Hillary Says She Will End War
February 3rd, 2007
From the Associated Press along with some coverage of the entire event and all the candidates from The Swamp:
“Believe me, I understand the frustration and the outrage,” Clinton said in a speech to the Democratic National Committee meeting that brought the party’s nine White House hopefuls together for the first time. “You have to have 60 votes to cap troops, to limit funding to do anything. If we in Congress don’t end this war before January 2009, as president, I will.”
I actually believe Clinton’s strategy is going in the right direction. There are many who see her position on Iraq as making her unelectable. I actually believe the opposite. Edwards has suddenly taken a “cut off the funding now” attitude toward Iraq which plays amazingly well to the left flank of the Democratic Party. The problem is that:
a) it is unrealistic and would be somewhat dangerous for the region
b) It is coming from someone who is no longer in the Congress and who voted for the War when he was
Clinton can easily maneuver around Edwards by simply saying “you saw the same thing I did back then and came to the same conclusion. The trouble is it is easy for you to throw around a lot of tuff talk now but you didn’t run for reelection to the Senate, you walked away from the decision making to run for president. You lost then, I don’t see you winning now. If you believe you are a good enough campaigner to win over the electorate you could have started at home by running for reelection, it would have been another Dem seat and you could have worked within to effect change. But here you are.”
On her other side she has Barack Obama. He can easily say he wasn’t for the Iraq war from the start. To which Clinton can counter “that was your position outside of the Senate then. We don’t really know when facing the evidence, the pressure and your constituents (lets not forget the majority of the country believed in this war back then), what you would have done.
As for any anti-war position for Barack now. She can easily say “Now you are in the same place I am, working to end this war the right way. You know the odds against us, you know the situation on the ground. You can attack me but what are you doing different?”
Now granted none of that will play to the left for the primary. Those are people who simply want what they want and will vote for whomever pretends to give it to them. They wouldn’t vote for Senator Clinton anyway. Her message does play to the center, to a good chunk of the base and to independents whom in some states can vote in the primaries. It even runs the risk of playing to disillusioned Republicans who don’t see anything more constructive coming from their candidates.
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