ABOUT FIRST READ

First Read is an analysis of the day's political news, from the NBC News political unit. First Read is updated throughout the day, so check back often.

Chuck Todd, NBC Political Director

Mark Murray, NBC Deputy Political Director

Domenico Montanaro, NBC News Political Reporter



Bill: 'She can win;' Obama, well…

Posted: Monday, March 24, 2008 3:23 PM by Domenico Montanaro

From NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli
Here are some interesting quotes from two small Bill Clinton events in South Bend, Ind., this morning. The first is from a Dyngus Day celebration at the West Side Democratic Club:

"She can win this race, and we have got to win. And she will win in Florida. And I must say that this new strategy of denying and disempowering and disenfranchising the voters in Florida and Michigan is I believe a terrible mistake. Hillary believes their votes should be counted. And I don't know how we're gonna go to those people in the general election and say you gotta vote for us even though we dumped all over you in the primary. We let New Hampshire go out of turn. They had a Democratic Secretary of State. The Florida voters are totally innocent. They asked to vote on time. So for all those reasons I think she's the most electable.”

VIDEO: Bill Clinton touts his wife's general election chances against McCain during a campaign stop in South Bend, Ind.

The second quote is from a Solidarity Day event at an Elks club:

"I think she can win the election. And I believe that she will win Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, and Arkansas -- four states that we have lost the last two times. If we win Ohio and Florida, it's inconceivable that we could lose the election. And I think that we are running the risk of throwing both Florida and Michigan away if she doesn't get nominated because of the events of the last few days where there has been a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise those voters. And don't you think there has not been a message there. Don't you think that they didn't get it?

“And Sen. McCain is not going to be easy to beat; he has always run well in Michigan. He will run pretty well in Florida. She can win.  Look, if we win these four states we will win the White House; there is no point in doing this if we are not going to win."

MAIN PAGE

Email this EMAIL THIS

Comments

Who is still listening to this perpetual liar. I am keeping my children away from him and the wife. The have made lying a good habit.
So, what the Clinton's are telling us is that if you say it over and over, it's true?

I'm skinny....
I'm skinny...
I'm skinny..


Nope. Didn't work for me either. Get over it and move on. I did.

Obama 08
no matter how tightly you muzzle your dog, he'd still bark the silliest it seems.
Poor old Bill. He just keeps moving the goal posts. And blaming Obama for the Florida and Michigan fiasco? Obama said he would abide by the rules, and he has.  If the people in those states want to blame someone, they need to blame their own Dem parties who thought they were so important they could break the rules and get away with it. The Clintons have shown us time and again that rules and laws do not matter to them. No integrity at all.
If she could just be honest, trustworthy, etc.
She lied about her experience in Bosnia - so when is she telling the truth?

As has now been conclusively established by video film and news photographs, Hillary Clinton did NOT come under sniper fire in Bosnia in March 1996 when she made a morale-boosting visit to U.S. troops enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. But she is dodging plenty of bullets for her over-dramatic accounts of the trip.

Last week was not the first time that Clinton talked about sniper fire in Bosnia. She has provided various different versions of the incident along the campaign trail and in her autobiography, Living History. See, for example, this New York Times account of a campaign rally in Waco, Tex., on February 29, at which Clinton said that the welcoming ceremony had to be "moved inside" a Tuzla airport building "because of sniper fire." She made a similar statement in Dubuque, Iowa, back in December.

After my post last week examining Clinton's claims, I received messages and calls from several readers, providing very different accounts of the scene at Tuzla Air Force base that dank March morning. U.S. Air Force journalist Don Jackson was standing on the back of a flatbed pick-up truck filming the event when Clinton's plane touched down. Here is his account:

Mrs. Clinton arrived to a flight line full of well-wishers, both military and civilian, accompanied by her staff as well as comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crow who were there to entertain troops. To set the record straight, there was no enemy fire, and no imminent danger. If there had been any danger, "well-wishers" would not have been allowed on the tarmac, much less allowing me to stand above everyone else on the back of a truck. And Sinbad and Sheryl Crow would've been running for their lives instead of taking the time to be interviewed by yours truly, on the tarmac. Mrs. Clinton's [claim] is a lie, plain and simple.
UPDATE Monday 2:15 P.M.

CBS News has now posted the full version of the truncated report by correspondent Sharyl Attkisson about the arrival ceremony in Tuzla that has been circulating on YouTube. You can see it below.



In a blog posting here, Attkisson shares her memories about the trip. She recalls that the pilots made a steep, very fast descent into Tuzla "to minimize exposure to hostile fire on the ground," but adds that there were "no known incidents of enemy fire on our aircraft." (This kind of landing is not the same as the "corkscrew landing" described by Clinton in some of her speeches. You can see an example of a corkscrew landing here.) Attkisson adds:

The mood upon first landing at the Tuzla airport was light. Children were there on the tarmac to greet the first lady, Chelsea was by her side, Bosnian dignitaries had gathered: It felt safe...To be sure, it was not the "safest" trip for a First Lady to take: there were serious risks in traveling to Bosnia, even for the President's wife under the vigilant protection of the U.S. military. It took some guts for her to go. But I don't recall, and did not note, any close calls on this trip with sniper fire or any other dangers.
Video clips of a smiling Clinton walking across the tarmac, and bending down to greet an eight-year-old Bosnian girl, are proliferating on YouTube. In some cases, the images have been juxtaposed with her harrowing account about running for cover "with our heads down." Here is one such effort that had received nearly 100,000 hits by Monday morning.




Sometimes, in politics, it is the trivial mistakes rather than the major policy blunders that can trip you up.

See the CBS news clips:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/more_incoming_for_clinton.html
So true Bill, so true.  Democrats pick candidates they like no those who can win against Republicans in Nov-08.  That is one of the reasons why Republicans, except for Bill Clinton, has been president for the past 30 years.

They understand, unlike Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry and Obama, that you have to have THE HEARTLAND to win.  It is plain and simple. You have to be able to win in Key Electoral states to get the nomination.

Keep on talking Bill because you speak the truth unlike Obama and his supporters who knew this Rev. Wright 20 year relationship should have had him sit his behind down and be thankful to just be an U. S. Illinois Senator.
People are forgetting that FOX News and Co are pushing Race-based stories in order to avoid focus on Economy and National Security issues that really matter. It's sad that the Clintons are now sounding like Republicans.

Chris Matthews rightly stated today that "the Media for 20 years have wrongly seen the world through the eyes of the Clintons" - in essence the Media keeps falling for the Clintons' spin.
To Pat Huntington NY Re: "Bill is 100% right!  Any Obamabot who says otherwise, is as naive and stupid as their candidate."

So you feel that calling people "Obamabot", "Naive" and "STUPID" will change our minds about Obama and we will see the light and the error of our ways?  You must be one of those people that believed in the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" and that Bill Clinton "Never had sex with that woman"....you must have listend to the 30 sec of Rev Wright's speech where he says "Goddam America" and REFUSED TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE SERMON IN CONTEXT.   I don't know which is MORE "naive" and/or "stupid"....TAKING A STAND BASED ON NON-FACTS OR POSTING RHETORIC BASED ON NON-FACTS....
Why did Hillary Clinton agree to punish Florida and Michigan in the first place if she believed it would be such a terrible mistake?  

This is not some "new strategy of denying and disempowering and disenfranchising the voters in Florida and Michigan."  This was her strategy as much as it was anyone's.  

It was what she wanted, too, unless she always planned to agree to the rules back then, and blame her opponent later.

Honesty, please!  Who wants another liar for President?  Haven't we had enough of that?
the only way two win is with hillary do not listen to the obomacants.
There has always been an agreement to count voters inclinations in Michigan and Florida. Unfortunately, Michigan and Florida have not held valid elections.


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):

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=801775

First Read e-mail alerts


Sign up for First Read alerts
The first place for key political news and analysis

Syndicate This Site

Add First Read to your news reader:
live.com xml
myyahoo msn
bloglines newsgator
google