I am p*ssed at the Clinton's. How do others feel about e-mailing

[wisteria]

Hillary with our outrage over her veiled attempts to paint Kerry as weak and being an opportunist taking advantage of all the hard work, Kerry and others have done to fight this administration? I am writing her. I think she needs to hear from those of us who don't care for her tactics.

[JI7]

1. does anyone remember how Hillary voted on the confirmation of

Condi Rice as sec of state in 2005 ?

[whometense]

2. She voted yes.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00002

NAYs ---13
Akaka (D-HI)
Bayh (D-IN)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Dayton (D-MN)
Durbin (D-IL)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Levin (D-MI)
Reed (D-RI)

[JI7]

3. wasn't this vote after the exchange with Condi Rice

over the "Bin Laden determined to attack" memo ? can't remember when or with who the exhange took place, but it did happen. either with the 9/11 investigation committee or Senate foreign relations or maybe both.

but she is using this memo to attack Rice and use it to show how they(Clintons) are fighters unlike "other" Dems. i agree with her criticism of Rice, but why did she go on to vote to confirm Rice unlike the non fighting Dems like Kerry.

[karynnj]

4. Yes it was it was in Bush's second term

making it after:
- not reacting properly on the Bin Laden Memo
- lying about mushroom clouds and being part of "fixing" the intelligence estimate
- lying to Kerry at her confirmation hearings.

Seeing Kerry speak about the alternatives in Iraq at various times - the language he uses is someone familiar with the military, I just can't see Hillary being as convincing on being strong on the military. (Also she and Bill in the 70s were far to the left of Kerry.)

[_dynamicdems]

5. I'm disgusted.

Hillary can go pound sand. Opportunistic doesn't even start to describe her. No wonder why Bill admires Rove's Machiavellian tactics. He sees some of the same in himself and Hillary.

No matter what people say, Bill Clinton wasn't strong when he went nutso in that interview. He came off as a horse's ass. And it was after the fact: too late to do any good. He'd already gotten his ass kicked by Disney. He should have voiced his outraged before the airing of the docudrama. Instead he pops his lid over a FOX news interview. Clinton was Swiftboated and he didn't do a damn thing except whine noisily afterward. Anybody who saw the docudrama and then watched Bill Clinton go apoplectic on FOX would conclude the man doth protest too much.

Now what has Bill actually done other than the one entertaining rant? If there is something, enlighten me, because I'm not seeing it.

Kerry, on the other hand, used what he learned from the Swiftboating episode to strengthen the defenses of ALL veterans. He's actually done something that nobody else has: he's put together a line of defense in support of any veterans who come under attack. He learned that the first place they attack is the veterans because veterans have credibility when they speak out about war. Kerry jumps to the defense of veterans verbally, campaigns for them and raises huge sums of money to combat the lies being spread by the neocons. When Kerry talks about kicking the swifties asses if they go after him again, he doesn't mean he's going to indulge in an ineffective Boltonesque temper tantrum.

What he's going to do is thoroughly and completely discredit them. In fact, he's already started. Every time he helps a veteran under attack and exposes the lies directed at them, Kerry makes a step toward bringing down the network of liars.

The thing is: you have to be careful in the way you defend yourself or you come off as a total jerk, or worse, like you have something to hide. What was lacking in 2004 wasn't a strong defense of John Kerry by John Kerry. It was a strong defense of John Kerry by other Democrats.

Can you imagine how much of an idiot John Kerry would have looked like if he took a nervy on television the way Clinton did? They would say he was too irrational and lacked the control to be President. This time, should the senator come under attack again, there is a network in place. All those who Kerry helped will be helping him. His band of brothers has expanded.

[ProSense]

6. This is why

I would ignore them, but acknowledge that it's posturing. You couldn't mention Terry McAuliffe's name on DU without McAwful snark, now it's praise that he smacked down Tucker Carlson. Good, but they will no longer be able to use him as the poster boy for their attacks. A reminder that the "position Hillary as THE Democrat of choice" machine was being put in place months ago:

Hillary Who?

The American Prospect: Sen. Clinton Is Nothing To Get Excited About

July 5, 2006

(The American Prospect) This column was written by Matthew Yglesias.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James Carville and Mark Penn wrote a recent Washington Post op-ed touting Hillary Clinton’s strength as a presidential candidate, and the Post somehow found it unnecessary to disclose to its readers that Penn is currently employed as Clinton’s top pollster. In the wake of the most recent fake scandal regarding conflicts of interest in the blogosphere, there was a certain grim humor in seeing the establishment press offer up a perfect and all-too-typical example of the real thing. But the substance of Carville and Penn’s case is even more humorous.

Snip...

We don't know whether Hillary will run," they conclude, "But we do know that if she runs, she can win."

This has the virtue of being true. It's also extraordinarily trivial...

But recent elections have been so close that one is inclined to say that "everything matters" on some level, and this is probably correct. If Al Gore had been a bit more charismatic, he would have won. Then again, he would have won if a little boy in a boat hadn't happened to have washed up in Florida at the particular time he did. And, of course, he would have won had Theresa LePore designed the Palm Beach County ballots differently. And maybe he would have won if he'd adopted an entirely different set of campaign tactics. Who knows? Everything matters in a razor-close election. But by the same token, just about anyone could win if the stars aligned correctly, and pretty much nobody can win if they don't catch some breaks.

Snip...

The evidence, however, tends to indicate that she'd be a relatively weak candidate. The main source of information we have comes from the 2000 election, where she won a contest for an open Senate seat in New York by a healthy 12 percentage point margin. That's a pretty good result. But as Brendan Nyhan points out, just two years earlier Chuck Schumer beat an incumbent Republican senator by 11 percentage points. The same year Clinton was running, Al Gore won New York's electoral votes by 25 percentage points. Four years later, John Kerry achieved an 18 percentage point margin.

A straightforward read of this data is that Clinton has less electoral appeal than Kerry or Gore, and about the same (or maybe even worse, depending on what you think of the incumbency factor) level of electability as Chuck Schumer. Nobody, of course, thinks Schumer should run for president, though he has considerably more experience as a legislator than Clinton. The reason for this is clear — a candidate who seems likely to run 6-13 points behind Kerry and Gore, all else being equal, simply isn't a very appealing choice.

Snip...

Which is all fine. It's by no means necessary to support the "most electable" candidate in any given race. Indeed, I believe the tendency of Democrats to think along those lines in 2004 proved to be a serious error. But Clinton has gone out of her way to avoid giving liberals anything substantive to get excited about. If that lack of effort at a substantive appeal leaves her only with a case based on electability — and if the evidence on that score is so tilted against her that even her own pollster can only muster a feeble “she can win” — there’s a real problem.

more...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/05/opinion/main1775619.shtml

Let the hypocrisy, spin and pandering roll, but there is plenty of information to counter it.

[wisteria]

8. Good piece, I had forgotten about this one.

I suppose I'm just amazed at how much gall the Clinton's have. I truly find it repugnant that they are so self-promoting and without any class. Their opportunism just makes me like them less and less. I have to wonder what kind of President Senator Clinton would make. Obviously, I think the party will be making a big mistake. A Clinton win may set our party back for years to come along with the chances of electing a good woman as president.

[partisan]

7. ????

Can anyone give me a link to Hillary's comments?

[beachmom]

9. Here

Clinton Defends Husband’s Tact, Adding That All Democrats Should Take a Hint
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
Published: September 27, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — The war of words between the Bush administration and the Clintons intensified on Tuesday as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that her husband would have reacted differently as president if he had heard the same warnings about Osama bin Laden’s plans that President Bush had access to before 9/11.

Snip...

In her remarks, Senator Clinton also suggested that Bill Clinton’s animated defense of his own national security record as president, delivered only a few days earlier, provided a powerful example for Democrats, whom Republicans have sought to portray in recent national elections as too weak to lead the country in such perilous times.

“I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not going to take these attacks,” she said.

Snip...

For Senator Clinton, who is considered a possible contender for the presidency in 2008, her comments on Tuesday were unusually personal in tone. But Howard Wolfson, one of her chief advisers, made it clear that Senator Clinton would be taking an increasingly aggressive posture to thwart any Republican attempts to cast Democrats as timid on national defense this election season.

“She is not going to allow her party, her husband or herself to get Swift-boated,” he said, referring to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that attacked the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry when he was the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2004. “Democrats have to stand up and go toe to toe with Republicans on national security.”


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=273x104287#104302

[wisteria]

10. You beat me to it! n/t

[wisteria]

11. Reading this just makes me angry all over again.

To bad I can't put her on ignore.:grr:

[Island Blue]

12. Am I missing something?

“She is not going to allow her party, her husband or herself to get Swift-boated,” he said, referring to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that attacked the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry when he was the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2004. “Democrats have to stand up and go toe to toe with Republicans on national security.”

Wasn't Monicagate the mother of all Swiftboating attempts? Did the Clinton's do something to prevent President Clinton from being impeached? Maybe I'm disremembering history. And hasn't EVERY BAD THING that has happened to the US during the past six years been blamed on Bill Clinton? Has he responded to those attacks - at all? (Other than to let Bush 41 choose the tee time. That doesn't count as fighting back IMO.)