Clinton, Murtha criticize McCain
Posted: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:39 AM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton hit McCain in a speech this morning to construction trade unionists, arguing that his economic speech yesterday shows he doesn't understand the economy and isn't prepared to lead.
"I have a great deal of respect for Sen. McCain. But yesterday, he made it clear that when it comes to the economy, he looks at the hole that President Bush has dug us into and says 'Why not more? Lets go deeper"," she said. "You know, when I was a little girl, my brothers and their friends were digging a hole in our backyard and I remember my mother asking 'What are you digging for?' And they said 'We're digging a hole to China.' Well, little did I believe all these years later, that we would have a Republican Party and a president and a Republican nominee who were literally digging us a hole to China."
Clinton’s remarks came during a pro-labor speech in which bashed the Bush Administration’s approach to organized labor and promised to stand up for labor. She entered the room to the strains of Tom Petty's "I won't back down."
She called McCain a good man who was wrong on all the important issues the country faces and said Obama was an “incredibly important” candidate, as she repeated her argument that this election should be considered a job interview, indicating she would be best for the position.
Clinton, who was received by shouts of approval and frequent standing ovations, began by saying she was honored to have received the endorsement of the plasterers and cement masons union today. She went on to deliver a standard union speech about universal health care and jobs.
She was introduced at the event by Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a longtime critic of the Iraq war, who argued the New York senator would be a better president than her husband and took an indirect hit at presumptive Republican nominee John McCain’s age.
"We all get older and this one guy running's about as old as me," Murtha said. "Let me tell you something: It's no old man's job," he said. "He said I was too old for the job one time because he disagreed with my policy. Well, I said 'Well, I'm the same age as you.' And he said 'Well, I'm different.'"
The event began with an address by political analyst Charlie Cook, who handicapped race. Cook compared the Republican winner-take-all primary system to Darwinism and said the Democratic system was like “an elementary school field day where everyone gets a ribbon. He said it was “truly a wretched year to be a Republican,” but predicted a close general election and said the long primary battle would lead to a Democratic nominee would be battle-tested and not “glass-jawed." He also talked about why he predicted in a column last year that Clinton would be the nominee and why it had now turned out to be so close.
"One is all those factors that are pushing for Sen. Clinton, and then the other is the sort of weird phenomenon that's come together that a little bit of it is sort of the future, new ideas change that's not ideological or issue-driven, kinda like Gary Hart and Bill Bradley," he said. "There's that, and then you put on top of that sort of this idealism, symbolism, romanticism, personality, glamour, charisma-driven like with John Kennedy and Camelot and then there's this post -- this, there's this racial component."
Cook said his own daughter, who is in her early 20s, was more impressed with the idea of a black president than a woman president -- a view that is much different from that of many older women. And Cook said that view was one reason this race was so close.
*** UPDATE *** RNC spokesman Alex Conant responds to Clinton's criticism of McCain: “It’s because of distorted attacks like these that today’s polls show more voters than ever don’t trust Senator Clinton. Clinton’s divisive rhetoric may appeal to super delegates, but it won’t disguise her plans for tax hikes and big government expansion.”\
*** UPDATE II *** McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds has this response to Murtha saying that McCain is too old: "These are nonsense attacks."
