On the campaign I worked on last year, something very similar happened to us. Someone put out a pretty nasty flier in the final days of the campaign, but we had nothing to do with it. We got blamed for it, the local papers and the opposition got worked up into a self-righteous lather about it - but we didn’t do it.
It helped put the competition over the top. Lots of people told me that’s why they voted for the other guy. (Who probably would have won anyway, but you never know.)
The young staffers on campaigns always have friends on the other campaigns. They play jokes, they taunt each other mercilessly. From what I read, a Clinton staffer sent that picture to an Obama staffer saying “imagine what they’d do to Hillary with a picture like this” - and then someone forwarded it to Drudge. I doubt very, very much the Clinton people (and by that, I mean senior staff) had anything to do with it.
The politics of umbrage always takes precedence over the truth, it seems. You might want to remember that.
Who gives a damn? It’s gutter politics.
It matters a lot to the people it’s pinned on.
I agree - it seems like both campaigns have taken the “don’t get Swiftboated” wisdom to ludicrous extremes. Apologies to Tina Fey, but umbrage is the new black.
That having been said, the way Maggie Williams threw up her hands and said “why-ever would the Obama campaign be concerned about this?” was pretty awesomely disingenuous in and of itself.