"The worst thing we can do is tear each other down. So what I'm proposing is that every Democratic candidate sign a pledge that we will not engage in any negative campaigning against each other."Whatever else he may be, and whatever his chances of winning the Democratic nomination for president may amount to, we can now at least be sure that Bill Richardson is crazy -- certifiable. If he believes that anyone is going to sign any such pledge, and live by it, he's been breathing too much desert air. The already tragically ignored Richardson went to Carson City on Wednesday and warned Democrats that if they want to win next year they better play nice with each other.--New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, at the first candidates' forum in Nevada this week
Just so we are clear: He is asking Democrats not to talk trash about other Democrats. That puts him firmly in the fantasy wing of the Democratic Party. Talking trash about each other is what Democrats do. They're not about to stop now.
Indeed, they are just getting started. We are now at the beginning of the "who-can-throw-a-punch" primary.
Would you spend all that time raising half a billion dollars to play nice? It's not for nothing that they call it a war chest. I, like every decent American, am against negative campaigning, in the same way that I'm against dry skin and gum disease, but we don't expect that sentiment to eradicate them from the earth.
In fairness, Richardson may have just been foreshadowing the ugliness to come. His pledge proposal was prompted by the sudden fissures that opened up between the two front-running Democrats -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- earlier in the week, when former Clinton supporter-turned-Obama disciple David Geffen called the Clintons liars and other unflattering things.
Geffen and the Clintons fell out years ago and his comments should not have provoked the uproar that they did. But they were in Maureen Dowd's column and the Clinton campaign saw an opportunity to throw a punch. They went for it, demanding that Obama disavow the remarks. "If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money," said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. David Geffen is number 50 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, with a net worth of $4.6 billion, which ties him with Charles Schwab. There will be no disavowing.
Instead, the Obama camp punched back, hard, going right to the whip. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom," fired back Robert Gibbs from Camp Obama. Ouch!!
You might have thought the Lincoln bedroom would not come up until June or July -- of next year.
There has been a fair amount of analysis about the implications of the skirmish. Lynn Sweet, Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago Sun-Times and a nuanced student of all things Obama, suggests that Wolfson intentionally goaded the Obama campaign into a heavy-handed response. "Gibbs' hardball response, the Clinton team seems to be betting, may serve to show that the Obama campaign may not be as different as it claims," she concludes.
The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial under the headline "Geffen has a Point," and went on to say that he was right, not in calling the Clintons liars, but in pointing out that they and the Bushes have run the country for 20 years and someone else as president might be a welcome change.
Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist E. J Dionne declares it bad for Democrats: "The grudge match revived those depressing clichés about the Democrats: their affection for circular firing squads and their habit of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
Cliché, you say.
My guess is that, in the end, this will have very little impact on the outcome of the campaign or on Democratic fortunes, especially in light of the fact that there will be more and worse confrontations. The dynamics of the contest demand it. Clinton has to find a way to disqualify Obama and she does not have much time; the longer he's in and "viable," the more talk there will be about the need for a fresh face and Bush-Clinton fatigue. Attacking him directly has been difficult, but sooner or later, she's going to have to land some blows.
Obama, who has had a pixie-dusted political life so far, once told me that the more things go his way, the more nervous he gets. Well, it may be time for him to stop being nervous. His test comes in the next phase when Democrats embark on the who-can-take-a-punch primary.
Unless of course, everyone signs Richardson's pledge.
LOL!
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C. His weekly TAP Online column appears on Fridays.
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