What on Earth convinced Hillary Clinton that embracing the politics of fear would bring her success in the Ohio and Texas Democratic primaries?
The Hillary Clinton for President campaign has released a new television advertisement featuring the idea of the White House red phone. It presents the idea that there could be a telephone call to the next President at 3:00 in the morning, with some unspecified threat to American safety making your family unsafe while it sleeps. Who do you want answering the telephone call? Well, the campaign advertisement suggests that it’s Hillary Clinton, the voice of experience, of course.
The underlying idea is that the world is a dangerous place full of people and things that could kill us at any moment. The underlying tone of the Clinton advertisement is fear. Through this advertisement, Hillary Clinton is trying to position herself as the Democratic presidential candidate best able to lead Americans in frightening times.
That’s the exact opposite of Barack Obama’s position. The position of Barack Obama is to encourage Americans to seize the opportunity inherent in this election to renew a positive vision of America that is based not on fear, but on hope.
Hope is not just a vapid, empty promise, as Hillary Clinton’s supporters like to say it is. The term represents a serious political choice, a statement that we believe that we don’t need to be afraid, that we can base our nation’s politics on what we want to become rather than what we are afraid other people will do to us.
It’s important to remember where Hillary Clinton’s longstanding rejection of the politics of hope led us back in 2002, when she voted for the resolution to allow George W. Bush to start a war in Iraq. The majority of Senator Clinton’s Democratic constituents opposed going to war, but Hillary Clinton ignored them, and embraced the politics of fear.
This advertisement indicates to me that Hillary Clinton still does not understand why that was a mistake. It indicates that she is still trying to use the politics of fear to gain power.
You see, in Ohio, the primary is an open one. So, Hillary Clinton can win the Ohio primary by getting a minority of Democratic voters’ support, but getting a substantial number of Ohio Republicans to turn out to vote for her.
I suspect that Hillary Clinton’s red phone TV commercial is aimed at those Ohio Republican voters, not at Democrats at all. That’s a rather nasty strategy for a Democratic presidential candidate to take, to disregard Democratic voters and try to get elected with the support of Republicans instead. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time Hillary Clinton has made that strategy work for her.
The best response to Hillary Clinton’s TV commercial is to laugh at it, because laughter is the best response to fear. So, this morning, I created a little amateur video spoof of Hillary Clinton’s red phone ad, imagining what Hillary Clinton might actually say if she answered the White House telephone at 3:00 in the morning.
For those of you who can’t view Quicktime, there’s also a YouTube version
Um, the phone looks white to me. Are you saying Hillary is a Red Communist?
guess she forgot one of Clinton’s law of politics…
“Now, one of Clinton’s laws of politics is this. If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is try get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.”
-Bill Clinton, 2004
Is better to deal with someone that you know with experience, than with somebody that you just know is new.
Experience count, we see it when we go to get a job. This time the job is TO BECAME THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
Hillary for PRESIDENT!
Oh, really, Julia? Well, George W. Bush has A LOT more experience being President of the United States. So, are you saying you’d rather have Bush in office for a third term than Hillary Clinton?
There are things more important than experience.
Iroquois – the “red phone” is referred to in the name of Hillary Clinton’s ad, and it’s the supposed color of the emergency phone in the White House. I don’t know if that’s an actual fact, or mere legend, but when you say the phrase “red phone”, it’s known to be a call on an emergency to the President of the United States.
No, Hillary’s ad is called “Children”. See for yourself.
Why does Hilary have an almost perfect make-up on at 3 a.m and why isn’t she sleeping instead she is fully dressed?.
l find that werd and disturbing for a commander- in- chief.
Apparently Hillary had some fairly successful ads in Texas that showed her wearing glasses and working late in her senate office.
I used to be able to sleep nine hours when I was younger, but now I can only sleep 5 or 6 hours–and I’m younger than she is. They say LBJ didn’t need much sleep either.
I get tired of you whinny Liberal Democrats, you don’t know arse from hole in the ground. You are destroying this country! The enemy Cuts our citizens heads off, and blows our buildings up ,and crashes our airplanes, and you worried about Habib mahareshi jellybean willy getting a little water in his face, or that his witto room is not the right tempreture, but those folks in the Twin towers and all the other terror attacks don’t have to worry about water in their faces or Tempreture any longer as their all dead,No, You shut up!
You know, in my experience whinny Liberal Democrats usually settle down as long as you give them a nice fresh bag of oats in the morning, and then maybe a little trot around the field for exercise. If you wanted to give them a carrot on top of that they wouldn’t say neigh.
If I could make a video I’d make the following phone spoof.
Night in the oval office. Red phone rings. Figure in pants suit picks it up. We hear voice on other end. A woman’s voice with a British accent: “Hello, Bill? Hello, Bill? Hello, Bill? gradually fades away. Not sure how to end it. This ad has not been approved etc.?