The Shadow Campaign

On the 5 year anniversary of the greatest President in our lifetime standing on an aircraft carrier and announcing "Mission Accomplished" I was going to list out all of the important accomplishments of his administration over their first seven and a half years but it would be a quick read. Maybe he is a strong finisher but I am hard pressed to think of on significant accomplishment during his whole 7 years.

Anyways, I was going to write a post on that but why beat an almost dead horse. Instead I would rather beat a horse's ass that just won't die. Hillary Clinton.

While it should come as no surprise that Peter Dreier of Huffington Post is reporting that a Clinton aide has been distributing Obama smears initiated by the right wing bloggers. In his words:

Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.

The list of past emails from Sidney Blumenthal to stories that were reported in the main stream media is disturbing. With opinion shaping like this, you would think it was the Bush administration. Didn't the Clinton campaign deny that they had nothing to do with the mysterious photo of Obama in a turban? While the story does not pin that on them, it is hard to read this and not think they are to blame. In the piece Blumenthal is credited with elevating the story on Ayers.

There is no doubt that politics is a blood sport. If you want to be President, the process toughens you up. The other thing they do is undermine you once you are President. Anyone that survives the gauntlet of negativity to become President is very weakened by the process. The worst thing I can say is they remind me of tactics that the Bush campaign has become great at. Aren't you tired of this type of crap?