posted 10-14-2015 10:33 AM                  

Ron Fournier

October 13, 2015

Hil­lary Clin­ton won. She won be­cause she’s a strong de­bater. She won be­cause Bernie Sanders is not. She won be­cause the first Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial de­bate fo­cused on lib­er­al policies—and not her email scan­dal or char­ac­ter.

The em­battled front-run­ner won her­self a news cycle or two, be­cause she stretched the truth and played to a friendly audi­ence. It won’t al­ways be so.

It took more than an hour be­fore CNN’s An­der­son Cooper asked Clin­ton about the cov­ert email sys­tem she es­tab­lished as sec­ret­ary of State in de­fi­ance of fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions, sub­vert­ing the Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act, thwart­ing con­gres­sion­al over­sight, and jeop­ard­iz­ing U.S. secrets. And, even then, her chief rival offered Clin­ton cov­er.

“What I did was al­lowed by the State De­part­ment,” said the wo­man who headed the State De­part­ment, “but it wasn’t the best choice.” Clin­ton noted that the GOP-led Benghazi com­mit­tee—the pan­el that dis­covered her rogue email sys­tem—is on re­cord try­ing to un­der­mine her cred­ib­il­ity. GOP par­tis­ans were par­tis­an, and yet, she dra­mat­ic­ally de­clared, “I’m still stand­ing.”

The Demo­crat­ic crowd roared. “I think the sec­ret­ary is right,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Ver­mont, a pop­u­list threat­en­ing Clin­ton from the left. “The Amer­ic­an people are sick and tired of hear­ing about emails.”

Pro­fes­sion­al Demo­crats and the party’s strongest voters are cer­tainly tired of hear­ing about the email scan­dal, but it’s not go­ing to go away—not with the FBI in­vest­ig­at­ing wheth­er con­fid­en­tial in­form­a­tion was mis­handled un­der Clin­ton’s sys­tem, and not with in­de­pend­ent voters los­ing faith in Clin­ton’s word.

Char­ac­ter and judg­ment are gate­way polit­ic­al is­sues. An un­trust­worthy can­did­ate might check all your policy boxes, might tickle your ideo­lo­gic­al but­tons, and might even grind away long enough to get your vote—but you’re not go­ing to like it.

That is Clin­ton’s prob­lem. Like it was in 2008, her char­ac­ter is the is­sue that threatens to con­sume all oth­ers.

The email scan­dal re­calls ques­tions about Clin­ton’s in­teg­rity that go back to the Rose Law Firm/White­wa­ter and the White House Travel Of­fice. Flip-flop­ping on the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship and the Key­stone XL pipeline add weight to the ar­gu­ment made by Demo­crats and Re­pub­lic­ans alike that Clin­ton is a mal­le­able op­por­tun­ist.

There are many people, in­clud­ing me, who know a side of Clin­ton that is strong (2012: “What I Learned Cov­er­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton”) and com­pel­ling (2013: “Best Bet for a Third Clin­ton Term is If She Runs as the ‘Real Hil­lary’—warm, open, and hon­est”), which makes her ac­tions this year shame­fully in­ept (“Memo to Hil­lary: You’re Still The Prob­lem”).

On the day of the de­bate, two stor­ies un­der­scored Clin­ton’s vul­ner­ab­il­ity.

“A ‘Can­cer’ on the Clin­ton Can­did­acy” by Politico’s Glenn Thrush and An­nie Karni climbs in­side the Clin­ton cam­paign to de­scribe a para­noid can­did­ate with me­diocre polit­ic­al skills re­fus­ing ad­vice of staff to come clean on the email is­sue. “We need to throw the facts to the dogs, and let ‘em chew on it,” seni­or ad­visor John Podesta re­portedly told the can­did­ate. In the deeply re­por­ted story based on in­ter­views with 50 ad­visers, donors, Demo­crat­ic op­er­at­ives, and friends, Clin­ton’s team ap­pears to throw her un­der the bus.

That’s cer­tainly how Bill and Hil­lary Clin­ton in­ter­preted the story, ac­cord­ing to three people who talked to them today. “They’re pissed,” said one.

“How to Beat Hil­lary Clin­ton” by the New York­er’s Ry­an Lizza, fea­tured an Oc­to­ber 2007 memo by aides to then-Sen. Barack Obama sig­nal­ing their suc­cess­ful char­ac­ter at­tack against Clin­ton. She “can’t be trus­ted or be­lieved” … “She’s driv­en by polit­ic­al cal­cu­la­tion” … “She em­bod­ies trench war­fare vs. Re­pub­lic­ans … “She prides her­self on work­ing the sys­tem, not chan­ging it.”

While held in high fa­vor with Demo­crats and lead­ing the field in na­tion­al polls, Clin­ton is strug­gling to build en­thu­si­asm be­hind her nom­in­a­tion bid. On that nar­row cause, she may have helped her­self Tues­day night.

Crisp and firm, Clin­ton chal­lenged Sanders’s elect­ab­il­ity and found cov­er be­hind Pres­id­ent Obama when the sub­ject turned to her sup­port of the Ir­aq war. Not­ing that Obama bludgeoned her with the Ir­aq vote dur­ing their 2008 con­test, Clin­ton said, “He val­ued my judg­ment and I spent a lot of time with him in the Situ­ation Room go­ing over some very dif­fi­cult is­sues.”

One of those is­sues, she offered with con­fid­ent non­chal­ance, was killing Osama bin Laden.

In vir­tu­ally the next breath, Clin­ton pushed back against an­oth­er rival, former Mary­land Gov. Mar­tin O’Mal­ley, by not­ing dryly, “I was pleased when Gov­ernor O’Mal­ley en­dorsed me for pres­id­ent in 2008.”

She chal­lenged Sanders’s neg­at­ive state­ments about cap­it­al­ism and his em­brace of Den­mark-style so­cial­ism. Pledging to “save cap­it­al­ism from it­self,” Clin­ton said, “We are not Den­mark. I love Den­mark. We are the United States of Amer­ica.” In her bid to raise ques­tions about Sanders’s abil­ity to win a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, the is­sue was a lay­up.

Sanders faced cri­ti­cism from Clin­ton and O’Mal­ley for vot­ing to pro­tect gun man­u­fac­tur­ers, an is­sue at odds with a Demo­crat­ic base that is lurch­ing left­ward. When Cooper asked if Sanders is tough enough on guns, Clin­ton said, “No, not at all.”

Sanders and O’Mal­ley said Clin­ton isn’t tough enough on trade, not­ing that she only re­cently aban­doned her sup­port of the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship to curry fa­vor with the party’s uni­on friends. Was it a flip-flop? “I did say when I was sec­ret­ary of State three years ago that I hoped it would be the gold stand­ard,” Clin­ton said.

She was mis­quot­ing her­self, adding the “I hoped” caveat. Here’s what she ac­tu­ally said at the time: “This TPP sets the gold stand­ard in trade agree­ments to open free, trans­par­ent fair trade, the kind of en­vir­on­ment that has the rule of law and a level play­ing field.”

See how she does it? It worked Tues­day night. She won. She sur­vived and won with a per­form­ance that was as dis­hon­est as it was im­press­ive, that be­nefited from a friendly crowd and weak field. When Lin­coln Chafee, the field’s Rhode Is­land cipher, dared to cri­ti­cize Clin­ton on the email is­sue, Cooper asked her if she wanted to re­spond.

“No,” she replied.

The crowd roared.

posted 10-14-2015 10:51 AM                  

"I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone."

and

"I have a five point economic plan, because this inequality challenge we face, we have faced it at other points. It's absolutely right. It hasn't been this bad since the 1920s. But if you look at the Republicans versus the Democrats when it comes to economic policy, there is no comparison. The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House and that's why we need to have a Democrat in the White House in January 2017."

posted 10-14-2015 04:03 PM                  

quote:

---

Originally posted by BeWare:
Two of my favorite Hillary quotes from last night debate.

"I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone."

and

"I have a five point economic plan, because this inequality challenge we face, we have faced it at other points. It's absolutely right. It hasn't been this bad since the 1920s. But if you look at the Republicans versus the Democrats when it comes to economic policy, there is no comparison. The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House and that's why we need to have a Democrat in the White House in January 2017."

Hello Hillary! If it true it's worse than is been since the 1920's and we have had a Democrat President for 7 years. So why has the economy not done better? Is this statement not a contradiction?

---

posted 10-14-2015 04:31 PM                  

Those who help to anoint her majesty and crown her President will be enjoying eating rainbow stew with a silver spoon, the sun will always shine, birds will sing, flower will bloom, etc, etc......

posted 10-14-2015 07:49 PM                  

quote:

---

Originally posted by silverkat:
She assumes the people in the US are really stupid w/comments like that.

---

posted 10-14-2015 08:29 PM                  

We in the West prefer to call it "Homesteading"

Make America Great Again