2008 Campaign Dirt

.

It looks like the Mark Halperin 2008 campaign behind the scenes book is going to be a fun read.  Among some of the juicer items in Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime are…

Presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton said she believed Obama’s team had used out-of-state supporters to win the Iowa caucuses and had intentionally exploited Obama’s race. She said the country faced a “a terrible choice” between Obama and Republican nominee John McCain.

Obama and running mate Joe Biden barely spoke, kept separate schedules and seldom campaigned together. The campaign kept Biden off the nightly calls that included Obama, instead having the campaign manager and senior strategist brief Biden separately.

Aides to McCain described the difficulties they faced with their vice presidential pick, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain, is quoted telling Palin’s foreign policy tutors: “You guys have a lot of work to do. She doesn’t know anything.”

Former President Bill Clinton’s efforts to persuade Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to endorse his wife’s presidential bid fell flat when Clinton told the Democratic lawmaker that just a few years ago, Obama would have been serving the pair coffee.

The revelation causing the most noise is Harry Reid’s awkward 2008 statement on Obama.

“He (Reid) was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he later put it privately,”

Reid apologized for the statement, Obama accepted and that’s that.  Of course conservatives are going to exploit it for all they could.  Here’s Liz Cheney and George Will battling it out.

CHENEY: “Can I just point out, I think one of the things that makes the American people frustrated, time and time again, liberals excuse racism from other liberals,” Cheney said. “The comments were outrageous … I don’t think it’s okay if you say it in private or public. The excuse by liberals is inexcusable.”

WILL: I don’t think there’s a scintilla of racism in what Harry Reid said. At long last, Harry Reid has said something that no one can disagree with, and he gets in trouble for it.

CHENEY: George, give me a break. I mean, talking about the color of the president’s skin…

WILL: Did he get it wrong?

CHENEY: … and the candidate’s…

WILL: Did he say anything false?

CHENEY: … it’s — these are clearly racist comments, George.

WILL: Oh, my, no.

Papa Cheney, I’m sure, is so proud of his little wingnut, Lizzy.

___

To receive email notifications of new posts from MarioPiperniDotCom, click on Subscribe.

.