Forget ‘Women and Children’. Women ARE Children. Right?
Okay, y’all know about the controversy: At Sunday night’s debate in Flint, Clinton interrupted Sanders, repeatedly, and tried to talk over him. And at one point Sanders said to her, “Excuse me. I’m talking,” and, then, when Clinton again interrupted him, said “Wait a minute. Wait. Could I finish? You’ll have your turn, all right?”
Oh, the horror. At least according to an army of political journalists. Most of whom work for the Washington Post.
Clinton is A WOMAN CANDIDATE. And she’s running to become the first WOMAN NOMINEE OF A MAJOR POLITCAL PARTY FOR PRESIDENT. Ergo, commentaries titled “What Bernie Sanders still doesn’t get about arguing with Hillary Clinton,” in which Janell Ross mentioned that Clinton’s campaign was equating Sanders’ comments to the infamous conduct by Rep. Rick Lazio, Clinton’s 2000 Republican senate-campaign opponent, and who seems to agree with that. And ‘Excuse me, I’m talking’: Bernie Sanders shuts down Hillary Clinton, repeatedly,” the title of a blog post by Peter W. Stevenson, also a Fix-er. And this from The Fix blog leader writer Chris Cillizza in his post-debate Winners and Losers take on Sunday night:
Losers
* Bernie Sanders: The senator from Vermont had effectively walked a fine line in the previous six debates when it came to attacking Clinton without coming across as bullying or condescending. He tripped and fell while trying to execute that delicate dance on Sunday night. Sanders’s “excuse me, I’m talking” rebuttal to Clinton hinted at the fact that he was losing his temper with her. His “Can I finish, please?” retort ensured that his tone and his approach to someone trying to become the first female presidential nominee in either party would be THE story of the night.
Well, it was THE story, I guess, among journalists and others who never forget that Clinton is running as a WOMAN but who don’t consider in these writings that she’s campaigning on a platform of equal treatment for women. Equal pay for equal work. Break down glass ceilings and other barriers.
Well, at least the glass ceiling that supposedly still exists that would be trying to keep, say, Elizabeth Warren from the White House, had she sought it. And who, I’m betting, does not consider herself such a delicate flower that she shouldn’t be treated, on the campaign trail or elsewhere, that same a man would be treated in the same circumstances.
And who can actually distinguish between a male campaign opponent who repeatedly physically approaches his female opponent on a debate stage and shoves a document in her face and demands that she sign it, and a male campaign opponent who finally draws the line on a debate stage that his female opponent has repeatedly crossed.
I do not believe that Sanders would not have said exactly the same things to a male opponent. And I do believe that the criticism is the very height of hypocrisy by a candidate whose primary shtick has been that her election is necessary in the service of equality for women. And, for that matter, by political commentators or anyone else who professes concern about double standards for women and men
But I also think Clinton came into that debate Sunday night with the very intent to be in-your-face-obnoxious. And some pundits caught this:
Sanders shot back that if people truly had a problem with the comment that Sanders made, they should look at the speaking time Clinton was given and at the number of times she interrupted the Senator.
“Well, I think that given the fact that during that debate she ended up going on many occasions [over the time allotment] – and when I was speaking she interrupted me. I didn’t interrupt her, despite the fact that she spoke longer.”
— Bernie Sanders Responds To Debate Interruptions: Says Clinton Is the Rude One, trofire.com
The actual link is http://trofire.com/2016/03/08/bernie-sanders-responds-to-ridiculous-debate-tone-policing/, so I’m assuming that the original title of the article was “Bernie Sanders responds to ridiculous debate-tone policing”. They shouldn’t have changed the title.
Clinton thinks this type of stuff and her habitual sleight-of-hand misrepresentations of Sanders’ record–a special feature of her debate performance on Sunday–are the path to wrapping up the nomination. We’ll see about that.
I agree 100% with the observations made here.
From very early on in the debate, I perceived Clinton as overrunning her allocated time by a particularly annoying amount. However, I would take this one step further as I believe it to be a deliberate strategy by Clinton to provoke the response she got from Sanders.
Sanders tends to be passionate and particularly animated when he speaks. This is occasionally perceived in a negative light.
Clinton disrespectfully interrupted Sanders repeatedly until she got the terse response that she was looking for. Following the debate, one of her representatives (campaign manager?) immediately focused on the exchange painting Sanders as a raving lunatic and a chauvinist. It was a setup from the git go.
This is a particularly insidious strategy — provoking someone to anger and then acting like a victim. It stems from a position of weakness and preys on people’s sympathies. Someone with integrity would never play the “poor me” card.
Welcome to AB.
With that being said, a little interruption? Compare this to what we see on the Republican side. Sanders and Clinton are being extremely polite in comparison.
rto, another Washington Post blogger, Alexandra Petri, who was in the audience at the debate, tweeted that the audience was not happy when Sanders interrupted Clinton’s interruption with “Excuse me. …” In response to Petri’s tweet there was a string of tweets saying, in 140 characters, pretty much what you’re saying.
Clinton always manages to stack the audience with her supporters, mostly, I think, from women’s groups and such. This time Sanders certainly had a good number of supporters in the audience, judging from the applause, but the group overall still clearly favored Clinton.
Everything she does is so staged, so manipulative, so calculating.
Bev:
Their debate was POLITE compared to the Republican circus circus going on with the crowd from the clown car. What happened doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.We have “two” good candidates to go forward with in this next election.
But when push came to shove, push did come to shove in a bill that combined the bailout of Wall Street with the bailout of the auto industry. Bernie was willing to sacrifice the auto industry in order to punish Wall Street. He voted against the actual bill that saved the auto industry and she voted for it. Fact check or not, that seems like fair game in an election that ain’t supposed to be beanbag. (As I recall, weren’t all the bailout funds paid back?)
Yes, Bernie is right (and Clinton won’t say so for strategic purposes) that Geithner, Summers and Obama letting Wall Street pay bonuses out of taxpayer funds was disgusting. Equally disgusting was hearing them wring their hands in agony over the sacred contracts promising millions in bonuses for the Wall Street executives who had either themselves tanked the economy or were benefiting from their companies’ fraudulent actions, while jettisoning without a whimper the contracts for workers in the auto industry. That “tell” indicating the true leanings of the leader of the Democratic Party probably did as much as anything to generate the 2010 debacle that is still paralyzing the government.
E-Mails, either HRC could not understand [training on] classified material or she thought it don’t apply to her.
Benghazi!!! Seems those CIA contractors a mile from the dead ambassador did not get many man portable surface to air missiles [cover story, they were doing a lot worse] out of ISIS’ hands.
“Secretary Clinton is chastising Sanders in the Motor State for not voting for the bill that created the funding for an auto bailout. Except, it wasn’t known that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bill, designed to bail out Wall Street banks from their subprime mortgage loan debacle that was crashing the economy, would be used to rescue the auto industry at the time Senators Sanders and Clinton voted on it. Clinton voted yay. Sanders voted nay. It was President Bush who signed the bill into law.” According to Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkiley5/2016/03/07/clintons-charges-that-sanders-did-not-support-auto-rescue-is-wrong/#71a8614d582b
The US should have a woman president: Not Clinton!
From what I understand, the TARP bill that Sanders voted against said nothing specific about using some of the money to bailout the auto industry. After it was passed and after the republicans blocked a bill specifically to bailout the auto industry, Obama authorized TARP money for the auto industry.