Michelle vs. Bill: In the Democratic Race, the Spouses Go at It

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Can Michelle Obama take down Bill Clinton?

Well, can she at least exploit the spouse of her spouse’s chief rival to raise money for her own spouse?

On Thursday afternoon, the Obama campaign sent out a fundraising appeal signed by Barack Obama’s wife that uses Bill Clinton’s recent swipes at Senator Obama as its main get-out-your-checkbooks motivator. She writes:

We knew getting into this race that Barack would be competing with Senator Clinton and President Clinton at the same time.

We expected that Bill Clinton would tout his record from the nineties and talk about Hillary’s role in his past success. That’s a fair approach and a challenge we are prepared to face.

What we didn’t expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we’ve seen recently. We didn’t expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack’s record.

Barack Obama isn’t relying on a former President of the United States to campaign for him.

He’s relying on us — you, me, and hundreds of thousands of people like us who are giving whatever they can afford to support this movement.

The Obama vs. Clinton and Clinton spat has been getting ugly, so much so that some Democratic leaders have been complaining that Bill Clinton has gone too far in assailing Obama, the most inspiring figure the Democratic Party has seen in years.

But, as I’ve already written, a mud-fight between the Clintons and Obama benefits Hillary Clinton. All this sniping sucks up oxygen (time and media attention) that Obama could otherwise be using to make his case that he’s a transformative, unconventional candidate committed to change and a new brand of politics. If in the days before Supersaturated Tuesday, the race comes across to television viewers (read: would-be voters) as a fury of accusation and counter-accusation, the more conventional candidate with the more conventional message will have the upper hand. You know who that is.

By keeping Obama (and his wife) in the gutter, Bill Clinton renders it tougher for Obama to inspire and to soar. And it’s hard to imagine that Mr. Clinton does not realize that.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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