Hillary campaign references "Hussein"

In a rapid response blog post this morning, Hillary's campaign refers to Barack Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, as "BHO" in a transcript of an Obama appearance on CNN that is rendered as follows:

ROBERTS: Senator, she suggests that you're falling short here by mandating coverage for children but not mandating it for their parents. What do you say?

BHO: …[I] mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating that everybody buy a house. the reason they don't have a house is they don't have the money.

However, the official CNN transcript labels him as "Obama," not "BHO," and never refers to his middle name. A Google search of the Fact Hub blog shows one other post referring to Obama as "BHO" in a transcript.

The problem, of course, is that people have used Obama's middle name to promote the myth that he is a Muslim. As a result, even if their intent is benign, it's a bit disconcerting that Clinton's people are calling him "BHO."

Comments

[Algernon]

Hey, maybe they just thought "BO" was too unflattering...

I don't know whether the Obama campaign has done so, but plenty of others use HRC in print.

Reducing your opponent to initials, regardless of what they are, is a little petty, but compared to other slights (real or imagined), this doesn't strike me as very significant.

I don't know whether the Obama campaign has done so, but plenty of others use HRC in print.

Reducing your opponent to initials, regardless of what they are, is a little petty, but compared to other slights (real or imagined), this doesn't strike me as very significant.

[Jinchi]

Not just that he's a Muslim. But that he's suspiciously close to having the same name as one of our recent adversaries.

I don't think it would play as well if his name was Barack Mohammed.

As for the comparison with HRC, I think the point was that the Clinton team explicitly changed the cited text from "OBAMA" to "BHO". (Although, they've now changed it back).