Today brings two new stories potentially damaging to the Clinton campaign — one from ABC supposedly showing that when she served on the board of Walmart in the late 80s and early 90s she did nothing to push back against the companies aggressively anti-union policies. The second comes from the Times and shows Bill Clinton mixing fundraising for his foundation with allowing international tycoons trade on his friendship to secure international mining concessions in Kazakhstan.
The first story seems mainly old news. We knew Hillary served on the Walmart board. The company is notoriously anti-union. I think it basically goes without saying that she wasn’t going to be pushing for a more union-friendly company policy, certainly not at a public board meeting, or else she wouldn’t have stayed on the board for more than five minutes. The story points out that she did push for more representation of women in the higher ranks of the company and also for more green policies — and on both counts had she at least some success.
But I remember being at a talk given by SEIU’s Andy Stern about how Walmart was willing to be flexible on a whole range of issues one might see as progressive, or at least was open to discussions, but that labor organizing was just in an entirely separate category. Walmart might be gay-friendly, completely green and whatever else but the top execs simply would not and could not imagine a different line on labor.
Now, whether or not Hillary should have ever gone on the Walmart board (remember this was an Arkansas-based company) is a very reasonable question. And I’m not saying the piece isn’t good journalism. I’m just saying I don’t think this tells us anything more than we did know or should have known based on the fact that she served on the board.
The Bill Clinton story in the Times is another story. I won’t try to characterize what the story describes. You should just read it. As far as I know, Bill Clinton says he’d still keep raising money for the foundation even while Hillary was president. And there’s no question the foundation does a lot of good works with the money, whatever the nature of the fundraising or the money’s origins. But Bill’s nuts if he thinks he’ll be able to keep raising money like this if Hillary’s president. It’s not even a close call.
One point that should not go unmentioned is that what former President Clinton is described as doing in that Times article is little different from what the first President Bush has done in his post-presidency. And his son is the president. So if it would be a problem with Bill, and I think it would be, it unquestionably is already a problem with the current president’s dad. And no one has seemed to much bother about it.
Late Update: I dashed this post off quickly. But after receiving a number of emails to this effect, I have to agree that the relationship between a father and son is simply not comparable to that between spouses. So while it’s ridiculous that Bush Sr.’s buckraking hasn’t drawn more attention, if Bill Clinton were to do this out of the White House the two would simply not be on the same par. Not even close.
As you can see we’re rolling out a new version of the site today. We started the switchover at about 10:30 this morning. And as is often the case with these relaunches there will likely be a few bumps along the way. So bear with us. On the main TPM site, the changes you’ll see on the front end will be relatively limited. The main thing you’ll see is the ‘log in’ box near the top of the site — which I’ll say more about shortly. This is the last stage of the redesign of our network that we’ve been rolling out in stages over the last six months.
As you’ve seen, with the new site design we rolled out in mid-2007, we’ve been integrating our small network of sites, giving them each a common design theme among other changes to recognize the fact that TPM, TPMmuckraker, TPM Election Central, TPMCafe and TPM Horses Mouth function editorially as an integrated network of sites.
Today changes will bring TPMCafe in under the new design. And you’ll now be able to comment and blog using one log in across all the TPM sites. So if you’re tpmfreak59 at TPMCafe you can now comment on all the TPM sites with that log in. In addition to new profiles reader can set up we think this will enhance the quality of the discussions at our sites in a number of ways.
As I said, I’ll be updating you on all the new details shortly. This is just a heads up about what’s coming. Please bear with us with any bumps through the day. And of course if you have questions, let us know.
Just a few days to Super Tuesday and we round up how it looks in both races, as well as bring you highlights of last night’s Mitt-McCain grudge match …
For those of you not familiar with the rarefied and delicate phenomenon of Manhattan Republicanism, the Manhattan Institute is a neoconish think tank (‘neocon’ in, I would say, the pre-Iraq War sense of the word which meant domestic policy as much as gonzo foreign interventionism) that publishes City Journal, sort of the highbrow outlet of the local Rudy cult. So as you can imagine, these are pretty glum days for the folks who run the place.
Well, this afternoon AH sent over this new piece from City Journal, “Requiem for Rudy: Giuliani’s exit removes the most visible representative of September 11.”
As long as the topic is the Islamofascist War Against Us (IWAU) (TM), I guess it’s sort of like There’s is no 9/11 but 9/11 and Rudy is its messenger … a little Koranic humor there.
In any case, at the end of the piece author Paul Beston has this beautiful sentiment …
Perhaps Giuliani should blame Bush for his campaignâs demise. If Bush had not been so successful in preventing another domestic terrorist attack, Giulianiâs relevance to voters would be painfully obvious, and his deviations from party orthodoxy less compelling. Instead, he and Bush, the two public figures most associated with September 11, will watch from the sidelines as America turns the page.
So there you have it. If only the last six-plus years of American history had been a real world equivalent of Rudy’s verbal tick — 9/11 9/11 9/11 — we could be blessed with the glory of a Rudy presidency. In the end, terrorism let Rudy down.
Yesterday Rasmussen reported a 6 point spread between Hillary and Obama in Massachusetts. Now SurveyUSA has just published a poll giving a 24 point spread.
SurveyUSA did have the spread at 37 on January 25th. So they have Obama moving quickly.
But it’s still like they’re surveying two completely different races.
In case you don’t know, the Dems California debate is running on CNN tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern. And with only two left in the race and Super Tuesday less than a week away, it could be the pivotal debate of the campaign. We’ll be here, of course, live-blogging.
CNN just reporting that tickets to tonight’s L.A. debate between Hillary and Obama are going for upwards of $1,000 apiece.
As Josh mentioned earlier, we re-launched all the TPM sites today, with some new and improved features on the front-end and the back-end. And, as with most re-launches, it wasn’t without its glitches. We think we’ve got the major kinks ironed out. But for those of you who were having trouble with the sites this afternoon, thanks for hanging in there.
ABC and Jake Tapper dig in and defend much-maligned piece saying Bill Clinton wants to slow economy.