Hillary’s Voice

Barack Obama reportedly said this at a speech yesterday:

“’My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants,’ Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said at a news conference in a high school gymnasium here. ‘Her name is on the ballot. She is a fierce and formidable opponent, and she obviously believes she would make the best nominee and the best president.’” (New York Times)

Contrast that statement to the strongly implied message his campaign sent out in a March 5th email, signed by Obama Campaign manager David Plouffe:

Since the 2004 Democratic convention, Barack Obama has been known for giving carefully crafted speeches. Yesterday, he gave another one.

One of the speech’s strong points was a spotlighting of modern-day racial injustices. Among the troubling aspects were a few seeming inconsistencies.

Between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina (with help from Mr. Rove and Mr. Limbaugh), George Bush managed to get a few million Americans riled up whenever other people questioned their president — as though the questioners were calling Bush fans’ mamas “ugly.”

Brilliant strategy: getting people emotionally invested to the point that they took personally any political opposition to a guy most of them weren’t even friends with.

Six days ago, I received an email evincing that Barack Obama’s campaign staffers are using a similar tactic. In part, the email reads: