Clinton campaign assails Obama for advocating against federal mandatory minimums
As David Zlotnick and FAMM have effectively documented here and here, many well-known conservatives and Republican-appointed judges have spoken out forcefully against federal mandatory minimum sentences. Policy criticisms of mandatory minimum sentences have come from, inter alia, the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, current Seventh Circuit Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, and former Utah District Judge Paul Cassell, none of whom will ever be accused of having been too liberal for the American public.
However, as now revealed by this ABC News piece discussing Hillary Clinton’s efforts to bounce back from her defeat in Iowa, the Clinton campaign team is suggesting that Barack Obama’s opposition to federal mandatory minimum sentences makes him too liberal for the Democratic Party’s nomination:
Sen. Hillary Clinton went on the counterattack today, one day after a stinging defeat in the Iowa caucuses to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. She said New Hampshire voters need to take a hard look at Obama, suggesting that they shouldn’t just buy into his message of “hope” without analyzing his policies….
While the senator was vague, her campaign pointed out to ABC News examples of Obama’s liberal positions, including his 2004 statement to abolish mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes.
This story further confirms my concern that Senator Clinton is not just willing, but apparently quite eager, to use the old “soft-on-crime” scare strategy in an effort to swing voters her way. Such a strategy is extraordinarily disappointing on the merits and telling coming from Senator Clinton now. Moreover, I cannot help but suggest that there is a sniff of racism in the Clinton camp’s now repeated efforts to adopt a classic “Willie Horton” tactic in the hope of scaring (mostly white) voters away from a (non-white) candidate because of fear of (mostly minority) offenders subject to extreme prison terms under the old crack guidelines and federal mandatory minimums.
This latest Clintonian move of assailing Obama for once calling for abolition of mandatory minimums provides strong evidence that her campaign has now, in classic pop culture terms, “jumped the shark.”
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