Posted by Vince Foster
From Captains Quarters - visit him daily!
The ad clearly aimed at people who watched the final Sopranos episode, but these are people who have steeped in Carmela’s denial and sellout for eight years. That same exact dynamic appeared throughout the Clintons’ terms in office but especially after the Lewinsky affair in 1997. After sending his wife out as an attack dog, allowing her to accuse people of lying to torpedo her husband, Bill had to appear on national TV to admit everything of which he was accused.
Inexplicably, this created a short burst of sympathy for Hillary — which quickly receded when her appearances reminded people that she isn’t terribly sympathetic. She stuck with Bill and, as Carlson mentions, put on an act in front of cameras that made the two look like teenagers in school defiantly daring teachers to give them referrals for PDAs. (If you’re over 35, you’ll know what that means.) Clearly she knows what she gets with Bill, and the rational conclusion is that she’s sticking around for some reason that benefits her, and given his serial indiscretions, those reasons don’t appear marital. Voters inclined to distrust her for these reasons alone may find those reservations reinforced, and others reminded of a certain lack of authenticity that has been the hallmark of the Clintons all along.
She may have scored a few points for hipness with this ad. In the long run, though, equating Bill with Tony Soprano and herself with Carmela may have a kind of resonance that she’ll regret as her campaign progresses.
Read it all - it’s great!
From Margaret Carlson
Yet the Clintons have too much in common with the Sopranos to risk parodying them. Through eight seasons of mob life in New Jersey and eight years in the Clinton White House, America has been gripped by these two couples. Much of the fascination is with the wives: How much does she know? Why does she stay?
In the last two seasons, Sopranos writer David Chase made sure that Carmela was held to account. She’d become the person she denied she was to her therapist and priest — a co-conspirator who turned a blind eye to her husband’s sins to enjoy the fruits of his crime.
In Denial?
We don’t have a writer to give us the answer for Hillary, who is by no means in her last season. And the Clintons might not know. Did they muddle into the middle of the most treacherous question about them, or do it with eyes wide open? They might be in as much denial about themselves as Tony. He thought his nephew Christopher’s movie was great until someone told him the homicidal maniac at the center of it was him.
The ad touches close to the mother lode of Hillary’s vulnerability among some women. When you ask them why they don’t like her, they say it’s because they don’t understand why she makes goo-goo eyes at a guy who broke her heart multiple times and humiliated her daughter. After that, pretending to be a teenager in love makes them wonder what else she might be faking.
The Carmela-Hillary juxtaposition has been made before by others, and not in Hillary’s favor. For staying with a repeat philanderer, Carmela got to live in a McMansion, wear expensive jewelry and wield derivative power as Queen Bee of the mob families. Hillary got to be first lady with a good shot at the White House.
Thanks to Monica
If Hillary’s hoping we’ll be kinder to her than Chase was to Carmela, it’s hard to see why she would tempt the comparison herself. The only possible rationale is that every time voters are reminded how bad Bill is, her numbers go up. She might not be the senator from New York were it not for Monica Lewinsky.
The other curious thing about the ad is giving Bill a starring role so early in the campaign. It’s a mixed reflection of where she is as a candidate. She’s earned A’s in deportment, preparation, effort, neatness and debating but still isn’t doing as well as her campaign had hoped when they said Bill would remain behind the scenes fund-raising until the fall, at the earliest.
Bill is now scheduled to go to Iowa, where Hillary is behind, over the July 4th holiday. While she leads in national polls among Democrats, she lags in some primary states and in most one-to-one matchups with Republicans. The Clintons may recognize that this is the first presidential election to be held in an odd-numbered year. If they wait until 2008 to use Bill, it could be too late.
The biggest problem with playing the Sopranos is that no matter how much viewers found Tony a sympathetic character or felt sorry for Carmela for being married to a murdering sociopath, they don’t want either in the White House. The person who had the bright idea to make the ad should get a promotion, but the person who approved it should be fired, unless it’s the candidate herself.
Unlike the Sopranos, in the saga of the Clintons, there will be a final accounting before the screen fades to black.
:
Hillary recently held her first major fundraiser targeting gay campaign donors for the 2008 presidential election. Several hundred guests showed up at D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel for the event. Despite Hillary’s trepidation about supporting same-sex "marriage," she still has solid support in the gay community. Hilary Rosen, a recording industry lobbyist and a host of the fundraiser, admitted that "there’s obviously some disappointment about marriage," but since all the main Democratic candidates are "consistent on that issue, that’s kind of taken off the table here." Rosen also said, "I think there’s a growing awareness among the community that, like so many other issues, Sen. Clinton understands how to address the complicated issues of supporting gay families and partnerships and dealing with discrimination issues. And I just think she’ll be a smarter, better president for our community."
