Clinton laughs about Ross Perot - Edwards spinners twist it as laughing at NAFTA (video)

[MethuenProgressive]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBypp2hqxaQ

The Edwards mudslingers sling and miss again.

[rodeodance]

1. I am an edwards fan and i wish he had NOT done that! its petty

[Lucinda]

3. This turn in his tactics the past month or so is why I bailed on him.

Makes me sad.

[MethuenProgressive]

10. Biden and Richardson are looking better and better all the time.

[Lucinda]

21. Definitely.

[ccpup]

2. it's just sad

I think John Edwards is an intelligent guy with his heart in the right place.

But the politics of smear and personal destruction he's currently using just don't seem to sit well with him. I almost feel like he has advisers and big donors urging him to attack, attack, attack and I fear he's turning a lot of rational people away from hearing his message.

What's that saying about making one's bed and then lying in it?

[CTyankee]

29. I love JE andI think he had every right to question HRC on this.

She does claim to have experience based on being in the White HOuse. So she can't just say all remembered was a bunch of charts on a matter that was so important.

I expected more from Hillary on this issue. John Edwards was right to question her.

[MethuenProgressive]

36. She laughed about Ross Perot, CT. Edwards is spinning this into an attack.

Read the full transcript, and don't just go by the editted video.

[CTyankee]

42. I saw the debate live. At the heart of the question was NAFTA. She was gaining her experience

in the White House that she talks about now when the debate over NAFTA took place. I know she laughed at Ross Perot, but the issue is really how NAFTA turned out for us. Since I think she already, in a different forum, said something along the lines of "NAFTA didn't turn out the way we had expected," I thought she would continue with that thought. This is a serious and legitimate issue and it deserves more consideration by HRC, IMHO.
As it does by every candidate. I don't let anybody off the hook!

This is at the heart of my problem with these debates and political conversations. They need to be about real policy questions, but they wind up in endless fingerpointing and attacks on superfluitous junk: cackles, hair styling, cleavage, and on and on. I don't think we are on opposite sides exactly, but I think I am trying to reach deeper. AT least I hope so...

[PollThis]

4. Great video thanks for posting. nt

[durrrty libby]

5. Sadly, Edwards has morphed into an angry desperado

with a side of phony bologna

[MethuenProgressive]

13. Seems to me more like the real Edwards is showing.

The character he's been playing since '04 seemed to contrived.

[1corona4u]

25. I couldn't agree more...

he has really changed....not for the better.

[hootinholler]

6. I've missed somethign here.

Where is it that this is Edwards spin?

Also laughing at the question instead of declaring her position on NAFTA is good? Are those the qualities we need in the Oval Office?

-Hoot

[MethuenProgressive]

7. "Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right?" was the question,

...and she laughed. The Edwardians on DU and elsewhere are spinning this as laughing at the poor poeple being crushed by NAFTA. That, Hoot, is classic Edwards spin.

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/11/edwards_campaign_...

[hootinholler]

32. Well, I'm not an Edwardsian...

But I kinda see it that way too. She is laughing at the working people.

-Hoot

[Midwestern Democrat]

37. Agreed - she gave a rather flippant response to a question about an

issue that is deadly serious to a lot of people. If nothing else, it kind of puts to rest any illusions (if any existed) that issues of trade and its effects on the American worker are really all that high on her priority list - I've never seen folks like Dick Gephardt, David Bonior, Marcy Kaptur, etc laugh when it came to NAFTA.

[creeksneakers2]

33. The video and the smear is up on Edward's main web site n/t

[MethuenProgressive]

34. That's no surprise.

Edwards probably still has the "she had her cats killed" rumor up too...

[Evergreen Emerald]

8. Now is his out right lying. He knows exactly what she was talking about.

[MethuenProgressive]

9. Huh?

[Evergreen Emerald]

11. Am I not clear? sorry.

edwards knows that the spin is a lie. She was not laughing at NAFTA. She was laughing at Perot and the charts. What a disingenuous bunch of crap.

[johncoby2]

12. I like Edwards, but his attack dog style is a turn off.

He doesnt even look like an attack dog.

It just doesnt fit him

[MethuenProgressive]

16. It's a real shame what he's become.

He had promise, not too many years ago.

[journalist3072]

14. It's really pathetic what John Edwards has become. A real turn-off. If he were the nominee, I wil

sit the general election out. I have intentions to vote for him whatsoever. He's not the type of person I want to see in the White House.

[MethuenProgressive]

17. It's hard to understand why anyone ever bought his act.

I can easily say I'll vote for him if he's the nominee, because he'll never win it.
He did well in front of 12 people. But in front of the nation, he shrivels.

[emilyg]

19. I never did.

[GreenArrow]

20. it's not what he's become,

it's what he already was.

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. You are making shit up.

That video does not have her 'laugh about Ross Perot' OR NAFTA.

She is laughing, and spinning, to deflect a question that she does not want to answer.

Did you notice, she never answered the question? Was Ross Perot right about NAFTA being a disaster?

"All I remember about that is a lot of charts".

That is NOT an answer. You know damn well she remembers a lot more than that - if she doesn't she has no business running for president.

[MethuenProgressive]

18. Is that the spin being sent in the Edwards emails?

And you're buying it?
NC, hold on to your checkbook, Edwards really doesn't deserve your money.

[Silent3]

22. How can anything notice anything after the convenient editing cut?

Here's a quote of this particular exchange taken from a full transcript of the debate:

MR. BLITZER: All right.

Senator Clinton, all of us remember the big NAFTA debate when your husband was president of the United States, and a lot of us remember the debate between Al Gore, who was then vice president, and Ross Perot. Ross Perot was fiercely against NAFTA.

Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right? (Laughter.)

SEN. CLINTON: All I can remember from that is a bunch of charts. (Laughter.) That sort of is a vague memory.

Look, NAFTA did not do what many had hoped, and so we do need to take a look at it and we do need to figure out how we're going to have trade relations that are smart, that give the American worker and the American consumer rights around the world.

And I want to go back to Campbell's question for a minute because it's really related to this. It is something that every parent should be worried about. It's not only the toys; it's the pet food, it's the medical components and prescription drugs. If we don't impose a third-party, independent investigative arm on our corporations that do business in China as well as the Chinese government, we should not permit any items to be imported into our country until we're sure they're safe. (Applause.) I mean, that to me is rule number one. (Applause.)

You: "Did you notice, she never answered the question?"

No, I didn't notice that because it simply isn't true, and I'm smart enough to realize that the place where a hit-piece video clips off what a person is saying just might not be all that was said. I'll admit she didn't say a whole lot more -- she used most of her time going back to a related trade question -- but she at least admitted NAFTA "did not do what many had hoped", and talked about the "need to figure out" how to change things. I for one don't consider it a major fault that she didn't have direct access to the exact anti-NAFTA arguments made by Ross Perot 15 years ago right on the tip of her tongue for quick response.

As for the laughter, I think reminiscing about Ross Perot and his famous charts is worth a chuckle too.

Now, if you've got a "scrap the whole thing!" attitude towards NAFTA, you likely still wouldn't be impressed with her answer. Okay then, address that, rather than the convenient fiction that she said nothing more than what appears in that video. Or do you prefer to stick with propagating deliberate misperceptions?

I sometimes despair that DU is sinking to freeper levels of intelligence and intellectual integrity.

[Cameron27]

23. Boy I wish I could recommend your post.

That's exactly I feel about DU lately.

[FreeState]

26. ditto for me n/t

[MethuenProgressive]

24. Great post!!

Thanks!

[creeksneakers2]

35. She answered the question about NAFTA

and owned up about the problems with it. She didn't answer the question on Ross Perot, which was irrelevant.

[Life Long Dem]

27. No mudslinging

Hillary was once again laughing off an answer to a question of whether NAFTA was a mistake or not then Wolfe had to rephrase the question and ask her for the second time. Which then she said it was a mistake that needs to be evaluated. Un huh.

[itsrobert]

28. But HillaryHub.com says otherwise

They wouldn't mudsling, would they?

[Lerkfish]

31. hey, that's the ministry of truth to you, bub.

[Lerkfish]

30. labels of mudslinging as you're slinging mud is always entertaining.

irony is lost on some people.

[Jim Sagle]

38. Correction: The empty pantsuit WAS laughing about NAFTA, and everybody goddamn well knows it.

Her spinners are lying in their teeth.

[MethuenProgressive]

40. Edwards has conditioned you to believe whatever he says.

Hypnotized. Only excuse his cult has left...

[Jim Sagle]

41. Correction: His following is not a cult, they are just a collection of average Americans who know

he's the only real. non-corporate Democrat in the top tier.

[K8-EEE]

39. I thought her answer was so lame!! I thought she did better last time.

Despite what the talking heads tell me, honestly I don't think the Driver's License thing was THAT bad.....but this last debate....a lot of her answers made me cringe!

I'm an Edwards girl though...honestly I think it made Hillary look bad having that booing section every time anybody else made a point against her. Very tacky.

[MethuenProgressive]

43. The smear/spin is still being posted as "news" a day later.

That's just sad.