When?

This is reprehensible. Senator Clinton said today,

“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.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

Clinton says she has crossed the “commander-in-chief threshold.” When, pray tell? Doing what? Can somebody explain that to me?

And I can ask the same question of McCain. I respect his prisoner-of-war experience, but being a POW doesn’t necessarily confer the commander-in-chief skill set.

Keith Olbermann is wondering if Clinton is a McCain Democrat or a Lieberman Republican. Richard Wolff suggests that all she has to do is kiss President Bush on the cheek and she’d be just like Joe Lieberman. Snort.

I have to assume that Clinton is equating “being a damnfool hawk on the Iraq War far too long” with being a strong commander-in-chief. And if that’s her game, she needs to be slammed down on this, hard.

See also John Aravosis.

15 thoughts on “When?

  1. It appears that she will say and do anything to win the nomination. I believe her ego is so inflated that she really would rather see McCain win if she can’t. Now reports say that it was the Clinton Campaign that told Canada not to worry about HER tough talk on NAFTA (now if that isn’t Roveian?) I don’t see that she can win the nomination much less the general. But if somehow she does get the nomination (perhaps in the supreme court), I’ll become a Nader supporter faster than you can say “whitewater”!

  2. I just tried sending her an email letting her know how shamed I feel about her antics. The autoresponsebot came back that since I didn’t live in her district she wasn’t interested in hearing from me.

  3. Is this another “In my dreams” virtual reality thingy that the good Senator has attained “CiC threshold”? What madness is it that anyone would believe that anybody else would believe that line of BS? What miasmic, fogged in, version of nightmare is going on in the country? No fiction could possibly equal, or even come close, to what is reported without getting the author into serious question of their mental state.

    Reality is a great state to be in, it should be tried sometime, it could catch on, you never know. For certain it beats the beauty pageant, popularity contests that pass as rational, critical thought there.

    Oh…..forgot…….nevermind…..

  4. You have all outlined my concerns about Senator Clinton very articulately. However, please allow me to play the cynic for one moment: we all know Clinton is campaigning around frivolous trivialities like this: “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. This doesn’t tell us how she or McCain have become such good security candidates – only that Senator Obama is not qualified.

    On the other hand Obama doesn’t talk about himself, he talks about how we are all going to work together as a whole to work for change. What I wonder is the following: what if Obama is just better than her at playing the Public Relations game? What if he doesn’t mean anything he says either? What if he is just a product cleverly packaged with a grass roots message? My supposition when looking at all things on television in America is everything is an advertisement trying to look good, while Obama is quite appealing, it could be just another trick for those of power to retain their power. While Clinton is Clinton, I’m not convinced that Obama is not Clinton.

  5. KingGeorgeThe Tenth:

    Of course, we can play “what if” all day. In the end, we will all have to make a decision based on what we know and what we feel in our gut. I have stated before Clinton is trying to “play the game” like a man and that makes her look artificial. Yet, she wants to claim it will be a sea change having a woman in the White House. I don’t see her as being very different from all the others that have been there for years. Politician has become a dirty word. IMHO, Obama is just being himself and he is not trying to be black, white, man, woman. He just is what he is and that is refreshing.
    It’s hard to accept and change is not easy. However, I feel it would be a big sea change having him as my President and I would feel proud. If he would let me down, it’s on him, not me. It’s not the end of the world although having McCain as President with his wargasms might be the end at least for us humans. And with Clinton, its’ iffy.

  6. heres the problem — both Sens Clinton and McCain are familiar with the issues surrounding national security after years in the Senate and her years in the White House. Obama — not so much. Short tenure in the Senate, short tenure in the House and failure to even convene his own committee meetings to even attempt to learn something.
    truth be told, if Obama is the nominee, he automatically loses on this issue — no contest.
    hope may spring eternal for those who have drunk the koolaid, but facts will still be facts.

  7. both Sens Clinton and McCain are familiar with the issues surrounding national security after years in the Senate and her years in the White House. Obama — not so much.

    Oh, please. You think one has to be living in Washington to be “familiar” with national security? (And while Clinton may have been living in the White House, but she didn’t have a security clearance that would have given her an inside look at the closed-door stuff. She’s still just the junior senator from New York.)

    And notice that while Clinton and McCain may be “familiar” with national security, the decisions they’ve made over the years tell me they don’t have the sense God gave grapefruit.

  8. Comment #8:

    Facts and truth are two different things. And by the way, I don’t like koolaid, it’s not good for my health, too much sugar. You’ve been watching too much Bill O’Really. He confuses facts with truth also.

  9. The explicit implication is that if Barack wins the nomination Hillary will vote for McCain. No surprise, Hillary is a Republican. The DLC’ers have made the Democratic Party a branch of the Republican Party.

  10. #8 “…and failure to even convene his own committee meetings to even attempt to learn something.” I think that points to some degree of problems with the way this process works. These candidates do already have jobs as Senators don’t they? While they do pop over to Washington from time to time – neither Obama or Clinton have been in the Senate for any longer than a handful of times in the last year or so. I wish we could do this whole thing in three months. Alas, wishful thinking… and thanks grannyeagle, your right – that is all we can ask for.

  11. Erm – I thought equanimity was a Buddhist goal…

    On the other hand, I live in Canada, so what do I know about U.S. politics? (Only 45 years of lilving in the U.S., that’s all – I even remember Wendell Wilkie.)

  12. At the risk of being catty, she crossed the threshold of the presidential bedroom. However if sleeping with Bill qualifies one to be president, she’s not the only democratic female with the credentials.

    Less catty, but quite seriously, on the ‘experience’ theme – she is saying that she has access to all of Bills experience, so she HAS his experience. That comes damn close to declaring a co-presidency. That’s a problem.

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