Robert Reich Endorses Barack Obama

Former Clinton administration Sec. of Labor Robert Reich will endorse Barack Obama. That is embarrassing to the Clintons, but not that surprising. Reich was one of the most addently liberal members of the Clinton administration and hated the deficit reduction advocates that made up Bill Clinton's circle of economic advisors. Reich was going to stay neutral. The Clinton campaign's attack ads got him off the fence.

"I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It's the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign. And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past twenty years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

Reich believes Obama represents a "chance of creating a new politics." Endorsing Obama is rather a safe move. Hillary is not going to get the nomination. The Clintons can't intimidate from a position of weakness. The dynasty is crumbling down before our eyes.