“Call off the Dogs,” Dowd proactively begs her readers, adding, “I’LL pay for this column,” in her characteristically overblown fashion. But setting that aside, she’s certainly onto something here:
The Rottweilers will be unleashed.
Once the Clintons had a War Room. Now they have a Slime Room.
Once they had the sly James Carville, fondly known as “serpenthead.” Now they have the slippery David Brock, accurately known as a snake.
Brock fits into the Clinton tradition of opportunistic knife-fighters like Dick Morris and Mark Penn.
The silver-haired 52-year-old, who sports colorful designer suits and once wore a monocle, brawled his way into a Times article about the uneasy marriage between Hillary Clinton’s veteran attack dogs and the group of advisers who are moving over from Obamaland.
Hillary hasn’t announced a 2016 campaign yet. She’s busy polling more than 200 policy experts on how to show that she really cares about the poor while courting the banks. Yet her shadow campaign is already in a déjà-vu-all-over-again shark fight over control of the candidate and her money. It’s the same old story: The killer organization that, even with all its ruthless hired guns, can’t quite shoot straight.
Squabbling competing factions helped Hillary squander a quarter-of-a-billion dollars in 2008.
By titling her article “Call off the Dogs,” Dowd is reduced to begging angry mobs of Times readers to attack her last — because the paper certainly has no qualms about whipping up a mob to advance its own interests on a regular basis. This past November, the Times published Ferguson police office Darren Wilson’s home address, a not so subtle invitation for its more wild-eyed core readers to descend upon his residence. (This after the paper accused Sarah Palin’s clip art for magically shooting Gabrielle Giffords.) In 2010, the paper attempted to publish the addresses of legal New York gun owners. In recent weeks, the paper has taken the side of hometown mobs over the NYPD. In 2011, Paul Krugman was so approving of Occupy Wall Street’s methods, we created a “Krug Army” Photoshop to accompany our posts on the former Enron Adviser turned leftwing rabble-rouser.
Since 2008, the Times has been rather approving of the community organizer currently occupying the White House. And has never lost much sleep over Media Methods’ tactics when they’re employed against the right. But all of a sudden, Dowd is concerned about a community being organized against her. Should have thought of that sooner, MoDo.
And as Dan Riehl writes today at Big Journalism in response to Dowd’s column:
Perhaps John Podesta, as Dowd suggests, can step in and give Hillary the kind of campaign she didn’t have in 2008 – one that wins. But for now, the same old shenanigans too long associated with Clinton, Inc. are rearing their ugly heads. If she isn’t careful, that might make a potential non-candidate-in-waiting, Elizabeth Warren, looks even more attractive to Democrats that she is already. Should Hillary stumble early, it might not take long for the party faithful to start calling for someone else to step up.
Warren’s followers attacking Hillary’s would certainly be quite an echo of the internecine struggle between far left and really far left in 2008. In 2008, Obama called Hillary’s Democrat supporters bitter clingers obsessed with guns and religion. Moving in lockstep, his supporters rushed to dub their fellow Democrats racist white men. How will a repeat of that scrum work out in the twilight of his administration?
Related: In case you missed, “NYT Columnist Blames Scott Walker for Teacher Layoffs That Occurred Before He Was Governor.” Former AP man Ron Fournier collateral damage in Gail Collins’ botched attack.
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