Obama Camp Registers Anti-Clinton Web Sites

ABC News:

Though Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has pledged to keep criticisms of his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, focused on the issues, ABC News has learned that his campaign secretly registered an internet domain name called desperatehillaryattacks.com, a Web site that may seem to insult the former First Lady personally.

The domain name -- and another one, Desperationwatch.com -- connects to a known Web site where the Obama campaign catalogues Clinton's attacks on the Illinoisan, hillaryattacks.barackobama.com But DesperateHillaryAttacks.com has not been known until now.

Read the whole story: ABC News

Comments

[cloudy]

02:04 PM on 12/21/2007

I think yesterday's NY TIMES, or somewhere else prominent in the last 24 hour news cycle, ran an article about two websites registered by the HRC camp, similarly traced to her campaign, that were devoted to attacking Obama. Interestingly, the article about HRC's campaign DID mention what the Obama camp had done by way of HillaryAttacksObama.com or whatever. & it appears that this other set of tidbits about the Obama campaign are more recent.

But this article doesn't mention ANYTHING about other candidates doing similar things, as if it only matters if OBAMA is campaigning negatively.

This is not the first time I've seen this in prominent recent press coverage of the election. While Bill Clinton complains that the press hasn't been critical enough of Obama, & has been TOO critical of HRC, I come across, as routine coverage, an article about "LOBBYISTS ON OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN PAYROLL" (or something to that effect). Then, in the article, it discusses people w/ similar lobbying backgrounds in the campaigns of the OTHER leading Democrats, as if the material in the article wasn't contradicting the implication of the headline singling out Obama.

I think that running as an idealist, Obama has drawn more harsh light to ANYTHING that could be construed as an 'attack' or as 'negative' while the other candidates are, for that reason & possibly others, not held to the same degree of scrutiny. & here are two blatant examples.

(I don't think that the media, aside from the personal crusade of Paul Krugman) have a special animosity/opposition to Obama. But for months while Hillary Clinton was far ahead, she was treated as the inevitable nominee & the strongest candidate to run against the GOP basically by default. So now, the man-bites-dog meme is that this is no longer true, which seems to some to be an anti-HRC bias.

I disagree -- I think that when all is said and done, although in the general the press might hold the Democratic nominee to a stricter standard, at this point, the most establishment candidate (which would be HRC) has a media edge overall.

[SeanGardner]

01:48 PM on 12/21/2007

You have got to give it to that HIllary Clinton. Leave it to her to attack Obama 130 present votes out of the 4000 votes he cast in the 8 years in the Illinois State Senate.

Clinton's narrative right now is that when Obama voted 'present', he was probably saying 'maybe'. To me, she's grasping for straws, and has no leg to stand on.

How can Clinton assail Obama for 130 "present" votes out of the 4000 plus he cast in Illinois, when her and Bill Clinton have yet to release their "2600 pages" of White House records which would easily verify all of the wild claims about how Hillary was supposedly involved in The Ireland Peace Process in the early 1990s, and how her advice was central in the successes of Bill Clinton's Presidency.

She claims OBAMA's 130 "present" votes might mean "maybe", but fails to realize how her and her husband's refusal to release "2600 pages" of secret pages might mean "I'm shady".

Once again...Team Clinton attacking on an issue where they have NO CREDIBILITY.

[rupperte]

12:55 PM on 12/21/2007

At least Obama does not use terrorist fundraisers linked to groups that train al-Qaieda the way Hillary does. Earlier this month, the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence and the Canada Free Press reported that one of Clinton's fundraisers in New Jersey, a U.S. resident who was associated with a December 12 Clinton fundraising event at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, was also a fundraiser for the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, which the U.S. government has suspected is a front organization for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which is on the U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The Times of India has reported that the Tamil Tigers have trained al-Qaieda in the past. I think the Department of Justice notice relating to the Tigers is a good account of who she is dealing with: http://www.fas.org/asmp/campaigns/MANPADS/2006/dojpr21aug06.htm

Shame on Hillary.

[Mileva Maric]

12:45 PM on 12/21/2007

Yatzee! Game on!

I don't expect any of these candidates to rise above these tactics.

If you want to win, you have to get in the trenches.

Which goes to prove that no matter how much you hate the process, until it changes, you have to expect your candidate as well as others, to play the system.

The game is to win. Obama is here no original

[cope]

12:39 PM on 12/21/2007

Okay, here's the "catch 22": If you criticize someone for being negative, is that being negative? I for one, believe you need to make an allowance for criticizing personal attacks without being called hypocritical.

It's like not tolerating intolance and being accused of being intolerant for not tolerating intolerance. Get it?

So, in short, holding a campaign accountable for their attacks, could be called an attack in itself, but in my book, that is the one kind of attack that is honorable and allowable. Other personal attacks are not.