Analyzing Hillary's Attacks

Her attacks were all incredibly misleading. She attacked Obama for having supposedly changed his stances on the Patriot Act, Iraq War funding, and single-payer health insurance. Click on the links for a detailed response from the Obama campaign to each accusation, and/or click to expand below for my take.

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So, while I do think that Obama could have done more on both rejecting the amended version of the Patriot Act and in cutting funding for the war, that doesn't change the fact that Clinton was being very misleading in her attacks. She argued that he had campaigned as a candidate against the Patriot Act, but then voted to extend it when in the Senate. This is a complete distortion. The truth is that Obama helped fillibuster the Patriot Act in its original form when it was up for renewal. He also co-sponsored an alternative bill called the SAFE act which never got voted on. The version of the Patriot Act that did pass was an amended one with three important revisions. You can read about those here. The way Clinton portrayed it you would be left to think that Obama had extended the original version. No mention of his fillibuster. And no mention of his speech on the Senate floor denouncing even the amended version.

She then attacked him for having once been in favor of single-payer health insurance, but for now being in favor of the plans that he and the others proposed, which I outlined here. The campaign lists a number of quotes where he argues that he is in favor of single-payer insurance if the system were starting from scratch, but that given the employer based nature of health-care as it is now, he favors his plan as it is now. I read this more as him being a realist (the same reason Richardson, Dodd, Biden Edwards and Clinton all had the same kind of plan) because there is simply no way Republicans will allow the jump from health care as it is now, to a full not-for-profit system (which is what we really need).

She also attacked him for having promised to cut funding for the war when campaigning for the Senate. The campaign claims that they never argued that they would cut funding, but that they would've voted against the $87 billion dollars appropriated for the war back in 2004 because of a bunch of special-interests earmarks. And as of right now, Obama has opposed funding. But it's also true that it took him a while to get there (and I was disappointed by this), but he certainly made the call to cut funding before Clinton. And his stance to cut funding in September essentially forced Hillary to stake the same position. Even this she did with a whimper. I have a post regarding Hillary's dilly-dallying on this issue from back at that time. The Obama campaign also argues that Obama decidd to cut funding the moment he saw Bush would veto a deadline to bring the troops home if funding were not cut. In other words he didn't want to cut funding for the troops unless he was convinced it was the only way to end the war. Again, my personal view is that he could have showed more leadership and acted quicker to cut funding, like Senator Feingold did, but, given Clinton's own reluctance to cut funding, it's a bit out there for her to make this attack.

And finally, after the debates the Clinton campaign sent out an e-mail that criticized Obama's record on abortion rights. The mailer says that seven times during his time in the Illinois state Senate, Obama declined to take a position on bills, while stating that on the contrary, Hillary has been a defender of abortion rights. But the record shows that Obama has been too. During his eight years in the legislature, Obama cast a number of votes on abortion and received a 100 percent rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his support of abortion rights, family planning services and health insurance coverage for female contraceptives. He also fillibustered the appointment of supreme court justice Samuel Alito and voted against Justice John Roberts (the same exact votes Hillary cast) primarily because they refused to state clearly their positions on abortion. So again, it's really absurd to try to paint Obama as someone who is in any way, shape or form anything but pro-choice.

Like I said, these attacks were gross mischaracterizations and are a sign that Hillary is becoming desperate.