It’s a tough primary fight. I get that. But while Republicans are coming together and preparing for the general election, we shouldn’t see leading Democratic candidates suggesting John McCain is preferable to the Democratic frontrunner. It’s divisive and unhelpful.
\n
\nOn MSNBC last night, Keith Olbermann read a report that got the quote slightly wrong, but got the gist of the story. From a Nexis transcript:<\/p>\n
OLBERMANN: Let me throw something out, (INAUDIBLE) I’d just saw on the Net, that is a couple of days old from Fort Worth, Texas. It’s a CBS blog from a campaign when the eight million campaign stops. This is Senator Clinton saying, I only read it, I got to read about it in the computer, “I think you’d be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to stay’, she’s talking about the campaign against him, “He’s never been the president but will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”<\/p>\n
Is it unfair to say that she just ranked Obama third on this topic behind the Republican that she and the Democrats are supposed to be blood oath sworn to defeat?<\/p>\n
MADDOW: That’s what you say when you want to be John McCain’s vice presidential choice, that’s not what you say when you’re trying to become the Democratic nominee for president.<\/p>\n
OLBERMANN: Unbelievable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There were points in the fall when Obama was accused — in some instances, fairly — of using conservative frames to make his case, which led some to suggest Obama was running against the party while seeking its nomination.<\/p>\n
But as far as I can tell, he never argued publicly that a leading Republican candidate brought a better background to the table than a leading Democratic candidate.<\/p>\n
Clinton’s comments were, to put it mildly, disappointing. At a certain point, which I believe we’re at right now, the Democratic Party’s general-election interests have to be taken into consideration by the candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can appreciate, when the pressure’s on in a competitive primary, there must be a temptation for a presidential candidate to say literally anything to stop a rival. But if for no other reason than the strength of the party, that temptation has to be kept in check. I’m afraid Hillary Clinton may have forgotten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}