Terry Jones

I love the dynamics of the upcoming US presidential race. With Hilary and Obama both in the running for the Democratic nomination, it’s gonna be a doozy. You can see the shape of things to come from recent events:

• A story appears claiming that Obama attended a Muslim madrassa in Indonesia. Nevermind that he was about 6 years old, that it’s not a particularly Muslim school, and that madrassa doesn’t imply evil (it’s just Arabic for “school”).
• Fox News runs with it. A caller (random, no doubt) suggests that maybe Obama “doesn’t consider terrorists the enemy.” Nice.
• Then it is claimed that the story arose from work done by Hilary’s research team. Aha!
• Clinton’s team denies it.

So there you have it in a nutshell. Ugly and damaging fabrications are manufactured about Obama, and they’re pinned on Clinton. For how long will Obama continue to believe that the Clinton campaign is innocent? For how long will the Clinton campaign be able to resist doing some Obama smearing and then claiming it to be part of Hilary’s vast right-wing conspiracy? Is the Clinton campaign in fact innocent?

It’s a field day for the right wing. They get to play all sides: inventing muck on both Dem candidates, airing it, AND then sourcing it to the other Dem candidate – hey, it must be news if it’s coming out of the Dem camp, right?

If I were Karl Rove I’d be rubbing my hand with glee at the prospects for evil. I’d be planning to smear both Obama and Hilary, in each case planting evidence to frame the other, so that whoever (if either) emerges battered and bruised with the Dem nomination will have all sorts of problems – but none of them caused by the sweet ol’ GOP. Nope, that was just those ugly divided Democrats tearing each others throats out. Which may come to pass. It’s like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Hilary and Obama have to continue to believe that each other’s campaign group would never do the low-down things that they are claimed to have done. How long will they continue to take it on faith? How long can they resist the opportunity to defect? There’s 22 months left…. lots of time to someone to crack.

Hilary and Obama could make the problem go away if they announced right now that they were running a joint ticket (but which of the two would settle for the VP slot? Neither, I bet).

So it looks like open season on the Dems for 2008, both from without and within. At this point I don’t think Obama or Hilary can win the presidency, but that’s no reason to stop one of them winning the nomination. Surely Hilary & Co will have the upper hand when it comes to political machinations, no matter who Obama has to advise him, and they’ll almost certainly have more cash.

2008 is going to be much more fun than the last time around.

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