Movement In The Clinton World

A campaign source says that Philippe Reines, nearly six years the press secretary for Sen. Clinton in the Senate and for three years an after-hours political adviser, has been quietly elevated to the title of "Senior Adviser."

Reines joines the rarified ranks of such luminaries as Sidney Blumenthal and Huma Abedin and Karen Hicks. Reines is a favorite quotemeister of reporters but is fiercely loyal to Clinton, a quality, as you know, that the candidate values highly.

Though his role these days is largely behind the scenes, Reines is the institutional memory of the Clinton press shop... having been on the recieving end of his sardonic e-mails, I can confirm that he knows just about everything Clinton has done or said while she's been in the Senate, including the ins and outs of her highly nuanced stand on Iraq.

Other movement in the Clinton world: Doug Hattaway, a former aide to Al Gore and a Democratic consultant, has taken a senior advisory role in New Hampshire and is said to have been fairly quickly accepted into the New Hampshire inner circle; such entrances usually take a while in Hillary Land.

Dem strategist Kiki McLean has been brought in to manage the campaign's growing surrogate operation; long-time Clinton adviser Capricia Marshall handles the day-to-day direction of their activities.

Comments

Who cares what moves that the Clinton campaign is making. When Senator Clinton loses in New Hampshire, her campaign is effectively over and the Democratic Primary season comes to an effective end six days after it started.

I wonder how soon the Obama versus generic Republican candidate polling will start. My guess in Wednesday morning.

Posted by superdestroyer | January 6, 2008 2:40 PM

I think that this movement, if it's in preperation for the distortions of Sen. Obama's record Sen. Clinton made last night are disturbing.

(1) She basically said Obama was against the Patriot Act and then for it, since he voted for the reauthoriaztion.

The truth can be found here: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/clinton-slams-o.html

he reality is that Obama wasn't in the senate in 2001, and then when he was, he was one of of a small band of senators who actually jumped in at the last minute to oppose the re-authorization of the legislation without more checks in what was a pretty bad bill that sought to remove what was left of the existing checks against abuses of the government's investigative powers.

Ultimately everyone in the senate (apart from Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin) voted "for" for the PATRIOT Act and most senators voted for its subsequent re-authorization. The disagreement was in the details, as the the readers of THREAT LEVEL well know.

(2) She has a mailing slamming Sen. Obama for voting present in the Illinois senate regarding abortion; neglecting that this was a strategy designed by planned parenthood.

(3) She told Mark Halperin that Obama was against the war, voted to fund it, and then said he didn't know how he would have voted in the Senate.

Really: he was always against the war, he said that he didn't know how he would have voted while being questioned on Kerry's record and stated he didn't feel the case for war had been made based on his information, and he voted to support the troops.

She's doing this across the board and its frustrating but understandable; what's really annoying is she's hitting him for taking the SAME positions she herself has taken.

So weird.

Posted by Rhoda | January 6, 2008 2:48 PM

"(3) She told Mark Halperin that Obama was against the war, voted to fund it, and then said he didn't know how he would have voted in the Senate.
Really: he was always against the war, he said that he didn't know how he would have voted while being questioned on Kerry's record and stated he didn't feel the case for war had been made based on his information, and he voted to support the troops.
She's doing this across the board and its frustrating but understandable; what's really annoying is she's hitting him for taking the SAME positions she herself has taken."

But Senator Obama was not an outspoken advocate against the war. In fact he didnt speak until very recently. It was kind of odd that he said he was against he war until he came in. He could have attempted to organize legislators to propose a bill against the war as soon as he came in to show he was willing to take risk.

In addition on Hillary's side in her speech she did say " I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq. I know that the Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections"

- I know Clinton, like Obama and Edwards didn't speak out to later but something that people don't remember/know is that Senator Clinton voted for the Byrd Amendment in 2002 in the Vote for Authorization to Force...which would limit the President's ability to use force up until 12 months. For some reason Edwards voted again that. In fact Edwards voted nay against the Levin Amendment and Byrd Amendment.

- Why has Obama twisting her message as if she was the most outspoken advocate of the war?
- Was Clinton ever war or was she for the use of force in Iraq in case Saddam didnt respond to our inspections requests...which he didn't?
- I think the whole war thing is exagerrated for all candidates...its terrible that its an issue being used to divide and weaken the 3 candidates....when its clear that as President they would respond in a more intelligent and responsible way than Bush ever would. The votes gave a lot of power but its the words in this case that may show the full meaning.
Calling this is a judgement call may be true if you are talking about trusting Bush...but it may have very well been the case that if Clinton, Gore, Obama or Edwards were in the same situation we would have gone into Iraq in a responsible,less ideological and maybe troopless and better way

Posted by Bob | January 6, 2008 11:06 PM