Something should be said about a story that broke late last Friday. The Something should be said about a story that broke late last Friday. The Huffington Post discovered audio of Hillary Clinton denigrating grassroots Democratic Party activists at a small, closed-door fundraiser. The location and exact date of the event were not disclosed, although reporter Celeste Fremon described it as "after Super Tuesday." Here are Clinton's comments:
Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] -- which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down. We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.
Some netroots bloggers, of course, are irate. For one thing, while current MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser authored a 2001 petition urging the use of "restraint ... rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction," in responding to the 9/11 attacks, he was not affiliated with MoveOn at the time, and the organization maintains it never took an official position against invading Afghanistan. Indeed, it is Karl Rove who perpetuated that myth. That led Markos at DailyKos to write, "Well, for a campaign that has morphed into nothing but 'Republican talking points', it shouldn't come as any surprise." The Obama campaign also hurried to jump on Clinton's comments, saying:
Hillary Clinton's decision to trash Democratic activists in a closed-door meeting with donors after publicly praising them when she needed their support is just another example of why she has such a serious credibility problem with the American people.
Of course, conflating MoveOn activists with "the American people" is a little silly, since the group isn't representative of even the Democratic electorate. I've attended a caucus and believed ever since that although the Clinton campaign messed up by not putting enough organizing resources into the caucus states beyond Iowa, it is a format that truly disadvantages her base. That said, Clinton shouldn't be whining about her failure to win the caucuses and shouldn't be insulting an organization that was founded, after all, to defend her husband against the "vast right wing conspiracy." Furthermore, the content of her comments calls into question which actual netroots foreign policy positions she finds so abhorrent. She's worked hard, after all, to convince the world that she is serious about ending the Iraq war. But really, this episode is little more than a kerfuffle, and certainly won't affect the outcome of in Pennsylvania or in future contests. And Clinton has already lost her chance to pick up as many online activist donations as Obama.
--Dana Goldstein
