Cross-posted at Daily Speech
I am clearly a supporter of Barack Obama and yet I would not condone Senator Obama comparing Hillary Clinton unfavorably to John McCain - the presumptive Republican nominee for President.
In the rough world of politics, there will be sharp intraparty struggles to become the candidate to represent your party in a general election and there will be comparisons made between candidates of the same party. That is expected.
It was fine (if fear mongering) for Hillary Clinton to release the infamous 3am ad that suggests she is the more qualified person to be addressing crises as President. Such comparisons are expected.
It is fine for Barack Obama to counter with an argument that experience alone does not guarantee good judgment as is suggested by Senator Clinton's vote to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002.
But when a candidate from your own party suggests the nominee from the opposing party is more qualified then a candidate from the same party as the candidate offering the critique, that is beyond the pale.
Basically Senator Clinton is so determined to beat back her own party's opposing candidate that she is willing to risk her party losing in the fall if the opposing candidate is the nominee then to avoid that risk by not mentioning the opposing party's nominee.
No folks, Mrs. Clinton's campaign strategist, Mark Penn, had devised an "incumbent inevitability" strategy last fall for Mrs. Clinton's nomination and here comes this upstart freshman Senator from Illinois who has the audacity to not wait his turn and to presume he can take away her coronation as the Democratic nominee. Who the hell does this guy think he is, anyway?
Never mind the irony of much more experienced candidates like Joe Biden and Chris Dodd losing to Mrs. Clinton (so much for the experience argument), but this "kid" out of Illinois, who is the same age as Bill Clinton was in 1992 and who has more exposure to foreign policy then Bill did in 1992, who does he think he is?
Oh yeah, we live in the post-9/11 world, so the analyses to Bill Clinton in 1992 does not apply here. I forgot. But wait, wasn't Barack Obama's arguments in 2002 post-9/11 and wasn't his reasons for opposing military action based on:
- We had not finished the work against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and we cannot afford to stretch our military against targets that had nothing to do with 9/11
- Such unilateral actions against a target that did not provoke us would only add to anti-American sentiments and increase the recruiting of radical Islamic extremists.
Well, OK, but still Obama is just a "kid", what does he know?
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton remains so angry that her crown is being "stolen" she is willing to say to the Democratic Party and that party's possible nominee this fall - Fuck You.