Truth is the First Casualty. Logic is the Second. The Democratic Party is
the Third.

By RJ Eskow

Created Mar 31 2008 - 9:15pm

For politicians who see campaigns as a war for personal gain, truth is
always the first casualty. Reality is nothing but a tool to be bent and
distorted to the candidate's will, regardless of the long-term costs to that
candidate's party, her nation, or the values she claims to represent.

But the fact that truth is the first casualty doesn't make it the last. The
Clinton campaign, reeling from the disclosure of lies about Bosnia and
Northern Ireland, is pressing on with arguments for her nomination --
arguments that are not only illogical, but are likely to cause further
lasting harm to the Party's prospects in November.

How illogical are those arguments? Well, let's see ... Sen. Clinton was
quoted this weekend saying that it would be profoundly antidemocratic to
resolve the nomination fight before the last primaries are conducted. She
used language that suggested that accepting the numerical inevitability of
the process beforehand would be downright un-American. She said that "some
folks" want to "stop these elections," adding:

"I thought we of all people knew how important it was to give everybody a
chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted."

And yet most nomination battles are resolved well before the last set of
primaries is held. That's why Michigan and Florida broke party rules and
jumped the line, an action that threatened to disenfranchise voters in late
primaries whose states had abided by the rules. If Sen. Clinton is so intent
on being fair to late-primary voters, she should be condemning the
rule-breakers who tried to prevent them from "having their voices heard and
their votes counted" -- especially since she herself agreed, along with Sen.
Obama, not to participate in their primaries.

But no. Instead, says Sen. Clinton [1], "We cannot go forward until Florida
and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have
the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York.
"I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we
don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."

What do those comments, so contradictory to one another, have in common?
Only two things: They are in Sen. Clinton's self-interest, and they are
profoundly damaging to the party's chances of winning the presidency. She
has exercised the "nuclear option": She's saying that a process that isn't
retrofitted to maximize her chances isn't valid or legitimate. She even
invites the Republicans to make ads around that theme. And her refrain that
"we" must "count the votes" is specifically designed to evoke memories of
the stolen 2000 election, a sore subject that is likely to alienate Florida
voters in November.

The surreal thing about all of this is that Sen. Clinton and her staff would
be making the exact opposite argument if it helped her chances. Everybody
knows that. Others have had the same reaction to her campaign's phone-in
press conferences that I have: They're exercises in politics as virtual
reality. Her staffers make arguments they don't believe. What's more, you
know they know you know they don't believe it.

One pill makes you larger ...

That's why the Bosnia and Northern Ireland whoppers shouldn't have been a
surprise. A campaign that views the truth in such elastic terms -- extreme
even by the standards of American politics -- is capable of saying pretty
much anything. That's why the candidate who claimed she was best-qualified
to answer a 3 AM phone call tried to excuse her misstatements with the
explanation that she was sleep-deprived -- even though that's a common
condition when receiving 3 AM phone calls. (And even though she repeated
this particular "misspeaking" several times, embellishing as she went
along.)

And yet, in the middle of the flaps over her truthfulness, her campaign went
after Obama over the supposedly false claim that Obama was a University
professor. In claiming he was merely a "lecturer" (it turns out he's been a
Senior Lecturer, which equates to professorship), they actually used the
phrase "details matter."

Gotta give 'em credit for nerve, if nothing else. A candidate who's been
padding her resume since the get-go, with the willing cooperation of the
media she claims is an enemy, now says that "details matter." And we're not
talking about the harmless fibs all candidates tell -- that she's named
after Sir Edmund Hillary or that Barack's parents met at the Selma march --
but tall tales that make more of her claims of experience than are
reasonable.

Details matter.

She repeated the Bosnia fable, elaborating with each re-telling, even after
Sinbad and others have challenged her version of it. Commenters from Frank
Rich to Nora Ephron [2] have asked why. The answer to that is simple:
Because it serves her self-interest, and until now the press let her get
away with it.

Oh ... and so much for being "fully vetted." How many more Tuzlas are
waiting to appear in her carefully crafted story? (And we haven't even seen
those tax returns yet ...)

Details matter.

After pumping up her Ohio numbers with tales of her opposition to NAFTA --
and a lie about Obama and the Canadians -- it turns out that she campaigned
for NAFTA's passage. She says she privately opposed it. Even if that's
true -- which we can't know -- this is the candidate who says people should
be judged on their "deeds," not their "words."

Details matter.

She turned a social visit to a women's center in Northern Ireland into a
watershed moment that brought peace to a warring people - a total falsehood
[3] that denigrates the hard work of Northern Ireland's woman peacemakers.

Josh Marshall [4] and others have commented on the increasingly tortured
logic used to support her claims of legitimacy. The ritual recitation of her
advisors' byzantine logic is becomingly increasingly meaningless. If the
only way to consider her the "winner" was to count the votes of anemic
Virgos who cast their ballots by the light of the full moon, that's the
argument they'd be making.

She really only has -- or had -- one valid reason to stay in the race: To be
the solid, reliable alternative should scandal or missteps seriously
threaten Obama's viability in November. The problem is, she's made so many
missteps of her own that she's no longer a good alternative should the
front-runner stumble. She undercuts her own arguments that the race should
go on by behaving in a reckless fashion that wounds the party itself. What's
more, she has undiplomatically trampled sensitivities in both Bosnia and
Northern Ireland (Clinton advisor jamie Rubin offended Protestant leaders in
Northern Ireland [5] defending her tall tales, while Bosnians -- including
the little girl who read her a poem -- expressed outrage [6] at her
exploitation of their suffering).

In short, the Clinton campaign's reckless spree is damaging their party, and
even the nation's diplomacy. That's why so many party elders are asking her
to step down.

In typical Clinton fashion, she and Bill may rant and rage that this
situation is the result of an unfair press, "Judases" insufficiently
grateful for their (tax-funded) largesse, or a world that's insufficiently
responsive to their desires and whims. But the real truth behind her
candidacy's implosion is much simpler:

Details matter.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson