What Obama said on immigration

Posted: Thursday, January 31, 2008 9:27 PM by Domenico Montanaro

From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
Obama criticizes Hillary for having different positions on the drivers license issue. One of Bill Clinton's critiques of the press coverage is that Obama had a similar hang-up one week later after Hillary's much-publicized answer during the MSNBC debate in Philadelphia. And in her response tonight, Hillary hinted at Obama's trouble during another CNN debate in November.

Here's what Obama said in Las Vegas. Asked if he'd support giving a drivers license to illegals, Obama said that as a state senator he voted to require illegal aliens to get them. He then said he is "not proposing that that's what we do" now. Wolf Blitzer tried to clarify his response at least twice, and ended the exchange by saying: "This is the kind of question that is sort of available for a yes or no answer. Either you support it or you oppose it."

EMAIL THIS

Comments

That isn't the whole story, Chuck. In that last debate you reference, to his credit, I think, Obama kept refusing to do the "yes or no" thing. Are any of the important issues before a president simple yes or no issues? Without this dynamic, your entry implies something else that is negative about Obama...

Patrick, Lincoln, NE (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 9:39 PM)

And, actually, at the end of that question, he answered, 'Yes,' saying he did approve of licenses

Jesse H, Washington, DC (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:00 PM)

Barack showed his character strengths for admitting he fudged that question one week after Clinton did on the same one. It's unbelievable that he made the same mistake months ago and was foolish, arguably not reflecting, when he pointed out another one of Hillary's flip flops. Perhaps, his single policy error on the campaign trail. However, if you notice he didn't attempt to obfuscate this error. He admitted it and that was it. Meanwhile, Clinton lacks the character to admit mistakes on policy. Her painful, laborious response in a vain attempt to muddy the clear waters of voting to go for war or not should shed some light on her poor character.

Will P, Hanahan, SC (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:07 PM)

Patrick,Lincoln,NE:
The job of the President of the USA IS a yes or no kind of a job. You can't just refuse to do the "yes or no thing" and say maybe. Their will be alot of tough decisions to make and you have to be ready! Hillary 2008!

Cathy, Upstate NY (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:13 PM)

Mike, you MISSED that one by a million miles.

In Las Vegas, it was a YES or No question, and Obama reiterated that he was ALREADY ON THE RECORD from the Philadelphia debate as saying YES, so a yes or no answer was irrelevant to the extent that it wasn't going to tell the voters anything new. So he chose to do some explaining instead, before he was rudely interupted and pressed by Wolf to say yes or a no.

Even my 12-year got it.

Diamond (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:14 PM)

He answered Yes and it didn't take him 2 weeks to do it!

Debbie, Wisconsin (Sent Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:20 PM)

No he didn't! Talk about misrepresentations. Mike explained it correctly. Wolfe had to get Sen. Obama out of the meandering explanation by reminding him it was a yes or no question. Come on already- what's with the months old spin and rewriting?

John P, Boston (Sent Friday, February 01, 2008 3:20 AM)

SEND A COMMENT

PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to the blog, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.

Message (please, no HTML tags. Web addresses will be hyperlinked):

Your name, city and state (John Doe, Seattle, Wash.):

Your e-mail address (jdoe@msnbc.com):

Your website (it's okay if you don't have one):

Remember me? (We'll keep it private) Remember me?

TRACKBACKS

Trackbacks are links to weblogs that reference this post. Like comments, trackbacks do not appear until approved by us. The trackback URL for this post is: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/trackback.aspx?PostID=627255