Shaheen: Did Obama sell drugs?

To date, the Clinton campaign's attack on Obama's electability has focused on his policy stances and on his experience.

But electability is a funny, vague word, that, for both Clinton and Obama, tends to also mean things nobody wants to say. And a prominent New Hampshire Clinton backer, Bill Shaheen, takes it in a whole different direction in the Washington Post:

"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," saidShaheen, the husband of former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is planning to run for the Senate next year. Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama's openness about his past drug use -- which Obama mentioned again at a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire -- with the approach taken by George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000, when he ruled out questions about his behavior when he was "young and irresponsible." Shaheen said Obama's candor on the subject would "open the door" to further questions. "It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" Shaheen said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."



No immediate response to Shaheen from Clinton or Obama camps, but I'll update.

ALSO: I thought it was too obvious to mention, but maybe not: There's no obvious basis to Shaheen's speculation. Obama has written about using drugs, not selling them. I don't think it's ever been raised before. And on the politics of it, the Obama campaign is responding to this as a deliberate attack (as any campaign would); but it's also a fairly major mis-step for Hillaryland.

UPDATE: David Plouffe says in a statement:

Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the ‘fun part’ of this campaign, and now she’s moved from Barack Obama’s kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton’s campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he’s talked about the lessons he’s learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people.



UPDATE: Howard Wolfson disavows the comments:

Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way.

