Hillary Clinton Mocks Barack Obama During Campaign Rally

Hillary Clinton's campaign is on its last legs after suffering a string of defeats to her rival Barack Obama. Clinton made the decision to go negative in an effort to halt Obama's rising momentum. On Saturday, she also accused Obama's campaign of using negative tactics "right out of Karl Rove's playbook" in mailers that misrepresent her positions on NAFTA and healthcare. Obama called the mailings accurate.

Today, Clinton was at a campaign rally in Providence, Rhode Island, and she mocked Obama and his message of hope and change in a very theatrical, over-the-top manner.

Watch the video from CNN below, and tell HuffPost whether you think Clinton's line of attack against Obama will help or hurt her campaign:

Hillary Clinton, at a campaig rally in Rhode Island today, mocked Barack Obama's message of hope and change in a very over-the-top way. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1430550935http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1178199204

Comments

[hinnis]

Anyone who wants to know just how honest Obama is, look at this news report from Canadian television. By the way, it's pathetic that we Americans have to rely on foreign news sources for the truth about our own campaigns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LtbLEKHsi0

[PamFlorida]

Obama has actually given that "light shing down from above" speech several times. I've seen it aired on the cable networks.
The mailings in question are visually misleading, the statements they contain are typical of political manipulations of opposing views. HC just called him on his claims of not pursuing "politics as usual".
BTW, Sen. Jay Rockefeller is the democrate who is leading the fight to include TELCO immunity in the FISA bull.

[Hotshortie]

I personally thought her mocking was completely unpresidential. It took away her dignity. I felt bad that she was willing to lower the bar. It also is making her look desperate!I hate to see her lower herself to such unattractiveness.

[amorosotom]

Fuck dignity. She was funny and her delivery was great. First time I thought the old gal was SEXY!

[2FedUp]

To answer the question, I don't see how her comments could help her overcome Obama's appeal. I think it's a sign of her desperation. Also, I do think that she (and her team) took her nomination for granted. She should have used these tactics earlier on, but it probably wouldn't have made much difference. The fact is the American people know that we would be (defacto) be getting Bill again. Not that he was all that bad, but people are thinking that enough is enough. Bush/Cheney & the rest of the crew have deeply wounded the American psyche. As a result, people want to move far away from the past to try something new. The experience thing doesn't mean much when one considers that JFK didn't have much either, but he made a tremendous impact.

[echopark]

It's amazing the importance of Ohio the last several elections. I've waited for the very last minute to send in my absentee ballot. I only wish both could end up on the same ticket, though slim chances of that happening.
http://sodahead.com/poll/16816/?link=chrf

[owleye]

It's about time we had a reality check...
If Obama isn't be devoured by the GOP attack machine and corporate special interests will beat him at the DC poker table everytime. But he won't let on... that this is happening. He will call the cost of unification, peace and harmony. We cannot endure any more compromises on health care, Iraq, education, alternative energy sources. One example: To stay competive, we need to control and change the amount of oil consumed in this country. $15 billion is lost on airliners waiting to take off.
Flying is incredibely costly, and so is driving. We all know more money is paying for gas. But we're never going to have cheap gas again, and
no one is wiling to admit they can't afford to drive gas guzzeling SUV's to the Warehouse food store for a $2.50 plastic container of milk. It's not just alternative fuels, it's away of life that has to change and it's not just people riding fast and efficient buses. It's corporation distribution of the food that needs to change. We need to return to neighborhood stores you can walk to instead of driving to the food warehouse. It's cheaper to send the trucks to the neighborhood store, than it is for all us to drive to the food warehouse. Americans are dupes to corporate cost cutting strategies -- so we trade $8.00 to drive for 300 choices of cereal. Figure your costs based on 48.5 cents per mile which is disturbingly low reimbersement based on the current cost of gas, auto maintenance and depreciation.

Who is going to really stand up and fight these special interests. If you are the Beaver, and
Eddy Haskill is threatening to beat you up if don't give him your lunch money, who would get to back you up? Someone who has actually punched someone out will stands up to the bully so you keep all your lunch money or someone who says we can talk this over, and you lose half your lunch money? Hillary has proven record of standing up for herself and others. I don't want to take a chance with sharp talker like Obama and maybe lose my lunch money and still take a blow to the stomach....

[PaulLoeb]

Excuse me. She didn't do a damn thing to stand up to Bush when he was riding high in the polls. Not on the war. Not on the judicial nominees, not on the tax cut, although she did vote aganst it.

You ought to read Dreams From My Father and look at the chapters on his Chicago organizing history.

[abot]

don't forget after she voted for the Iraq war which finally she would like to take back she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman bill on Iran. All she has done in senate has been supporting the NEO-CON Rove machine.

[SouthCentralDel]

owleye, I believe you and Intrade are at vastly opposing odds on how Obama may fare in the general election:

http://www.intrade.com/

[Hotshortie]

Obama is standing up to the Clinton Machine. I think he can stand up to the Republicans.

[jkel]

This looks familiar. Does anyone remember 'poppy' Bush mocking Al Gore by calling him 'Algore', implying Gore was from another planet because of his 'wacky' environmental stand? That worked out well for W's dad, didn't it.

[danton59]

she is SOOOO yesterday!

[danton59]

she is SOOOO yesterday!

[bowloforanges]

Hillary Clinton Health Care Plan: New Release of White House Records
By Tom Fitton
Jan 22, 2008

Judicial Watch released new documents last week from the Clinton Presidential Library regarding Hillary’s botched attempt to stage a government takeover of our nation’s healthcare system in 1993. Our investigators found them during a trip to the Clinton Library in Little Rock last year.

Here are a few highlights from what we found: A June 18, 1993 internal Memorandum entitled, “A Critique of Our Plan,” authored by P.S., which makes the startling admission that critics of Hillary’s health care reform plan were correct: “I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy…Is the public really ready for this?... none of us knows whether we can make it work well or at all…”

***

--A “Confidential” May 26, 1993 Memorandum from Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVA) to Hillary Clinton entitled, “Health Care Reform Communications,” which criticizes the Task Force as a “secret cabal of Washington policy ‘wonks’” that has engaged in “choking off information” from the public regarding health care reform. The memorandum suggests that Hillary Clinton “use classic opposition research” to attack those who were excluded by the Clinton Administration from Task Force deliberations and to “expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of lobbyists” in order to deflect criticism. Senator Rockefeller also suggested news organizations “are anxious and willing to receive guidance [from the Clinton Administration] on how to time and shape their [news] coverage.”

--A February 5, 1993 Draft Memorandum from Alexis Herman and Mike Lux detailing the Office of Public Liaison’s plan for the health care reform campaign. The memorandum suggests building an “interest group data base” detailing whether or not organizations “support(ed) us in the election.” The database would also track personal information about interest group leaders, such as their home phone numbers, addresses, “biographies, analysis of credibility in the media, and known relationships with Congresspeople.”

***

We found these records amongst the approximately 13,000 made publicly available by the Clinton Library, specifically from the White House Health Care Interdepartmental Working Group. The National Archives admits there are an additional 3,022,030 additional textual records, 2,884 pages of electronic records, 1,021 photographs, 3 videotapes and 3 audiotapes related to the Task Force that are currently being withheld indefinitely from the public. Given what we found thus far, can you imagine what else is down there in Little Rock? (On November 2, 2007 we filed a lawsuit to obtain the Task Force records.)

Unsurprisingly, rather than engaging the American people on the issue of health care reform honestly, the Clintons and their allies attempted to track citizens’ private and political information, smear administration critics, shroud their plan in secrecy, and manipulate news coverage. Some of this was dirty politics; some of it may have run afoul of the law. Will anyone ask Hillary about it?

Tom Fitton is the President of Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

[IngeniousGirl]

Thank you for posting this, I've been pointing out the largely overlooked find by Judicial Watch, which clearly shows Hillary's true colors. 15 years ago she hid in the dark, Jay Rockerfeller's memo urged her to look up names of those who opposed her, addresses, etc. and basically figure out a way to neutralize them. This all in the name of a health insurance initiative for US? She is too old to change her style, secrecy, elitist and rather banal.

[realpolitic]

Jay Rockefeller critized Hillary's health care task force as a "secret cabal of policy wonks." My God, isn't that terrible. I guess they were not nearly as secret as Dick Cheney's task force on energy that included petroleum companies that actually wrote the energy legialation. Cheney went to the Supreme Court so he would not have to reveal even who participated.

Your one note looked for parallels in peace time for such "broad and centralized controls over a sector of the economy" as Hillary's proposed health care reform. How about medicare? That program seems to function well and has actually lowered the cost of health care for participants.

As usual, public animus towards the Clinton's is so displaced and pales in regard to the danger, the lying, the false wars, that Bush has given us. Where were all these people who complain when the Clinton's sneeze, as if they will catch cold, where were they when Bush was stealing our civil liberties. They were cheerleading him, that's where they were.

[IncredulousGeezer]

Wow!!!!!

Anybody know if this is a record for the number of comments for a thread?

It appears to me that the internet has come into full flower just in time to facilitate the sort of nonsense we are seeing here, i.e., relatively good candidates for president being nitpicked while the other side, with enormous real burdens, getting the time to pull themselves together for the general election.

Beware friends, Karl Rove is just earning some lunch money over at Fox. He & his mignons will soon return for some laying on of the cudgels you won't believe!

[psfurlong356]

Rove's day's in the sun is almost over. His tactics are outdated and out of step with current day politcal realities. Let's finally put him in his place: the guy that snuck GW through the back door of the white house and wrought 8 years of hell on the country.

[msfiskvletterman]

2/27/08
11:34am
Alexandria, VA

Before the "laying on of the cudgels" (that's funny) don't you think that the Democrats should retire the Republicans' favorite target?
I don't think that this is "nitpicking."

[realpolitic]

These nutty conservatives complain that Obama's midle name is Hussein or that Hillary is too strident. Meanwhile, Bush rips our civil liberties apart and launches false wars. McCain wants to stay in Iraq 100 years and bomb Iran. I think the values of these conservatives are seriously misplaced.

[carlgt1]

I could just imagine her chastising Abraham Lincoln for his "better angels of our nature" speech ("sure Abe, celestial choirs of angels will come to help us out; we need REAL EXPERIENCE!")

[stanjz]

Either Senator Clinton has understated her experience as first lady, stated it just right, or overstated it. It seems to be that many people including Chris Dodd thinks she is overstating her experience.

Even Bill Clinton cannot take full credit for all of the successes or failures in his two terms. Yet, it seems Senator Clintons supporters grasp onto the idea that she was the mastermind behind any good things that happened during Bill Clinton's presidency and none of the bad things. Who are the delusional ones?? Please make a small donation to Barack at his website.

[AtiasMom]

I think you miss the point of experience. You are willing to let Barrack count his volunteer time when he was young, but not Hillary's accomplishments throughout her life.

If it is convenient, you give Bill credit for the failures while he was president with a Republican congress, but don't want to give him credit for his accomplishments with the same congress.

Hillary may not have the "smooth talker" technique that Barrack has, but she can walk circles around him to what she has and can continue to accomplish.

Send money instead to her campaign. Give her a fair playing field with the media and with the money and see who people will vote for.

[psfurlong356]

here goes the revisionist rhetoric if not for his great fund raising, if not for the media... the truth: ... Hillary ran a historically bad campaign and was somewhat arrogant in her initial assumptions. She has to take responsibility...

[abot]

The only experience of HRC that I count is her time in elected office. BTW - Barack has more elected office experience unless you are a washington snob who thinks that state legislature does not count. So anyone please tell me what HRC's major accomplishments have been in the senate?

[belikejeanvaljean]

This performance begs the question: Who do you want answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning in the White House when some crisis breaks out in the world?

[BatedBreath]

Obama

[suki78]

Hillary

[iemmathu]

Let me start by saying I am a "dyed in the wool" Obama supporter and have been for quite some time now.

I found this clip to be pretty funny. . . and it made me chuckle. People need to lighten up a bit.

If Hillary wins the democratic nomination (which, by the way, I do not think she will) then democratic voters need to rally behind her.

She would make a good president. Though I think Obama will make a GREAT president.

All of this vitriol for Hillary isn't a good thing.

[mansky]

Several reasons it was ill advised:

It insinuated that Obama supporters were stupid.

It's "over-the-top" style wasn't presidential.

If it was appropriate, why hasn't she repeated it?

Part of being a successful candidate is having a good "ear" for what works. Many Hillary supporters were embarrassed.

[pgate127]

Thank you for that, iemmathu. I too am tired of the vitriol. AND--I laughed out loud at this clip, big time.

iemmathu, I respect your candidate, Barack Obama, and what he has done to date in this election. I am SO GLAD that he is a Democrat. That being said, I'm behind Hillary, 100%, and hope to see her elected. This is a GREAT time to be an american--especially a Democratic American.

Laughed my butt off at this. GOOD JOB, HILL!!!

[AtiasMom]

The only thing I disagree with you on, is that I think Hillary would make a great president and Barrack ok.

You can't change the system from the outside in...you need to have someone who can change it from the inside out. The changes will be longer lasting and more effective.