Chill Bill
Looks like former President Bill Clinton is getting sidelined after his aggressive attacks of Barack Obama seem to have repelled South Carolina voters and “inflicted lasting damage on his wife’s presidential candidacy.”
“I think his harsh style hurt Senator Clinton–it polarized the campaign and polarized the electorate, and it also made it harder for Senator Clinton’s positive message to break through,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster who is not affiliated with any of the candidates.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team, seeking to readjust after her lopsided defeat in South Carolina and amid a sense among many Democrats that Mr. Clinton had injected himself clumsily into the race, will try to shift the former president back into the sunnier, supportive-spouse role that he played before Mrs. Clinton’s loss in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton advisers said.
But Democrats said it was not clear whether the effects of Mr. Clinton’s high profile could be brushed away by having him modulate his campaign style. They said Mr. Clinton had upset some of the central themes of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, including her appeal to women and her assertions that her time in the White House during the 1990s amounted to vital experience rather than a link to a presidency defined as much by scandal and partisan divisions as by its successes on fronts like the economy.
Do you think Clinton’s campaign can recover from these latest setbacks?




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back to top13 Comments to “Chill Bill”
Gee, I hope not.
I heard Hillary on the news this morning telling us that Bill was just tired, and we all say things we shouldn’t when we’re tired. Yeah, right.
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I don’t understand why people think it should be about “style.” Why does it have to come down to whether a candidate cries or loses his/her temper or strikes the perfect balance between civility and “mudslinging”?
It should be about the candidate’s qualifications and record.
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I doubt if he’s done much damage to her candidacy. I think next Tuesday will be all she wrote for Obama.
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Yes, KyleA, it should be in a perfect, totally rational world. Now come down to earth, ’cause we don’t live in a perfect, totally rational world. These little crying fits and the reactions to mudslinging actually tell us about something about the candidates. How they throw off criticism tells us a lot about a person.
The fact that McCain is rumored to have a temper doesn’t bother me. I have one, too — it takes a lot to bring it out, but when it comes, it’s a doosie. But I have no effect the world. It depends what makes McCain lose his temper and how it affects his decisions.
Hillary’s crying: she was tired up there in NH, that was evident. She saw all her hard work going down the tubes and she was sad about it. This softens her a bit, and it takes the edge off the idea that she has only the desire for power and evil intent inside of her. Cry too much, too often changes that equation.
These may seem like small things, but we use them evaluate what a candidate might do on a larger scale, when faced with a real problem. It’s how we get to know them as people. They ARE people. Just as we want to know a babysitter before we leave our children with her, so too, do we want to know a candidate before we hand him/her the presidency.
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Do you think Clinton’s campaign can recover from these latest setbacks?
I don’t know for sure. It depends on her. What the nation needs to hear right now is something like, “I am my own person and candidate. My husband does not speak for me. If elected, this will NOT be my husband’s third term in office.”
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Roger, how many people would believe her?
(I’m sorry, but I’m in a disputatious mood today.)
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As a Republican I am having a hard enough time trying to figure out who to vote for. I don’t think any of the Democrats has enough experience for the job.
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Obama 2008. Know hope.
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DC Lawyer: I hope this note finds you doing well. I suspect you’d not seen a question I posed to you
in a previous thread, so I’ll be brave and ask again.
Could you please tell the class what is it about Barak Obama’s experience, policy, campaign and voting record that makes you support him for President?
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As a Republican I’m rooting for Obama. Not because I want him as president, but because (1) I think he’ll be more beatable (he doesn’t have the necessary experience, and her campaign seems more likely to use any-means-necessary, including fraud) and (2) I’d rather see him win than her, if it comes down to that.
I have heard repeatedly that he is even more liberal than she is. But I think he’d be a powerless president and get less accomplished–a good thing when we’re talking about a president with a bad agenda. I also don’t want to see the Clintons anywhere near the White House ever again, so if it takes defeat from someone else in her party, I’ll accept that.
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As usual, I’m completely with Cheryl D.
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I can’t argue with CherylD’s first paragraph either! Well said. I could swallow Obama to keep the Clintons out of the White House, too. And he can’t accomplish much without the backing of Congress. The only bad thing is the judicial nominees. That would disappoint me tremendously.
(Justus331, stay brave!)
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NJLawyer, you have a point. How a candidate reacts to pressue is important. I think what bothers me about the “Chill, Bill” bit is that the Clintons are following political strategies that are risky–they will either show emotion or not depending on how the poll data turn out. We learn nothing important from politicians whose every word and gesture is planned.
Do you think that you’ve seen the real Bill Clinton? We will never see the real Clintons (or the real Obama, or the real Romney, etc., etc., etc.).
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