John Edwards is grasping now.  Hillary's assertiveness knocked him off balance and he seems desperate to find an issue that will "stick".  MEMO TO JOHN EDWARDS:  Please tell voters what YOU plan to do, not what Hillary's position is.  YOUR message would be much more effective.

I respect Bonior, and I am glad that he is speaking out about Hillary Clinton's response. Although the pundits are lauding her performance in this debate, it seems to me there are several things that the media needs to follow up on, including her vague memory about NAFTA. The "debate" seemed to me to be more of a circus, although Clinton's supporters apparently thought it was to be a pep rally for her. I do not support Clinton, but I have heard her speak in candidate forums several times and I never booed! T

Bonior is right. If the only thing Clinton remembers from Nafta are a "bunch of charts" that certainly doesn't bode well for her as president.

Just like on Iran it shows that she has a lot of lessons still yet to be learned.

Hillary laughed about remembering there were charts.  The charts predicted what would happen.  it would have been better if she and Bill had looked at the charts and considered the data.  However Clinton showed once again that she does not learn from the past.  She was asked if Perot was right.  He WAS right.  He said listen for the big sucking sound of jobs leaving the US.  She still cannot say that she was wrong or that Bill was wrong.  She doesn't learn from her mistakes.

She gave Bush authority for war with Iraq as did Edwards but he learned not to do that again.  She trusted Bush again by voting for the Kyl Lieberman amendment to increase hostilities with Iran.  

And she laughs.  Many families have been devastated by the loss of jobs and by the war.  Clinton laughs to brush off the criticism.  

What a conservative was right. Ross P gave the election to Clinton. All the unionis that endorsed Clinton got what they deserved...So why cry now, If your going to dance the fiddler has to be paid!!!

I wish the media would also follow up on Obama's points about raising the Social Security cap.  This was a substantive and important moment in the debate and it contained a difference about a matter of factual information.  Isn't the media's mandate to investigate?

H. Clinton answered that “fiscal responsibility came first” for her.  B. Obama countered that raising Social Security caps would raise taxes for “only a few taxpayer.  They further clarified each position as being about either “every firefighter who earns 95,000” (H. Clinton) or the “top 6%” of wage earners.”  Clearly someone is distorting the numbers.  

Is this line of questioning dropped because those making the choices about what the media covers are in that top 6% or income and they don't want to take a financial hit even if it benefits the vast majority of Americans?  

What I remember is if there hadn't been a Ross Perot taking away 19% of the vote there wouldn't have been a Bill Clinton.

Hillary's claim that the charts are all she remembers about that debate is almost certainly a lie.  She's brighter than that, and she was, to put it mildly, deeply involved in her husband's campaign.  Her response sounds more like she was trying to guess what her target voter remembered about that debate (if anything), and to buddy up to the voter by saying, see, I'm just a regular person like yourself, who hardly remembers all this fancy political stuff from years gone by.  Please.  How phony.

Re: Dave, TN.  Election Day polls in 1992 showed that if Perot had not been on the ballot, his votes would have broken in a way that would have elected Clinton anyhow.  But in a different sense, you are right that Perot's candidacy helped produce a Clinton win - if Perot had never run, the dynamics of that election, and the issues that were forced to the front, would have been different.  But since Perot ran, Clinton was forced to tack toward Perot's issues -- and that helped make Clinton more electable.

If firefighters make over 95,000 as Senator Clinton stated last night... well then I need to change my job and go put out fires.  Does the good Senator from NY really have a clue who the middle class really is?  

The comment about Ross Perot's charts is very telling as well, after all didn't Senator Clinton say that she never read the Intelligence Estimate of Iraq before voting for the war?  Seems like people try to give her the facts but she never bothers to look at it unless it says what she wants to hear.  While I may not agree with Senator Edwards on much I do agree with him that Senator Clinton is out of touch with real people and real problems... all she wants is power.

What I remember is if there hadn't been a Ross Perot taking away 19% of the vote there wouldn't have been a Bill Clinton- Dave TN

You're probably right.  But we got our Ralph Nader payback in 2000.

She didn't know about Hsu or the planted questioner; she takes credit for the 1993 healthcare initiative, but doesn't take credit for its failure; and now she can't remember anything about NAFTA except a bunch of charts? She is either lying, or she is not fit for president.

i have heard more people blam the goverment ;for illagels in our country and know i here politains start saying it is the fedral goverment my question is oh is the fedral goverment then if it aint senaters &iam glad to see that some politains are standing up on no amesty &no more money for the war

NAFTA proves the point that Democrats should seek to be more than Republican-Lite.  Clinton went along with exactly what the big business arm of the GOP wanted to look "moderate".  The results have been exactly what critics predicted.  To be fair globalization would have proceeded even without free trade agreements, but some effort needs to be made to establish a level playing field.  As is we're all racing to be the next Malaysia.  Fair trade not free trade!

"I don't remember anything" is Hillary Clinton's scripted cop-out line for any scandal, bad news, bad press, bad decisions, etc that she faces...

Norman Hsu?  I didn't know!!
Law firm documents in her White House closet?  I didn't know!
Planted questions?  I didn't know!
My last health care attempt failed miserably?   Oh wait, that one was actually BILL's fault!  Not Hillary's!
NAFTA?  Huh?  I don't remember much about that whole thing.  There were just a bunch of charts and stuff...


I'm surprised she didn't call the charts typical Republican political lies, the same lies that "douped" her into voting for the Iraq War...
 

Theres a simple reality Hillary's social circle don't work in factories they invest in wall Street.

Needless to say they still made money.

It was the trickiest question for her in that slamming gore and saying he lost would have hurt her.  GO look at polls where the remove gore from the mix and see what it did to her numbers.  

I respect she recognized what was the only risky question posed to her in the debate.  Discrediting gore would not have been smart.

what I rememmber is Rush limbaugh pushing and praising that Bill went for Nafta.The republicans wanted nafta and Bill was foolish for passing it.But he did not cause the murder of so many innocents like the guy running the white house for the past 7 years.

First of all, as an aside, Ross Perot took as many votes away from the Democrats, as he did the Republicans in 1992.  Perot was considered a centrist candidate and 'read my lips', with or without him Bush 41 was doomed to defeat.  Remember it was 42% for Clinton, 38% for Bush and 19% for Perot.

Anyway, Hillary laughing at the NAFTA question is indeed a slap in the face to all working people in this country and is indicative of how the triangulating Clintons, who will do anything for power, got in bed with corporate America in 1994. They gave the shaft to the working people of this country and sold out to the power elite.  David Bonier and Joe Trippi are right to point this out.

Hillary's attempts at evasion, as illustrated by that answer, are consistant with her constant avoidance of specifics in these debates.  And to make matters worse, she was not further questioned by the Wolf Blitzer and got a free pass with this and other foolishness.  (To my tastes, Tim Russert was a much more effective moderator.)

She certainly was more polished last night then she was in Philadelphia but she still said nothing.  She has as much claim to the presidency as did Eva Peron to Argentina's vice-presidency in 1951.  

This fight is not over and if she does wind up getting the Repub.. oops I mean Democratic nomination, she will be the biggest wedge issue that the Democrats have ever faced.  I have to laugh each time one of the Hillarophiles tell us opponents to 'get a grip' and face the fact that she WILL be the Democratic nominee.  I don't think that they realize what they are saying.  None of us are bound to vote for the Democrats (as much as I subscribe to what I think are the principles of the party) and getting a grip will never force me to cast my vote for Hillary (and Bill Clinton - enough was enough).  

So if you Hillary lovers are insistant in splitting the party, (and that booing last night should have been an embarrassment to all of you) well then, it's your party.  Go ahead, nominate her and don't listen to the concerns that the rest of us have about her support for the war and her cow-towing to Republican interests (btw, Wolf, that's what is meant by triangulating, it means loss of your party's principles in order to gain power).  I think that wedge plus polarization equals difficult general election and certain loss of Congress.  What a great 4 years will be in store for all of us if Hillary gets the nomination.
Obama '08

Another dodge by Hillary. Selelctive memory on a huge labor issue. There were many dodges last night but the media chose the storyline that Hillary had a "come back". I make my own decisions. She bobbed and weaved and took a few cheap shots of her own. Using the crowd to intimidate is right out of the Republican playbook!

Someone tell Senator Clinton that the giant sucking sound that Ross Perot talked about was not about the media "sucking up" to Hilliary which would be worth a laugh if it wasn't so serious. The giant sucking sound that Perot referred to is about jobs being sucked out of this country. He was right and Senator Clinton still doesn't get it.

By the way Hilliary obviously went after Edwards and Obama in this debate (the media credits her with this) yet her supporters in the audience prevented them from going back at her. So it's ok for Clinton to attack but it's not ok for other candidates to reciprocate. Do you suppose the Republicans will agree to this setup?

What a shame your earlier segment with Green & Schultz was ruined by Craig Crawford and the other two who could only go with the current media narrative. Please bring back the independent thinkers and get rid of the corporate hacks.

Oh great...just heard Johnathan Capeheart of the Washington Post editorial page fame (not real good for Democrats) call Edwards...what else...the angry man. When the Post editorial page writers support Clinton then every Democrat should know to run the other way. I like the Post but the editoral page sucks. It's almost as bad as the WSJ.

Mitchell-  Get a grip man, she's not the anti-christ, she's a politician, just like Obama, just like Biden.  Maybe she's a little better at it, maybe she's not, but they're all the same animal and in the end they're all on the same team.  If we get 4 years of GOP rule it won't be because Hillary was better at the game than Obama was, it'll be because whiney 'my way or the highway' part-time liberals want to cut off their noses to spite their faces.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll vote for any dem that wins this, because I want to see America become great and respected again and the GOP is not interested in that anymore.

I hope MSNBC or some other media outlet will ask Senator Clinton if she feels it was ok for the audience to interfere with this debate by booing her competitors. We've seen the Bush campaign supporters shout down people who voice dissent and the audience last night was eerily similiar. I don't want to see another person in the White House who thinks it's ok to stifle dissent.

I think Edwards is right. NAFTA is not laughable because people lost their jobs and everuthing that goes with it. Now we are used HRC not read any report, the Iraq intelligent report, chart of NAFTA, what nex ....the Iran resolution, just wait.

John Edwards is a snake oil salesman.  He's a fraud, nothing more.  It's not even worth the effort to explain how much of an opportunistic hypocrite he is.  

Barack Obama is inexperienced and is drowning in his own hypocrisy.  He's attacked Hillary on not taking a stand on key issues, yet he refused to take a stand on 80% of the votes during his short tenure in the US Senate.  He's attacked Hillary about not releasing all 36 million pages of documents from her years in the White House, yet he doesn't have one scrap of paper to support his experience in the Illinois state senate.  He's attacked Hillary for her stance (yes, another example of her actually taking a stance) on Iran, yet he dodged the vote to avoid political fall out.  He's attacked Hillary for accepting money from lobbyists, yet he takes money from state lobbyists, companies who employ lobbyists and friends of lobbyists.  He's attacked Hillary for her response on drivers licenses for illegal aliens, yet he gave an even more convoluted response last night than she did (and he actually supports such a ridiculous idea).  If Obama was 75 pounds overweight, he would not even be on that stage.  

I'm voting for Hillary.  If others are looking for an alternative to Hillary, it's understandable.  What's not understandable is why as an alternative, you would choose amongst the two most inexperienced and unqualified individuals (Obama and Edwards), instead of choosing someone with a great deal of experience, such as Biden, Richardson, Dodd, or Kucinich (ok, maybe not Kucinich).  Regardless of how bad you think voting for Hillary would be, there is nothing worse than voting for a woefully inexperienced individual simply because they look and sound good on camera.  

don't bother the Dynasty Candidate
with real Questions --

That's what she has advisers and handlers for!

waffle, shuffle, laugh, misdirect, and accuse --
that's what Hillary and her Media "Wingmen" are most skill at.

But direct questions, about real issues,
take a number and get in line!

Several things: Hillary laughs as people go hungry from no jobs
Cnn Wolf Blitzer cowers like an animal in headlights as Clinton and Moveon.org dictate what the debate will be like and he must accept a "NO" as a final answer adn not follow up or they will  come after him.
Student now claims she was given a planted question for Hillary, Calls to Cnn not returned. This "debate" is a hoax, only Msnbc conducted a fair and newsworthy debate, You people at MSNBC shoudl look into CNN and see why they bent over for Bill and Moveon, and why would Cnn use Clinton advisors as panelist

Anybody has doubt about how biase Wolf was read this: The girls who ask the question was Harry Reid intern and Harry's son is HRC surrogate in Nevada.

Behind Clinton’s Diamonds and Pearls
By Jodi Kantor
At last night’s Democratic presidential debate, the candidates faced questions on Pakistan, trade policy, and merit pay for teachers. So how did it come to pass that, at the close of the debate, Senator Hillary Clinton was asked what sort of jewelry she liked?

“Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?” Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval, one of several audience members who posed questions, asked her.

“I want both,” Mrs. Clinton replied to laughter.

Last week, CNN had contacted Ms. Parra-Sandoval, a political science student at University of Las Vegas-Nevada, through a professor, and asked her to submit a question. She wrote one about health care for children. CNN rejected it, calling it too similar to another question that would be asked. So she sent another, about Iraq. That was rejected too. On Wednesday, a CNN producer asked her for two final questions, one substantive and one light. Ms. Parra-Sandoval sent one about Yucca Mountain, the Nevada site under consideration as a storage facility for radioactive waste. With the deadline approaching, she stared at her computer screen. Noticing the pearl-pattern background on her MySpace page, she dashed off the jewelry one.


CNN asked her to come to the debate with both questions memorized. Two hours in, a producer whispered that she should ask the second one.

“Because I was on national TV, I felt hesitant, but then I felt like, ‘Oh my God, I’m on national TV, I’ll just ask it,’” Ms. Parra-Sandoval said.

Now Ms. Parra-Sandoval is being accused, by everyone from bloggers to fellow students, of asking an airheaded, sexist question. On her MySpace page and in a phone interview, she protested that she tried to ask several substantive questions but that CNN would only let her participate through a silly one.

“The media should be more democratic and be better able to reflect our democratic process,” she said.

David Bohrman, Washington bureau chief and senior vice president of CNN, defended the network’s decision. “I thought it would be a nice way to end because we had had a couple of hours of tension,” he said, pointing out that Ms. Parra-Sandoval had written the question herself. “Not every question has to deal with life or death.”

Ms. Parra-Sandoval isn’t alone: regular people who are put on display during the show that is a presidential race can end up feeling used. But the odd thing about this particular incident is that Ms. Parra-Sandoval does not seem the least bit frivolous or bling-minded. A former illegal immigrant whose parents clean and do laundry for Las Vegas hotels, she attends a UNLV honors program on scholarship and work-study programs. Two summers ago, she interned for Senator Harry Reid; last summer, she won a fellowship in public policy at Princeton. She wants to be an immigration lawyer when she’s older.

This morning, looking at the commentary her question drew on the Internet, she saw her question compared to the famous choice President Bill Clinton was asked to make during his 1992 campaign.

“I didn’t want to be known as the girl who asked something about boxers or briefs,” she sighed.

Katharine Q. Seelye contributed to this post.

It is just nice to be in a forum where people see through the aura that others have painted around her performance. The crowd was her saving grace. Without it, people might have actually been able to hear the reasonable responses that other candidates were giving to her responses.
The posts here, coupled with the past few weeks, have help me come to my conclusion.......Obama 08!

NAFTA is funny to Hillary.  You should get her going on executions.  She'll be rolling on the floor.

Everyone, in addition to posting to this blog, each time you have an observation about Hillary Clinton please email your comments to every newspaper in your state, and every local TV station. The press won't cover Hillary's evasive nonsense unless we, the readers/viewers "encourage" them to do so. We want REAL debates on the issues of concern to voters, not the nonsense that CNN pulled on Thursday.  

Hillary is the usual scapegoat here, and with the usual pathetic level of unfairness and irrational hatred.  Perot did not affect the vote in a way that favored Clinton.  The few things for which Hillary is "accurately" attacked, are all errors of judgement and voting, that all politicians have fallen into, but Hillary is singled out for attack, because her attackers, and his, are people that have been seduced by 15 years of mostly lies and nonsense directed at the Clintons, mostly by the Right-wing.  Everything the Clintons have done, can be found in the careers of "all" politicians. But they are singled out, for constant abuse and hatred.

“All I can remember from that is a bunch of charts,” she replied. “That, sort of, is a vague memory.”

Sort of like the National Security Estimate she barely remembers reading or the women in Bill's Life.

I found something concerning democrats and lower gas prices.

After watching Fox news, where Hillary Clinton announced that a vote for the democrats ment lower gas prices LOL, I went back to see about the campaign promises democrats made that they would lower gas prices if they were elected control of congress.

I found many, but this one takes the cake....



DEMOCRATIC PROMISE #16: Lower Gasoline Prices
Promise: “Democrats have a plan to lower gas prices…join Democrats who are working to lower gas prices now.” – Then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Press Release, April 19, 2006

Broken Promise: “The average price of gasoline hit $3.218 a gallon Monday, up a stunning 11.5 cents the past week and just half a penny shy of the inflation-adjusted record, the government reported. The average is almost certain this week to pass the inflation-adjusted high of $3.223, recorded in May 1981 by the Energy Information Administration.” – “Average Gasoline Price Nears 1981 Average,” USA Today, May 22, 2007. Democrats have been in power for six months, and gas prices have gone up, not down.

Prices still going up Nancy........
You and Hillary really need to stop lying to people...

Hillary was originally a Republican, her father was a conservative Republican.  Bill Clinton passed more Republican bills than any other prior to him during his Presidency.  I was not impressed with her performance, especially her response to the mother of the Marine and the Marine hismelf.  She didn't thank him for his service.  Poor move.  She is a neocon like Lieberman, after all they endorsed him in the last election.  You want another Republican in office vote for Hillary Clinton.  Bill Clinton was the best Republican President the Democrats ever had.  That's why Wolf Blizter supports her (he's a Republican).  Ruport Murdock supports her and gave her a fundraising dinner (another Republican).  Enough said.

What’s laughable is Edward’s debate performance in Vegas on Thursday.  The drooling attack dog routine didn’t go over too well with the audience and he was deservedly booed.

Hillary talks about issues and policy as Obama and Edwards grasp at straws and their petty attacks.  Well, I guess desperate times (i.e. polls/fundraising) call for desperate measures!

I remember the NAFTA debacle well, it was the republicans baby that President Clinton caved in on after republicans took over Congress in 1994. And I distinctively recall ( at my dismay) Hillary voicing support for it by saying something like, "third world countries face a huge disadvantage in the Global market, and it is time we welcome them to the party"  I also remember distinctively what my feelings were then, and know, " thats' all fine and dandy, I thought, lets' help those poor countries as much as we can, but not at the expense of American workers, family comes first!" But the truth of the matter is NAFTA was never intended to be a tool to help third world countries, it was intended to allow Corporate America to tap into near slave labor markets in countries which do not support human rights or environmental laws and to force American workers to compete with near slave labor in order to bolster profit margins of the elitist and return the world to a mid- evil times culture where all the power and wealth is reserved for kings, lords and barons.

   Those posters who complain that John Edwards needs to stop attacking and offer his own ideas, need to start paying attention.  Edwards has been way out ahead of the other candidates in putting out position statements and papers on everything from health care to foreign relations.  He's covered all the major issues and many of the minor ones, defining clear, unequivical positions.

NAFTA should be repealed.

It is not free trade.  It is managed trade that favors the companies and people that have political connections.

On top of that, it whittles away United States sovereignty. If we want to change our tariff laws, we would have to go through NAFTA and not congress. I'm sorry, but having an unelected group of foreign bureacrats running how US companies can do business in Canada and Mexico is wrong.

Hillary Clinton is not going to make any fundamental changes because she is fine with NAFTA, with the invasion of Iraq, with the Health Insurance industry making our healthcare decisions, with the neocon  rush to war in Iran and with the big corporations writing our legislation through their lobbyists.  She IS Republican lite. Always has been.  All she promises is to be a more competent version.  

If you think the only problem with the Bush administration has been competence, not anything fundamental, than she's your girl.  If you think you'd like to try something else, she's not.

Edwards is just pointing out what ought to be obvious and the media is following Hillary's story line about how that makes him mean.  As for angry, I'm glad he's angry.  I'm angry.  If you aren't angry with where politics as usual has brought this country, you're not paying attention.  Hillary is nothing BUT politics as usual. Anyone who can't see THAT isn't paying attention either.

Sorry that I spelled the word 'kowtowing' wrong.  mike oh:  I am not whining, nor am I a part-time liberal.  I'm not really a liberal at all (too much of a capitalist at heart).  Still social mobility is my main interest and the government helping the corporations does not foster social-mobility.  Taking money from special interests and defining lobbies as 'real people too' is not a commitment to social mobility.  Establishing dynastic rule is an affront to social mobility and you know that this 'Hillary run' is just a way around the 22nd amendment.

And all of this takes a back seat to the war.  I cannot and will not vote for a candidate who continues to authorize the use of force for these imperialistic Middle East incursions.  It just ain't gonna happen.  They can call themselves Democrats or they could call themselves Republicans, but this war was the most, the absolute most, disasterous foreign policy decision in the history of our nation.  To continue to give this president the authority to authorize force in the region, to be so naive as to think that he would use this authorization as a tool for diplomacy, evidences naivete, poor judgment and lack of experience.

I am not cutting off my nose to spite my face.  I am being true to myself and I will not throw my vote away for a candidate who would be no better than the Republican choices (this is nothing like Gore v. Nader).  I refuse to vote for a Republican with brains (HRC).
Obama '08 the agent of change

Thank you Spot for paying attention. You are correct about John Edwards. If people would quit listening to sound bites and would research the candidates they would see that John Edwards is the man with THE PLAN!!! Edwards in 08!

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