Nope, sorry, I won't be defending language like this:
"I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington."I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.
"Certainly Senator McCain has done that?" Really? How? By promising to continue the neo-con bully Bush doctrine for 4 more years? By escalating and perpetuating a tragic war?
If I were giving Senator Clinton the benefit of the doubt here, I'd say she means that McCain has crossed this "commander in chief threshold" in the minds of the electorate and I imagine that's probably true. But this language just isn't helpful. There are two conventional assumptions about John McCain perpetuated by the media that Democrats, especially those running for president, have the responsibility to debunk at every opportunity rather than reinforce. One of them is the whole "maverick" thing, the other is that he would be acceptable as commander in chief.
Yesterday, a paragraph in an Obama fundraising ask from David Plouffe began "John McCain may have a long history of straight talk and independent thinking..." I thought that was bad. Hillary Clinton's insistence on reinforcing the idea that John McCain has somehow proven himself as commander in chief is far worse.
Tom Hartmann this morning on Air America predicted that Clinton's latest attacks on Obama as unfit to be commander in chief crossed a point of no return rendering an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket impossible. I'm beginning to think he's right.
I still truly believe that Hillary Clinton would in no way want John McCain to be president over Barack Obama if Obama were to win the nomination, but her strategy of constantly pointing to comparisons between her and McCain and touting her friendship with him is a truly bizarre, if not potentially damaging to an Obama presidency in the fall were he to become the nominee, Democratic primary election strategy.
To their credit, the Obama team's attitude seems to be "bring it on."
From TPM:
On an Obama campaign conference call just now, Obama advisers previewed a two-prong attack that they will be making with increasing intensity in the days ahead, tying Hillary more tightly to John McCain while simultaneously broadening their efforts to undercut Hillary's claim to foreign policy seasoning.His aides repeatedly argued that Hillary's criticism of Obama is virtually identical to McCain's arguments, and Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice made what sounded to our ears like the most elaborate case against her claim to experience yet.
As first lady, Rice argued, "you are not the person asked by the U.S. government to deliver tough messages or apply pressure. You're not the person who's responsible for the loss of life. You're not the person who has to make the sometimes recalcitrant bureaucracy deliver in the national interest."
There are ways to responsibly make the case that you're more prepared/experienced/insert adjective here to be president. This isn't one of them.
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