NYT, Gail Collins: Everybody vs. Hillary

[DeepModem Mom]

Everybody vs. Hillary
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 1, 2007

Hillary Clinton stood on a stage for two hours Tuesday night, being yelled at by six men. Now this is what they mean by pressure. The most important job in the world is at stake and every single one of the other candidates walked into the presidential debate gunning for her. They began piling on from the first question. She took it all and came out the other end in one piece. She’s one tough woman. Kudos.

Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible....

***

Hillary Clinton is relying on her Democratic audience to understand that all her peculiar positions and triple-waffles have to do with a fear of being demagogued by the Republicans in the general election. But you would have to be a very, very committed Hillaryite to be comfortable listening to two solid hours of dodging and weaving on everything from her vote on the Iran resolution to her husband’s attempt to keep records of their White House communications secret until after 2012....

***

Clinton needs to ration her obfuscations. Otherwise, she risks looking as silly as she did at the end of the debate, when she gave a perfectly rational explanation of why she once said that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses “makes a lot of sense,” then raised her hand a minute later to add that the fact that she understood why Governor Spitzer was trying to do it did not mean that she thought it should actually be done.

The good news for her side was that nobody else seems really poised to take her place in the front of the field....What the debate did demonstrate was that the others deserve more time to make their case. Hillary might have looked immovable on that stage, but she sure didn’t look inevitable.

There are still two months before the first primaries, contests that as we all know only involve a tiny, tiny number of very, very special voters. (On behalf of the rest of the country, let me suggest that presidential candidates refrain from ending their rallies by saying: “We need your support! If you know anyone in Iowa or New Hampshire ...”) Most of the nation has at least until next February to think about this, and Hillary really hasn’t sealed the deal.

But you do have to give her a few points for not letting the guys push her around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/opinion/01collins.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Karmadillo]

1. Ah! The loathsome Gail Collins strikes again. What would we do without the liberal media?

Collins refers to Edwards as the Man with the Expensive Haircut. Ha Ha Ha!!! What a pundit! Here she is in 1999 on that silly Al Gore, the "class nerd":

http://www.dailyhowler.com/h110399_1.shtml

<edit>

Collins then said how Bradley came across. Of course, we already knew she thought Gore had done well. She'd said so, in her New York Times column:

COLLINS (10/29): Al Gore has a personality without a thermostat, and when he tries to look animated he practically crashes into the wallboard. On Wednesday he hijacked the auditorium early on, begging for a chance to do a pre-debate Q-and-A. ("This person has a question! Do we have time for his question?") He tossed in a little Spanish and a long joke, and made endless attempts to create Clintonesque mind-melds with the audience. ("How old in your child, Corey? Are you unionized, Earl?") At the end, he refused to be dragged off-stage. ("Can I say one more word? I would like to stay!") He bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the kid who asks the teacher for more homework. Mr. Bradley, lounging on his stool, arms folded across his chest, looked like the high school athlete watching the class nerd volunteering to stay and clap erasers.