NEW HAMPSHIRE – New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s strategy to paint fellow Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a sitting duck for assassins appears to have resonated with New Hampshire voters.
At a campaign rally on Monday, the day before Tuesday’s primary, a Clinton supporter said this in reference to Obama: “Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually” passed the civil rights legislation.
After the speech, the Clinton campaign quickly ran last-minute advertisements featuring footage from Abraham Zapruder’s famous film of Kennedy getting his head split open by an assassin’s bullet. The 8-mm color home movie was immortalized in Oliver Stone’s classic film JFK, in which Kevin Costner proved a government conspiracy by repeatedly showing the clip and muttering the words, “Back, and to the left.”
Clinton’s ad juxtaposes the Zapruder film with a picture of Obama riding in an open-air convertible, believed to be somewhere in southern California. A voiceover says: “Do you want your Democratic nominee to be shot dead? Vote for Hillary, the candidate who will live.”
Exit polls showed the ad helped propel Clinton to her stunning upset of Obama on Tuesday.
John Wellsby, an average middle-class voter in New Hampshire, said the ad “struck at the heart of Obama—literally.”
“I voted for Hillary because I didn’t want to wake up one morning and find that Obama has been assassinated,” Wellsby said. “We need a leader who can stay alive for four years.”
The ad may have been particularly effective given the assassination in Pakistan last month of Benazir Bhutto, an opposition leader who fought for democratic changes in the nuclear-armed South Asian nation. In addition, many blacks have memories of their ancestors getting lynched, a fear Clinton was happy to capitalize on.
“We showed today that voters want a candidate who won’t get murdered,” Clinton told cheering supporters. “You guys want another Lyndon Johnson!”
Clinton has portrayed herself as following in Johnson’s footsteps, believing that voters are desperately looking for a candidate who rose to the presidency after an assassination, covered it up with a bogus investigation, drummed up fears of nuclear war to win an election in 1964, was hostile to the media and became so unpopular that he didn’t run for re-election in 1968.
“Our message will resonate throughout the nation,” Clinton said in her victory speech. “Barack will die—Vote for me! I love you New Hampshire!”
