Rep. John Conyers, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, levied harsh words for Bill Clinton, saying the former president "can't contain himself" on the campaign trail.
"He acts like this is an entitlement," said the Michigan Democrat. "How could anyone be challenging him and his wife?" It is hard for us to remember that that was exactly the age he was when he ran for president. He was 46, the same age [as Obama]. And he was considered an upstart."
Conyers has spent much of the past week campaigning for Obama, and he called the primary battle one of the most pitched and emotional he'd ever seen. In a phone interview with the Huffington Post, he dismissed the notion -- raised in last Thursday's CNN Democratic debate -- that either of the candidates would be willing to server as the other's vice president.
"I started off thinking this is the way we would resolve it," the congressman said. "But I think they both generally see themselves as presidential material and not people working underneath or subservient to the other. You know the vice president thing as Clinton and Gore taught us doesn't always work out too well."
As 22 states go to vote in a slate of primaries on Tuesday, Conyers declined to offer predictions. But he did give a take on a hypothetical general election match up with Sen. John McCain. Terrorism and fear baiting, he said, are sure to become electoral issues once the primaries are over. As such, both Clinton and Obama had to stress their strengths in this regard.
"More than one person has said, 'You know John, I don't think we should have a woman president.' The notion being from this male chauvinist view that woman couldn't handle world emergencies and enemy attacks on the country and quick decisions about whether we take military action or not. And I think that the Clinton camp is protecting her against this sort of thing by deliberately putting greater and greater emphasis on it. And besides if you are running against McCain you're going to have to come off as strong, because that's going to be a given issue... The whole idea is that she is strong on it. And I think he has got to very quickly develop and make it clear to people that [Obama] can understand this and going to be able to deal with this satisfactorily."
Circling back to an earlier topic, Conyers predicted that, as heated as the primary had become, the Democratic Party would emerge united. No matter the candidate, he said, there would not be any fissures.
"It doesn't take a political scholar to figure out that no matter who wins they are going to need to take the other party with them," the Congressman said. "That is so obvious, that you are amazed that it even got that much out of hand."