Thursday, December 13, 2007

Obama Press Conference on Negative Campaigning

Concord, NH –

The Obama campaign held a press conference this morning at their Concord office to talk about the recent charges of negative attacks by the Clinton campaign, more specifically stemming from the incident yesterday involving Clinton’s NH co-chair Bill Shaheen’s remarks about Obama’s past drug use and the implication that Obama may have also distributed drugs at the time.

Two of Obama’s own state co-chairs, Ned Helms and state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, were on hand to deliver remarks about the issue and take questions from the handful of reporters crammed into the Eagle Square office.

“Now is not the time to return to old politics,” Helms asserted, as he charged the Clinton campaign with resorting to character attacks instead of real policy disagreements congruent with Obama’s recent rise in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

“They have moved from looking at his kindergarten record,” Helms continued, “to reading his book” to glean information from Obama’s teenage years. “There is no place in the process for smearing character.”

Senator Clark reiterated Helms’ remarks that Obama’s campaign was successful because of his positive message. The voters, she suggested, “are looking for a President who can bring people together.”

Asked by a reporter what more the Clinton campaign could do beyond condemning the statement. Were they pushing for Shaheen to resign?

“That’s a conversation that needs to happen within the Clinton campaign,” Helms replied, before adding that they are not in the business of giving advice to rival campaigns.

Pressed further by another reporter about whether or not that meant that the Obama team believed that the Clinton campaign actually did, if not authorize, at least allow for such comments to be made.

Helms did not confirm that statement, but said “When you see a pattern,” citing the two nefarious e-mails in Iowa and now Shaheen’s remarks, “it doesn’t take a genius to see that there is a thread going on here.” He then added that at some point you just need to say enough is enough.

With that, there were to be no further comments.

No comments: