Anyone who follows South Carolina politics had to be wondering when Dick Harpootlian--the sharp-tongued, bare-knuckled former state Democratic chair who frequently branded his political opponents "bastards" and "sons of bitches"-would sound off on the Obama-Hillary battle going on down there. Well, today he did, and he didn't disappoint, telling CNN that some of Bill Clinton's recent comments about Obama were intended to "suppresses the vote, demoralize voters, and distort the record" and that they were "reminiscent of Lee Atwater."
And that, in turn, prompted Clinton to get red-in-the-face angry (again) at a CNN reporter who asked for his response to Harpootlian's assessment:
"You live for this. This hurts the people of South Carolina," he said. "Because the people of South Carolina come to these meetings and ask questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not what's going to be in the news coverage tonight, because you don't care about it.
"What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along. I mean, the people don't care about this," he added. "They never ask about it. And you are determined to take this election away from them. And that's not right. That is not right. This election ought to belong to those people who are out here asking questions about their lives."
You know, Clinton would actually have a point if he wasn't completely full of it.
--Jason Zengerle