Hillary Clinton 2008 Presidential Campaign

Hillary as the universally acclaimed presidential frontrunner and titular head of the Democratic party in 2007.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for President while serving as a Senator from New York State. The time spent raising money and on the campaign trail adversely affected her work as Senator.

The much ballyhooed presumptive nominee and "inevitable" general election winner according to her media allies as the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries approached, Hillary Clinton finished a dismal third in a Democratic field of three in the Iowa Caucuses.^[1] On June 7, 2008 she conceded defeat to Barack Obama although she did not release her delegates until the convention itself.

Islamophobia[edit]

A pro-Hillary website, Stop-Obama, which billed itself as "a multiracial team of Democrats dedicated to critically think about BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA...will challenge the Obama image through scrutiny and analysis. We will ask tough questions about Obama’s past, present, his associations, and identity."^[2] The group stated,

Obama had the misfortune of rich grandparents who lavishly spent their time and money on him, pampering him with attention and prep-school. Far from thanks, Obama grew resentful, and instead of softening his drive to “Rule the World,” only increased it. As his relatives and colleagues witness, it would come to define his life.^[3]

Hillary regularly relied upon the so-called "opposition research"^[4] of the same sources from the group to attack and denigrate the person, character, identity, and motives of Barack Obama.^[5]

Racism[edit]

See Racial views of Bill Clinton

The 2008 campaign was marred by Hillary Clinton's cynical manipulation of Black voters and pandering to "white working class, hard-working white" nativist sentiment.^[6][7] Reminiscent of her famous "bring them to heel" speech, while discussing police shootings Hillary said, "We have got to rein in what is absolutely inexplicable" without bothering to explain what is inexplicable.

As heir to the New Deal tradition and key to the New England donor base, Sen. Ted Kennedy's blessing on the candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination was vital. The Clinton's also were seeking bona fides among liberals and the civil rights movement. Clinton said of Obama, "that boy would have been carrying our bags and getting us coffee a few years ago".^[8] Kennedy was offended by Clinton's racism and refused to give Hillary the endorsement.^[9][10]

Birth of the birther movement[edit]

See Obama birth certificate lawsuits

Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign team began spreading Islamophobic rumors that Obama was a Muslim schooled in a madrassa as a child in Indonesia.^[11][12] Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal, working through his son, Max Blumenthal, was the origin of the rumors that Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim in order to stir up fear among the electorate which was intended to discredit Obama and work to Hillary's benefit.^[13]

It began with People United Means Action (PUMA), a group of Hillary Clinton supporters who not only opposed Barack Obama's nomination, but then went on to oppose his Presidency.^[14] PUMA members pointed to charges that the media directed sexism and misogyny at Clinton during the primary campaign and expressed anger at Democratic Party leaders' failure to speak out against that or otherwise respond appropriately.

Barack Obama[edit]

There were a string of murders in Chicago from 2005-2007 that involved men who were killed because they had knowledge of Jeremiah Wright’s Down Low Club and the closeted gay black men who partook in the club’s orchestrated cover-up of their homosexuality. Young, gay, black men are mentored into the club and are eventually paired up with often unattractive and difficult to deal with straight black women who have trouble finding boyfriends. Besides Obama, other high-profile cases are the marriage of Steadman Graham and Oprah Winfrey, Star Jones and her gay husband, Terry McMillan and Jonathan Plummer, and Will Smith and Jada Pinckett.

In 2007 a man named Donald Young was murdered. Young was said to be killed because he started talking about Barack Obama being gay. Hillary’s campaign knew of Obama’s reputation in the Chicago gay scene where he was known as “Bathhouse Barry”. Departing from her key strategy of using sexual-blackmail on political rivals, Hillary couldn't use anything salacious she had on Obama because she needed the black vote behind her if she won the nomination. Hillary's hands were tied. If public knowledge of Obama's homosexuality were traced back to her, blacks would be alienated from the Clintons if they ruined the first viable black presidential candidate.

Fight for Michigan and Florida delegates[edit]

The Democratic Party was concerned that states were rescheduling their primaries because most states wanted to be an "early primary state" that would play an important role in selecting the presidential candidate. The party, responding to pressure from New Hampshire and Iowa adopted a rule that limited the number of early primaries and protected the importance of those states on the schedule. The Florida and Michigan legislatures moved their primaries to January 2008,^[15] in contravention of party rules and were stripped of their delegates.^[16] In late August 2007 Senator Bill Nelson and other members of Florida's Congressional delegation protested the Democratic National Committee's scheme^[17] to deprive Floridians of equal voting rights protection^[17] in selection of delegates to the 2008 Presidential nominating convention. A letter sent to DNC Chairman Howard Dean, threatened legal action "to determine whether this could violate any state or federal laws governing and protecting individual voting rights.... It always has been a priority of our party to protect the rights of every eligible American to vote...We would hope the DNC will continue to honor this right."^[18] The move (and the desire to please New Hampshire and Iowa voters) prompted Hillary Clinton to pledge not to campaign in Florida.^[19] A week later she was campaigning in Florida.^[20] Clinton won the Florida primary (perhaps because the Florida voters resented the candidates that honored the decision to strip Florida of its delegates). Clinton also won the Michigan primary where Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards removed their names from the ballot, but Clinton had failed to request that her name be removed.

Under pressure from New Hampshire and Iowa, the Clinton campaign along with the other candidates initially opposed seating the Michigan and Florida delegates, stating they acknowledged that the delegates from neither Michigan nor Florida would count. However, after winning the Florida and Michigan primaries and still lacking the delegates to win the nomination, Senator Clinton spoke in favor of seating the states' delegates.^[21] Party Chair Howard Dean asked Florida and Michigan to submit new plans for a process to choose the delegates, such as holding primaries again, or let the matter be referred to the Credentials Committee.^[22] On May 31, 2008, the Clinton and Obama campaigns had a showdown at the Democratic Rules Committee meeting held in Washington, DC.^[23] If the Michigan and Florida delegates were awarded to Clinton, she stood a good chance to win the 2008 nomination, but without those delegates, Obama would have a majority at the Convention. The rules committee agreed to let the Florida and Michigan delegates have half a vote each, which protected the Obama majority at the convention. The decision upset the large number of Clinton supporters observing the meeting, who staged a protest and some vowed to fight Obama through November.^[24]

Exploitation of Mother Teresa[edit]

Hillary Clinton was chastised by a Catholic Advocacy group for using an image of Mother Teresa in a campaign ad. Clinton continues to support abortion.^[25] The U.S. Catholic-based advocacy group Fidelis, an organization working with people of faith to defend the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty rights, called for Hillary Clinton to remove the image of Mother Teresa from their campaign video. In a press release the group declared the video, narrated by her Bill Clinton,

When the image of Hillary and Mother Teresa appears in the video the former president is heard saying “Hillary, in effect, was the face of America … in India;” the video then cuts to a clip of the former first lady addressing the 1995 Beijing Conference where an effort was made to declare abortion a fundamental “human right.”

Nixon's legacy[edit]

Barbara Olson in her 1999 book Hell to Pay ^[26] made a convincing case that the former Goldwater girl, raised in a Republican home, while working for the staff of the House Judiciary Committee preparing impeachment Articles against President Nixon, studied Nixon very closely. Olson and others have now commented how Hillary Clinton built her political career by learning to think and act as Nixon did, and modeling herself after him. These writers cite instance after instance of such behavior.^[27] When Democratic competitor Barack Obama made a public statement vowing not to use nuclear weapons, Hillary Clinton shot back,

Nixon referred to it as "the Madman theory,"

Alleged embellishment of career events[edit]

Peggy Noonan observed Hillary Clinton's distortions of her record on the campaign trail:

She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. ... But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop NAFTA. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie Wag the Dog, with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.^[29]

"Pants on Fire" from PolitiFact[edit]

Hillary received a "Pants on Fire" award from PolitiFact for saying Obama "basically threatened to bomb Pakistan."^[30] Hillary received a second "Pants on Fire" award from PolitiFact for this false statement to a Washington, D.C. crowd on March 17, 2008.

See also[edit]

• Hillary Clinton 2008 Exploratory Committee
• Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest
• Clinton scandals

References[edit]