"The Hillary Clinton Memos" - "The Front Runner's Fall"

[sniffa]

I haven't seen a thread (though I'm only online at dawn, and when I get home on, on weekdays) that The Atlantic finished scanning the memos.

Here is the main page with links (back to at least 2006, but I just found the page).

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200808u/clinton-memos

Also, the (in?)famous article is now out, but again haven't seen a thread about the actual article (besides the speculation, leaks, etc) so here it is as well:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/hillary-clinton-campaign

I may be missing it so if this is a dupe, I apologize.

I've got a lot of reading to do. :popcorn:

[babylonsister]

1. I think they were just released. Tweety was talking about 'em, but

this is the only thread I've seen on them...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6622512&mesg_id=6622512

[sniffa]

3. There's been umpteen+ threads about it

but not about the actual publication of the memos and the story.

[babylonsister]

5. Those I had read; I don't know about any interpretations of the memos yet. nt

[QueenOfCalifornia]

2. The memos

are just more evidence that we are supposed to line up and mindlessly accept whatever candidate has the best makeup and which one tastes most like chicken - you know, middle of the road, do not upset the status quo, make the red voters like you and talk tough about being shot at even if it's a lie.

When was it that we decided to not expect some integrity?

(I've been out of the loop since the Edwards debacle - I decided 1,0000 threads about the same thing was a sign for me to take a break.)

[tblue]

4. On "The Argument"

This line keeps rolling thru my mind:

"You vacuous, malordorous PERVERT!"

LOL! I <heart> Monty Python!

Thanks for the chuckle.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

32. One of my favorite

Python sketches. My second favorite is "The Cheese Shop."

[DevonRex]

6. Hi Gilligan! Haven't seen you in a while. How's it goin?

I've taken a bit of a break lately, too. But today I'm all happy thinking that maybe Clark will be the VP pick. And of course, nobody knows, but it's fun to speculate.

I read some of the memos. Nothing earth shattering and nothing that will really divide us. Thank goodness.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

31. Hi Jen

I had the flu and also I decided that reading a brazillion threads about John Edwards lust life was a snore fest....

Thanks for noticing I was gone! :hi:

[AlCzervik]

7. print worthy, thank you.

[AtomicKitten]

8. It's a blueprint addressed to the McBush campaign.

[tblue37]

9. This passage in the article struck me:

To find out, I approached a number of current and former Clinton staffers and outside consultants and asked them to share memos, e-mails, meeting minutes, diaries—anything that would offer a contemporaneous account. The result demonstrates that paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to hoard. Everything from major strategic plans to bitchy staff e-mail feuds was handed over<emphasis added>. (See for yourself: much of it is posted online at www.theatlantic.com/clinton.)

Though never a Hillary supporter, I am appalled that so many insiders turned over so many messages and memos of the sort that loyalty should have precluded revealing.

Oh, sure, I am fascinated to read all the inside info, and releived that such an inneffectual manager was not who ended up as our pesidential nominee, but if these were my staff and supposed supporters babbling and tattling to the press about the campaign's dysfunction, I would be hurt and enraged by the extreme disloyalty. I would imagine that Hillary, who already seems to find it hard to trust people, would now find it virtually impossible to do so.

She probably is hoping for one more shot at the presidency in 2012, but this disloyalty on the part of her campaign staffers has made that very unlikely, even if (God forbid) Obama desn't win in November.

I did not want Hillary for our nominee, but I am deeply dismayed on her behalf that her staff would do this. I would also think that any other politician who might be tempted to hire these bozos for a campaign would think twice about doing so!

[Whisp]

33. maybe they were sick of her tactics and lies too.

[SteppingRazor]

10. I can't recommend the article highly enough, whether you were a Clinton supporter or not...

if you're a political junkie of any stripe, this article's hot shit. I was actually coming to GDP tp post it myself, but sniffa beat me to it. I realize it's something of a primary revisit, but with so much new information and so many interesting angles, it's still of interest to people interested in the process, even though the primary's a done deal.

[GalleryGod]

37. Excellent Read! Dr. Thompson would be proud!

EOM

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

11. Margaret Thatcher.

I knew it!

[tblue37]

12. I keep thinking about how Mark Penn told Hillary that she needed to

be positioned as a Margaret Thatcher clone. Good grief! How could he not realize that Margaret Thatcher is detested by most Democrats?

She did not seek out good advisors.

[vaberella]

14. Margaret Thatcher was detested all over the world...none more than England.

MT would never been seen as some sort of figure to idolize and if she was pushing herself like that, let's rest assured that the global community would take pause and most likely be wary. Especially our European comrades who would never want another MT again.

[Stephanie]

21. Iron Maiden - Clinton herself mentioned it in New York Magazine

She said she thought that her primary mission was to prove that a woman could be Commander-in-Chief, that she had to do that to be electable. She goes on to say that she found out that was the wrong approach. I believe this Margaret Thatcher strategy explains her fatal mistake of approving the IWR, which turned out to be her Achilles heel.

[Egnever]

13. Thanks ! Reading now.

[Debi]

15. Bookmarked - too much reading for one day

:hi:

[Egnever]

16. So they knew it was over on march 4th

On March 4, as Ohio and Texas were voting, the advisers, who now included senior strategist Doug Hattaway, circulated another memo formalizing what they now called the “Florigan Plan.” Absent a revote, the memo warned, “we cannot secure enough delegates to win; we cannot overtake him; the math simply doesn’t work …

The rest was just for show. How much crap did they throw after that?

[StevieM]

19. Obama himself never came out and said "they have no right to vote again" so I don't see how

you can fault her for taking the position that they should. A re-vote was a fair compromise. It didn't use delegates awared from before a certain date, which is what the DNC said they wanted. Had MI and FL voted again it might have defeated the narrative about the PD winner being the rightful winner, and that was the strategy--a reasonable one IMO. For a variety of reasons I didn't look at the PD count as determining the winner, and neither did a lot of SDs.

Steve

[Egnever]

24. I fault her and the campaign because it was fantasy.

There wasn't going to be a revote ever. The logistics of it weren't going to work from the get go and it was obvious. Clearly from reading this account they half assed the only thing that they could even begin to hang their hat on.

All the while spending money they didn't have and attacking what even to them appeared to be the nominee.

We got lucky we avoided this administration in my opinion.

[StevieM]

25. OK. And IMO she would have been one of the best presidents we ever had. I guess we'll never know.

eom

[Egnever]

27. What in your opinion would have made her so?

Clearly she is no master administrator.

[Stephanie]

22. How much MONEY did they spend after that, which they would now like donors to cover?

It's obscene.

[SteppingRazor]

41. Answer: A lot of crap. And thank God they did.

Personally, I'm glad all the Wright and "bitter" crap got put to pasture in the primary. Can you imagine having the Wright thing hit in, say, October?

[Starry Messenger]

17. Wow!

Very interesting reading.

MPK

[JNelson6563]

18. Can you imagine if this team

was running the GE? Keystone cops redux.

Read thre whole article and some of the memos. I recommend everyone do so.

Julie

[Stephanie]

23. Imagine if they were running the WH!

What we often fail to note in these post-game analyses is the utter incompetence of Clinton herself and what it might have been like if she's actually taken the WH. Why did she letting herself be pushed and pulled like this? Why didn't she make decisions? What are her core beliefs and why didn't she stand up for them? Why did she hire such horrible people for her team?

[Stephanie]

20. I don't see much new here - does anyone else? No time yet to go thru the memos.

Sounds like it was a lot of fun though!


http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/hillary-clinton-campaign/4

On February 10, Clinton finally fired Solis Doyle and moved Williams in—but did not heed calls to fire Penn, enraging Solis Doyle’s many loyalists. At this crucial point, long-simmering feuds burst into the open. On February 11, Williams’s first day on the job, Phil Singer, Wolfson’s deputy and a man notorious for his tirades at reporters, blew up in Wolfson’s office and screamed obscenities at his boss before throwing open the door to direct his ire at the campaign’s policy director, Neera Tanden, an ally of Solis Doyle. “Fuck you and the whole fucking cabal!” he shouted, according to several Clinton staffers. In the end, he climbed onto a chair and screamed at the entire staff before storming out.

[Franc_Lee]

26. Has Hillary made any signifcant help in Obama's campaign yet?

[Egnever]

28. She made a great speech for him here in Las Vegas the other day

She didnt leave that crowd wondering who to vote for come November.

[Whisp]

34. but I thought speeches and rallies were something to mock?

[Egnever]

36. well it wasnt a huge crowd

So i am thinking she was ok with it.

Seriously though she did a great job here. I am no fan so for me to say that it had to be pretty solid.

[JVS]

29. ugh

:puke:

[ErinBerin84]

30. one thing I found interesting

was the plan from the start to portray Hillary as a scrappy "single parent" type- and the memo that said the country did not want a "mama", they wanted a father, but would possibly accept the father to be a woman. Some interesting tidbits. I wonder who will be the first to write a book.


oh yeah, and the memo calling out Brit Hume and fox news...I thought her campaign thought that Fox had been the most "fair and balanced"? That memo also said "there is a vast right wing AND a left wing conspiracy".

[PassingFair]

35. *ucked-up Authoritarian *ssholes.

I'm so sick of psychopaths running things.

[GalleryGod]

38. Sniffa? You R still... "Da' Man !!!" Thanks, Pal

Great Stuff!
All the Best to You & BiBaby!

[PresidentObama]

39. Read all you want. And post in the General Discussion. This doesn't belong here.

I'm here to talk about the election.

How about you?

[PassingFair]

40. If and when the thread gets moved to GD, we will discuss it there.

Until then, I suggest you simply quit posting in this
thread, alert the mods, use the "hide thread" function,
or all three.

:)