Truth is the First Casualty. Logic is the Second. The Democratic Party is the Third.

Truth is the First Casualty. Logic is the Second. The Democratic Party is

the Third.

By RJ Eskow

Created Mar 31 2008 - 9:15pm

For politicians who see campaigns as a war for personal gain, truth is

always the first casualty. Reality is nothing but a tool to be bent and

distorted to the candidate's will, regardless of the long-term costs to that

candidate's party, her nation, or the values she claims to represent.

But the fact that truth is the first casualty doesn't make it the last. The

Clinton campaign, reeling from the disclosure of lies about Bosnia and

Northern Ireland, is pressing on with arguments for her nomination --

arguments that are not only illogical, but are likely to cause further

lasting harm to the Party's prospects in November.

How illogical are those arguments? Well, let's see ... Sen. Clinton was

quoted this weekend saying that it would be profoundly antidemocratic to

resolve the nomination fight before the last primaries are conducted. She

used language that suggested that accepting the numerical inevitability of

the process beforehand would be downright un-American. She said that "some

folks" want to "stop these elections," adding:

"I thought we of all people knew how important it was to give everybody a

chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted."

And yet most nomination battles are resolved well before the last set of

primaries is held. That's why Michigan and Florida broke party rules and

jumped the line, an action that threatened to disenfranchise voters in late

primaries whose states had abided by the rules. If Sen. Clinton is so intent

on being fair to late-primary voters, she should be condemning the

rule-breakers who tried to prevent them from "having their voices heard and

their votes counted" -- especially since she herself agreed, along with Sen.

Obama, not to participate in their primaries.

But no. Instead, says Sen. Clinton [1], "We cannot go forward until Florida

and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have

the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York.

"I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we

don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."

What do those comments, so contradictory to one another, have in common?

Only two things: They are in Sen. Clinton's self-interest, and they are

profoundly damaging to the party's chances of winning the presidency. She

has exercised the "nuclear option": She's saying that a process that isn't

retrofitted to maximize her chances isn't valid or legitimate. She even

invites the Republicans to make ads around that theme. And her refrain that

"we" must "count the votes" is specifically designed to evoke memories of

the stolen 2000 election, a sore subject that is likely to alienate Florida

voters in November.

The surreal thing about all of this is that Sen. Clinton and her staff would

be making the exact opposite argument if it helped her chances. Everybody

knows that. Others have had the same reaction to her campaign's phone-in

press conferences that I have: They're exercises in politics as virtual

reality. Her staffers make arguments they don't believe. What's more, you

know they know you know they don't believe it.

One pill makes you larger ...

That's why the Bosnia and Northern Ireland whoppers shouldn't have been a

surprise. A campaign that views the truth in such elastic terms -- extreme

even by the standards of American politics -- is capable of saying pretty

much anything. That's why the candidate who claimed she was best-qualified

to answer a 3 AM phone call tried to excuse her misstatements with the

explanation that she was sleep-deprived -- even though that's a common

condition when receiving 3 AM phone calls. (And even though she repeated

this particular "misspeaking" several times, embellishing as she went

along.)

And yet, in the middle of the flaps over her truthfulness, her campaign went

after Obama over the supposedly false claim that Obama was a University

professor. In claiming he was merely a "lecturer" (it turns out he's been a

Senior Lecturer, which equates to professorship), they actually used the

phrase "details matter."

Gotta give 'em credit for nerve, if nothing else. A candidate who's been

padding her resume since the get-go, with the willing cooperation of the

media she claims is an enemy, now says that "details matter." And we're not

talking about the harmless fibs all candidates tell -- that she's named

after Sir Edmund Hillary or that Barack's parents met at the Selma march --

but tall tales that make more of her claims of experience than are

reasonable.

Details matter.

She repeated the Bosnia fable, elaborating with each re-telling, even after

Sinbad and others have challenged her version of it. Commenters from Frank

Rich to Nora Ephron [2] have asked why. The answer to that is simple:

Because it serves her self-interest, and until now the press let her get

away with it.

Oh ... and so much for being "fully vetted." How many more Tuzlas are

waiting to appear in her carefully crafted story? (And we haven't even seen

those tax returns yet ...)

Details matter.

After pumping up her Ohio numbers with tales of her opposition to NAFTA --

and a lie about Obama and the Canadians -- it turns out that she campaigned

for NAFTA's passage. She says she privately opposed it. Even if that's

true -- which we can't know -- this is the candidate who says people should

be judged on their "deeds," not their "words."

Details matter.

She turned a social visit to a women's center in Northern Ireland into a

watershed moment that brought peace to a warring people - a total falsehood

[3] that denigrates the hard work of Northern Ireland's woman peacemakers.

Josh Marshall [4] and others have commented on the increasingly tortured

logic used to support her claims of legitimacy. The ritual recitation of her

advisors' byzantine logic is becomingly increasingly meaningless. If the

only way to consider her the "winner" was to count the votes of anemic

Virgos who cast their ballots by the light of the full moon, that's the

argument they'd be making.

She really only has -- or had -- one valid reason to stay in the race: To be

the solid, reliable alternative should scandal or missteps seriously

threaten Obama's viability in November. The problem is, she's made so many

missteps of her own that she's no longer a good alternative should the

front-runner stumble. She undercuts her own arguments that the race should

go on by behaving in a reckless fashion that wounds the party itself. What's

more, she has undiplomatically trampled sensitivities in both Bosnia and

Northern Ireland (Clinton advisor jamie Rubin offended Protestant leaders in

Northern Ireland [5] defending her tall tales, while Bosnians -- including

the little girl who read her a poem -- expressed outrage [6] at her

exploitation of their suffering).

In short, the Clinton campaign's reckless spree is damaging their party, and

even the nation's diplomacy. That's why so many party elders are asking her

to step down.

In typical Clinton fashion, she and Bill may rant and rage that this

situation is the result of an unfair press, "Judases" insufficiently

grateful for their (tax-funded) largesse, or a world that's insufficiently

responsive to their desires and whims. But the real truth behind her

candidacy's implosion is much simpler:

Details matter.

--

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson