General Presidential Campaign: Trump vs Hillary
- Thread starter mchammer
- Start date
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
One think missing in this treatise? Any evidence that HRC campaign started the birther crap. Oh, mixed into this is the Mark Penn suggestion that the HRC campaign use BO's childhood time spent abroad to paint him as different from you and I and "unamerican" but did he suggest he wasn't born in Hawaii? Nope. Try again but it was a good attempt at misdirection.
Judy Rose? A volunteer leader in Iowa forwarding on an email? That's what you got? Notice that some of these articles mix in the "Muslim" claim hoping that the reader won't notice they just switched arguments. HRC DID push the Muslim claim by all evidence and then when challenged took a very Trump-like approach leaving doubt without ascribing ownership.
In the end, the only evidence of HRC pushing the birther argument is a friend of HRC, not in any way paid or associated to her campaign, meeting with Asher. That's it! Meanwhile Trump spends 5 years pushing the issue. The only reason to try and pin this on HRC is to absolve Trump (and his supporters) of what in the end was an attempt to discredit the first partially African American POTUS. It was asinine then and it still is now. Hey, Trump used it to get a seat on the national stage of politics. Why anyone would defend it though is beyond me.
SH,
When Penn criticized Obama for his supposed "lack of American roots," what do you think he meant? Whether you think he was referring to his supposed birthplace or not, there's no question that Hillary "Hardworking White People" Clinton was trying to convince voters to question the Americanism and legitimacy of the guy who was trying to become the first black president. In other words, she was trying to do exactly what she's accusing Trump of doing. I'm not defending Trump's crusade. It was stupid, as is much of what he says, but she has absolutely no credibility to raise this issue.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Are you saying there is no difference between saying "Obama was raised differently" and "Obama was born in Kenya"? I'd argue there is a sharp difference. If Trump had simply said "Obama is different than you or I" he never would have gotten the notoriety. In fact, isn't it standard fare for politicians to paint their opponent as different from the voters. After all, it's pretty accepted that voters want to vote for someone like them. This is why pointing to Mark Penn's memo is quite a reach to cite as the genesis of birtherism. Birtherism was a very distinct idea that Obama wasn't born in the US. It's a stretch of logic to say that HRC's attempt to say he's different was the "birth" of birtherism.
Now, I do believe the evidence shows that HRC and her campaign trafficked in the "Obama is a Muslim" rumor.
Some in this thread believe everything #PanderingHillary says...hook, line and sinker. The frustrating thing is that they also vote...
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Le't see...unless HRC was the only one running against Obama there are any number of possibilities on who raised it. Occam's Razor would lead me to start by evaluating who has been pushing the rumor for the last 8 years. Trump didn't jump in until 2011 but it was a common discussion on here leading up to the 2008 election by conservatives.
Do I believe any thing HRC says? I believe her as much as any politician, Trump included. In this instance Trump and his supporters have invented a story out of thin air and created a conspiracy around it for the sole intention of not owning an issue that Trump has pushed for 5 years. Some commentator claimed he's tweeted about it 37 times since 2011, the point at which Chris Christie claims Trump considered the topic "over".
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Joe Fan
10,000+ Posts
There were other parts, but were posted individually immediately preceding. I determined not to re-post them, assuming most readers would be smart enough to put it all together. And looks like that covered almost everyone.
And, in any event, they have conceded it by now, only attempting minor wiggles.
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Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
I assumed I didn't need to address each post. The previous posts focused on Asher-Blumenthal and "He's a Muslim" which ties to the place of his birth how? Look only at my right hand rather than my left hand, right?
They conceded it...LOL. I wasn't the one to start it but I finished it was the jist of conceding. Like most Trump statements, he never really backtracks on anything and now his surrogates (i.e. Chris Christie) lie about Trump never pushing the issue since 2011.
Joe Fan
10,000+ Posts
The facts are all there. You are, of course, free to ignore them.
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I35
5,000+ Posts
HC, hiLIARy lost her right to get the benefit of doubt on telling the truth on anything. The next time she tells the truth with be the first time. You can't lie every time you move your lips and expect anyone to believe her just because it's not proven yet. But you sure like to use the word fact as if that's the truth. The only fact is that she's not been connected "yet" to any of her people that started it.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
So, which facts actually point to HRC starting the birther conspiracy? Religion and place of birth are erroneously tied together in you argument. I'm Lutheran, where is my place of birth? Germany? Asher-Blumenthal is the only real evidence. That's certainly something that needs to be evaluated but in the same breath one has to acknowledge that Blumenthal has never had any official role in the HRC campaign.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
I35
5,000+ Posts
I can handle a few lies because all politicians do it. That's the norm. But for you to try to put anybody close to Hillary lies is really pathetic. She lies more in one week than all the congress put together does in year. She lies about lying. SH, Do you really not see the difference in Hillary lies vs anybody in history?
Joe Fan
10,000+ Posts
Here is a piece from May 1, 2008 shedding more light on the power and influence Sid Blumenthal had with HRC, and how he was often the root of conspiracy theories about Obama. ---
------------------------------------
"Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.
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.
These attacks sent out by Blumenthal, long known for his fierce and combative loyalty to the Clintons, draw on a wide variety of sources to spread his Obama-bashing. Some of the pieces are culled from the mainstream media and include some reasoned swipes at Obama's policy and political positions.
To cite just one recent example, Blumenthal circulated an article taken from the fervently hard-right AIM website on February 18 entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor" by Cliff Kincaid. Kincaid is a right-wing writer and activist, a longtime critic of the United Nations, whose group, America's Survival, has been funded by foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife, the same millionaire who helped fund attacks on the Clintons during their White House years. Scaife also funds AIM, the right-wing media "watchdog" group.
The Kincaid article that Blumenthal circulated sought to discredit Obama by linking him to an African-American poet and writer whom Obama knew while he was in high school in Hawaii. That writer, Frank Marshall Davis, was, Kincaid wrote, a member of the Communist Party. Supported by no tangible evidence, Kincaid claimed that Obama considered his relationship to Davis to be "almost like a son." In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote about meeting, during his teenage years, a writer named "Frank" who "had some modest notoriety once" and with whom he occasionally discussed poetry and politics. From this snippet, Kincaid weaves an incredulous tale that turns Davis into Obama's "mentor." ..........."
https://web.archive.org/web/2008050...dreier/sidney-blumenthal-uses-fo_b_99695.html
------------------------------------
"Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.
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.
These attacks sent out by Blumenthal, long known for his fierce and combative loyalty to the Clintons, draw on a wide variety of sources to spread his Obama-bashing. Some of the pieces are culled from the mainstream media and include some reasoned swipes at Obama's policy and political positions.
To cite just one recent example, Blumenthal circulated an article taken from the fervently hard-right AIM website on February 18 entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor" by Cliff Kincaid. Kincaid is a right-wing writer and activist, a longtime critic of the United Nations, whose group, America's Survival, has been funded by foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife, the same millionaire who helped fund attacks on the Clintons during their White House years. Scaife also funds AIM, the right-wing media "watchdog" group.
The Kincaid article that Blumenthal circulated sought to discredit Obama by linking him to an African-American poet and writer whom Obama knew while he was in high school in Hawaii. That writer, Frank Marshall Davis, was, Kincaid wrote, a member of the Communist Party. Supported by no tangible evidence, Kincaid claimed that Obama considered his relationship to Davis to be "almost like a son." In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote about meeting, during his teenage years, a writer named "Frank" who "had some modest notoriety once" and with whom he occasionally discussed poetry and politics. From this snippet, Kincaid weaves an incredulous tale that turns Davis into Obama's "mentor." ..........."
https://web.archive.org/web/2008050...dreier/sidney-blumenthal-uses-fo_b_99695.html
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Joe Fan
10,000+ Posts
I think I have pretty consistently said "Hillary '08."
Is this the distinction you are trying to make, that it was her people acting on her behalf, but not her personally?
This is the first sentence of the first post of mine on this particular area of Clinton slime.
I'm saying that the media is hyping up semantics over substance. The fact that he chose the words "foreign roots" rather than "born in Kenya" doesn't make much difference, because the objective was the same. That objective was to give the impression (fairly or unfairly) that Obama was not loyal to the United States. I'd be less assertive on the point if it wasn't consistent with Hillary's campaign strategy, but it was. She ran a very nativist campaign in '08, and this issue fit perfectly into her narrative. Of course, none of this means that Trump deserves the moral high ground, but it does mean that Hillary doesn't. They were both out of line.
"Different" and "foreign" aren't the same. Someone who's merely different has different values and beliefs. Someone who's foreign is disloyal. That's a much more severe and consequential attack.
I don't particularly care what the literal genesis of it was. Again, that's focusing on a side issue. The issue is which if these two candidates has moral authority on the birther issue. The media is fumbling around to create an illusion that Hillary has some when she doesn't.
How is that any more ethical or fair than the birther issue?
Clean
5,000+ Posts
Heard on the radio coming in this morning that Obama is set to launch an "unprecendented effort by a sitting President" to aid Clinton's sagging poll numbers. He plans to dedicate one or two days a week in October stumping for Hillary.
Given that the rest of the time he'll be golfing, I guess he's done being President. He knows if Trump is elected he'll try to undo what's left of Obamacare, Obama's execution immigration rules, etc. The whole "legacy", that he believes he created, is in peril.
Given that the rest of the time he'll be golfing, I guess he's done being President. He knows if Trump is elected he'll try to undo what's left of Obamacare, Obama's execution immigration rules, etc. The whole "legacy", that he believes he created, is in peril.
Joe Fan
10,000+ Posts
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