Letters to the Editor
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Vote to make little old ladies happy?
But it's humbling, it's inspiring. I have to tell you as I travel around the country. Fathers drive hours to bring their daughters to my events. So many women in their 90s wait to shake my hand, and say something like, 'I'm 95 years old, I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.'"
What the hell?
I'd love to vote for the first woman Democratic president, but I don't want to waste my vote on a corporate Democrat who embraces the existing power structure.
Please. Stop it, Hillary. We know you're female, but we just don't care. We're voting on issues.
And, by the way, ask your supporters to quit booing other candidates who disagree with you on issues.
It's rude.
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Well, I do know she likes Pearls
Gender Card... what gender card....? She only gave a 5 minute speech about how great it is to be a woman, ya know...while everyone else was having a good debate on energy policy.
What Gender card is this you speak of?
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Hitlery (the real one) was scripted as usual
No spontaneity. No charisma. Cliches. Posturing. Arrogance. That's Hitlery (the real one) for you. What you see is what you get.
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Pearls or Diamonds
It was such an embarrassing question and pretty much sums up the substantive level of the debate in toto.
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Predictable
It is rather predictable in both accounts to the question asked to Hillary and the response to the question that Hillary gave: She answered the question by appealing to her future constituents--who, of course, were thoroughly impressed by her response. However, the answer in no way appealed to many, like myself, who are on the fence in regards to Hillary. The overall effect of her long, but nevertheless candid, response was utterly tiring: She has a tendency to beat around the bush on many issues, and she never truly makes decisive attempts to delineate her points of view. So, as a result of this political dysfunction, those who originally loved Hillary still love her; but those of us who are still ambivalent about Hillary still remain rather ambivalent about her.
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Are you kidding?
She played the 'poor little girl beat up by the big bad boys' from the moment that last debate ended. It was widely reported and widely criticized for weeks.
Then two weeks later, after all this criticism, after all this time to 'manage her answer' she is thrown that question, (how surprising) and she has her well researched and well rehearsed answer all ready.
You know, it truly is shameful the pass this woman gets from the media.
She waffles badly on the driver's license issue for undocumented workers in the last debate. It is widely reported that she ..or at least her campaign.. pressures Spitzer into changing his mind and dropping it prior to the debate, so now she is free to categorically say she is not for it. To allow a candidate to massage an answer that way and then give her kudos for having a 'no' answer last night is really very illustrative of how the media has been pushing her candidacy and, for the most part, allowing her to go unchallenged.
I won't even start on her whole 'experience' claim. Why is no one really having her get specific on that claim. Clearly other candidates have longer legislative history. Being the wife of a governor and president doesn't exactly make Laura Bush qualified for the presidency. Why is no one in the media really looking into that?
The event last night was not a debate, it was a media circus. I don't know how people get tickets to the event, but it was clear that a huge contingent of Clinton supporters were in the audience. They were allowed to boo and heckle anyone who criticized her and were terribly distracting and disruptive. Every blog I went to last night, regardless of who they seemed to support for president, was buzzing about whether Hillary was planting her debate audiences now. And more than a few are now openly wondering whether that rumor that Wolf Blitzer was 'warned' to go easy on Hillary was true. It sure looked like it from my vantage point.
All in all there were no winners last night, and that's too bad. Many of the candidates had good strong answers that were overhadowed by the circus theatrics.
The American people were not well served by the spectacle they watched last night.
This country is facing very serious issues. Who they put in the White House next year may be the most important decision they make for our future. CNN had an opportunity to give them a better chance of chosing wisely and instead they chose to play the game of political theatrics. If that wasn't obvious during the debate, it was a sealed deal when two former employees of Bill Clinton were doing the after-debate analysis.
Apparently, even Salon.com fell for it. Fortunately, the viewers are not blind, deaf or dumb.
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Brass Tacks
This gender card. What role does gender play in formulating policy? None (except to the most inequitable traditionalists among us and they're Republicans). So why does this continue to be an issue or, rather, a non-issue-made-into-an-issue? As Chileans know with Bachelet and as Germans understand under the chancellorship of Merkel, policy questions are policy questions are policy questions regardless of the leader's gender. It's a serious disservice done to us all that time is spent on such things at the expense of debating distinct and detailed policy positions.
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Were we watching the same debate?
Apparently not. Hillary clearly rocked it-- she was sharp, eloquent and at moments actually pretty funny. I thought her handling of the gender card question was super-- because it does matter. It's not a made up issue. Because up until now we haven't had a woman president and that actually matters to a lot of people. It's also true that woman like my 80-year old grandmother never thought they'd see a woman president in their lifetime and are energized by the prospect. Some folks here just don't seem to get it.
By the way, the audience members who were booing booed at everyone who started making anything resembling a personal attack. I thought it was a nice touch.