Andrew Sullivan, an admitted Obama partisan, thinks so:
The “bitter” spat is gold for Morris-Rove politics, which is why Clinton is exploiting it so baldly. It is exactly the kind of debate that has constructed American politics since Vietnam; it is exactly the kind of politics that Obama has been trying to transcend. Clinton will use anything at this point to destroy Obama’s candidacy and message; but by adopting Rovism at its reddest, the Clintons do risk looking too obvious. Check out the comments in CNN’s Politicker. At some point people will realize that the Clintons represent a continuation of the kind of politics that has made a serious engagement with this country’s profound problems impossible. Or is acknowledging profound problems now unpatriotic?
Is this election about how to salvage the least worst option in the Iraq disaster? Is it about restoring some kind of fiscal sanity? Is it about doing all we can to unite Americans in a war against Islamic terrorism? Is it about restoring America’s compliance with the Geneva Conventions? Or is it again about red-blue culture wars? We know what the professional political class is comfortable with. We know what Rove and Bush and Penn and Clinton believe. What we will find out soon is if Americans want more of the same. It’s a free country - and people can vote. Goodbye to all that? Or hello again - for yet another cycle?
Unlike Andrew, I no longer buy into the idea that Barack Obama truly is the “new kind” of politician that his campaign rhetoric would have us believe. The rhetoric is admittedly inspiring at times, but it’s becoming clear that there’s no there there, no substance to the “hope” and no difference in the “change”, it’s all the same old statist Democratic policies of the past wrapped up in a new package.
The difference is that the Clinton’s themselves are poison of a different kind, as I noted back in February.
But Sullivan over states his case when he argues that the Clinton campaign’s concentrated fire on Obama’s small town remarks is somehow over-reaching.
It’s all politics, Sully, and all sides play the game the same way whether they admit it or not.
Obama made what can clearly be interpreted as an elitist, Ivy League, latte-sipper’s dismissal of the values and culture of small-town America and, as absurd as the idea of Wellesley and Yale Law Alum Hillary Rodham Diane Clinton being the champion of the people of Clearfield County, Pennyslvania might sound, it’s perfectly rational for them to make a try for it.
