October Surprise

Harold Ickes is darkly warning that Democrats will face an “October Surprise” if they follow the will of the people and nominate Barack Obama as their presidential candidate — some weird and crazy thing in Obama’s background that will totally fuck over his possibility of winning the White House.

In the context of this kind of whisper campaign, isn’t it about time Obama starts actually throwing some mud back?  I mean I know it goes against the whole “Hope and Change” theme, but the idea that Barack Obama is a dirty politician (and possibly Islamofascist Black Panther Christan Fundamentalist Elitist Cryptofascist) but Hillary Clinton is a paragon of untouchable political virtue is just begging to be taken down. 

I mean if we’re talking about spurious right-wing style attacks “just to prove she’s ready”, you’ve got the whole of the Arkansas Project to choose from.  If you want to stay a little classier than that, you’ve got a whole lot of substantiated gross associations from the 90’s, as the Politico recently detailed in a feature entitled “What Barack Obama Wishes He Could Say”:

You want to talk hypocrisy? How about piously criticizing me for Jeremiah Wright when you have a trail of associations that includes golden oldies like Webb Hubbell? (‘90s flashback: He was one of Hillary Clinton’s legal partners and closest friends, whom she installed in a top Justice Department job before prosecutors sent him to prison.) It also includes modern hits like Frank Giustra. (In case you missed it: There was a January New York Times story, which did not get the attention the reporting deserved, highlighting how this Canadian tycoon and major Bill Clinton benefactor was using his ties to the ex-president to win business with a ruthless dictatorship in Khazakstan.)

Now I really don’t think any of these are REAL issues — this is all just stupid CNN-style scandal mongering where you try to nail someone to a wall because they happened to have some dealing with some person who ended up doing something stupid.  But the same can be said about Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, and Bill Ayers.  If Obama has skeletons in his closet, Clinton has a mortuary.