So you were thinking of something else when claiming “he sabotaged the campaign nicely”. Care to tell us what that was?
Pretty much everything that came out of his mouth during the primaries sabotaged the Clinton campaign. It got so bad that there was speculation he was doing it on purpose:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1242746
It even got to the point in South Carolina that he had to insist that he wasn’t a racist:
And in the aftermath, he reflected that maybe his role hadn’t been all that positive;
C’mon guys, I know your memories can’t be this short. Eight years is not that long.
Obama was going to win SC no matter what. Bill made mistakes, but he also helped in a lot of other ways. No one on the stump is better.
Bill didn’t just make mistakes, he injected race into the campaign, one of the biggest blunders in history.
There’s no such thing. Race is already injected into every campaign no matter what, especially when one candidate is black.
True, but irrelevant to the fact that Bill was not actually a plus to Hillary’s campaign in 2008. And he’s not off to a great start so far, what with him saying he makes millions in speaking fees because he has bills to pay.
Face it, he’s lost it. Been out of practice too long.
I don’t accept your analysis of 08. Reeks of crap Halperin conventional wisdom.
Well, it is conventional wisdom and it doesn’t originate with Halperin or anyone like him. Bill knows he didn’t help, and that his anger got the best of him many times. The Obama team pushed his buttons with ease. Republicans will probably use a similar playbook: make attacks that strike Bill as unfair and get him out there wagging his finger.
It would help if he’d say something like “That guy would have gotten us coffee ten years ago” in public rather than just in private to Ed Kennedy about Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, but he’ll probably have to get a little older for that to slip.
More bullshit. Bill helped because he’s Bill Clinton, even though he made some mistakes. It’s like Manning throwing a couple of picks one game - he still helped the team through the season.
Dude, you are really arguing against the CW here and you should really provide some evidence or even some commentary from a trusted source that Bill was a plus.
I found tons of hits for “Bill sabotaged Hillary”, nothing at all germane for “Bill helped Hillary” except for speeches he gave to help retire her campaign debt. So if you contend that Bill helped, make an argument or link to something, rather than just falling back on “Bill’s Da Man!”
People get old, people get emotional. He fell victim to both failings in 2008. And he reacted especially badly to being accused of racism.
The conventional wisdom is often bullshit, and if it states that his campaigning didn’t help her win PA, WV, and many other states, then it’s total bullshit.
I’d agree that her NAME helped her, as well as her own campaigning, which got better once she got too far behind to have a chance. I’d also agree that Clinton’s unintentional race baiting increased her white support(Obama was losing the white vote to her by HUGE margins late in the race, when in IA and NH he actually did very well among white voters). It’s possible that if Clinton had compared him to Jesse Jackson earlier, Clinton would have won IA and NH and the race would have been put away.
But doing it in SC, that was stupid.
Yes, he made a big boo boo in a state they were going to lose anyway. He also helped in other states.
I never knew that Clinton could whip up the white vote to vote against Obama, which is what was happening after SC. He’s good.
So you acknowledge that he helped?
No. You’re citing Clinton’s improved performance in larger states as evidence of a “Bill effect”. That’s really thin, especially since if she’d had her way she wouldn’t have accomplished those wins by getting margins among white voters that Republicans would envy.
Yes, his performance in larger states in which he campaigned heavily and drew large crowds. He helped in those states. Do you think he didn’t help in those states?
Sure, it’s possible that he helped after the race was already all but over, but there’s no real evidence of that either. Where it mattered most, he hurt the campaign. And it’s not as if his dumb statements stopped in South Carolina. Although his later attacks were true, calling Obama an “off the shelf Chicago politician”. It’s just that the Hillary campaign wasn’t interested in going negative and Bill kept forcing the conversation in that direction. Bill was never on the same page as his wife’s campaign.
Yes, he was a mixed bag. You think he hurt more than he helped, and I think the opposite.
Well, in Hillaryland, being off script is generally considered not helping. It’s not exactly the Straight Talk Express and that’s what Bill was offering.