Please.
{{rolling eyes}}
There’s nobody on either side of the aisle who is more ready to be president than Hillary.
She worked in the White House for 8 years.
She worked in the Senate for 6 years.
She ran the State Department for 4 years.
When she opens her mouth, fully formed policies on every subject fall out with such detail an completeness that this former scientist can tell she’s done her homework, asked all the questions and has come up with most of the answers.
You might not like her solutions. She might not be as revolutionary as you want. I wish she were pushing the envelope too. Those are legitimate concerns
But that’s quite a different question than whether she is qualified to be president.
The answer is profoundly, whole heartedly, without any reservation-YES.
We’ve elected many presidents who don’t have so much as a foreskin of qualifications and no one blinked an eye.
So, Bernie is clearly attacking Hilary’s undisputed strength.
Not a fan, Bernie. It feels too much like the Penis Years crap we saw in 2008 where 1 penis equaled 8 years of someone else’s hard work.
Don’t go there, Bernie.
Filed under: 2016 election, General | Tagged: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Penis Years, qualifications |
The Confluence 
100% agreed! This is going too far
What about the “she is getting nervous” stuff? I’m getting irritated about that also. from getting nervous to she is being hysteric is a short step. We all know how men like to say this about women….
Agreed. Lots of negative responses to his remarks all over the internet today. And I like how her campaign is responding with their quiz: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/feed/hillary-clinton-qualified-be-president/ HA! That being said, perhaps his campaign is now just panicking after his interview with the NY Daily News…
Sanders reacts to his own missteps and to criticism of him, by lashing out at someone else, threatening to sue, and so on. Always attack, never defend, is his nature; and his sleazy campaign managers try to accentuate that. And yes, that Daily News interview was potentially devastating, as it unmasked the emptiness beneath the rhetoric, something that many of us had always known. But by attacking Hillary in this way, he tries to pivot and change the narrative and media focus. His choice of words was completely inappropriate, damaging, and untrue.
And at perhaps a deeper level, note how he tries to redefine the word “qualified.” As RD noted, that is Hillary’s strong suit; and so he tries to make “qualfiied” simply a matter of opinion on positions. If you don’t do it or see it his way, you are unqualified. I am perhaps making much of the semantics, but for “qualified” to be defined in this way, is a very dangerous theme, on a par with calling a novel “great” because you agree with its politics or positions, and “bad” if you do not. This reducing of any measurement or evaluation to a personal and subjective perspective, is a favored tool of deconstructionists, as well as radicals in any milieu: academia, aesthetics, and the political and social spheres. By Sanders’ metrics, his wife Jane, or indeed any of his supporters, is more qualified to be president than Hillary Clinton.
Thanks, William. Something was really under my skin about his comments, and you clarified what it was in your post.
Dismissively berned Jane after Wisconsin win. Guess poor jane doesn’t know her place either… does he make her walk ten paces behind him too? http://bluenationreview.com/bernie-dont-stand-next-to-me/
There is no such thing as objectively “good” or “bad” art, since beauty is a matter of emotional judgements, which are subjective and irrational. 🙄
If you want objective truth, stick to the natural sciences and their practical applications.
But there are aesthetic criteria. If someone tries to argue that his friend is as good a painter as Monet, this is not simply a matter of, “oh, he likes Jones, you like Monet, it is just a matter of opinion.” Some current novelist on the bestseller list is not in the same hemisphere as Shakepeare or Fitzgerald. There are aestheric values, though people might disagree at the margins.
This is a pet issue of mine, the way that deconstructionism and political correctness have degraded the “literary canon,” so that people try to argue that Alice Walker is a better writer than Faulkner. I guess that people can argue anything, but simply because there are no objecive metrics as in track and field, for example, does not mean that there are not aesthetic values. I don’t know enough about classical music to know what makes a piece truly great, but those who do, can write eloquently about it, and I can learn from that, though of course I will always have my own ear. Similarly, I have extensively studied literature, and have read a great deal of fiction and literary criticism, so I think that I can make worthwhile arguments as to why I think one book is superior in style, characterizations, or coherence, to another. Anyway, getting back to our main subject, if “qualified” is not based on anything more than “he or she doesn’t vote the way I do, or have the same positions,” then the word loses all meaning, and is simply self referential. I think that it is a very dangerous deogation of language and evaluative criteria, and it is seeping out of academia into general discourse. Among other negative things, Sanders’ comment has substantially contributed to that. When language can be perverted in that way, yoi are moving into Orwellian doublethink. How long before someone argues that Trump is the most quaified candidate ever, because “he thinks the right way.”
Settle down, Beavis. 😆
William, I agree. The way Sanders used the word ‘qualified’ is destructive of its meaning. He may be getting stressed out lately: blanking at the interview, bouncing the word ‘unqualified’ back with a random predicate, now saying the Pope invited him….
People saying he should drop out must be putting more pressure on him; that shouldn’t become a tradition. Party Unity His Ass? But he should stop the negative attacks.
In good conscience, I could not vote for Bernie Sanders, just as I could not vote for Trump or Cruz.
Yes, I am convinced that he is not temperamentally suited to be president. And I don’t think that he cares a bit about the Democratic Party, or any of the Democrats in office. I don’t exactly know what he wants, but based on the NYDN interview, I don’t think that he has thought it out. Like Trump, he is just winging it, and thinks he will figure it out sometime later. Sanders has better positoins than Trump, but I would shudder to imagine him trying to negotiate treaties, or deal with world leaders. Yell about everything you want, but if you can’t get anyone to join with you, you get absolutely nowhere, which this planet cannot afford.
What would you vote for in the event of Sanders v Cruz v Various Third Parties?
Hey, what happened to my happy, wavy carrot from outer space?
Now, I’m a demented jack o’ lantern from hell!!! 🙂
Lol! Ok, I’ll change it back.
Sanders appears to be confused on the difference between “qualified and credentialed” as against “possessing policy goodness or badness”. She is arguably credentialistically qualified to be President.
And then of course “qualificationism” is in the eye of the beholder too.
Various Republican nominee-wannabes claimed that you have to have been a State Governor to be credentialed and qualified to be President. Of course the ones who said that had all been State Governors.
Sanders and Clinton seem to me to be equally “qualified” and “credentialized” in terms of political service/exposure/etc. What I will be looking at and sniffing around about will be their respective past and future policy records and viewpoints, their respective stables of thinking-brain dogs and likely cabinet choices, etc.
Perhaps Bernie lashed out after feeling he had been poked with a sharp stick? Sharp sticks are a part of politics. And cattle prods, tasers, tear gas and pepper spray too, if the stakes get high enough and the margins of victory get narrow enough.
Let’s not do the both sides do it thing.
Hillary did not call Bernie “unqualified” to be President.
H Clinton called Sanders “unqualified” on Morning (Corporate) Hoe ScarWhorough show. (Troll prophylactic: I am referring to solely 1 man, Joe Scarborough, as a Corporate Whore)
Which is laughable, given that Sanders has more years of relevant experience than H Clinton, 33 yrs, all in elective office: 9 as US Senator, 16 as US Rep, 8 as (Executive experience) Mayor
Furthermore, Sanders has shown excellent judgement, H Clinton has shown terrible judgement.
Furthermore, H Clinton is a massive Flip Floppa during the campaign, perhaps half as bad as the worst Flip Floppa Trump. H Clinton says her plan is “more progressive” than Sanders, then Flip Flps & says Sanders is “not progressive enough” or “not pragmatic”.
In contrast Sanders has a consistent policy platform, based on Social Democracy, the poltical-economic ideology with the best empirical & factual track record in the world. Word to Denmark & other Social Democratic nations that dominate the world Top10 lists in economic mobility aka “does hard work pay off”, life expectancy, etc.
Someone with “good judgement”: doesn’t allow interviewers to confuse an invitation to attend an academic conference in Vatican City with an invitation from the Pope.
And even Sanders supporters have to realize by now that Clinton was baited three times by Joe Scarborough concerning the qualified question. She didn’t bite even once.
As for Sanders experience, it may be longer, it does not represent much breadth.
As for Sanders consistency…in December of 2009, he told the press that he would never vote for the ACA because it lacked a single payer provision. He voted for it two days later.
Bernie has the fever, and he has it bad. It’s beginning to feel like ambition and entitlement. Hopefully he’ll get back on track and finish it out with dignity and class.
I’d count Hillary’s relevant experience (First Lady=co-CEO) from when she and Bill had the Governor’s Mansion of Arkansas, or even back when he was Atty Gen of Arkansas.
You need to look at the tape. She never said he was unqualified. She said he didn’t do his homework which is true. The NYDN interview was nothing short of a disaster for him because he simply couldn’t answer the questions. People who don’t know answers or have solutions to the problems they are talking about either are unprepared.
Good to see you are still telling it like it is RD!
Thinking they’re unqualified is a big reason women don’t run for office: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-calling-hillary-clinton-unqualified-smacks-of-sexism/
My problem with Bernie and his campaign is not that I don’t support his domestic policy goals, or even that he has no real plans to achieve them, it is that in deluding himself-or his followers-that he can still win (something that became basically impossible after OH, IL, and FL) he is not helping any of the down-trodden people he purports to represent. (I say purports because a majority of his voters are white males nowhere near the bottom of our current economy.)
I’m not saying he should have dropped out, I’m saying after the math became clear, he should have concentrated his fire on the GOP, and used his campaign to support down-ticket Dems. In doing so he would help prevent a GOP victory in the fall, AND earn points with both Hillary and the Democrats more generally, giving him and his policies a boost. Instead, he has chosen the exact opposite tack, focusing his increasingly harsh attacks on Hillary and doing nothing for anyone else down-ticket. This not only helps the GOP, but ensures that Hillary, and any other Dems who win in the fall, will do so in spite of, rather than because of, his campaign. They will owe him and his supporters nothing.
Of course, this is the problem with those who call for Revolution: revolutions don’t do compromise, bargaining, leverage. That’s fine if there is in fact a revolution, but self-defeating if there isn’t. Bernie has apparently decided to double-down on his bet on revolution, despite the fact the evidence says that it isn’t coming. (And that it would just as likely-at best-be a fascist revolution if it came.) Not (alas) the first time the Left has made that mistake.
Agree. Illegitimizing Hillary’s voters at this point and jumping on the Republican smear wagon doesn’t help anyone, not even his own supporters.
Besides, katiebird and some of my own family notwithstanding, the Bernie bots are from the same cohort as the 2008 Obots. They got what they wanted in 2008. Oh? That’s not what they wanted? Then I guess they picked the wrong person.
What they keep asking for is a politician who is not a politician. And the world doesn’t work that way.
I genius once said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This applies to politically naive* voters as well as an “outsider” who has spent over twenty-five years in politics and hasn’t accomplished much. *Most school’s curriculum no longer require a civics class for high school students much less middle school (a passing score was necessary in order to be advanced to high school). Our system of three branches of government is poorly understood by voters young and old. Not understanding that selecting a leader in just a small part of a complex process of changing government policy, laws etc. reflects on the pathetic midterm election Dem turnout. Anymore when someone gets in my face about voting – I just ask them if they voted in the mid-terms or their last local election because those are important too. Not surprisingly the most rabid “get out the voters” say they didn’t (I’m not taking about 18 yr olds here). Tempted, as I am, I don’t tell them to STFU instead I just shake my head and walk away.
Agree. Well said! A little surprised he didn’t do better in WY today, given the hype. Maybe some of this is having an effect.
I think it is having an effect. I know I started out more evenly divided and I’d happily vote for either one. Over the course of the primary, I have started to shift farther from Bernie. I would still vote for him over anyone the republicans have to offer but I would not be excited about it. His temperament is a concern, he seems to say things thoughtlessly and way harsher than warranted.
The unqualified comment. Very bad reaction to a newspaper headline. Everyone knows headlines are used to sell papers. Worse to me is the meat of the article is Hillary saying maybe Bernie needs to do his homework – oops! He didn’t do his homework again and stepped in it. I think it is OK for the president to not be the smartest and most informed person in the room. That is what advisors are for. However, the president does need people to do that homework, read the stories under the hot headlines and give them good information. The best leaders are very measured in their reactions and don’t slip like this.
Exactly, Churchill once said that “Roosevelt had a second class intellect but a first class temperament.”
Bernie needs to stop talking, rest and then come back because he is just putting his foot in over and over at this point. The sound bites are getting worse as he is interviewed this weekend.