HRC guy knocks Obama on drugs (Updated)
Apparently, a top official in the Clinton NH campaign has taken a shot at Obama over his decade-old admissions that he smoked marijuana and tried cocaine when he was a kid. NH co-chair Bill Shaheen (left), husband of the former Democratic governor:
"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use.... It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?' There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."
Even accepting reports that the Clinton campaign is worried, and that the campaign has officially been attacking Obama on electability issues for the last couple days, it seems hard to believe that they've authorized this particular line of attack. It was Bill Clinton, after all, who broke the marijuana barrier back in 1992 with his "never inhaled" formulation.
Is this different? Do they think there's still an "inhaled" barrier 15 years later? Or maybe they think cocaine, even as a kid, is something Americans aren't ready to swallow? Rudy Giuliani, notably, has given Obama a pass: "I respect his honesty. One of the things that we need from our people that are running for office is not this pretense of perfection."
It's true that Mitt Romney hasn't been so forgiving. But still: Have we now entered a zone where the Clinton campaign is ready to make an issue out of something even Giuliani lets slide? Where a candidate who herself has a past that the GOP has made a career out of twisting and Swiftboating now wants to argue that an opponent should be rejected because his past might be Swiftboated?
Or: Is Shaheen trying to suggest that Obama actually did sell drugs? Is this campaign getting that dirty?
Update: The Obama campaign reacts: "Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the 'fun part' of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls." Full statement after the jump.
Statement from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe:
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the 'fun part' of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."
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Comments (4)
Senator Clinton never inhaled, snorted lines, or shot up. That is something Senator Obama cannot claim.
Giuliani has let the issue "slide" because it is currently an issue within the Democratic primary. Once the general rolls around, let's predict July, the GOP nominee will hammer voters with this issue. Also, Senator Obama's book was published in October of 2006, not "years ago" as his campaign manager asserts.
"Once the general rolls around, let's predict July, the GOP nominee will hammer voters with this issue. "
They didn't hammer voters about Al Gore's admitted drug use. Nice Clinton spin though Anon.
Perhaps Barack should point out how Hillary experimented with Marxism in her youth. Not only did Mrs. Clinton try it, she liked it so much she still uses it today, even though it has been shown to cause permanent brain damage.