NY Times Editorial: Low Road to Victory
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
The New York Times has an editorial up this morning: Low Road to Victory.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
Sadly, I’m afraid taking the low road does work most of the time. It takes an extraordinary appealing and demographic spanning candidate like Obama who pledges to take the high road to overcome it. She would have beaten any other Democratic candidate into submission by now.
Mike: I agree although I’m not quite cynical enough to think that there’s not another way and that we’re stuck in this kind of politics forever.
The problem will be that if she wins by taking this road and injuring Obama it will do her as much harm as him and there will be many disaffected Democrats who will think twice about voting for her. That should never have happened. She’d have been a controversial candidate anyway because of mixed feelings about her and her husband but this amplifies that, not to mention what it does to Obama should he win.