plouffe is accusing Clinton’s campaign of “shameful, offensive and fear-mongering” tactics worse than any candidate from either party so far during this election. These are pretty strong words. I sure hope they have confidence that Drudge’s account is even accurate. They must, right?
A reporter asked on a conference call with Obama advisors [sic] Susan Rice, Richard Danzig, and Scott Gration how they knew the email came from Clinton.
“I’m afraid we’re not terribly well informed about it,” said Danzig, who said he’d “love to hear [a denial] from them.”
Alright, well, let’s again assume that everything Drudge said is true, is Plouffe’s response accurate? Is an internal staff email complaining about press coverage (because I’m sure Obama staffers never complain or say surly things about their opponents) really worse than Romney suggesting that Democrats will waive the white flag of surrender to terrorists? Or, [insert any other nasty thing that has happened this campaign, which is way way way worse than this internal email]?
Now, instead of offering a reasoned response, calmly articulating Obama’s complete overreaction, Clinton’s campaign manager sent out a nonsensical, irate response:
“Enough.
“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.
“This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.
We will not be distracted.”
It may have better served them to point out that if it’s true, they’ll fire the staffer. And then, offer for consideration the Obama campaign’s response, without any corroboration or desire to get that corroboration, was not only extremely hyperbolic but also destructive for the party.
But still, it may serve everyone to actually think about the report, ask why Obama’s campaign just blindly followed Drudge’s account and if their response wasn’t a bit of an overreaction.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 25th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Great post. Hard to believe that HRC staffers would unhappy about the fair and even handed coverage of the respective campaigns by the media.
When I first saw this story, I thought it odd. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would deliberately promote this picture thinking it would have any effect on support for Obama. But people keep forwarding that stupid “Obama is a secret Muslim” e-mail – so who knows?
At some point, I think you have to give the Clinton campaign at least some credit for understanding that this would create much more damage for them than any possible gain they could get. Nobody in the Clinton campaign leadership could be that stupid to think this would help. If it turns out that this really came from a Clinton staffer, I have to believe that it was without knowledge of the campaign leadership itself. It just makes no sense. I mean, for petes sake – does anyone know an Obama supporter that would be dissuaded by this picture? Why would we think the Clinton campaign, with all their research resources, would think differently?
February 25th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
To 2008Central’s points…
1) Drudge tied it to the Clinton campaign which means he or one of his staff members got it from there. You can call them liars if you want, but most insiders know that this type of oppo research is handled through surrogates all the time. Also, there’s no way Drudge is going to name their anonymous sources. Sure, they do get some things wrong, but for the most part he has the trust of the politico because he can be reliably counted on to push their dirt when they send it to him. So don’t be naive to think that the Clinton camp isn’t behind this. The record proves that Drudge is right more often than not on this.
2) “Circulating” means it’s making the rounds through the back channel emails of the politicos and it landed on Drudge’s doorstep. That’s it. Nowhere in Drudge’s report does it come anywhere close to suggesting that Hillary’s camp was spreading this around Texas and Ohio. Nor is their any suggesting that this is one staffer emailing it to another staffer. Both are speculation on your part.
3) Umm, folks, have we not been paying attention? Yes, the insinuation is that Obama is a secret Muslim. That along with the frustration over the media makes this email what it is, a cheap smear.
To mw’s point about this dissuading Obama supporters, you can’t credibly say it won’t pull a few %s away from him, and grab a majority of the % of the undecideds. That’s the point to smears like this.
As far as stupidity goes, you are talking about the same campaign that put a press release about Obama’s kindergarten papers, right? The same campaign that didn’t rebuke Robert Johnson when he suggested that Obama was taking drugs when Bill and Hillary were helping people and then lied about it? The same campaign that talked openly about his drug use on political pundit shows and was called out on that by Joe Trippi, Edwards’ campaign manager? The same campaign who has had a history with other staffers sending out Obama Muslim smears?
Sorry mw, but Hillary’s credibility is shot with this blogger. Her people have been consistently dumb about their attacks so something clumsy like this wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Also, and this is for both of you…show me something beyond Chris Matthew’s inane comments that demonstrate how unfair the media has been to Hillary. Please. Let’s get some credible arguments going instead of “Oh, they’ve been SOOO unfair.” That is just a meme at this point, and I haven’t seen anything besides people saying it to demonstrate it’s even plausibly true.
I’ll be waiting. :-)
February 25th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Did Obama understand that when he was donning the garb of the Moslim slave traders (of whom he is a descendant) he may be giving is opponents an edge?
February 26th, 2008 at 10:18 am
When people put their trust in somebody like Drudge—a high school bottom-feeder and former souvenir stand clerk—for news and information, things like this are bound to happen.
Not the first time Drudge attempted a smear like this… certainly not the first time he was wrong. Matt Drudge is bottom-feeding scum in a Walt Winchell costume.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report#Errors
Michelle Obama should have lunch with Alexandra Polier and get the low-down on how to track down Drudge and put the screws to the libelous P.O.S.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/9221/
Agnostick
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April 7th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
[...] an open secret how pushing dirt through Drudge works, and even though some here at Donklephant dismissed me for believing that Hill’s camp pushed that image, I think it’s important to remember [...]