Hillary’s Voice

Hi,
Right now on The Plank, Zvika Krieger has an update on Obama’s note from the Western Wall:

“Yesterday, I posted an item about an accusation from Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv that the Obama campaign had leaked a copy of his Western Wall note to the foreign press (rather than Ma’ariv having bought it from some yeshiva kid who stole it out of the wall). After some additional reporting last night, I noted that the story sounded a bit fishy–not only has Ma’ariv not offered any tangible evidence to supprot this claim, but they also have only made the claim via a spokesman to various Israeli papers rather than printing the accusation in their own paper.

I just got off the phone with a Ma’ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is “completely false,” and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma’ariv. “No official spokesman for Ma’ariv told this to any of the papers.” I’ve got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I’ll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that “the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing.”

Here’s the full link: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/29/obama-vindicated.aspx

Best,
Eric Zimmermann
The New Republic

Right. Why are people always so surprised to learn that Sen. Obama honestly is, gasp, a politician? There’s a revealing in-depth profile of Obama in the July 21 New Yorker [here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all ]
It presents a revealing portrait of Obama as a transparently ambitious and canny politician who (for all of his idealism) has made a career out of cultivating people, connections, and positions for political advantage.
History repeats: Look at his recent tack to the right on FISA and his public courting of an anti-choice, anti-gay veep prospect, Virginia’s Tim Kaine! See lots of useful and interesting pieces posted on the Smart Women For Hillary website: http://www.SmartWomenForHillary.com.
Like lots of stalwart Hillary supporters, I’m trying very hard to like Obama, given how unlikely it is that superdelegates will come to their senses and back Hillary at the convention in Denver. The Obama campaign and the Democratic Party want us to “get over it,” but it leaves such a nasty taste when the “winning” candidate clinches in large part based on low-turnout caucuses and the “losing candidate” nailed the high-turnout primaries, not to mention nearly all of the crucial blue states, battleground states, + swing states Demos need to win in November.
None of this makes this progressive Democrat likely to back McCain. But I may have to be carried to the polls to vote for Obama, and many folks around the country who’ve sent messages to Smart Women for Hillary clearly are ready to sit on their hands in November, especially if Clinton isn’t on the ticket. The Obama campaign and the DNC don’t seem to get that lambasting these folks won’t necessarily bring them around. The reluctance about Obama among working-class voters, especially women, is conceivably going to cost him the election. Looking at recent state-by-state polls, it just doesn’t look good for Obama–especially in those key states that most experts (and polls) suggest Clinton would win. Yikes.