Clinton can’t stop hitting the wrong note

Years ago, I was having a conversation with a jazz pianist who told me, “When I hit a wrong note, I keep hitting it — so the audience will think it’s intentional.” To move away from the wrong note would be a subtle admission of a mistake.

About a week ago, Hillary Clinton hit the wrong note when she called for a “gas-tax holiday” over the summer. The dumb idea ran counter to almost every positive quality Clinton has — her commitment to telling voters the truth, her intelligence, the seriousness with which she takes policy details, etc. The whole mess contradicts who Hillary Clinton really is, and she knows it.

But like the pianist, instead of quickly transitioning to a better note and hoping no one notices, Clinton has decided to hit the wrong note over and over again, with increasing volume and intensity. The more reality pushes back against her nonsensical idea, the more aggressively Clinton pounds the ivory. As someone who’s respected Clinton’s intellect for years, it’s been painful to watch.

Jason Zengerle added:

[S]tubbornness and refusal to admit error — and, in fact, the penchant for taking actions that only compound the original error — would seem to be qualities we don’t want in our next president, right?”

The demagogic pandering prompted the Clinton campaign to create another ad to tout her ridiculous idea — the second commercial this week — and bash Barack Obama for taking reality seriously. The ad, which started airing in Indiana yesterday, says Clinton’s proposal would “save families $8 billion,” adding, “Barack Obama says that’s just pennies.” The ad concludes that Obama would “make you keep paying that tax, instead of big oil.”

The irony, of course, is that Clinton’s plan would ensure that the oil companies “end up the biggest beneficiaries.” Everything about Clinton’s idea is backwards — consumers lose, the environment loses, conservation loses, Big Oil wins. Clinton knows all of this — she’s far too smart to believe otherwise — but she insists on shamelessly pandering anyway.

The new ad, as it turns out, was only part of yesterday’s offensive display.



On Thursday, the Clinton campaign said policy experts no longer matter, and added a Bush-like ultimatum to congressional Democrats: “Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the oil companies? I want to know where people stand and I want them to tell us, are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?” (Remember, the biggest beneficiaries of her plan are the oil companies.)

On Friday, the Clinton campaign actually managed to make an insulting situation even more offensive by accusing those who care about reality of being elitist: “Clinton strategist Geoff Garin deployed [the elitism card] on a conference call with reporters, and Clinton used the tactic on the trail: ‘I find it, frankly, a little offensive that people who don’t have to worry about filling up their gas tank or what they buy when they go to the supermarket think it’s somehow illegitimate to provide relief for … millions and millions of Americans.'”

To press her point, Clinton adopted one of the Republicans’ favorite tactics: she announced she would go forward with her idea of introducing legislation, forcing Democrats to either vote against a popular-but-ridiculous idea in an election year, or vote for a policy that would boost oil company profits and undermine the environment.

Some of her biggest supporters — including Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Patty Murray — both said yesterday that can’t support her bad idea. Rep. Mark Udall, an uncommitted superdelegate who’s running for the Senate in Colorado, went even further, calling Clinton’s proposal a “bumper-sticker fix” that wouldn’t “fix anything.” Udall added, “We can’t afford more Washington-style pandering while families keep getting squeezed. It is exactly the kind of short-sighted Washington game that keeps us from getting real results to our energy problem.”

Also yesterday, Clinton told voters in North Carolina:

“We ought to say: Wait a minute, we’d rather have the oil companies pay the gas tax than the drivers of North Carolina, especially the truck drivers, or the farmers, or other people who have to commute long distances.”

This is just factually wrong on multiple levels.

Looking at the big picture, John Dickerson notes that Clinton’s campaigning on this has a familiar feel:

Embracing intellectual obtuseness and deflecting criticism with charges of elitism is a tactic George Bush often deployed while campaigning. It’s striking to see Clinton do it because she has been a regular and harsh critic of Bush’s blindness to expert opinion. It’s even more striking to hear her aides actually sound like Bush administration officials. When I asked Communications Director Howard Wolfson if the Clinton team could offer any intellectual ballast for the gas-tax vacation, given that so many policymakers had criticized it, he said, “The presidency requires leadership…. There are times when the president does something that the group of experts, quote unquote, does not agree with. Presidents get advice and then act, and that is what Senator Clinton is doing.” Or, as George Bush used to put it: A leader leads. Even if off a cliff.

Campaigns have ups and downs, but I can’t remember ever being this frustrated with Clinton.