Democrats revert to ancient combat

Monday, 14th January 2008

It appears that the Democratic party is about to test to destruction the idea that American voters are fed up with the old adversarial politics of negative campaigning, character assassination and sectarian politicking. According to news stories, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are polishing both their knuckles and their haloes. Newspapers today and yesterday have reported a burgeoning race row between the candidates, with suggestions that the Obama camp was quietly whipping it up while publicly saying it wished to remain above the fray. Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, reported in the Sunday Times that Hillary’s camp was about to go seriously negative against Obama with a range of personally damaging allegations.

The question is, though, whether the mud that each of them may now be starting to throw at each other will stick on its intended victim — or will blow back upon themselves. Hillary — who, as many commentators have noted, in the wake of her Iowa debacle switched both her strategy, from posing as the candidate of ‘stability’ to the candidate of ‘change’, and her pitch, from being cold and strident to warm, funny and human — would seem to be taking a risk in reverting to type; while Obama, whose principal claim to fame is as an antidote to the old discredited politics, risks courting cynicism and disillusionment the instant he is associated with any of that stuff.

Round three.

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JB

January 14th, 2008 1:34pm

There are faultlines in the Democratic party that have been papered over for decades. the stress of this campaign may cause those faultines to crack wide open, with dire consequences for the Democratic party. And the campaigning has just begun. Democrats have begun to apply the tactics they've always used against Republicans in attacks on each other. I'm not sure the party will survive.

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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.

For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here