The mysterious source: who’s most afraid of Cain?
Who first tipped off Politico to the sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain that have become such a big story?
I will say at the outset that I haven’t a clue. And neither, I suspect, does anyone else, except Politico and the source[s] him/herself.
That doesn’t mean we can’t speculate, with the caveat that all of this is a mere flight of fancy. So here’s my shot at it.
It may have been the folks at Politico themselves, sleuthing around in LexisNexis for any dirt they could find on Cain. Highly unlikely, however; it’s hard to see why they’d focus on Cain, plus Politico’s pieces on the subject have repeatedly referred to “multiple sources.”
Most of the speculation on the sources’ identities has so far centered on Cain’s Republican opponents. That makes a great deal of sense because they’re the ones who are seemingly most threatened by Cain. Cain himself appears to think one of them bears the blame; he’s been shooting from the hip and accusing Perry consultant Kurt Anderson of being the culprit, although he’s walked back a bit from that charge in recent days.
Or Cain may have other antagonists, perhaps even personal rather than political ones, who possessed the lawsuit information and would like to see him brought him down. As in a detective novel, there’s probably a plethora of possibilities there; a powerful and successful man is likely to make quite a few enemies.
Of course, Politico itself is well aware of its sources, and probably its sources’ motivations, too. But so far Politico isn’t spilling the beans, which puts it in an interesting position. As Andrew McCarthy writes:
[In subsequent articles,] Politico has reported [on allegations] that Perry may be the source and that Romney may be the source. Yet, Politico knows precisely whether the Perry campaign or the Romney campaign (or both . . . or neither) is the source…
In sum, Politico is publishing at least some things it knows to be misleading or untrue, and framing as a great mystery something to which it knows the answer. That can only be because Politico finds the specter of the Republican circular firing squad more appealing than the prospect of informing readers of the accurate version of events.
One possible source that’s hardly been pointed to is Obama or someone in his camp. But why would Obama bother at this point? In fact, Cain might be a weaker opponent than some of the others, and Obama might even welcome a Cain candidacy.
Then again, perhaps Obama fears it for special reasons of his own. If so, it could be the result of what I’d call the Bobby Rush phenomenon. You may recall that Rush was Obama’s opponent in the 2000 Democratic Congressional primary, and the only person in political life who has (so far) ever gotten the better of Obama.
Rush is a black man of roughly the same age as Cain, although the former is an extreme liberal and the latter a conservative. This is what Rush did to Obama back then:
Running in 1996 from the South Side, Obama won a seat in the Illinois State Senate, but three years later, when he tried to take on Bobby Rush, a four-term Democratic incumbent in the House of Representatives, Obama got a lesson in Chicago politics…
Rush did not hesitate to mock Obama as inauthentic””and, by inference, insufficiently black. “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool,” Rush told the Chicago Reader during the campaign. “Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.” State Senator Donne Trotter, who was also vying for Rush’s seat, told the same reporter that “Barack is viewed in part to be the white man in blackface in our community. You have only to look at his supporters. Who pushed him to get where he is so fast? It’s these individuals in Hyde Park, who don’t always have the best interest of the community in mind.” Rush’s tactics were brutal, and they were effective: Obama lost the primary by thirty points.
The experience unquestionably made a deep impression on Obama. That’s not just my guess, either; take his word for it:
“I was completely mortified and humiliated,” Obama told [David Remnick] while he was still only considering a Presidential run. “The biggest problem in politics is the fear of loss. It’s a very public thing, which most people don’t have to go through.
Not the sort of thing a person would forget, or want to repeat.
Although Obama also had an older black opponent in Alan Keyes in his Senate race of 2004, Keyes did not occupy the same “authentically black” position as either Rush or Cain could be said to. Keyes is an intellectual like Obama, hardly a man of the people, and without much political following at all. In fact, Keyes was drafted into the race as a last-minute replacement (with less than three months to go until the election) for the disgraced Jack Ryan, who was forced to quit after salacious allegations by his wife during their divorce and child custody hearings were released to the public when those records were unsealed against the will of both parties.
Obama has also been the beneficiary of other scandals felling opponents at opportune times, based on leaks to the press about legal proceedings that made them look bad. Just ask Blair Hull. And of course there’s the Alice Palmer incident, which I never tire of mentioning, in which Obama used every legal trick in the book to eliminate his mentor Alice Palmer, an older and popular black politician who probably would have defeated him in the primaries for his very first office (state senator) had he not gotten her knocked off the ballot due to irregularities in her candidacy petition.
It wasn’t just Palmer, either [emphasis mine]:
There [Obama’s people] began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city’s South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama’s four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.
A close examination of Obama’s first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.
Right from the start, Obama seemed especially wary of competition, particularly from older black candidates who probably would be seen as more “authentically black” than he. Cain fits that description, too despite the efforts of the left to discredit him as a buffoon and/or an Uncle Tom.
Cain may indeeed be a weak candidate in many ways (lack of political experience, changing his mind on abortion), and he’s not doing so well against Obama in the polls. But nevertheless he just may be the potential opponent who frightens Obama the most.
A Cain candidacy would open Obama up to the sort of criticism no white candidate could ever mount without the fear of at least being accused of racism. Obama’s blackness, and opponents’ fear of the racist charge, has had most of his rivals treating Obama with kid gloves. With Cain—as with Bobby Rush before him—the gloves would be off, and Obama knows it.
Running against a black candidate also has the potential to split the the black vote, the group that has remained most steadfastly and valiantly behind Obama. If he can’t count on them he loses a great deal, and no other Republican candidate but Cain presents this threat.
[NOTE: Obama’s campaign manager in the fight against Bobby Rush had this interesting obvervation on the repercussions of that defeat [emphasis mine]:
…[U]ltimately, if it hadn’t been for that race, there would be no Barack Obama. That was boot camp. That’s what got him ready to do what he had to do.”.
We don’t know exactly what that thing he had to do was. But we do know the Rush experience was exceedingly formative.]
“But as the president’s reelection team begins in earnest to attack Mitt Romney, Obama faces one of the most difficult tests of his political career: to tear down Romney without getting a single smudge of dirt on his own shirtfront – a trick he has performed deftly in previous races.”
â—¼ HillaryIs44 has a good post on the Obama-lovin’ media and how it covers for Obama’s campaign dirty tricks. – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
â—¼ The Innocent Charles Manson – Hillaryis44
In few words Smith acknowledges that Obama has always run on the politics of personal destruction but if anyone questioned Obama’s character Smith and the JournoListers closed ranks and protected Obama.
The JournoListers knew that there was a concerted effort to protect Obama among fellow JournoListers and derail any discussion about Obama ties to Jeremiah Wright because they were reading the emails sent to them but somehow we are supposed to believe that Barack Obama is a genius at murder without high laundry bills….
Ben Smith knows that the politics of personal destruction will once again be the Barack Obama strategy in 2012. The JournoListers are already in amazement mode as they watch Obama pour mud yet the crease on his pants remains sharp and the shirts stay bright white spotless.
â—¼ Barack Obama’s campaign style: Go negative, stay clean – Ben Smith/Politico
If the catchphrase weren’t already taken, you could call Barack Obama’s signature style of negative politics “leading from behind.”
I think the answer lies therein.
A very shrewd analysis, both on the personal/psychological level and the political level. I was wondering what Obama had to fear from a Cain candidacy — he seems exactly the one the dems would fear LEAST — but you’ve answered my question. Cain could say things about Obama that nobody else could say. He could dig up and reveal what nobody else would dare to expose about Obama
And Cain could use his position to critique even if he wasn’t at the top of the ticket. Indeed, it might be better still if Cain was in the VP slot.
Vanderleun — yes, what a chilling insight. Even though Cain’s inexperience was going to eliminate him from the presidential nomination, he had to be smeared because he is very likely contender for VP — and it’s the VP candidate who’s the attack dog.
DEFINITELY Obama. Knocking Cain out now allows Obama to twist the narrative to say, “See! I told you those Republicans hated Blacks! Republicans are Racists!” and thus Obama gets all the Black vote. It would be different if Cain makes it to a head to head contest with Obama…for the very reasons you point out.
Now, some latest potentially credible allegations:
http://tinyurl.com/ml3qm5
Not only CAN Herman Cain say things about Obama that no one else can say, he has shown that he WILL say them. He has already thrown down the gauntlet of Obama not really sharing in the American black experience.
Furthermore, for as difficult as politics is, business at Cain’s level is no afternoon in the sandbox. The difference between Cain and Obama is that Obama argues rhetorically and in theory; it sounds nice but it’s mostly untested (or formerly failed) platitudes which only survivie due to a sycophantic press. Cain argues from the point of practical experience and getting things done. I think that he has the potential to draw an Obama-Cain debate off of the playing field with which Obama is so intimately familiar and to force Obama to argue on Cain’s turf.
The very survival of the Democratic party depends on the monolithic black vote. If Herman Cain can bring half of the black vote to the Republican party, big city Democrats will be swept out of office like a tidal wave. That’s what they are afraid of.
jms,
Half of the black vote? I think (pure speculation on my part) that those results can be achieved with much less than the 1/2 the black vote.
More importantly, any %-age of the black vote which votes not Democratic is the first crack in the wall; that, IMO, is more important in the long term than any other consideration. Suddenly a good portion of the U.S. population will have the opportunity to realize that their traditional party regulars have been selling them a bill-of-goods.
Another possibility: Democratic Party supporters have tried to take Cain down. Cain poses a threat to Pres. Obama, yet Cain poses a long term threat to the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on the black vote. The Democratic Party has more to lose than does Pres. Obama.
also, as we saw re Journolist plotting: the Dem Party supporters might be free agent leftists who instinctively understand the long term threat which Herman Cain represents. As we saw with Journolist: activists do not have to be acting at the behest of secretive big shot party organizers. They can be free agents who view “Progressivism” as a big cause in their life; as a source of their own virtue.
I am one of the likely few who saw Cain-Gingrich on C-span tonight. They make one heck of a duo.
>>The very survival of the Democratic party depends on the monolithic black vote.<<
A truer statement has never been made.
I've said to anyone who will listen that if Obama had won "only" 65% of the black vote in 2008 instead of the 97% that he got, then McCain would have won the popular vote.
In 2012, if Cain wins 1/3 of the black vote as he claims he can get, and everybody else votes like they did in 2008, then Obama has a serious problem.
It makes perfect sense that Obama would want to sabotage Cain because Obama does not want to face Cain in a general election.
Cain has never changed his mind on abortion!!
Just for the record he has given near a million dollars of his own money for/to pro-life causes.
Cain v Obama debate = Man v boy; you could probably watch Obama shrink in his presence. Obama does not do well in the face of authenticity.
I think Cain will make a much better president than Romney- we need a president, not a manger. A man of principled views, not a pool shark that can bank the cue off 3 rails to sink the 8, like Romney. I have seen lots of Cain and believe he’s the man. Like W with Cheney, a Cain-Gingrich ticket gives insider savvy to principle, Newt has the patina of well-burnished experience, and they could be a mighty dynamic duo to start effecting the change America needs to desperately emerge from its progressive long march. None of the others, however paired, offer that same productive promise for the Nation against what has become the National enemy within…the Federal Government as presently constituted in the WH, Cabinet, Senate, much of the Judiciary, and DNC.
Some will say, principles are over-rated in sausage-making. I don’t want Boehner-Reid-Obama wurst. It’s a lousy recipe that always cooks up Bad.
IMO Cain is the most serious threat to Obama and has been since he first announced his candidacy. Cain is the polar opposite of Obama in every way. Cain is down to earth. Obama has his pointy head in the sky. Cain understands business and economics down where the rubber meets the road. Obama needs the teleprompter to remind him to mention he will focus like a laser beam on jobs, jobs, jobs. In a debate Cain would the headlights and BHO would be the deer. This is why BHO fears Cain. Cain will not hesitate to tell it like it is.
And of all the candidates for the republican nomination, Cain comes across as the most authentic on a personal level. Cain is the one most capable of making a direct connection with individual voter. The fact that he is not a professional politician is one of his greatest assets. He’s out there being Herman Cain. How refreshing!
“The very survival of the Democratic party depends on the monolithic black vote.”
If Cain can win the nomination and the general election; and then prove to be a successful leader, this will seriously threaten the future of the democratic party. (That’s why they are so desperate to smear Cain.)
“If Herman Cain can bring half of the black vote to the Republican party, big city Democrats will be swept out of office like a tidal wave. That’s what they are afraid of.”
😉 I would gladly settle for 10% voting for Cain and another 10% undecided and staying home which would be a game changer and doom BHO to one term.
The promise of Cain, for me, is not a miracle save of the current United States. Economic adjustment (which will be called collapse) is inevitable.
Cain offers at minimum:
a) a lot of inspiring rhetoric for hard-working individualists.
b) an awesome mindfnck for Progs and lefties.
c) a charismatic leader who might not turn the post-collapse States into an old-school dictatorship.
I don’t expect the black vote to change much this time around. But Cain in the bully pulpit for a time will begin the fracturing of the Gramscian edifice.
The Progs are trying to paint Cain’s candidacy as a lever to higher speaking fees. He’s not a serious candidate to them. But they don’t eat at Burger King. Joe Public is in a different clique.
Yes, Occam’s Razor says that Obama is behind the attacks on Cain.
Anyone who has read what I think of BO knows that I certainly wouldn’t put it past him to be behind the attacks on Cain. However I think there is something broader going on. Dems and libs believe they own all identity groups – blacks, women, Hispanics, gays – and any member of one of those groups that doesn’t stay on the plantation (deliberate metaphor though mixed in the case of non-blacks) has to be destroyed. That was absolutely a key motivation for the astonishing vitriol directed at Sarah Palin, and potential VP or future POTUS candidate Rubio is already starting to get some of it.
Savvy Americans instinctively know that unsavvy Americans voted for Obama because pop culture media convinced them the need to prove they’re not racist. Herman Cain is the natural antidote to this issue. And it’s a front and center major issue for national politics in the way it has cloaked progressive/commies in downtrodden camouflage.
Point very well made. One of your best, neo.
Neo,
I hope you aren’t Cained out. See this interesting take from David Brooks.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/05/david-brooks-cain-nothing-more-than-an-entertaining-very-likable-tv-show/
David Brooks says:
Oops. I didn’t do end blockquote after the first paragraph. sorry
Neo, you hit the nail on the head of the thing that has bothered me most: Politico’s playing around. It reminds me of a high school drama queen who has the dirt on someone and drops hints in every direction, just to prolong the agony.
Interesting look at the issue by Ann Althouse
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-publish-story-then-when-you-couldnt.html
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/11/note-to-cain-accuser-saying-very.html
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/11/woman-said-to-have-felt-hostility-at.html
Seems Ann has the most clarity of all the bloggers I’m reading. Bill Kristol is just about unreadable anymore.
It does not matter who the source is, as no one who is looking to use the point as a fulcrum cares if its valid or not valid. from mike lupica, stanley crouch, richard cohen, tantaros…
mike lupica’s hatchet job is EXTREME in its piss and vinegar and innuendo. personally at what point is what they write actionable? As we have lupica writing as if the tea party existed before Obama was even elected!
Herman Cain’s self-made mess: He allowed an old sex scandal to resurface by mishandling the media
Says Andrea Tantaros..
NEVER ONCE musing that a press that says what it wants without any regard for any validity, and who has it out for people along party lines, can be handled at all by someone who is their target.
with her the scandal is not the scandal its even bigger than that…
One of Cain’s accusers said Wednesday night that she will not come forward with her story. That’s pressure off Cain, but expect a drumbeat of new details until he gives a definitive version of events – and gets back to campaigning.
Does it matter what “definitive” version is given? the feminists never believe that its not the mans fault, even if the evidence exonerates them fully.. and do not pronounce guilty if the evidence is inescapable. (heads i win tails you lose politics)
whatever version he puts out can only be compared in hearsay, and as a good feminist, they are accepting womens hearsay as evidential. they do that in court too, along with hearsay from friends being allowed as witness information AS IF they were present. (regardless of ones incredulity or disbelief, this IS how it is)
Witnesses who do not show their faces, make unprovable allegations, and so on and so forth, are believed with a higher level than others and so trump all others in 1 to 1.
[the ONLY defense is to stay away from them, as there is no way to identify the nut job from the reasonable. its like looking for landmines with a hammer]
After all, a properly managed sex scandal will go away. Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones – a state employee when he was the governor of Arkansas – $850,000 to settle sexual harassment charges. The mainstream media told us it was a personal matter, a distraction that we should ignore.
and her example is a person the press loves for his communism.. for his going to soviet Russia as an exchange student rather than go to Vietnam… for his soviet nickname…
All these articles do their job by pretending an equality that is presumed but does not exist, and so they can be faulted for not behaving the same… (when if they did it would be worse)
meanwhile..
we are on the eve of nasty…
and nothing at all has happened to change the course of things in any meaningful way, and people are only barely waking up before the door is closed…
the OWS has devolved to a matriarchy with the women in their tents with no protectors but their numbers, the men not their providers and protectors and so their predators… and so they in microcosm have EXACTLY the world of the noble savage they are fighting for but are too short sighted to see it.
the very fact that without modern capitalist individualist society… women evolved differently as they were always INSIDE apart from the world…
either they were inside the family, which they shared a common settlements society inside apart from the world.
or, if somewhat matriarchy… they lived inside a hostile area inside a even more hostile area…
the ONLY time in human history it was otherwise was here in the US and western culture AFTER we stopped wandering built society had the magna carter and the US constitution and so on…
you see what kept such a society free wasnt the paper, wasnt the rules, laws or games.
it was the fact that the individuals out there were free AND capable, and were raised to be such by their FAMILIES (ie the moms who didnt think they existed for themselves as the end of 15 billion years of evolutionary work).
there was no way to control or to force them because they were independent and would self organize into a functional thing that would be a power to oppose…
today? they are legends in their mind as they have a high score in zelda, but they cant even organize a basic living area without devolving into a nomadic predatory thing..
the world they are making will be like that…
they cant make better..
they are crippled
(by their mothers mostly – dads were not there and havs not been for 40 years)
the odd thing is what they hold in their mind as the reality that will happen upon the achievement of workers paradise and the absolute power of their side..
does mike lupica think that with socialism there will be economy and anything at all like opinion press?
they all think that their loyalty will be rewarded with a place etched out for them in the plan that they will enjoy some greater form of what they have.
in such a society the state has absolutely NO USE for politically manipulative writers…
none whatsoever.. they only have use for writers who can pass on the party line in artful form, and who have no celebrity or public knowing as that is a form of power to act independently and not be accessible for punishment for a while
does he think that once things change he will be allowed to continue to write in any vein like he does now? same for Stanly crouch… or how about the feminist leaders who think that soviets promised them parity. when they have no place in that kind of state other than a show place token thing… they are confused that they have less of a place at the table with obama than before!!! but they have yet to believe that they, the users have been used by higher users…
“The woman, who will be the first to go public on Monday, sought Cain’s help with an employment issue and was allegedly sexually harassed by him. Allred and her client will discuss, in detail, what she alleges occurred with Cain.”
Gloria! Gloria! Gloria!
Come on people ,don’t believe everything that anyone says in government.Obama would eliminate any person in his way,one way or the other. You should all know that his administration is no different then the Al Capone mob. They have a motto “why take the chance”.Democrats are trying to say that no canidate has presidential experience. What the hell did Obama have?This next election will be a slaughter to remember. He is finished.They know it,Iknow it, the republicans know it, and everyone else is praying for it.