“Secretary Clinton appears to be getting a little bit nervous,” Sanders told a crowd of thousands at a rally at Temple University in Philadelphia Wednesday night. “She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am quote unquote, not qualified to be president,” Sanders began before ticking off a list he claimed actually made Clinton unqualified for the office — an attack both candidates had previously avoided.Bernie then went on to tick off several other "reasons" why Hillary Clinton is not qualified to be President. Setting aside the merits for a moment, there was one basic flaw in Bernie's statement: Clinton never "quote unquote" said he was unqualified to be President. Perhaps he or his staff believed the headline in the ratf*cking
“Now, let me, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton, I don’t believe that she is qualified, if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest donations,” Sanders said. “I don’t think that you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.” [Ed. note: by this standard, President Obama is unqualified to be President, too.]
“I think he hadn’t done his homework and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions,” she said, getting a swipe in over Sanders’ confused New York Daily News editorial board meeting while avoiding host Joe Scarborough’s language of qualifications. “Really what that goes to is for voters to ask themselves can he deliver what he’s talking about.”Catch that? At worst, Clinton questioned Sanders' qualification as a Democratic Party leader, a fair point, since there is an issue of whether or not Sanders has a commitment to the Democratic Party as an institution, given his (and apparently some of his followers') disinterest in helping downballot Democrats (and, no, it's not "buying" superdelegates, it's building the party at the State and local levels). In the meantime, Sanders is doubling down on yesterday's comments.
“I think he himself doesn’t consider himself to be a Democrat,” Clinton responded after Scarborough pressed her about Sanders’ qualifications as the party standard-bearer. “You know, look, he’s raised a lot of important issues that the Democratic Party agrees with, income inequality first and foremost. But it’s up to the Democratic primary voters to make that assessment.”
As far as being qualified to be President, we can think of no other candidate in recent memory that is more qualified by virtue of over 25 years in the public arena at the State, national and international levels than Hillary Clinton. You can dislike her, you can question or oppose her positions or votes in the past, but "unqualified?" Um, nope.
This is not a time to be blowing up the party you aspire to lead. This is a time to keep the debate to issues that affect people, not to be making disingenuous attacks on your opponent. By the way, we criticize Clinton and her campaign for this, too. As an example, wouldn't it have been better for Clinton to respond this way rather than give the ratf*cking media a chance to make something out of nothing:
UPDATE: Looks like Hillary did just that (a day late).
"On our worst day... We are one hundred times better than any Republican candidate" -@BernieSanders #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/SG8msqGHB6— Mashable News (@MashableNews) February 5, 2016
