I’ve been trying to figure out why David Geffen was so harsh on Hillary Clinton. Whatever you can say about the music mogul, he is one shrewd character, quite savvy about the media and its ways. He’s been in the public eye for thirty years or more. In all likelihood, he knew precisely what he was doing when he opened his mouth to Maureen Dowd on the eve of the first public Democratic presidential “debate.” This was no accident.
So why?
Rumors are flying about. Geffen was angry that Bill pardoned the creepy Marc Rich but didn’t pardon the “heroic” Leonard Peltier. (Clinton was wrong about Rich but right about Peltier, in my view.) I don’t buy it. There would seemingly have to be something more personal or stronger to merit such vitriol (calling the Clintons liars on that level).
But I don’t think it’s personal at all. I think it has to do with something much more pragmatic to Geffen – and my wife Sheryl pointed this out. Geffen doesn’t think Hillary can win.
Think about it – looking at the polls right now (yes, it’s way early but still… you deal with what you’ve got), you see a Giuliani – Hillary head-to-head. Giuliani is winning. And the principal weakness Rudy has in a general election – his checkered private life – is completely useless to Hillary. Any comments by her and her supporters about Giuliani’s marriages would elicit nothing but snorts. And they should!
Obama may be another matter. So far he seems to have a pretty good home life. He’s personable in a way that Hillary isn’t, which would undercut another advantage for Giuliani. Maybe I’m reading too much into this here, but Geffen made his billions picking winners (The Eagles, etc.). He’s made another judgment. He may be right.
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38 Comments
1. jedrury:Roger is right: Geffen has said as much “Hillary can’t win.: He said this months ago too.
There may be posts attacking Geffen about this and that, his Hollywood friends, his support of liberals, his Malibu land fights but get beyond that the guy is smart; he reads the polls and he has a good feel for the Democratic thought processes.
Hillary is standing with a 41% negative rating; 25% who barf when she is seen on TV, 16% who have a deep negative view of her. And, this is before campaign begins. White males despise her; 75 – 80% against. Females barely 50% in the last poll I read.
Where is her support? As they say in Vegas: show me the money.
Let her run, let her get the nomination: Rudy, McCain are in. 4 more GOP years.
Feb 22, 2007 - 10:43 am 2. Dick Stanley:Hillary undoubtedly has too much baggage. But Obama has too little. A blank slate. These are early days.
Feb 22, 2007 - 11:41 am 3. Amy Alkon:Bill Richardson is the thinking person’s Democratic candidate.
And I’d like to know more about Salt Lake City’s Rocky Anderson. A possible VP?
Giuliani has zero foreign policy experience. Voting for him is like buying an SUV to keep your kid’s safe. It’s the perception of safety, not actual safety.
Richardson lacks any swagger and looks decidely unpresidential, but he appeals to fiscal conservative, anti-fundamentalist, pro-science people like me. (Of which there may be only a handful, compared to the vast swath of people who believe in The Big Imaginary Friend, and march in political lockstep with the Haggards and Dobsons of the world.)
Feb 22, 2007 - 11:41 am 4. Amy Alkon:“kids safe,” that is.
Oops.
Sorry about that.
Feb 22, 2007 - 11:42 am 5. Bostonian:Amy,
I didn’t see the war on terrorism anywhere on your list. Not a factor?
Feb 22, 2007 - 11:52 am 6. jackmack:Roger, I think you think too much.
Feb 22, 2007 - 12:41 pm 7. Terrye:Who really cares at this point? Who is going to remember what happens now.
David Geffen is a billionare. He is getting up there in years. I think he was just letting off steam because he got back stabbed by the Clintons some way and/or mulitple times.
What is the sense of being a billionare if you can’t be honest sometimes?
He described his first million as “F-U money”, as in being rich he didn’t need to take crap from anyone anymore.
Remember the guy has made mistakes. Dreamworks didn’t turn out the way he wanted.
Hillary might not be able to win, but I really do not think Obama can win either. His name alone is a killer. Literally.
But Richardson would be the better candidate. But he is not all that charismatic…however, he is no fool either.
Feb 22, 2007 - 1:03 pm 8. Lem:Obama is to Hilary what Ralf Nader was to Al Gore. Hilary wants to take Obama on now, dispose of him early so that by the time the election comes around Obama would be forgotten.
What happens when you let a Ross Perot linger? Ask Bush 41.
I suspect Geffen was in on this. The idea is to lure Obama into saying something stupid, (Obama is inexperienced) stand back while he implodes.
The Clintons cannot take Obama on directly; they must do it by proxy.
Remember when the Clintons were in the WH? Every time they were attacked their poll numbers went up.
I got to give credit to Obama for not only not falling for it, but for mustering a brilliant counter-attack.
Feb 22, 2007 - 1:05 pm 9. jedrury:JackMack writes:
“He is getting up there in years. . . . the guy has made mistakes. Dreamworks didn’t turn out the way he wanted.”
Geffen may be annoyed at Bill and Hillary for their deceit and dishonesty, etc., etc. ; the point is that he made it public and re-enforced the views of many Americans who despise the ground they walk on. It hurts Hillary and when the GOP unleashes its mouth foaming attack dogs; she will sink like a brick in water.
Who is keeping her afloat right now?
MSM, Chris Matthews, Keith Ober-dork, The NY Times, CNN, the usual suspects of the liberal asylum.
Feb 22, 2007 - 1:47 pm 10. Ray Zacek:Geffen said what he said because what he said is true. The Clintons are a pair of monumental, self aggrandizing liars. What was the title of Hitchens’ book about them? No one left to lie to. Right on the money, that. Doesn’t stop them from trying however. And if Hill is elected I’m sure they will continue lying and make a mockery of the 22nd Amendment in the bargain.
Feb 22, 2007 - 3:07 pm 11. Ray Zacek:Marc Rich would make a fine Secretary of the Treasury in a Hillary Administration BTW.
Feb 22, 2007 - 3:08 pm 12. Soldier's Dad:I’m pretty sure the republicans want to run against Hillary.
As far as Geffen picking winners, he has been fairly good in the entertainment business where 50% of the “voters” are under 18.
Picking winners when 50% of the voters are over 40 is a whole different thing.
What is the saying -
A young man who is a conservative…has no heart.
An old man who is a liberal…has no mind.
The idealism of youth gives way to the reality of the human condition. Just does.
The Dem’s haven’t come to understand that the median age in the US is now mid-late 30’s.
The median voting age is in the 45+ age group.
I would note that Barack is younger than half the voters.
Feb 22, 2007 - 4:35 pm 13. SMGalbraith:Maybe, but I’d hedge my bets in case she does win.
Seems to me that he’s rolling the dice bigtime. Although, admittedly I’ve yet to make my first billion.
Or million.
As Carville once admitted, defending the Clintons is like being in the Mafia; once you’re in it, you’re in it for life.
Feb 22, 2007 - 6:27 pm 14. The Kid:We
Feb 22, 2007 - 7:13 pm 15. TallDave:Well, in Clinton’s defense, Peltier didn’t heroically donate $10M to his Presidential library, so clearly he didn’t earn his pardon like Marc Rich.
Feb 22, 2007 - 7:58 pm 16. Buddy Larsen:Oh, I’m sure there was no connection between the money and the mercy. Not with the Clintons, they’d never let dough get in the way of right and wrong. They do have their principles, dontcha know.
Feb 22, 2007 - 9:00 pm 17. Mick Stockinger:I believe you are attributing too much rationality to Geffen’s comments.
A sharp guy like Geffen doesn’t try to pick winners so early in the game. The primaries are a year away and Obama will have plenty of time to screw the pooch. It simply wasn’t necessary to alienate the Clinton camp.
This was high-handed stuff–personal and angry.
Sometimes its exactly what it appears to be–I think Geffen just blew his top. He was pretty clear about his reasons, but I’ve noted that a lot of lefties are very pissed at the Clintons and blame them for setting up the Gore loss. That bitter pill was and is the foundation for all the I-hate-Bush stuff we’ve been seeing for six years.
Feb 22, 2007 - 9:35 pm 18. linda:NEWT RUDY
Feb 22, 2007 - 11:16 pm 19. Shawn L.:“Obama is to Hilary what Ralf Nader was to Al Gore. Hilary wants to take Obama on now, dispose of him early so that by the time the election comes around Obama would be forgotten.
What happens when you let a Ross Perot linger? Ask Bush 41.”
But Hillary can’t take on Obama until the Iowa Caucuses and the NH Primary. Until then, all you have are war machines spinning their wheels without a war. To be campaigning a full year before the first actual votes are cast is foolish.
Worse, it allows the media to overhype some candidates, leading other candidates to create strategies that look good in the year before, but come to bite them in the butt later on.
Last time around Howard Dean was the overhyped one. He attracted money and volunteers from the internet, but failed to get voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. But during the year leading up to that point. Kerry took him serious enough to change his stance on foreign policy to woo Dean’s supporters. Come the general election, that was used against him, as he was now “soft” on the war on terror, and exposed as an opportunist who changes his position with the polls.
Hillary and Obama should still only have exploratory committees. There’s no benefit to their full campaigns now, save to line the pockets of consultants.
Feb 23, 2007 - 1:11 am 20. Brad:“Giuliani has zero foreign policy experience. Voting for him is like buying an SUV to keep your kid’s safe. It’s the perception of safety, not actual safety.”
**As opposed to the wealth of foreign policy experience W had in 2000, Reagan in 1980, Truman in 1945, etc.?
Feb 23, 2007 - 5:34 am 21. Buddy Larsen:True enough. “Experience” is not automatically a virtue anyway. It’s only an add-on to the prime character. Lots of unprincipled crooks have loads of “experience”.
Feb 23, 2007 - 6:16 am 22. BJ:Amy your metaphor is just plain silly and in most cases poor physics too. Having been in a SUV struck on the freeway by an eighteen wheeler at speed; I can attest to the fallacy of your perception. The CHP who assisted us out of the wreck, bloodied and bruised but not seriously injured, said we were lucky to have been in a SUV.
Back on topic: Geffen is probably expressing what many of his peers feel..Clinton Inc. fooled them once, not again.
Feb 23, 2007 - 6:37 am 23. Sandy P:Ronnie was fighting the commies since the 50s, I think Howard Veit had a piece on how Ronnie fought them when he was the pres of SAG(?).
The UN is in NYC, I think Rudy’ had some “foreign policy” experience.
He threw Arafat out of something.
Besides, Bubba ran as the no foreign policy candidate. #41 spent too much time on foreign policy, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Feb 23, 2007 - 8:00 am 24. markus:Geffen probably is just smitten with Obama, as quite a few liberals genuninely are.
Fact is, both Hillary and Obama are each saddled with shortcomings that make the potentially very “unelectable”, in my opinion.
But if you could morph them together into a single (male) person, you would more or less have Bill Clinton, the man who would have been President on 9/11, and perhaps even today, if we didn’t have the 22nd Amendment.
Then again, Bill Clinton himself looked fairly unelectable in February 1991.
What is depresses me is the rhetoric and policy stands that both Obama and Hillary are putting out. Its the same old, same old DC Democratic insider press releases. Richardson sounds now better. If I had my druthers, the other Senator from NY State would be running.
Both McCain and Giuliani would be very strong candidates. Ironically enough, the more successful the Democratic Congress is in getting a substantial amount of troops removed from the Iraqi crossfire, while the Administration continues to whip up Iran nuke hysteria, the better their chances.
So much will play out in the coming year and half, that all of this is ridiculously hypothetical.
Feb 23, 2007 - 9:29 am 25. TheManTheMyth:Richardson has zero chance of being nominated–no charisma (even the negative kind) which sadly is vastly more important than brains or principles in the TV era. Obama is like a new girlfriend–everyone loves him now because he’s a fresh face–give him a year or so though, and we’ll see. “This too shall pass” would be my guess.
Feb 23, 2007 - 9:42 am 26. Rhod:Markus:
However much I disagree with most everything else you’ve said, when you hit the target you split the arrow already there. To wit:
“But if you could morph them together into a single (male) person, you would more or less have Bill Clinton,…”
Feb 23, 2007 - 10:12 am 27. Buddy Larsen:Markus, if you Dems want to win the general, you better get busy getting behind Richardson. You’ll need swing voters remember.
If he ‘lacks stature’, hell, give him some. As the party candidate in the general, he’ll have plenty of “stature”.
Rescue your party now from the left, the loonies, and the liars. I demand it.
Feb 23, 2007 - 10:16 am 28. Buddy Larsen:meaning, if you don’t, I’m going to post a strongly worded rebuke!
Feb 23, 2007 - 10:33 am 29. Dan Wismar:In reply to Amy Alkon,
I would venture to say that the large majority of “the vast swath of people who believe in The Big Imaginary Friend”, in other words, the two hundred million or so believing Christians and Jews in this country, don’t have any idea who Haggard and Dobson even are, much less “march in lockstep” with them.
Some of us who believe in the BIF even consider ourselves to be “thinking people”, your implication notwithstanding.
People who lack a spiritual life, and who flatter themselves as thus more rational than the unenlightened “other”, are akin to (and I quote a popular blogger here) “two-dimensional circles pronouncing on the non-existence of spheres.”
Feb 23, 2007 - 11:43 am 30. Rhod:Me too, Buddy. We’re emphatic about being really close to the last straw.
And it’s impossible march in lockstep when the Hound of Heaven is snapping at your heels.
Feb 23, 2007 - 12:10 pm 31. Barrett:There is a lot “flying” around interm so comments.
In short, Geffen has learned the he cannot trust the Clintonistas, who are nothing more than about obatining power. In addition, he has the money to float a “trial balloon”. No big deal.
Obama is a an inexperienced politician who some folks I know refer to as “gee I just found out I was black when I was 19″ and “maybe I am a Muslim or at least many in the Muslim community think I am depsite my posing as a Christian” candidate.
I don’t know if any of that is true, but I am not sold on Obama from what I know is a cut and run and partial birth abortion.
Hillary is not electable as many have pointed out.
It is a wide open race! Let the games begin.
Feb 23, 2007 - 1:12 pm 32. Buddy Larsen:roger that, Rhod–bottom of the barrel political behavior-wise, we’ve done seen it, no need for any more exhibition, please can’t we just call it even now, we did Whitewater/Jones/Lewinsky (ok, Clintons did it but let’s let that fine point go), they did BDS in revenge, ok, even-steven, ENOUGH already.
Feb 23, 2007 - 1:15 pm 33. Buddy Larsen:But alas, to envision that soft-focus, nostalgia-tinged decent centrist old-timey campaign between decent centrist Richardson and decent centrist Giuliani, is to dream on ghosts and miracles.
Feb 23, 2007 - 2:02 pm 34. dclydew:Some of us who believe in the BIF even consider ourselves to be “thinking people”
I agree. Some people that consider the possibility of something based entirely on faith, with no evidence may be thinking people. However, they remain thinking people, only as long as they realize that their belief is based on “maybe”, “possibly” or “I choose to hold this belief”.
When the person takes the ideas and beliefs, drops the maybe and tries to enforce these ideas upon others as TRUTH… then we might say they become unthinking.
While Amy’s post was quite as direct, I think that may be what she was trying to say with the and march in political lockstep with the Haggards and Dobsons of the world.
Feb 23, 2007 - 2:09 pm 35. TomTom:I rather suspect there is a secret account in (only Bill) Clinton’s name somewhere with $50 to 100 million in it deposited by Marc Rich as the price of his pardon. Ten mill for the Clinton library was enough to buy clemency for a billionaire? I don’t think so.
Feb 23, 2007 - 2:25 pm 36. A B:Obama can win? Why do people think this? The guy is lighter than Edwards!
Can anyone imagine what the debates would look like between Obama and Romney? Or Obama and Guiliani?
Both of those guys would absolutely destroy him.
The fact is, maybe Hillary can’t win. But she’s the stronger of the two candidates.
The Democrats need someone else, and quickly.
Feb 23, 2007 - 5:22 pm 37. Luther McLeod:OT but maybe not. A prediliction of Hil’s. And the video of the day. And these folks want to be President?
Feb 23, 2007 - 8:11 pm 38. Captain Hate:“Bill Clinton, the man who would have been President on 9/11, and perhaps even today, if we didn’t have the 22nd Amendment.”
I know the Clinton-bots prefer to ignore this “inconvenient truth” but he never received 50% of the popular vote in either of his presidential elections. Not even against Bob Dole.
Feb 24, 2007 - 3:34 am