Gay favorite Hillary Clinton ran circles around her male competitors last night. Watch as the Democrat dismisses Campbell Brown’s inquisition about whether or not she has exploited her gender to win people’s hearts – and votes.
Read the transcript after the jump. Special thanks to Petulant Rumblings for the video!
BROWN: Senator Clinton, you went to your alma mater recently, Wellesley College, and you said there that your tenure had prepared you to compete in the all-boys-club of presidential politics. At the same time, your campaign has accused this all-boys-club, surrounding you on stage, of piling on with their attacks against you. And then your husband recently came to your defense by saying that these, quote, “boys,” had been getting rough with you. And some have suggested that you, that your campaign, that your husband are exploiting gender as a political issue during this campaign. What’s really going on here?
CLINTON: Well, I’m not exploiting anything at all. I’m not playing, as some people say, the gender card here in Las Vegas. I’m just trying to play the winning card.
(APPLAUSE)
And I understand, very well, that people are not attack me because I’m a woman; they’re attacking me because I’m ahead. And I understand that…
(APPLAUSE)
You know, as Harry Truman famously said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
(APPLAUSE)
And I feel very comfortable in the kitchen.
(LAUGHTER) And I’m going to withstand the heat. But, you know, this is really one of the kind of issues that we can laugh about because it’s exciting when you look at this field of candidates.
You know, several of us would never have had a chance to stand here and run for president — a Latino, an African-American, a woman — if it hadn’t been for the progress of America over my lifetime. And I am thrilled to be running to be the first woman president.
(APPLAUSE)BROWN: But, Senator, if I can just ask you, what did you mean at Wellesley when you referred to the “boy’s club”?
CLINTON: Campbell…
(LAUGHTER)
BROWN: Just curious.
CLINTON: Well, it is clear, I think, from women’s experiences that from time to time, there may be some impediments.
(LAUGHTER)
And it has been my goal over the course of my lifetime to be part of this great movement of progress that includes all of us, but has particularly been significant to me as a woman.And to be able to aim toward the highest, hardest glass ceiling is history-making.
Now, I’m not running because I’m a woman. I’m running because I think I’m the best qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running, but it’s humbling…
(APPLAUSE)
It’s been inspiring. And I have to tell you, as I travel around the country, you know, fathers drive hours to bring their daughters to my events. And so many women in their 90s wait to shake my hand. And they say something like: I’m 95 years old, I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.BLITZER: Thank you, Senator.
Dawster
i love how she denies playing the “gender card”… by then playing the gender card.
Leland Frances
And Obama is playing the race card AND the biracial card.
And Richardson is playing the Latino card—when he can remember that he is Latino.
And Edwards is playing the Grew Up Poor card.
And Kucinich is playing the UFO card.
And Gravel is playing the Old Coot card.
And Rudolph the Red Faced Liar is playing the 9/11 card.
And Romney is playing the Religious Freedom card.
And McCain is playing the Prisoner of War card.
And Huckabee is playing the None of My Kids Are Gay card.
And some in Blogland are playing the I Hate Hillary [or Obama or Edwards or fill-in-the-blank or the Democrats] More Than I Care About Keeping The Republican Reich From Stacking The Supreme Court With Card Carrying Fascists Until Long After Most of Us Are Dead, From Amending The Constitution So That Gays Are Officially Second Class Citizens, From Continuing To Rape The Environment, From Keeping Us In A State of Perpetual War To Keep Themselves Rich And In Power card.
But one thing the Repugs haven’t succeeded in taking away from us is the right to vote stupid.
Dawster
actually, last night… only Hillary mentioned that Richardson was Latino and Obama was black.
Edwards did use the “grew up poor” thing, as did Kucinich.
actually, everyone was going well except wolf blitzer (dumbass)
hisurfer
It’s hard to believe that John Edwards used to be my top choice – he was the closest thing I saw in the field to a real leftist. Lately he seems to be doing a bit too much populist pandering for my taste.
I’d still like to see a strong three-way race, so here’s hoping Dodd, Biden, or Richardson step up to the plate.
Jon
Why would Hillary play a gender card? Most people don’t want a woman president, so it would be in her best interest to downplay her gender.
Ash
The mere notion of a “gender card” is in and of itself sexist since a man could never and will never be accused of that.
Leland- your comment was brilliant. I cracked up. Thank you.
Bitch Republic
Hillary rocked the debate last night. I especially loved her line that the other candidates weren’t attacking her because she’s a woman, but because she’s ahead in the polls. So true.
http://www.BitchRepublic.net
Matt
Yes, another vote for Leland. Everybody’s got a “card” in this race, and they’re all playing the hell out of them. (Though I agree with Ash, I’m not sure that “gender card” is really relevant–I mean, she’s standing right there, being the only penisless person in a group of presumably penissed people. Hard not to notice that, so I’m not sure she can really be accused of “playing” it.)
Leland Frances
Appreciate it, Ash and Matt, and luved your observation, Matt. I blame the blood suckers in the media for this type of fake controversy, who, it seems, as often as not, start them themselves without suggestions from any candidate’s opponents. Though this one isn’t quite as low rent as the time they invested in debating whether or not she was purposely flashing cleavage on the Senate floor. And they spent more time in the 2000 campaign pondering the significance of whatever Gore wore that day than why anyone should vote for an empty suit like Bush or where the latter was when he was supposed to be on duty in the military, ad infinitum.
I would LUV for Hillary to answer some idiot reporter’s question about what she was doing whenever with Ali MacGraw’s answer in “Goodbye, Columbus” to the question, “What were you doing over the summer?”
“Growing a penis.”
ProfessorVP
Hillary’s “womanly ways?” Is that like Rosie O’Donnell’s anorexic ways? I can think of numerous obnoxious things about Our Gal, but being too feminine is not one of them.
Know what I like about her least? If she got a handwritten, signed note by God Himself saying she couldn’t win in 2008, she would still run.
Michelle
No. 6 Ash has the best commentary on this.
Bill Perdue
Civics 101.2
Just before the Vegas debate the Heir Apparent got some more dividends from the gift that keeps on giving…
On his final morning in the White House, January 1st, 2001 Bill granted the last of his 140 presidential pardons and 36 commutations. Three more recipients of these notorious last minute pardons ‘given’ by Bill Clinton minutes before leaving office made large to the presidential campaign Hillary Clinton,” according to campaign finance records examined by ABC News.
One of Clintons most notorious pardons was uberrich Marc Rich, aka Marc David Reich, a financier and international commodities swindler who fled the US while being prosecuted on charges of tax evasion and illegally making oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis.
There’s nothing illegal about this; the Congress is run by the hand puppets of the uberrich and Republicans and Democrats burn with a bipartisan zeal to protect their contributions from lobbyists, criminals, and big business. For both parties of the ruling rich it’s business usual.
Clinton refused to pardon Leonard Peltier a leader of the American Indian Movement falsely convicted of killing two FBI agents attacking an Indian reservation in 1975 or hundreds of other prisoners of conscience.
With Democrats like this who needs Republicans.
Clinton’s probable opponent in the Presidential race will be Rudolph Giuliani had a similar scandal break this week. His aide Bernie Kerik, who Giuliani proposed as Secretary of Homeland Security is mixed up in a new scandal. Judith Regan a book publisher sued FAUX News claiming that they told her to lie to the Feds investigating Kerik’s nomination about her affair him. The lawsuit asserts that the Fox News wanted to cover Giuliani, then planning this run for the White House. Kerik’s been charged with 16 counts of mail and tax fraud, corruption and lying on forms submitted to be Homeland Security Secretary, accepting more than $250,000 in free apartment renovations from a company with alleged ties to organized crime, and using a downtown Manhattan apartment intended for use by 9/11 rescue workers for sexual trysts. If Giuliani wins Kerik walks.
The gory details include pardons for Clintons cocaine dealing brother Roger Clinton, his business partner Susan McDougal who went to prison rather than testify in the Whitewater investigation, former CIA Director John Deutch, Clintons former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, former Navaho Nation chief Peter MacDonald, impeached for taking bribes and kickbacks and Clintons cocaine dealing brother Roger Clinton. Beside his coke dealer brother Clinton pardoned several other cocaine dealers including Thomas Earl Burton, James William Gardner, Sebraien Michael Haygood, Warren Curtis Hultgren Jr Leslie Jan McCall, John Timothy Thompson, and Andrew Kirkpatrick Mearns III. I listed all these coke dealers so I could ask if their names are indicators of what kind of people got pardoned and what kind didn’t.
As ‘Deepthroat’ famously said “Follow the Money.†He was talking about a Republican criminal, Nixon who was pardoned by a Republican President but his advice equally to the Democrats as well.
In her remarks at the Vegas debate Her Royal Highness, Heir Apparent Hillary gobsmacked her Democratic opponents, commoners all. She majestically accused them of ‘throwing mud’ and reading ‘from the Republican playbook’. She self-importantly confuses herself with the Democratic Party just as her shill try to equate the Democratic Party with democracy instead of corruption.
If Obama, Edwards, et al are the Republican dupes Heir Apparent Hillary claims they are, I shudder to think what her cheerleaders will say about leftists whose numbers happily increased after the Democrats woke them up with their ENDA betrayal.
Republicans are baboons in suits and Democrats are Republicans in drag. Both support the war, union busting and bigotry. Both are corrupt from the word go. Their shills are clueless if they think we’ll believe whatever they tell us, especially about the merits of their infantile lesser evil theory. Bill Clinton appointed his share of union busters and gay bashers to the courts and Senate Democrats just voted in homobigots as a circuit court judge and as Attorney General.
Matt
OK, Bill, so they all suck. Now what do we do about avoiding eight more years of neocons in the White House and the federal courts? When we’re all finished eviscerating our enemies and allies and quasi-allies, what do we have left?
Bill Perdue
We have ourselves left. And our real allies.
It’s futile and silly to blame the messenger for ‘eviscerating’ political frauds. Instead blame them being fraudulent. Start from there because if either Hillary or Giuliani wins we’ll get 4 to 8 more years of the same. That’s a given and we can’t stop it this time. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. Etc.
Start by not voting for your enemies and by joining or building parties that can take them on. Or stay in the political closet and get the government you deserve. DOMA, DADT etc.
The wake up call of ENDA dispelled the illusions of lots of activists who are now rethinking the ideas of wandering in the swamp of Democratic or Republican Party politics.
The escalating level of internal wrangling resulting from the ENDA betrayal reflects the deepening crisis of American political life. It being shattering along fault lines created by the war, misogyny, a tumbling standard of living, homobigotry, union busting, the super exploitation of immigrant workers, racism and a crumbling infrastructure etc. We’ll all have a chance to learn and choose sides.
In our movement the lines are being draw and people are choosing sides at an unprecedented rate. On one side are old school right wingers, Democratic and Republican shills, the conservative and wealthy owners of many GLBT local papers and groups like the HRC.
On the other is an emerging left wing of stubborn combative activists. As the membership of thousands of new GLSEN/GSA high school groups and college equality groups enters the movement they’ll bring a transfusion of energy and a definite swing to the left.
The differences between the two boils down to the bankrupt rightwing view that we should patiently wheel and deal about this or that cosmetic reform and make what ever sacrifices we’re told to. Opposed to it is the leftwing perspective that embraces the certainty that not only can’t the system be reformed but it’s in the process of fracturing to the point that it’ll demolish itself and have to be rebuilt.
Both our internal struggle and the larger national struggles will play out over the next several years. We’ll all have a chance to learn and choose sides.