I agree that it was ill-judged and opportunistic. I also agree that you probably should have left it at that without the Kreskin impression.
She’s starting to sound like Giuliani, only replace “9/11” with “woman”.
When you quote the story, could you include what Hillary Clinton said that indicates that she was talking about Bernie Sanders?
Because I’m seeing a pretty innocuous quote from Hillary, combined with a newspaper’s claims that her words had something to do with Bernie.
(And no, I’m not gonna use up one of my 10 free NYT views to read the story myself, even assuming I’ve got one left to spare.)
I think there is a misreading of how that statement is portrayed. I saw it shared by plenty of Democrats on Facebook. And from a quick look at that quote on Hillary Clinton’s official Facebook page shows that it’s been “shared” over 11,000 times and ‘liked’ over 43,000 times. I think it’s a statement that does resonate with some.
The comment and her frequent refrain in the debate claiming two X chromosomes as an important qualification both certainly rub me, a male supporter, the wrong way. She deserves our votes because she is, IMO, the best person running for the job, not on the basis of her gender. But more than half of all voters, including in the Democratic primary, are female; it may play differently with them. And it is not such a bad rub that it diminishes my support.
Minimizing the problems of the VA won’t win her many vets’ votes, although I doubt that was a group she was going to do well among to begin with.
Gotta admit that her changing the subject while walking back her comments is pretty skillful though. The VA does still need fixing(why this President isn’t leading the charge I have no idea), and it’s good that Clinton’s comments have caused her to now have to release a plan to fix it. Be interested in seeing if there’s anything there other than “spend more money”. Like more accountability, the ability to more easily fire people, making it easier for vets to get care outside the system, etc.
And according to the article, the problems are getting worse, not better:
Mr. President?
How concerned were you when your party’s last President, the one who made most of these people become wounded veterans, declined to do anything about it either?
I agree, Obama is very much like Bush.
Evasion noted.
Even the war-starting, economy-destroying part?
It’s true that the President(two Presidents) have known about the problems since 2005 and done pretty much nothing.
So the question is, why should anyone believe Hillary Clinton will do anything? She tried to minimize the scandal, claiming that the problems weren’t widespread, then when she takes heat for it, promises a plan. But how high a priority will that plan be? Why didn’t she have a plan until she got into trouble? Oh yeah, because she was going for a third straight Presidency of “I had no idea!” when it comes to the VA.
The evasion continues.
Of course actually there has been quite a lot done about the problems in the VA … and much of it the result of work done by Sanders on the one major issue that Sanders actually accomplished something about while in Congress. And there is a huge amount more to still accomplish. Both of which she clearly has to have already known.
Which really raises more question about why she said what she said.
Dang. Grant the man his singular actual accomplishment. It won’t hurt you in the polls to acknowledge the one major thing he actually has to show for all his years in Congress and it rightfully claims the major share of working on the problem for the Democratic team even if not for you personally.
I like her, I support her, but dang sometimes smart people make stupid decisions.
Doublepost … dang hampsters.
What did she say about Sanders? Clinton’s been blasting Republicans for wanting to privatize the VA instead of fixing it. Maybe you have some other statement in mind?
Problems with the VA are enormous and widespread and will probably require several administrations to completely fix.
It is what she did not say as much as anything else … this is a dog that did not bark moment. To my ear anyway.
Let me back up though. There are two items to discuss here.
One is the political tone and utility of what was said - and that was a fail. There was a better response available and she flubbed it.
The other is the accuracy of what she said. And she seems actually to be on target with that. The fact actually is that the VA overall gets scores as high or better than private hospitals by those who use the system. Tremendous improvements have been made and the care there is as good or better than in the private sector.
The problem for the VA remains more demand for the services than capacity and funds with consequent long wait times. And it is true that the GOP Congress is not willing to provide the funding or even allow the VA to control where they spend the funding already allocated to best address the demands.
This is a very basic thing: a new drugs have come out that cure Hepatitis C. It is quite expensive up front but over the course of disease care they are cost-effective. The costs of providing this new and expensive care was not budgeted to be spent in this cycle. The GOP Congress had been refusing to provide even the flexibility to shift money around in order to pay for it is hard to explain other than by their wanting to see the VA fail. (They finally approved the ability to shift the money around in August.)
No question that there are systems issues that have allowed for some individuals to perform poorly and have resulted in some wastes.
But boy, this from the RAND corp:
So let’s be straight up here … she is right. The VA actually does a fine job taking care of a population that has many chronic health care problems and doing a better and more cost-efficient job of it than does the private sector and achieving high scores on quality of care and on patient satisfaction … and the GOP has used its problems, which it has, as a whipping boy, in a partisan fashion. And the problems that are there need to be addressed including mechanisms for funding that keep up with the very real increases in demands including for some for expensive even if cost-effective services and including better oversight mechanisms to prevent fiscal abuse (which of course the private sector could use too).
But saying that how she did was politically imprudent and she should be a smarter politician than that.
It’s … interesting to see someone criticized for the *way *they didn’t say something.
The free-fall continues - not! 
Not that all minds are capable of changing:
I’ll use Nate Silver’s term and say that the “death spiral” has indeed ended. Just as the media wanted it too, since now we have a horse race. If she fell too far, no more horse race, so it was time to start being more bullish on her.