Oprah key to converting enough women to Obama
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
The chances of Hillary and Bill Clinton ever again living in the White House are on a narrow precipice to be decided by the women’s vote.
One woman can flick them off.
Oprah Winfrey!
All Oprah needs to do is use her megaphone to convince, not all women, but enough, that Mrs. Clinton lacks honesty and character to lead America and the Free World.
There’s a lot of evidence to back the argument.
Some number of American women are outraged that Hillary didn’t have the personal pride, resolve or both to kick Bill out when he humiliated her time and again with sexual encounters outside their marriage.
Then there were all those lies, in which she colluded with Bill to bring down to the Clinton level anyone who stood in their way.
On the campaign trail, Mrs. Clinton has hardly proved a model of a leader. She weeps in purely political moments. She gripes about alleged conspiracies. She complains that other candidates are ganging up against her.
She ducks behind the coattails of her increasingly strident husband, depending on him to drag her across the finish line.
Does America really want eight more years of the “Bickersons: Hillary in the Oval Office, Bill prowling around the East Wing looking for mischief?” was how New York Times writer Maureen Dowd put the question on Meet the Press.
Bill’s presence has been so virulent at times that one MBJ syndicate writer, Phil Gailey, said the spectacle was “like watching a mad dog slobber.”
By roughing up Obama in a way that African-Americans and many others see as unseemly, if not racist, Bill has opened Hillary’s campaign to ghosts from a seedy past.
Slandered women from his past can now expect more credibility. In the 1990s, a united Bill and Hillary front convinced many that Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones and others were exactly what the Clinton attack dogs said they were: liars, sluts and “trailer trash.”
Now, an entire bloc of voters inside the Democratic Party and out see how it works.
South Carolina has been especially cruel.
Columnist Dowd again had the last word after Caroline, Ted and Patrick Kennedy came out after the South Carolina primary and Bill’s latest eruptions with strong endorsements of Obama.
It was like the “wrath of Camelot came down on their heads,” Dowd said.
Piling on were Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee; former House Minority Leader Tom Daschle, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who suggested that Bill “shut up.”
Sen. John Kerry, the party’s presidential candidate in 2004, using only slightly more elegant language, called Clinton a liar over remarks about Obama’s stance on the Iraq War.
Heading for California for a Feb. 5 primary, the Clintons seem reduced to a strategy of giving up on their deteriorating African-American base and having instead to pander to the Hispanic community, praying the gain will offset the loss.
Sen. Kennedy is reportedly on the way to California to throw his considerable clout with Latinos behind Obama.
The final wisdom, as this writer sees it, is this:
Oprah started Obama on his way in Iowa.
With sisterly help from Oprah, Obama can end the Clinton era this summer in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.
February 2008
