The Difference Between Worrying About Right-Wing Smears and Validating Them

Via John Cole, I see that Clinton surrogate Evan Bayh had this to say today about Obama's 'bitter' comment:

“I think it’s a real potential political problem and it’s something for superdelegates and voters to think about,” said Bayh, who was made available to reporters by the Clinton campaign to speak about the controversy.

“The far right wing has a very good track record of using things like this relentlessly against our candidates, whether its Al Gore or John Kerry,” Bayh said, “I’m afraid this is the kind of fodder they might use to harm him.”

This is the classic 'concern troll' type of argument, but it's fair enough. Bayh is undoubtedly right that Republicans will attempt to paint Obama as some sort of effete, elitist snob who is out of touch with regular folk, and they will cite his recent comments as evidence of this. They're already doing it.

But it's important to remember that they will do this with whomever the nominee turns out to be, and they will have no problem finding things to cite as evidence. They do it every single election cycle.

The problem is that Hillary Clinton, the person Evan Bayh is out stumping for, isn't just expressing concern that Republicans will use Obama's comments to attack him unfairly. If that's all she was doing, I wouldn't really have any problem with it. Instead, she's explicitly arguing that Obama is in fact an elitist, out-of-touch snob.

Yesterday she said (referring to Obama): "Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them."

In case that wasn't clear enough, today she said: "Senator Obama's remarks are elitist, and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."

That's not just concern trolling. That's flat out validation of the worst Republican-created stereotypes about Democrats. It's hard for me to imagine anything she could say that is more myopic and reckless. Clinton has gone way too far on this one.

UPDATE: Take a look at this mailer from the Clinton campaign. I repeat: this is an incredibly destructive way to campaign against a person who will very likely be the Democratic nominee. Not only is the Clinton campaign completely twisting what Obama said and trying to put the worst possible spin on it, they are doing it in exactly the same way Republicans are and validating all sorts of awful Republican stereotypes. There's a line that you shouldn't cross in primary campaigns, and this well over it.