Confronting Al Gore’s "Deafening Silence" in the Democratic Primary

In her post at No Quarter yesterday, Ani confronts Al Gore in an open letter about his “deafening silence” throughout the Democratic primary and in the process, she effectively and cogently nails each of the major offenses of the media, party leaders, and the Obama campaign in their abusive treatment of Hillary Clinton, the obviously better qualified candidate in the race.

Ani starts out like this:

“When so many of us begged you to run for office again this year, you jokingly stated you were a ‘recovering politician.’ Certainly, you have more than earned the right to walk away from what you consider to be a toxic environment. However, much as I appreciate your desire to remain neutral in this nominating contest, as you have sent me a fund raising letter on behalf of the DSCC, I feel I must now question your deafening silence in this most critical of primaries.

“You of all people understand what it is like to be the far more qualified candidate and be on the receiving end of ridicule by the drive-by hit squad media. You have rightly stated that television is a one-way medium, not encouraging discourse, critical thought or active participation. This year, we see even more clearly the influence and effect that favoritism of one and vilification and misogyny toward another has on the voting populace, as junk food is fed to a citizenry struggling to make ends meet, at points overwhelmed by their own responsibilities, without time to dig deeper for the truth of the story.”

In the following paragraph, Ani addresses a point that infuriated me every time I witnessed Obama deceitfully presenting himself as the candidate who opposed the war from the beginning, while never once explaining that he was not a member of the U.S. Senate when the vote on the Iraq War Resolution was taken.

“It is both amazing and unconscionable to me that some educated people, possessing a master’s degree no less, actually believe that Senator Obama ‘voted’ against the war. They are clueless to the fact he was not even a U.S. Senator at that time.”

Ani continues her analysis of the Democratic primary:

“Yet, with all of the advantages he had going into this year: the DNC clearly gaming Michigan and Florida in his favor, the media offering pillow fluffing soft stories about him, rather than vetting him, while exaggerating Senator Clinton’s every step to negative effect, he still was not able to close the deal until the Super Delegates raced to forcibly shut down this process.”

I urge Katalusis readers to go here to read Ani’s post in its entirety.

Note: Feedback from readers is always welcome at Katalusis. I try to find time to reply to each of your comments as well as any email messages I receive.

The Obama Campaign’s Destructive Tactics

Photo credits: Associated Press File Photo

In an article in The New Republic today, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz explains how Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton. In the process, Wilentz addresses an issue related to one that I raised in a previous post, that is “the gap between Senator Barack Obama's promises of a pure, soul-cleansing ‘new’ politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp--over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress--will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is.”

Noting the media’s complicity in the Obama campaign’s destructive tactics, Wilentz states, “This development is the latest sad commentary on the malign power of the press, hyping its own favorites and tearing down those it dislikes, to create pseudo-scandals of the sort that hounded Al Gore during the 2000 campaign. It is also a commentary on how race can make American politics go haywire. Above all, it is a commentary on the cutthroat, fraudulent politics that lie at the foundation of Obama's supposedly uplifting campaign.”

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Sean Wilentz is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Norton).

Echoes of Ralph Nader’s Attacks on Al Gore in the 2008 Campaign

Seeing Al Gore collect his Nobel Prize the other day reminded thoughtful people around the globe of the debacle in Florida and subsequent Supreme Court decision that gave the American presidency to George W. Bush in 2000. Most are in agreement that Al Gore would have been the wiser choice.

In an article first published yesterday in the Huffington Post, historian and Princeton professor Sean Wilentz compares attacks by Obama supporter R. J. Eskow on Hillary Clinton to Ralph Nader’s criticism of Al Gore in the 2000 campaign. Wilentz argues:

“The politics of perfectionism on the left also succeeded in creating a splinter movement that wound up electing an even more right-wing Republican president -- the Ralph Nader campaign in 2000. Eskow's attacks on Hillary Clinton read almost word-for-word like those Nader delivered against Al Gore.”

Wilentz offers an excellent discussion of the difference between the messianic perfectionist idealism of Obama and his disciples (Oprah’s “He is the one!”) to the pragmatic idealism of Hillary Clinton that has been tried and tested in her many years of experience.
Read more.