The audacity of xenophobia
This is not cool:
We're not taking any sides in the presidential campaign yet, but suffice it to say that this sort of thing reflects poorly on the Obama campaign. We've defended all Democratic candidates when they are unfairly smeared by Republicans and the traditional media, so it's pretty disheartening to see the Obama campaign resort to the same sorts of tactics.
That being said, we hope the Obama campaign takes appropriate steps to determine who is responsible for this piece of xenophobic trash and well, disciplines or fires them.
It would be even better if Obama took responsibility himself and apologized. It's really hard to understand why someone would think this is a good idea at any time, but given the Dobbsian nature of our discourse right now, it was an especially egregious error by the Obama campaign.
Referring to various ways in which Mrs. Clinton, of New York, and her husband had benefited, financially and politically, from support from Indian-Americans and companies that do business in India, the Obama campaign circulated a document to reporters on the basis that they not reveal where it had come from. Under a bold headline, the document referred to Mrs. Clinton as “(D-Punjab).”A lot of folks in the netroots have serious doubts about the Democratic presidential campaigns and the influence of overpaid and under-intelligent consultants. This certainly has "some stupid consultant thought it was a good idea" written all over it.
The Obama campaign was forced to acknowledge authorship when the Clinton campaign got a copy and shared it with The New York Times.
We're not taking any sides in the presidential campaign yet, but suffice it to say that this sort of thing reflects poorly on the Obama campaign. We've defended all Democratic candidates when they are unfairly smeared by Republicans and the traditional media, so it's pretty disheartening to see the Obama campaign resort to the same sorts of tactics.
That being said, we hope the Obama campaign takes appropriate steps to determine who is responsible for this piece of xenophobic trash and well, disciplines or fires them.
It would be even better if Obama took responsibility himself and apologized. It's really hard to understand why someone would think this is a good idea at any time, but given the Dobbsian nature of our discourse right now, it was an especially egregious error by the Obama campaign.
