Dem Distress

What do George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have in common? Each had virtually no relevant experience before becoming president. And what do you suppose Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have in common -- besides being perfidious, nefarious, malignant, noxious, ignominious reprobates? They both came to Washington with more experience than anybody EVER!!! Hillary Clinton keeps hammering away about her abundance of experience, comparing herself to -- say, WHAT??? -- McCain!!! If that's the field she wants to play on, then McCain wins hands down. She's practically giving McCain the election. Apparently, she believes experience is what we want. So, if that is the case, then she should just hand the White House over to McCain right now and put us out of our primary misery.

Oops! Not an option. Obama is ahead on all counts. She can't win. If she really cared about the party and the country, she would call a truce and urge us all to work together to get Obama elected. She then could write her ticket to just about any position after that and win the gratitude and affection of the whole party.

The Repugs couldn't have created a better 30 second spot for McCain to run with than the one Hillary gave them -- she and McCain have experience and Obama has a speech? Was she kidding? That was it! That crossed the line for me. That sent me right into orbit. If myopia were politically terminal, Hillary now would be working on a brand new gig. What was she thinking? She opened a vitriolic can of worms and the rest of us are going to have to pay for it with another batty old white man in the White House. What both she and Obama need to do is stay on the offensive against McCain, not each other, so we can see who has the best strategy to beat McCain and the rest of the Repugs who want to make us cross that bridge to the 13th century.

Which brings me to judgment. How is emulating the Karl Rove divide-and-conquer strategy of political warfare going to do anything to benefit the Democrats, or for that matter, the country? Be afraid, be afraid is their mantra, not ours! She is behaving as though she would rather have McCain in the White House than Obama. That is a fundamentally flawed strategy. Why would she give the enemy the weapons with which to fight her own party? Her decision to carry the water on health care reform worked out so well, we lost the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. She has been in the Senate two years longer than Obama. She has held elective office six years less than Obama. If her experience as First Lady really is that relevant, let's urge McCain to choose the lovely Laura Bush as his running mate. My pal, Georgia, has been married to a physician for 36 years. That does not mean I would be willing to have her operate on me.

Clinton talks about the economy as if the war were a separate issue. Hello!!! The war is the core reason the economy is tanking. Of all the Senators who could have put the brakes on Bush's rush to war, Hillary alone had the name recognition and stature -- particularly if her self-assessment is to be believed -- to do so. Instead of reading the intelligence report, she cravenly hopped onto the pro-war bandwagon and helped usher us into this costly debacle. By the way, the six Senators who actually did read the report voted against authorizing the Shrub to go to war. Right now, the consensus of opinion seems to be that the cost of this war is heading towards $3 trillion...all down a rat hole. Last night I had dinner with two Marine Captains (three Iraq tours each) and one Marine Lieutenant about to leave for his third tour in Iraq. Each had multiple stories of breathtaking waste and incompetence in the execution of Bush's war on Iraq and countless violations of basic principles of our democracy. What are we doing there?????

Did you know that a staggering one in 150 children in this country is diagnosed with autism? The federal budget coughs up $108 million a year for autism research. That's FOUR hours in Iraq. As reported by Bob Herbert in the New York Times, according to testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, the money spent on one day of Bush's war could send an additional 58,000 children to Head Start for a year, could pay the annual salaries of 14,000 additional policemen, could make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students -- you know, all those kinds of expenditures that would improve our collective quality of life. Imagine where we may have been had Clinton's judgment been as good as Obama's and her ability to inspire as powerful as his.

Before Texas and Ohio, Hillary complained bitterly about a double standard among the media. Soft on Obama, hard on Hillary. I am so confused. In most cases where a candidate continues to lose -- she had lost 11 contests in a row at that time -- and remains behind after most of the states have voted, the media rightly favors the front runner. Hillary proceeded to get a hot spot on both Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show right before the March 5th primaries. Not bad. Now, Hillary booster, Geraldine Ferraro, gets to announce, not once but TWICE, to the world that Obama is where he is because he's Black? Excuse me??? Can we define racist? And Hillary's close advisor, Harold Wolfson, gets to accuse Obama of being another Ken Starr, the scourge of the Democratic Party? Hillary, where are you? Certainly not denouncing, renouncing or repudiating reprehensible behavior on your behalf. The media took hold of Samantha Power's decidedly bad form in calling Hillary a monster as if it were the worst thing that ever happened and the only thing happening that day. Obama instantly relieved Samantha Powers of her role in his campaign. Who would make the better leader, indeed?

Final thought for now -- if you think the radical religious right was in high dudgeon with Bill Clinton in the White House with something to do, how happy do you think they will be about the prospect of having him in the White House with nothing to do? The crazies will come out of the woodwork to vote against Hillary. I know many of my friends are Hillary supporters but that McCain comparison did it for me with Hillary.

Comments

[SamThornton]

If, as First Lady, Sen. Clinton had personally supervised the place settings at state dinners rather than have one of her flunkies do it, I'd be perfectly content to admit she had White House experience. To be charitable, I suppose that might qualify as "management experience."

I firmly believe that Sen. Clinton knew which fork to use for the salad before she became First Lady, so that bit of experience -- while equally relevant -- isn't really White House experience.

Smiling winsomely and offering her hand to visiting firemen and other dignitaries, same thing.

Granted, Sen. Clinton was charged to put together a Health Care initiative while First Lady, but it turned out to be one of the most disastrous paragraphs of the Clinton legacy. Give her credit for ticking off nearly everyone involved. Experience, yes. A plus? You've got to be kidding. Larry, Mo, and Curly would have been more effective.

Don't get me wrong. Sen. Clinton is obviously an intelligent person who might well do as credible a job as anyone else. If experience is the metric, however, a fair-minded person would have to admit that, in this case, the absence of evidence is evidence.

[Idytme]

When people use Cheney and Rumsfeld as an indicator of experience vs wisdom, I agree with that argument except that it was the people with experience in government who controlled the government. So while we did not like their decisions, they were the puppet masters, who outmaneuvered everyone who did not have as much experience.
So America elected one idiot with no foreign policy experience who had to rely on advisers with a lot of governmental experience, are they willing to do that again? Don't they want the real person in charge of the government being the person they elected into office?
Obama is no idiot - but he is campaigning on many of the themes Bush did - bringing respectability to the Whitehouse, bringing change to Washington and having everyone "get along" (the last one is amazing when you look back on it). Bush had no problem campaigning one way and doing something else in office (against nation building).
I read that Obama is scheduled to go to Europe this summer - so he can actually say that he has been to the EU.
Since he has not even been a governor, Obama has less experience then Bush did, and while a lot of people want to use Cheney to spin this as a positive, I think a lot of Americans are going to think of Bush as a reality check. The inexperience is going to bite his campaign hard in the general election and it is wishful thinking to imagine otherwise.

[vbond]

Excellent... now send it to the superdelegates, who were given the power to vote their consciences for just this reason: to stop people like the sociopathic Clintons from destroying the Democratic Party.

[Rescisco]

A new poll shows that voters support the notion of a Democrat in the White House by 15%. Yet, when the names of Barack and Hillary are plugged in, the same poll shows McCain within the margin or error (e.g. Obama 47 McCain 44). What does this tell you? I hope something resembling calm and rational thought soon appears to offer a balance to the insanity that is taking place in the name of a presidential campaign. But as a realist, I expect the irrational hate and the division produced by this campaign to escalate to the point that McCain wins. Then hope will be dead, and all the "speeches" and all the "experience" in the world will not be able to revive it.

[Countess]

You make an excellent point about the economy and the war which Clinton refuses to talk about. Her support for this stupid war will cost over a trillion dollars and is bankrupting the nation and she is still defending her vote using Bush's ridiculous arguments. On this count alone she is unfit to be president and all her promises mean nothing without the money to pay for them.

[DoninJoisey]

You must be a sexist pig to write such a thing against Hillary - oh, wait, you're a woman....;-)


Very well done. The glib "35 years of experience" - is so patently absurd. The bolder the lie, the louder you have to procalim it....


What was it she said in the one debate defending her Iraq vote? Something about preventing Saddam from competing with Bin Laden? Was that a sane person talking? Was that from a Cheney speech? Does anybody really listen to her? I heard her say she'll fight to take government away from special interests!!! Really! I heard her say it! I guess that's after they finish funding her campaign....

[Chewelahboy]

The Clintons are obviously out to try to win no matter what the costs. Should they be rewarded by the Democratic Party, they will turn around and use different propaganda but the same strategy against McCain. Independents will determine the victor. I agree with you, I don't think that this is good for the Democratic Party. However, if the Democrats are going to reward Hillary for this poorly run, trashy campaign, it may be best for the country to have this continue.

I am an Independent voter. Early in this campaign I could have voted for Hillary. Given her obscene campaign, that's not going to happen. You are right about the very real danger in the Clinton strategy. Hillary could be the best thing to happen to the Republican Party in years. The Republicans have been saying as much for years. Now, perhaps it is easier to see why they are eager for Hillary to be the Democratic nominee.

Thankyou for the post. I too am disappointed in Hillary Clinton.

[MRINSPIRED]

Even now I still can't believe it. The Democratic party elders and superdelegates should grow some balls and do something about her before it's too late!

[S1m0n]

"Did you know that a staggering one in 150 children in this country is diagnosed with autism? The federal budget coughs up $108 million a year for autism research."

With some form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, actually. That could be severe autism plus an anxiety disorder and low IQ and one end of the spectrum, but could also be mild Asperger's (social deficits, etc) with an extremely high IQ.

However, a recent study determined that the rise in ASD diagnoses almost perfectly mirrors (and offsets) a decline in diagnoses of conditions which used to be called "retarded", etc.

[CraigWilloughby]

That does nothing to answer the fact that there are approximately 250,000 children in America diagnosed with an ASD. Sure, there are fewer diagnoses of mental retardation, but that explanation and decrease doesn't explain the astronomically high incidence of autism appearing today. McCain has at least acknowledged a problem, and so has Obama. Billary is just doing what our current not-so-White House is doing and ignoring the problem.

[Tejano1]

right on point. you capture the absolute disgust i now feel for the mcclinton campaign.

[dkm]

The comparison with Rummy and the Dick are really apropos. They both had more experience than Clinton will ever have and look what they gave us. If that is experience, then give me character every time. Notice that even Clinton doesn't mention character.

[ulmew]

I wish people would stop praising Obama for firing Samantha Power. I agree with everything else you said, but really.

1. He didn't fire her, she resigned. Whether he asked for her resignation or not is unclear. My sincere hope is that he DID NOT.
2. Her comments were not all that bad; they were simply magnified by a slow news day and a media eager to look like it isn't biased against Hillary. I personally would rather have a President who stands by his advisers in the face of a little bad press, which was all it was. A President who would go as far as to refuse her resignation over something this absurd. This incident marks one of the very few moments in which Obama has disappointed me, in contrast to the vast array of Clinton's (both Hillary and Bill) constantly disappointing actions.

[happytrails]

Hillary Clinton would NOT BE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT if she hadn't married Bubba. It's obvious but we must keep pounding this home. HILLARY CLINTON has accomplished very little on her own. Look at her record as a Senator--PLEASE!

[boonagain]

Me, too.

That was the end for me.