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November 24, 2007

Hillary Ad Appears To Say 'Trust Hillary Clinton or Your Children Will Die'

Topics: Political News and commentaries

When a politician feels compelled to put out an ad like this (HT - Jawa Report), she knows damned well she's got a trust problem with voters, and voters know they damned well better not buy what she's trying to sell:

(Via MSNBC) Clinton went up with a new health care ad in Iowa and New Hampshire over the weekend, featuring a man who says he asked for Clinton's help when his insurance company would not cover a bone marrow transplant for his son. She came through, he says, and adds, "Now her opponents are saying that Hillary can't be trusted? I trusted this woman to save my son's life. And she did."

Interesting that the campaign would choose, in a 30-second ad, to bring up Clinton's trustworthiness. In our most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Clinton received some of her worst scores on the question of whether she is "honest and straightforward." Among all voters, only 34% gave her good scores on the topic; 39% rated her poorly. Among Democrats, 49% gave her good scores, compared to 20% who did not.

But compare those numbers to her leading rivals. Among all voters, 51% said Obama's "honest and straightfoward," 17% did not. Among Democrats, his numbers spike: 75% gave him good scores versus just 10% who did not.



Interestingly, this is not the first time this guy Joseph Ward has appeared in an ad for Clinton. He was one of four men who appeared in a 2006 ad during her Senate run called "Standing Up for New York."




As for which side trusts Hillary the least, Andrew Sullivan writes:

The latest poll on views of Senator Clinton are no big surprise. Her negatives are still sky-high and there's no reason to believe they will decline. But the most important aspect of the polling, I think, is the reason for her negatives. Easily the biggest reason people give for not liking her is trust. They don't trust her. The trust issue is on both right and left.

Here's the right-wing distrust expressed:

"I've followed her history back to her college days, and I just don't trust her. I think she's a socialist, and I think that's exactly where she wants to take us."
I'm not sure what she is, myself. If you peel back all the onion layers of opportunism, sound-bites on sound-bites, private promises, public compromises, spin, calculation, triangulation, reinvention and deceit, I think you get what can only be called numb. Deep beneath that numbness, somewhere in that Arctic, resentful interior of hers,I suspect she is just a congenital, well-meaning nanny. Here's the distrust many on the left (a)nd in the center feel:
"There are certain things she has voted on since she has been in Congress that seem to me to lean more toward the Republican view of things, which doesn't make me too happy," said Ms. Hughes, a retired newspaper columnist. "I want her to be strong and express strong feelings, not just fit her feelings to that audience at that moment," she said.
It's quite an achievement - to evoke distrust almost equally across the spectrum. And after all these years, I don't believe the American public is wrong.

This wouldn't be that big a deal if it weren't for the last seven years. We are at war; one of our deepest weaknesses is that we are divided as a country and as a civilization in a battle for our values and, perhaps, our existence. Another profound weakness is that we have lost trust - with very good reason - in the leaders of this war. Successfully prosecuting a long war requires a bond of trust between rulers and ruled. One reason why the current debate about what to do next in Iraq has become so bitter so quickly is precisely because none of us can trust what the government says or its motives.

Replacing Bush with Clinton would, it seems to me, compound this problem. It would send a message that we are more consumed with scoring points at home than confronting a deadly foe from abroad. It would split red America from blue America just as deeply as Rove has done. Even if you like and support her, a vote for Clinton is a vote objectively to divide the nation and distract us from the real enemy. We have a chance to break out of the pattern we're in. Clinton would prevent that for a very long time. (emphasis mine)

Sullivan's last point is on target, is worth repeating, speaks to what all of us need to keep in mind in the upcoming elections as our "civilization battle(s) for our values and, perhaps, our existence," and goes beyond the matter of simply trusting or not trusting Hillary Clinton: "A vote for Clinton is a vote objectively to divide the nation and distract us from the real enemy. We have a chance to break out of the pattern we're in. Clinton would prevent that for a very long time.

Posted by Richard at November 24, 2007 12:26 PM



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