Earlier on, before the Tuzla flap finally broke on TV,
I mentioned how, mostly, I just feel insulted by how the Clinton campaign simply seems to see us as fools. For example in the way they float these petty lies that they
must have known would be shown up in the end, and then keep repeating them even afer they are debunked, actually scornfully deriding the first couple of people who debunk them.
"Tuzla" has been the most blatant example of that, but see also N-Ireland and S-CHIP, or much more unambiguously, the endless BS peddled by Penn, Ickes and Wolfson in the daily conference calls. When it comes to describing the state of the race, they really float, day after day, these most transparent fibs and spins, which they cant possibly think people will buy. They always promptly receive unanimous incredulous ridicule in the media and blogs, but that doesnt seem to register at all either.
What kind of mindset is that, which thinks it can get away with stuff like this? What do they
think of us? Have they been in the bubble of DC and consultancy politics for so long that they just have no feeling anymore for what regular people out here will buy or not buy? Or is it that Bush's lies and spins have convinced them that hey, if he can get away with it, so should we? What
is it?
Anastasia, who started out as a Hillary supporter (in as far as she cared at all) and is now sort of on the fence, said it might be narcissism - narcissistic people often lose the capacity to even realise it when they are exaggerating or even lying, and perceive any blowback that then follows as a conspiracy against them. It's not so much that they know the lie is going to come out and calculate in the effect in advance, it's that they have become unable to even take that distance from themselves and look at themselves from the outside that would be necessary to anticipate that inevitable response.
Anyway, this TNR poster puts it very articulately:
Quote:geoffgraham said:
This is the sad thing about the Clinton campaign - it cannot speak to us as adults - it does not even seem to recognize that adults are in the audience. How many times have Mike or Noam or any of the other Plankers and Stumpers deconstructed some ridiculous Wolfson (or Penn or Singer) conference call? Who knows, but one person who apparently doesn't know and doesn't even care is Wolfson. [..]
One can't help but reach the conclusion that Hillary sees her constituency as a bunch of ditto-heads who react based on emotion rather than reason and will take anything she says without thinking or reflecting for even a nanosecond. This may describe part of the Dem electorate [..], but it fails to recognize that left-leaning pundits, unlike most of their brothers and sisters on the conservative side, usually apply some analysis, even to statements from people with whom they sympathize, rather than take statements at face value. Thus, if Hillary or her surrogates let a corker rip, even pundits who'd love to love her have to call her on it. Sadly, the more corkers, the more derision, and it begins to seem there's not a pundit anywhere with anything nice to say about Hillary. (She still has Krugman, but I can't think of anyone else.) This makes dedicated Hillary-philes apoplectic - the constant drumbeat of criticism makes it appear that they must all be conspiring against her.
Aiming the campaign at the perceived lowest common denominator results in things like the Tuzla flap. Sinbad (Sinbad!) debunked the story several weeks ago. Everyone who reads TNR, HuffPo, the NYT, Slate, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, etc.,etc. knew the story was a silly exaggeration. Did she quietly let it drop? Well, that's what you'd do if you thought people were actually paying attention. But she didn't let it drop, and instead used it to open her big Iraq speech on March 17th! And then, when the din of derision finally pierced the shell around her, she says she misspoke! If she had acknowledged her misspeak after Sinbad called BS, it would be defensible. Instead you have a situation where she tells a tall tale, gets called on it, ignores the call-out and continues to tell the tale, even bringing it into a big national speech that she must have hoped would burnish her national security bona fides, gets called on it again, and then finally says, "maybe I got it wrong." [..]
