Where the Clinton campaign tears a page out of Richard Nixon’s playbook
In 1950, Richard Nixon ruined Helen Gahagan Douglas, a passionate progressive California Congresswoman who was running for the Senate. Douglas, originally an up-and-coming Hollywood star, turned to politics after spending time in Central California with the migrant farm workers flowing in from Oklahoma and elsewhere. She was well-respected in the Congress, on track to become head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and popular among Democrats in California.
Her reasons for running for the Senate seat aren’t completely clear, but they centered around young Richard Nixon (then 37), who first tried running for Congress as a Democrat before switching to the Republican party in time to vie for the open Senate seat. The primary was a difficult process, due in part to the fact that her opponent (Manchester Boddy) was a newspaper publisher with no political experience whatsoever. It was bitter, and ugly, and the Republicans were able to groom their candidate during the primary to pick up the ball where her opponent left off, effectively finishing her for the general election.
She lost the election in a year where more Democrats than ever voted. The reason she lost? Voters thought she was a communist.
Not that Nixon ever came out and said that. Not quite, anyway. In over 300 pages of interviews done in 1976, campaign aides, union supporters, and friends talk about the quiet, but effective smear of Helen Gahagan Douglas.
Here’s one excerpt that describes how the primary worked to Nixon’s benefit:
When Nixon went to attack Douglas on legitimate issues, it was always framed inside of the more subtle and frightening message that she was really a Commie in a pretty pink dress. (See Pink Sheet (PDF)) That tactic has now been employed by Clinton supporters and has proven extremely effective against Obama in states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas. Only this time it’s not the “commie” label that’s been applied; it’s the “Muslim” label, with the subtle subtext that voters need to fear Barack Obama because of his middle name and color of his skin.
From Good Morning America (I can’t get the video to embed, so click here to see it on video)
GMA’s KATE SNOW: Janis said she can’t support Obama.
JANIS: He’s Muslim and you know, and that that has a lot to do with it. I just, you know, I just rather have Hillary.
GMA’s KATE SNOW: Just for the record he constantly says he’s a Christian –
JANIS: I know he does. He says he is.
GMA’s KATE SNOW: You don’t believe him?
JANIS: No.
Hillary Clinton has had more than one opportunity to set this record straight, and hasn’t. There’s only one reason for her not to, and that’s to weaken Obama enough to slide herself across as the ‘electable’ one. By playing the subliminal ‘pink paper’ in interviews (“Not that I know of….”), by continuing to hammer on the Reverend Wright issue in town halls and by using surrogates, Hillary Clinton has laid the strategy bare for the Republicans.
This time it won’t be pink sheets. It’ll be flag pins, pledges, and interviewers like the one on Good Morning America who set the stage.
The racists in this country will be racists no matter what. We won’t change them. But at the same time, they shouldn’t be allowed to frame a candidate this way, and particularly not with the complicity of mainstream media outlets like ABC and Good Morning America. (Not to mention print publications like the LA Times, who ‘forgot’ to qualify an interview statement about Obama’s alleged “Muslim affiliations” by reminding the reader that he is in fact, NOT, a Muslim).
Democrats everywhere need to read about how an honorable woman was smeared and ruined by insinuation with no fact, with much assistance from the press and ‘word of mouth’, and then decide whether they want that again this time. I sure don’t. I’d like to see Hillary Clinton exposed and barred from politics forever for what she’s done.
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