Stop posting to toasters.
Schumer: 'Hit McCain harder'
By BEN SMITH 08/07/2008 03:14 PM EDT Updated 08/08/2008 11:05 AM EDT
One of the Democratic Party's leading electoral street fighters, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, said that Barack Obama should respond to John McCain's personal attacks with an equally personal slap.
"I would not be afraid to attack back," said Schumer, who chairs the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, in an interview with Politico. "When they say, 'He's not one of us,' you don't say, 'Here's our plan on health care,"' he said.
"I thought the Britney Spears commercial was powerful," Schumer said, referring to McCain's television ad casting Obama as a vapid "celebrity."
Currently promoting the paperback edition of his book "Positively American," which argues for a Democratic agenda pitched around a new set of bread-and-butter issues and government activism on behalf of middle class voters, Schumer didn't directly criticize Obama's strategy. Rather, he argued for a higher-velocity response.
"I would answer back hard. What do you mean he's not one of us? It's John McCain who wears $500 shoes, has six houses, and comes from one of the richest families in his state," Schumer said. "It's Barack Obama who climbed up the hard way, and that's why he wants middle-class tax cuts and better schools for our kids."
Obama's campaign responded to McCain's barrage by accusing him in television ads and press releases of taking the "low road," while casting Obama as above such attacks on his opponent's character.
The strategy has produced some questions in Democratic circles as to whether Obama shouldn't be hitting back more personally - but Obama's aides argue that the perception that McCain is running a traditional, negative campaign is damaging McCain's reputation for high-minded independence.
See also
After shake-up, McCain ground game revs up
McCain, Obama claims stretch the truth
Bruised Clintonites show loyalty at DNC
Schumer argued that Obama will best be able to make his case on issues if he's also willing to slap back on matters of character.
"McCain's an unappealing candidate," Schumer said. "McCain's done great things for our country, but he doesn't particularly empathize with the plight of the average person."
Schumer argues in a new preface to his book that Americans' economic insecurity could make 2008 a realigning landslide.
"This election has the potential to effect the kind of paradigm-shifting change that occurs once in a generation," he writes, comparing the vote to Franklin Roosevelt's rise in 1932 and Ronald Reagan's in 1980. "If it's decided by issue and policy offerings, this election might just be the one that creates a political majority for a generation."
Schumer, who supported his junior New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the primary, said he never underestimated Obama's strength.
"He's an amazingly capable person, and I think everyone in the Senate knew that," he said.
"It was a close race, a hard-fought contest, I think either one of these candidates would have made a great president and would beat McCain," he said.
Though Schumer seemed to be urging Obama to hit back harder, he said Americans' general unhappiness at the state of affairs would dampen the effect of Republican attacks on his character and readiness to lead.
"I think there's a real chance that Obama gets 300 electoral votes," he said. "This is a change election and the more people get to know him and see him the better it will be."
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/schumer-hit-mccain-harder-012375
Sens. Schumer and McCain used to have a lousy relationship. President-elect Trump has changed that.
Sens. John McCain and Charles E. Schumer used to have a lousy relationship. The Arizona Republican and New York Democrat came from different backgrounds and focused on distinct legislative priorities. They were two hard-charging senators who were both aggressive in their courtship of the media.
The New Yorker and the Arizonan even broke into an open feud when, during a 2011 debate on defense policy, McCain joked that Long Island was “regrettably part of the United States of America.” Schumer demanded an apology: “All of America saw how heroic Long Islanders were on 9/11.”
Five years later, times have changed. The duo is emerging as a potentially critical force in the new world order of President-elect Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress. In the last 10 days, McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader, led a bipartisan push to create a robust investigation into Russian hacking of political committees that intelligence officials say was designed to promote Trump’s candidacy.
Through TV appearances and joint letters, the senators are pushing for an investigation that Trump is so far rejecting and other Republicans have been reluctant to tackle because such a probe might appear to undermine the results of the 2016 elections.
“There’s no doubt [the Russians] were interfering,” McCain said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” stepping up the pressure on congressional GOP leaders. The question is now, how much and what damage? And what should the United States of America do?”
An hour or so later, Schumer held a news conference in New York City echoing McCain’s call for a detailed investigation, and a few hours afterward the carefully choreographed effort included a formal letter from McCain, Schumer and two senior senators on foreign policy issues, Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to establish a select committee to conduct a thorough investigation.
McCain’s early view of Schumer was as a partisan with sharp elbows. He oversaw the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and added 14 seats to the Democratic caucus in four years. When McCain suspended his 2008 campaign to fly to Washington to try to help cinch a Wall Street rescue package, the meeting ended in insults and no deal.
In a Senate-floor speech the next day, Schumer took direct aim at McCain and blamed him for the faltering talks. He said McCain could help in only one way: “Get out of town.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/schumer-mccain-could-be-a-winning-team-in-new-congress/2016/12/21/7178da22-c79b-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.e327f64ef0a0
Meet The Press Transcript for Feb. 17, 2008
SEN. SCHUMER: Well, let me say this. There are good arguments on each side. Nancy Pelosi, moveon.org, have said basically what you've just quoted. Howard Dean and Jim Clyburn have said that the superdelegates ought to vote their conscience. And each has an argument there. I have another goal here–and I think Dick agrees, by what he said–and that is that at the end of the day, we don't have such an internecine battle that we lose the general election. Most Hillary supporters are strong for Hillary; most Barack supporters are strong for Barack. But I think most of us all feel winning that general election and making sure that there's not another four years of Bush-McCain is predominant. So having a set rule in sand when, of course, each candidate chooses the rule at the moment that is in their self-interest, makes no sense. We ought to let this play out.
And then–and I don't think that–and I'd have to say this to Dick–I don't think either candidate wants or can even get away with forcing their will down the throat of the other. At the end of the day, on June 5, for the sake of party unity–June 7–Howard Dean and the two candidates will have to get together if neither candidate has 2025, which is the margin that the rules require to win, and come up with a strategy. Each candidate will have to have buy into that strategy to determine who wins because if the loser and their supporters stalk away, then we will lose the general election. So, you know, this, this issue of how the superdelegates ought to vote, you know, this great epistemological, metaphysical issue, no one thought about it three months ago. To me, it is not a great moral issue. The great moral issue is defeating George Bush, John McCain, and coming up with a way that we can do–walk away from the convention unified. And neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama, I think, want to have an internecine fight where one side is so bitter that the other feels that they can't enthusiastically support the winner.
Meet the Press Transcript from September 14, 2008
SEN. SCHUMER: I don't think so. I think Barack Obama will show that he's ready to lead. But far and away, the most fundamental question that will determine this economy, and the numbers would be quite reversed, is who can help the middle class out of the economic troubles that they're in. The average middle-class person, even during seven years of George Bush prosperity, so to speak, went down in average income according to Professor Elizabeth Warren from 48,000 to 46,000. You add buying power, it's down to 41 or 42.
George–John McCain's policies on taxes, education, health care, energy, the big meat-and-potato issues, are exactly the same as George Bush's. Barack Obama represents change. As we go through this campaign, because most people are going to really begin to focus now, that is what's going to give Barack Obama the lead. Now, he'll have to show that he can handle foreign policy. But again, he has a big leg-up. Iraq was the biggest mistake George Bush made. If anything, John McCain is to the right of George Bush on Iraq.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26702299/ns/meet_the_press/t/meet-press-transcript-sept/#.XJJjMChKhEY
He was getting in the way of their opiod profits.
The West does not embrace Islam.
The Left embraces Islam, as the Left embraces death.
Islam is death.
Submission to the grave.
Welcome to Infinite Bread Universe, where the shills cannot diminish the supply of Bread.
Billionaires get germphobic, big time. Can't hop into an escape tunnel away from germs.
Life is too short to reward shills with (you)s. Always filter anything that bothers you.
These always crack me up!
Jews are the Chosen People under the unbreakable promise God made to Abraham, where God Himself walked through the hewn animals for both sides of the covenant, ensuring it would NEVER be broken.
Anyone who hits a Jew hits something that is the apple of God's eye.
Best not to swing in the first place, lest you find you are the enemy of the Almighty.
One can hope and dream that to be the case, yes.
That's a rather specific coincidence.
Love the guy, wish him well, the rape charges are bogus and manufactured, and his work towards transparancy and truth is not going unnoticed.