Saturday, February 16, 2008

Obama: Clinton Divides America

February 11, 2008 8:28 AM
At a town hall over the weekend, at the high school that inspired the Denzel Washington vehicle "Remember the Titans" -- TC Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, asked voters to remember that, in his view, the Clintons were titanically bad for the Democratic Party.

“Keep in mind we had Bill Clinton as president when in '94 we lost the House, we lost the Senate, we lost governorships, we lost state houses," Obama said. "And so regardless of what policies they wanted to promote, they didn't have a working majority to bring change about.”

ABC News' Sunlen Miller has more on this HERE.

This argument dovetails with a harsh Obama campaign mailer (check it out HERE) that argues that "Democrats win when we unite America" and goes on to argue that the Clintons are divisive.

"8 years of the Clintons, major losses for Democrats across the nation," the flier says, enumerating that from November 1992 to November 2000, Democrats lost 12 governorships, 7 Senate seats, and 46 House seats.

The flier seems to insinuate that the Clintons have a "political strategy that's been all about division" and pushes instead what Obama says is his plan, which is "about addition -- to build a coalition for change that stretches through Red States and Blue States."

"It's time to turn the page on the divisive politics of the past," the flier says. "South Carolina voters rejected Hillary Clinton's divisive and deceptive attacks."

"Fair or not, poll after poll shows Hillary Clinton helps Republicans divide America. Clinton's nomination would be a guaranteed return to the permanent political warfare of the last decade -- the kind of warfare that succeeds in winning elections for Republicans but accomplishes nothing for the American people."

Something the flier doesn't touch on is former President Bill Clinton's strategy of "triangulation" -- positioning himself in the center with congressional Republicans on the right, congressional Democrats on his left, which a lot of Democrats complained at the time made Clinton look reasonable and made Democrats look like kooky liberals.

In any case, these are strong charges. What do you think?

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