Shut Up, Hillary

In last night's debate, the candidates were asked if they would meet with countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, etc. Obviously, the sensible answer to this question is "yes." We have gained nothing by following the Bush administration's strategy of pouting in the corner, and we have nothing to lose by engaging our enemies. This is essentially how Barack Obama answered the question.

Sen. Clinton responded that no, she would not promise to meet with these leaders. A second or so later, she added that she would make an effort to meet with them, but she would have to be sure that the meetings were undertaken in good faith. Presumably, this means Kim Jong Il won't be mean or something.

Now, when I heard her say that, I was kind of confused. Why would she go out of her way to add this condition? Obviously, the condition was implicit in the question - no President would meet with any foreign leader if they didn't think they had good intentions. It kind of goes without saying that Presidents only meet with foreign leaders when they know that said leaders want to have constructive dialogue. I naively thought that Clinton had just answered the question clumsily, probably overthought it.

Today's attack has shed quite a bit of light on the question of why she answered the way she did. She's gone after Obama, calling him "irresponsible" and "naive", because he didn't spell out the conditions of the meetings in his answer. Now I understand - this is right out of the Clinton playbook. See, now Clinton has created an artificial distinction and put some space between herself and Obama. This fits in well with her strategy of appealing to "Very Serious People", while painting Obama as flavor-of-the-month, an unproven rookie.

Why does this piss me off? After all, I'm an Edwards guy. Because it breaks my important rule regarding primaries: thou shalt not give the GOP ammo against our eventual nominee. Any primary contest is bound to have some disputes and disagreements. We want the candidates to draw distinctions and make their case. But we must not feed media narratives that could hurt other candidates in a general election campaign. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Hillary Clinton has done. She's playing into the number one narrative that the Republicans would use against Obama in the general: that he's a lightweight without the experience needed in a commander-in-chief. Clinton knows that this narrative isn't true, that any of our top tier candidates would be a great commander-in-chief. She chose to use this narrative to help her campaign - at the expense of our party. The last thing we need is Democrats issuing rhetorical attacks on other Democrats and weakening our party brand. So, for now, just shut up, Hillary.