Smoking Them Out

by digby

In a thoroughly egregious Hardball yesterday, even by its usual egregious standards, Chris Matthews spun some CW that I think may be growing, even though it makes little sense:

MATTHEWS: Is David Geffen smart politically? He strikes me as someone who is very smart.

I mean, here‘s a quote. It‘s an indirect quote from today‘s Maureen Dowd piece in “The New York Times,” which caused all this stir over in the the Clinton world—quote—it‘s just about Bill and Hillary, obviously, and their relationship.

Geffen says, adding that, “If Republicans are digging up dirt, they will wait until Hillary is the nominee to use it.”

That‘s what I have always thought, that, if they‘re going to really turn the guns on the Clintons and the cameras and everything else, and try to, you know, smoke them out, in terms of any problems there, that they will wait until Hillary gets the nomination, then blast her when it‘s too late for the Democrats to change horses.

I think the US government spent eight years and 70 million dollars or so digging up Clinton dirt and rich wingnuts put up several more million on top of that. Every single allegation was aired in the press either through leaks or salacious official “reports.” An entire batalion of rightwing operatives also spent eight years making up dirt, including allegations of murder and drug running. They went all the way back to the Clintons’ college days, looked into financial transactions from the 70’s and interviewed virtually every person the Clintons had ever met. Libraries could be filled with the books and magazine articles written about their personal history along with vast numbers of psychological profiles and speculation about everything from Bill being a manchurian candidate to their sex lives. There were no limits and no stone was left unturned.

What in God’s name does Chris think they could possibly find after all that?

Will the press go after Clinton for being a “calculating” bitch? (I think that word’s been used more in the past month than ever before in history.) Of course. Will they attack her mercilessly and dredge up every old trope that was used against her back in the day? Undoubtedly. But it is almost impossible to believe they could come up with any real dirt on her because there has never been a more thoroughly vetted candidate in history. Not that the swift-boaters won’t just make stuff up like they always do, but it should not be believable to anyone in the mainstream media and it should be greeted with so much skepticism as to be laughable on its face.

I have no dog in this fight and I could not care less if you vote for Hillary Clinton or if you don’t. Neither do I care if you think she’s a calculating bitch and hate her stance on the war and loathe everything she and her husband did during their administration. Those are fair game. But I will be damned if I’ll passively accept this ongoing enabling of character assassination against Democrats, I don’t care who they are. If an eight year multi-million dollar federal investigation into every aspect of his or her life isn’t enough for the mainstream media to accept that there is no unethical or criminal charges that can credibly be brought against Hillary Clinton then no candidate is safe. If they can believe that “dirt” still exists against her, imagine what they will do with the inevitable swift boat attacks on a candidate who is fairly new on the scene?

This idea that there’s “dirt” yet to be unearthed about Clinton is a pernicious rightwing meme designed to stoke the fear that we will be back in tabloid trivia land if Clinton is elected. But that’s a meaningless distinction among the candidates since we are already seeing all of them being trivialized with silly “spats” and “obambi” and “breck girl” commentary. It’s just the beginning and it will continue as surely as you can say the words “earth tones.”

.