Obama Aide Calls Clinton "Monster"

[FSTargetDrone]

And then resigns:

From Times Online
March 7, 2008
Obama aide Samantha Power quits over Hillary 'monster' gibe

Tom Baldwin and Tim Reid in Washington

Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser resigned today after describing Hillary Clinton as a “monster” who would do anything to win.

The departure of Samantha Power for insulting remarks made to The Scotsman newspaper during a visit to London reflects how the Democratic presidential race has been transformed in the past five days.

After weeks in which Mr Obama had shrugged off Mrs Clinton’s flailing attacks, he is now the candidate who appears most rattled with his campaign promising to go negative itself – and making mistakes.

Earlier this week Mr Obama fled a press conference asking him awkward questions about his relationship with former fundraiser, Tony Rezko.

David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s strategist, later responded by threatening to dredge up material about Mrs Clinton’s past – including the Whitewater scandal – but her campaign was swift to compare him to Ken Starr, the notorious investigator who hounded the White House in the 1990s.

Ms Power’s resignation today came after Mrs Clinton’s campaign had successfully capitalised on her remarks by contrasting it with Mr Obama’s high-moved rhetoric.

Ms Power made the offending remark during a trip to London this week in which she was apparently too candid about the problems facing the Obama campaign.

"We f***** up in Ohio," she told the newspaper. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything," Ms Power added. The newspaper described her as "hastily trying to withdraw her remark".

Scotsman editor Mike Gilson tonight stepped in to defend his use of the "off-the-record" quotes.

He said: "We have no opinion on whether Ms Power was right to quit and perhaps politics should be able to retain people with talent who are prepared to learn by their mistakes but we are certain it was right to publish. I do not know of a case when anyone has been able to withdraw on the record quotes after they have been made.

"The interview our political correspondent Gerri Peev conducted with Ms Power was clearly on an on-the-record basis. She was clearly passionate and angry with the tactics of the Clinton camp over the Ohio primary and that spilled over in the interview. Our job was to put that interview before the public as a matter of public interest. It was for others to judge whether the remarks were ill-judged or spoke of the inexperience in the Obama camp."

Instead of coasting down the road to the convention in Denver as the prohibitive Democratic frontrunner – a realistic possibility until this week – Mr Obama now faces a rocky road to the nomination.

He will be harried at every stage by Hillary Clinton who predicts many “interesting twists and turns” to come.

First stop is the suitably mountainous state of Wyoming which holds it caucuses tomorrow, followed by a vote in Mississippi on Tuesday. Mr Obama expects to win both states, cancelling out most, if not all, the gains Mrs Clinton made on Tuesday night with her triple triumph in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.

He has a seemingly insurmountable lead over her of 140 in elected delegates, a margin which would narrow only to an estimated 84 in the unlikely event of Mrs Clinton winning every remaining primary by 10 points.

But the blizzard of memos coming from his aides explaining why he cannot be caught, reflects how Mr Obama has been changed from a candidate of inspiration and hope – to one remorselessly grinding out the logic of what Mrs Clinton calls a “mathematical calculation”.

Her campaign, though still riven by internal dissent, appears to have recovered some of its former self-belief and discovered a source of previously untapped passion. Advisers say she can win the nomination by raising doubts in the minds of both voters and Democratic party super-delegates about whether Mr Obama is ready to be commander-in-chief – or strong enough to withstand attacks from Republicans in November’s general election.

Mr Obama’s team have got been so spooked over claim that he is all talk and no action that they are increasingly leery of the big rallies – where he has excelled – and say they want to do more small “roundtable” discussions.

Mrs Clinton’s aides are pointing to the next big contest in Pennsylvania, where she is backed by popular politicians and which has a similar blue collar demographic to Ohio.

They tell super-delegates to think twice before picking a candidate who has failed to win in any major states except for his home base of Illinois. And there are already suggestions that Mrs Clinton may overtake Mr Obama in the popular vote before the convention, giving the 795 super-delegates a reason to defy the will of voters from caucuses and primaries.

One Clinton aide today derided Mr Obama’s victories in “boutique” caucus states rather than the hardscrabble terrain of the rustbelt, saying: “Obama has won the small caucus states with the latte-sipping crowd. They don’t need a president, they need a feeling.”

But the concern in the party is that Mrs Clinton will succeed in wounding Mr Obama without quite killing him off. That task, warned a senior Democrat, would be “left to Senator McCain in the general election”.

Others point to the title of her book, It Takes A Village To Raise A Child, suggesting Mrs Clinton may now be more intent on “rasing the village – to the ground”.

In his own book, The Audacity of Hope, Mr Obama expressed nostalgia for a time when presidential conventions used to “capture the urgency and drama of politics”. He even complained these occasions had more recently become “bereft of surprises”, serving merely as a “week-long infomercial for the party and its nominee”.

He should, perhaps, have been a little more careful about what he wished for.

Here is the interview in full. It's kind of long, so I won't copy it here.

[Tanasinn]

Big fucking deal, the woman IS a monster, just like Chimp is a liar and McCain is a religious right cocksucker.

This really only concerns me because Shillary's supporters have a chance to spin it as "proof" that Obama is going negative.

[Flagg]

CNN reported it as a "slur". Since when is "monster" a slur? If she had been called a shrill old harpy with delusions of grandeur then I could see "slur". But then they also ran the headline "Obama Campaign: How to Come Back from Defeat" so maybe their shilling for the Monster shouldn't surprise me.

[General Zod]

CNN reported it as a "slur". Since when is "monster" a slur? If she had been called a shrill old harpy with delusions of grandeur then I could see "slur". But then they also ran the headline "Obama Campaign: How to Come Back from Defeat" so maybe their shilling for the Monster shouldn't surprise me.

I'd imagine it's the same way that "periodically", and "the claws have come out" are sexist.

[FSTargetDrone]

The sad thing is that this is an irrelevant issue, yet the cable channels are talking about it endlessly, making it more than it is. So, nothing new there.

I suspect this will be forgotten in a few days, unless Clinton keeps talking about it.

Which we can be sure she will, at least for awhile.

[Patrick Degan]

The sad thing is that this is an irrelevant issue, yet the cable channels are talking about it endlessly, making it more than it is. So, nothing new there.

I suspect this will be forgotten in a few days, unless Clinton keeps talking about it.

Which we can be sure she will, at least for awhile.

I expect very soon she's going to be too busy attempting to stop redos in Michigan and Florida to worry about how to exploit the "monster" gaffe.

[Gerald Tarrant]

I think this incident highlights one of the major differences between the Obama and Clinton campaigns and advisers. It looks like a wide swath of Senator Obama's people hail from the academic world, whereas Senator Clinton's tend to be party regulars. Academics do have their own codes of conduct, but they aren't nearly as restrictive as the "PC speech codes" that everyone adopts in politics. Does anyone doubt that there are some nasty things being said about Obama in the Clinton camp? Senator Clinton's people just seem to be better at staying quiet, and obfuscating her positions (Obama and Clinton had identical positions on NAFTA, and both reassured Canada, but Obama loses face and votes in Ohio over it).

That tendency of Senator Obama's people to be honest with the press may be a campaign liability, but it's hugely desirable if Obama becomes President.

[FSTargetDrone]

I expect very soon she's going to be too busy attempting to stop redos in Michigan and Florida to worry about how to exploit the "monster" gaffe.

True enough. And the primary tomorrow in Wyoming might even make it go away all the sooner.

[Qwerty 42]

It is rather ridiculous that she condemns Obama for picking up only small states, as if the people there don't matter. LOTS of small states can be worth more than one big one.

[The Yosemite Bear]

It is rather ridiculous that she condemns Obama for picking up only small states, as if the people there don't matter. LOTS of small states can be worth more than one big one.

but people don't matter, if you've got enough money backing you!

after all everybody knows by now that Bush is an incompetant idiot, and that the majority of the population would support anyone standing up to his pendulant bratty, jingoistic, behaviour. however he's got enough Fox-spin, and overseas money backing him up, that he can live in his fantasy world while he drives an ocenliner of state into a field of reefs. Fuck the lighthouse, they are wrong!

[ray245]

It is rather ridiculous that she condemns Obama for picking up only small states, as if the people there don't matter. LOTS of small states can be worth more than one big one.

but people don't matter, if you've got enough money backing you!

after all everybody knows by now that Bush is an incompetant idiot, and that the majority of the population would support anyone standing up to his pendulant bratty, jingoistic, behaviour. however he's got enough Fox-spin, and overseas money backing him up, that he can live in his fantasy world while he drives an ocenliner of state into a field of reefs. Fuck the lighthouse, they are wrong!

Bey...obama raise more funds than clinton...

[Flagg]

It is rather ridiculous that she condemns Obama for picking up only small states, as if the people there don't matter. LOTS of small states can be worth more than one big one.

Oh, it's not just small states. It's states like Virginia and Maryland. Basically once a state goes for Obama it becomes irrelevant as far as her campaign is concerned. I'm sure that Ohio and Texas would be just as irrelevant. Well, maybe Texas already falls into that category since Obama took 3 more delegates than Cunton. Some states are more equal than others, apparently.

As an aside, I love how her campaign has managed to equate Obama to Karl Rove, George W. Bush, and Ken Starr, yet an outside adviser calls Cunton a "monster" and the media jumps all over it.

[Teebs]

Isn't it slightly out of line of a newspaper to publish a comment when the person said it was off the record?

[Glocksman]

Isn't it slightly out of line of a newspaper to publish a comment when the person said it was off the record?

I'm not a media ethicist, but IIRC the comment would have to be prefaced with the proviso that it was off the record.
In her case, she made the comment during an on the record interview and tried to retroactively say it was 'off the record' in an attempt to keep it from being published.