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lonestar2004
Live to party,work to affordit.


Registered: 10/03/04
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Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern
#7753137 - 12/13/07 10:48 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Oprah is going to kick the Clinton's ass for this!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071213/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_obama_s_drugs
CONCORD, N.H. - A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate.
Obama's campaign said the Clinton people were getting desperate. Clinton's campaign tried to distance itself from the remarks Wednesday, and the adviser said later he regretted making them.
Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton's front-runner campaign, raised the issue during an interview with The Washington Post, posted on washingtonpost.com.
Shaheen, an attorney and veteran organizer, said much of Obama's background is unknown and could be a problem in November 2008 if he is the Democratic nominee. He said Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama's admittedly spotty youth.
"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" said Shaheen, whose wife, Jeanne, is the state's former governor and is running for the U.S. Senate next year.
"There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.
Clinton's campaign said it had nothing to do with his comments, and Shaheen said later he regretted them.
"I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way," Bill Shaheen said in an e-mail released by the campaign.
A campaign spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, earlier had said "Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way."
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in response to Shaheen's remarks:
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."
Obama wrote about his teenage drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." His rivals have largely remained silent on the subject.
"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote. Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, he wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.
Speaking to Manchester high school students earlier this month, Obama said he was hardly a model student and had experimented with drugs and alcohol.
"You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said. "There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time.'"
New polling shows Clinton and Obama basically tied in New Hampshire. A CNN-WMUR-TV poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows Clinton at 31 percent support, Obama at 30. The same poll had Obama trailing by 20 points in September.
Clinton's campaign has distributed its first flier that criticizes Obama's health care plan for leaving 15 million people without insurance. TV ads following the same theme also have been prepared.
"This is not the time to go back to the same old politics of, 'now I'm going to smack you over the head with a baseball bat and call into question your character,'" Obama co-chairman Ned Helms told reporters in a conference call earlier Wednesday, decrying what he said was Clinton's negative campaign.
In Iowa, Democratic presidential rival John Edwards said of the comments: "I reject it. I reject it, and I want nothing to do with that kind of politics."
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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ApJunkie
part-time Ninja



Registered: 08/17/06
Posts: 2,735
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: lonestar2004]
#7753152 - 12/13/07 10:54 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Wait, So I can still run for president?
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lonestar2004
Live to party,work to affordit.


Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 8,978
Loc: South Texas
Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: ApJunkie]
#7753180 - 12/13/07 11:05 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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only if you're also a whore.:)
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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zorbman
blarrr



Registered: 06/04/04
Posts: 5,952
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: lonestar2004]
#7753314 - 12/13/07 11:38 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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But Bill didn't inhale, remember?
-------------------- “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” -- Rudiger Dornbusch
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ApJunkie
part-time Ninja



Registered: 08/17/06
Posts: 2,735
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: zorbman]
#7753377 - 12/13/07 11:53 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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that's my favorite way to get high too. my friends love it when I smoke their pot but don't inhale.
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zappaisgod
horrid asshole


Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
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Last seen: 7 years, 7 months
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: ApJunkie]
#7753443 - 12/13/07 12:14 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
"There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.
As he opens the Dirty Tricks bag to see what's inside and then promptly turns it inside out and dumps the entire contents on the floor. What a bullshit artist. "Yep, I've gotta do the dirty work before the Republicans can because, you know, they're gonna, they surely are."
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johnm214



Registered: 05/31/07
Posts: 17,582
Loc: Americas
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: zappaisgod]
#7753607 - 12/13/07 12:59 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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"This is not the time to go back to the same old politics of, 'now I'm going to smack you over the head with a baseball bat and call into question your character,'"
---
What?
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EntheogenicPeace
Scholar



Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 3,926
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: lonestar2004]
#7754140 - 12/13/07 03:02 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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---
Edited by EntheogenicPeace (02/12/21 04:50 PM)
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zorbman
blarrr



Registered: 06/04/04
Posts: 5,952
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: lonestar2004]
#7754444 - 12/13/07 04:10 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Clinton Co-Chair Resigns Over Obama Drug Remark
Clinton Personally Apologizes to Obama
By JAKE TAPPER Dec. 13, 2007
"Bill Shaheen, the Clinton campaign's New Hampshire co-chair, stepped down Thursday one day after publicly raising the issue of the youthful drug use of her chief opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois.
Shaheen, the husband of a former New Hampshire governor and an influential Democrat, was a constant presence by Clinton's side whenever she campaigned in the Granite State, where recent polls have her and Obama in a dead heat for first in that first-in-the-nation primary state.
"I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorized by Sen. Clinton or the Clinton campaign," Shaheen said in a statement issued Thursday afternoon.
'I Will Step Down'
"I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the co-chair of the Hillary for President campaign. This election is too important and we must all get back to electing the best qualified candidate who has the record of making change happen in this country. That candidate is Hillary Clinton."
Hours after the Wednesday release of a CNN/WMUR poll showing Obama in a statistical tie with Clinton for the first time among New Hampshire Democratic voters, Shaheen told The Washington Post that should Obama get the nomination, "one of the things Republicans are certainly going to jump on is his drug use."
In his 1996 memoir, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," Obama wrote candidly about his high school-era drug use: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."
Shaheen said Obama having been so open -- as opposed to then-Gov. George W. Bush, who refused to detail his past drug use during his 2000 presidential campaign -- will "open the door to further queries on the matter.
"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the attack "desperate," and referred to a Clinton campaign attack on Obama -- who alludes to Clinton having planned for years, if not decades for her run -- for having told his kindergarten teacher he wanted to be president some day.
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the 'fun part' of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls," Plouffe said.
"Sen. Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country."
By the end of the day Wednesday, Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer had issued a statement asserting that "these comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way."
And Shaheen himself issued a statement: "I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way."
Personal Apology
Thursday, on the tarmac at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. en route to the debate in Des Moines, Clinton personally told Obama she was sorry for Shaheen's remarks.
Authorized or not, of course, Shaheen raising the issue of Obama's past cocaine use had the effect of bringing the story to voters' attention just weeks before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary, at a time when voters are paying keen attention.
In his farewell statement, Shaheen asserted that "Clinton has been running a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to America's families." But Clinton has certainly in recent weeks -- ever since her once-commanding lead in Iowa and New Hampshire seemed to evaporate -- been going negative, in person and in campaign literature and Obama campaign officials were not inclined to regard the Shaheen comments as a mistake."
Of course, the damage has already been done.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3992371&page=1
-------------------- “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.” -- Rudiger Dornbusch
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lonestar2004
Live to party,work to affordit.


Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 8,978
Loc: South Texas
Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
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Re: Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern [Re: zorbman]
#7754776 - 12/13/07 05:25 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
zorbman said:
Of course, the damage has already been done.
yep, the damage has already been done against Hillary Clinton.;)
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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