Todd Beeton looks at all the Republican praise for Hillary Clinton’s debate performance last night and asks, “Is Clinton proving that she CAN run a primary and general election campaign all at once? It’s starting to look like it.”
Yeah, maybe so. But only if the primary voters are suckers. Hillary thrilled conservatives by saying that she would not meet with foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then she called Barack Obama ‘irresponsible and naive’ for suggesting that he might be willing to meet with them. Let me be blunt. Screw Hillary Clinton and her right-wing frames.
I don’t advocate meeting controversial and even adversarial foreign leaders for the hell of it or if nothing productive can be announced afterwards. But don’t try to score political points by being close-minded. American presidents met with Soviet premiers throughout the Cold War. It was a good thing. Nixon went to China.
Hillary Clinton thinks she is clever. She actually said that she wouldn’t meet with these leaders until after ‘lower-level diplomatic contacts [were] conducted’. What? Does she think Obama would just fly to Havana without any prep-work from the State Department? I am sick of this idiotic level of debate.
Conservatives respond to this kind of empty rhetoric. Progressives should be repulsed by it.
Please be more respectful to our next President, Booman.
Of course Hillary is going to the right–and smearing Senator Obama in the process. Doesn’t anybody remember Bill Clinton plucking Sister Souljah from obscurity, shaking her by the scruff of the neck, and then tossing her back into obscurity–all to prove how tough he was and that his fellow Bubbas in the South could trust him? “America’s first black President” my ass.
But the fix is in, apparently–Clinton has tons of cash and is in the lead just about everywhere. Her buddy (and one of her financial supporters) Rupert Murdoch is going to smooth things over at Fox News. And, in lesser news, your amigo Markos Moulitsas appears to have had one of his trademark changes of heart, and is now praising Hillary Clinton’s…cleavage. Well, it’s a start. Gotta focus on the “important shit”.
And Clinton has dispatched her blogger boy, Peter Daou, to DailyKos not once but twice to remind the “Kossacks” how she’s supporting them against the smears of Bill O’Reilly.
Gee, I wonder who’s going to get a standing ovation at YearlyKos? Hint: rhymes with “Binton”. Figure the rest out for yourself.
I’m still waiting for Hillary Clinton to renounce her support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. You think she’ll do that soon, or should I go to the movies and check back?
Hilary would really struggle with a general election, and after her YouTube/ CNN performance I think she would lose the debate in a general election.
Did you look at her face when Obama was talking? The camera angle would shoe Obama talking with Hilary’s face in the background, and almost every question he answered she showed a very sour face. I am not sure if it was contempt, anger, or fear that he would say something devastating, but it was not a “respectful listening face.” Hilary is going to have some serious trouble in a one on one debate if she keeps making faces like that.
Of course I think she does have reasons to be afraid. The fix is no longer in on Cash, and much of her poll numbers reflect early name recognition and hide some very high negatives. Hilary is at her ceiling already the other candidates have room to grow. As people think more about the election that early lead will shrink. This time four years ago it was Lieberman who could lay claim to the mantle of front runner.
hey- why not just come out and say that you support obama and not clinton. Make that clear BEFORE you decide to rant against her.
Given what is going on in the Congress these days, it might be helpful for you to focus on the goddamned lies that they bastards are spewing forth.
Booman has said many times that he does not favor a Clinton nomination, but that does not mean he is an Obama supporter. If anything I think he secretly wishes Dodd or Gravel would win.
Me I strongly oppose a Clinton nomination, I think her nomination would be a sign of sever weakness in our democratic institutions. America cannot afford 3 decades of Bush-Clinton.
Thanks for saying that, and for Booman for saying:
Conservatives respond to this kind of empty rhetoric. Progressives should be repulsed by it.
When I saw her dog Obama for that, it sounded like mommy smacking junior. Why he didn’t rise like a grown man and smack her ass back, using Boxer or (yuck!) Kissinger as models makes me wonder once more where his brain cells are at. He wants to be president?
Also: Hillary says that she is a progressive? Lord love a duck, she’s a progressive???
That’s like saying Ron Paul is a liberal Republican.
It’s not only Repubs, but Dems who have got to stop lying.
I’d like to see Gravel elected as president of…I don’t know…maybe…the Curmudgeon Club? Nah. The Isle of Man? I dunno. Something. He deserves to run something. But not anything in the United States.
We are looking for a treasurer, though.
I dunno about Mike Gravel. Gotta love a guy who wore Doc Martens and khakis to a presidential debate. Think he’d drive the presidential pickup truck instead of the presidential limousine?
Frankly, I suspect that awareness of this is somewhat limited. After all, Lindsay is back in the news.
say “Hillary” is “Duff”…her new album is totally awesome, by the way.
Booman…
Not ALL stances taken by these people are necessarily entirely politically motivated. To think so is to essentially give up all hope of finding a shred of honesty in a national politician.
Which I must admit is a tempting position. But not one that I am personally willing to occupy at the moment.
I believe that both Obama and Clinton were being honest here.
Clinton has been through COUNTLESS international wringers, and she knows the way it the game been played.
Obama has not.
Does he have a better approach?
To my mind…a mind that, just like Mr. Obama’s, has not been privy to several thousand secret CIA briefings or sat down to dinner with countless “experts” in the field of international skullduggery…yes, he does.
Maybe it is time for a new pardigm in these matters.
Or…maybe Mr. Obama is setting himself up for a thorough whuppin’ at the hands of some well practiced woof ticket sellers.
Time will tell.
But it is NOT all about politics here. I don’t believe so, anyway. It is more about a confrontation between the new and the old. Sometimes…VERY rarely…the new steps right in and dominates. But most often it needs to travel a learning curve and can gain great benefit from some extensive schooling vis-à-vis the vets. You follow baseball…you know the drill.
Well…as above, so below.
This is what I think is going to happen.
I think that Clinton will be nominated. And choose yuoug Obama as her running mate. I hope that she will, anyway, and I hope that he will accept. And they will win. Big time. Bringing a Dem majority along with them. And then we will have 16 years of Dem rule.
Can you say “FDR”?
Public works, an economic recovery, a climb back to being a world power that actually fights for something real?
Dream on, you might say?
Could be.
Sue me.
But remember…my mama’s name was NOT Pollyanna.
And she didn’t raise no fools, either.
Later…
AG
Sorry, Arthur, but that sounds like a character from some cheesy B-flick:
“Young Obama! You must avenge my death!”
“I will, O Master! The evil monks of the Hil-Lar’i Temple will pay!”
You should stop watching those flicks, BC.
MEDIASTRIKE!!! and all that, don’cha know.
They will soften your brain. And you won’t be able to be a curmudgeon anymore. THEN what fun wouild you have?
Hillary Clinton is 15 years Obama’s senior. FOR those 15 years she has been in the middle of the middle of it all. When she was dealing with international affairs of state and hhelpinng to make decisions that affected the lives of billions as Bill Clinton’s REAL chief of staff, Barack Obama was a freshman Illinois State Senator, voting on extra crossing guards for busy intersections during schooldays and hog jowl futures credits for downstate farmers.
So in politician years her 15 years of seniority is more like 50.
Young Obama indeed.
If he is as smart as he seems, he will reealiize that she just schooled him in that debate with her take on meeting hostile foreign leaders.
No matter HOW the spin comes off.
AG
I liked Obama’s answer on that one. Basically, both Obama and Clinton answered the question affirmatively – yes, they WOULD meet with foreign leaders that Bush currently shuns – but the way they answered the question also gave a suggestion of their style.
Hillary is still, as Booman points out, standing in the right-wing frames, treating Chavez and Castro and Ahmadinejad, etc. as if they or the countries they represent were in fact actually legitimate threats to the US, or “rogue states” — which really, none of them are. (Granted, they’re not necessarily friendly to the US right now, but that has more to do with attitudes on Bush’s part and the way we have treated them in the past, I think, than actual circumstances.) So her approach is guarded, wary — as if there’s a real reason to be hesitant about talking to them, as if we can only afford to do so under particular circumstances, so they realize what a Big Frickin’ Deal it is that we finally are willing to be diplomatic. It comes across as more of the same US arrogance… even though she is saying that yes, she would be more reasonable about it than Bush as been (which wouldn’t be hard to do…).
Obama, however, simply said Yes, I would. Simple frank honesty, no sense of “But I have to be tough about it so they won’t underestimate me” — no sense of establishing who’s doing who a favor first. It’s almost as though he doesn’t see any big difference between meeting with Chavez as meeting with, oh, the prime minister of Romania or the Queen of Denmark. And there’s something very refreshing about that stance…
It’s more a difference of attitude up front than how either of them would go about it as President — I don’t think Obama would ignore the advice of the State Dept. or Hillary would be as belligerent as Bush in person. But in terms of undoing some of the damage that Bush has done to America’s image around the world, even among our allies, I think Obama’s openness is very promising.
Craig Crawford agrees with me.
What does CINDY Crawford think?
as i said over at skippy, this whole controversy seems more like a knee-jerk reaction by the establishment to make themselves still relevant in light of the undeniable success of the first youtube debate, which essentially cut out the middle man, ie, the pundits, the very people that are fueling this made-up fire.
i think what’s more interesting is that edwards got the highest marks for his discussion of universal health care, yet that’s not getting any play at all.