John Edwards for President? for Wednesday, November 21, 2007

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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

"Mudslinging" Defined By Hillary Herself

Since Hillary found that the accusations of the boys piling on, accusations of her being Swiftboated from her husband, former President Bill Clinton, didn't get any traction and instead caused people to question the legitimacy of these statements and accusations, in the last debate the Hillary Clinton Campaign conjured several lines that they thought might stick (and they sure did in the first media headlines that appeared) including the accusation against Edwards of "mudslinging"...with some help from Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd.

According to this statement yesterday, John Edwards for President communications director Chris Kofinis released the following statement on the definition of mudslinging:

"mudslinging |mŭd'slĭng'ing| (also mud-slinging) noun informalthe use of insults and accusations, esp. unjust ones, with the aim of damaging the reputation of an opponent.

As in: Hillary Clinton said about Barack Obama, 'Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face.'

"Now we know what Senator Clinton meant when she talked about 'throwing mud' in the last debate. Like so many other things, when it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another."

Not sure if Obama is getting stranger by the day and his comments somewhat odd at times or whether Hillary in these kinds of responses is really starting to show her true colors as she has stumbled repeatedly between the drivers' licenses answer, the planted audience question, the odd attack on Edwards...the list goes on. 

Here is more on Hillary Clinton vs Obama on the continuing issue of experience as seen thru her stints as First Lady and him as a 10-year old living abroad. According to this New York Times story.

Fog may have diverted Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s plane from her campaign stop here on Tuesday, but that did not prevent her from continuing her attacks on Senator Barack Obama’s experience.

It was an odd moment. Mrs. Clinton, her voice piped in over a sound system, apologized for missing the event, expressed concern about the safety of food and toys from overseas and, pivoting off the overseas topic, tweaked Mr. Obama for saying on Monday that living overseas as a child had increased his experience in foreign relations.

Mrs. Clinton, who this week in Iowa has been making an issue of Mr. Obama’s experience, said the next president would face two wars and fraying alliances. She said she had traveled broadly and had “met with countless world leaders” and knew many of them personally.

“Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges that the next president will face,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I think we need a president with more experience than that.”

That was apparently a response to Mr. Obama’s citing his years in Indonesia as a child as contributing to his knowledge “of how ordinary people in these other countries live.”

“I sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said. “So I have frequent interaction with world leaders who come to visit here, and I take trips on various fact-finding missions, whether it’s to Iraq or Russia or Africa. But you know, probably, the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in Southeast Asia.”

New York Times: Less Coverage Of John Edwards In All Media

According to the Public Editor of the New York Times a surprising admission and then a disappointing excuse from the editor in charge of political coverage:

For as long as I have been in the newspaper business, there has been tension between editors who have finite resources and an obligation to reflect reality and readers who argue that a lack of coverage shuts out the ideas and diminishes the prospects of lesser-known candidates. Richard W. Stevenson, the editor in charge of The Times’s coverage of this campaign, said: “Not all candidates are created equal. Some of them have a much greater likelihood of becoming the next president of the United States.”

I think the call is easier on the candidates at the very back of the pack, including some whose only campaign activity is to appear in the debates. But an unusually large number of serious candidates bunched somewhere behind the front-runners are not getting major attention in The Times.

“It is frustrating to us as well,” Stevenson said. “We are acutely aware of it, and are watching very carefully to be sure we aren’t making a mistake in how we are apportioning our resources.”

I’ll cite just one case where I don’t think The Times is paying enough attention.

In Iowa, which launched a little-known Jimmy Carter to his party’s nomination in 1976, John Edwards is close behind Clinton in the most recent Des Moines Register poll, yet The Times has given him comparatively scant coverage. Clinton and Obama have been profiled twice each on the front page since Labor Day, but Edwards not at all this year. Throughout the paper, The Times has published 47 articles about Clinton since Labor Day, only 18 about Edwards.

Stevenson said, “I don’t track our coverage by quantity; in a qualitative sense, we’ve covered him pretty thoroughly, and there is more to come.”

Yeah, after John Edwards was almost completely ignored by the New York Times and other media, where talk of Obama vs Clinton was an easier story, now American voters are being promised future coverage when the Iowa caucuses are less than 45 days away. So much for fair and accurate coverage in a democracy where we let voters decide!

Hell, yes, it is a mistake as the Public Editor himself puts it in the context of previous elections where a win in Iowa can catapult a candidate to the nomination and the presidency. That is still a very strong possibility as this new Washington Post article notes today.

Washington Post: Edwards Remains Formidable Threat In Iowa

According to this Washington Post story:

The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key issues, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) draws support from 30 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, compared with 26 percent for Clinton and 22 percent for former senator John Edwards (N.C.). New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson received 11 percent.

....[Clinton] appears more vulnerable on questions of character. Thirty-one percent found Obama to be the most honest and trustworthy, about double the percentage who said the same of Clinton. While about three-quarters credited both Obama and Edwards with speaking their mind on issues, only 50 percent said Clinton is willing enough to say what she really thinks. Forty-five percent said she is not sufficiently candid.

...And despite widespread impressions that Obama is banking on unreliable first-time voters, Clinton depends on them heavily as well: About half of her supporters said they have never attended a caucus. Forty-three percent of Obama's backers and 24 percent of Edwards's would be first-time caucus-goers. Previous attendance is one of the strongest indicators of who will vote.

Clinton's reliance on new voters helps explain her campaign's recent push to drive up attendance on caucus night -- including a new "caucusing is easy" video featuring former president Bill Clinton and a hamburger -- and also illustrates why Edwards, with his cadre of experienced caucus-goers, remains a formidable threat.

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