Damaging?

Back at the ignition of the Iraq War I always said that if one thing was going to trip up Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld and company it was the fact that they lied. Now, some call that politics, but I think there's a key difference when you say something you know to be untrue. The truth, no matter how badly it may be taken upon delivery, is ultimately always defensible. Owning up can suck f'sure, but getting caught in a lie, or having to waste additional energy, cycles and reputation propping up a lie, that's the basis for maybe 80% of all film noirs.

So Bill and Hillary (or is it Hillary and Bill?) Clinton are lying. She lied during the debate this week about what Barack said about Ronald Reagan, she and her campaign is lying about Obama on abortion rights, and Bill, if he isn't lying, is squandering whatever goodwill he retained for eight good years ending in one sour blowjob by acting as un-Presidential in attacking Obama as Donald Trump would be vs. Rosie O'Donnell.

He's got his own Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, decrying his lies. He's got Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) calling him up to say stop. Meanwhile, a female Hillary supporter who ran the Chicago division of NOW (National Organization of Women), someone squarely in her target demo, switching her vote and endorsement to Barack over Hillary's lies about his pro-choice record and making extremely compelling online videos about it.

Even Michelle Obama is getting into the act, with a letter to supporters of her husband:

We knew getting into this race that Barack would be competing with Senator Clinton and President Clinton at the same time.

We expected that Bill Clinton would tout his record from the nineties and talk about Hillary’s role in his past success. That’s a fair approach and a challenge we are prepared to face.

What we didn’t expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we’ve seen recently. We didn’t expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack’s record.

Probably great for fundraising, especially as, by some assessments, Obama is starting to win the spin war on it. Greg Sargent at TPM frames it as a battle for who's being victimized (remember Hillary nearly crying?) with Barack coming out on top:

Right now -- if media coverage, pundit opinion, and insider chatter among Dems is any guide -- it's hard not to conclude that Obama is winning this particular spin war handily.

At risk of overgeneralizing, much media coverage and commentary right now appears to be hewing closer to the Obama campaign's chosen narrative, which is roughly that the Clinton machine is using every gutter tactic at its disposal to halt the triumph of new politics and the making of history.

Every gutter tactic includes racial innuendo and just plain willful mischaracterization, all in service of the Karl Rove-style tactic of going after your opponent's strength, rather than their weakness. Most recently, this has meant attacking Obama's honesty. But are the Clintons (and how Soprano are they seeming now -- their own ad prophetic) playing with fire?:

The Clinton campaigns emphasis of experience throughout the campaign is entirely consistent with the perceived importance of the competence/experience brand. Emphasizing areas of perceived strength in a campaign's final days is a basic element of Political Strategy 101, which makes the sudden, blistering shift to issues of personal character by both Clintons so curious.

Of course, Schmelzer was right to hedge. Only time will tell," he wrote on Tuesday, whether the "trust/truth narrative" would overtake the "'experience' narrative of the past few weeks," or whether such a shift might benefit Obama "at the polls."

The last 24 hours, however, brings signs that the coverage may be changing: A front page story in today's Washington Post takes sides in the Clinton-Obama dispute, hitting a Clinton radio ad for repeating a "discredited charge" against Obama and "juxtapos[ing] it with GOP policies that Obama has never advocated." A companion editorial in goes further, concluding that this "episode does not speak well" for Clinton's "character and judgment."

And there's nothing the GOP likes to run on more than their own twisted yet successful meme of "character."