Which was not because the Dems “flubbed” anything WRT Wellstone’s funeral but becauset the Pubs maliciously and dishonestly spun it.
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Sorry if this is a silly question (my US history is almost entirely self-taught, so I may be missing something obvious here), but why wouldn’t Hamilton have been eligible to run for President?
Article II of the US Constitution states:
Certainly, Hamilton was born in the West Indies (his parentage is surely irrelevant, since no-one born in 1755 could have inherited US citizenship from either parent), but none of the first seven US Presidents were “natural-born” US citizens, which is why Article II has the phrase “…or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution…” to grandfather in those born before the Revolution (otherwise the US wouldn’t have had anyone eligible to be POTUS for decades, given the over-35 requirement!).
Hamilton moved to New Jersey in 1772, and fought in the Revolutionary War. Is there any reason that he wouldn’t have attained citizenship as soon as the concept of “Citizen of the United States” became meaningful, i.e. at the same time as the other Founding Fathers? If so, why wouldn’t the “grandfather” clause of Article II – adopted in 1787 – have included him (after 1791, when he turned 35)?
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Cite? Jesse Ventura isn’t a Republican.
Regards,
Shodan
I already provided the cite and Ventura (who was never a U.S. Senate candidate) is mentioned nowhere in it. What’s he got to do with anything?
SuperDelegates aren’t assigned to any candidate, so would not need to be reassigned.
They are basically elected Democratic party officials and elected officials from Congress, the states, and previous elected officials (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore & Walter Mondale, for example, are all superdelegates, I believe).
They are ‘committed’ to Hillary Clinton just because they have individually announced that they have decided to support her. If she were gone, they would be free to change their mind and support someone else. In fact, they are free to do that at any time – if any one of them decides that they like another candidate better, they can switch to that candidate.
To answer the original question, Bill Clinton would be free to have sex with other women.
Quoting yourself isn’t a cite.
This is a cite:
So is this:
The Saint Paul Pioneer Press reported:
Hell, even the Star-Tribune said
Look, I know you are in denial. I realize that this is more of the “Democrats can do no wrong” and every time they lose an election it is because of the vast right-wing conspiracy and blah blah blah. And I am on record as warmly encouraging this sort of foolishness - the more you think that turning everything into conspiracy theories is going to help the Dems, the better I sleep.
But this is too much like debating Don Quixote about the Sorcerer to be very worthwhile.
Regards,
Shodan
I was not quoting myself, I was quoting Al Franken, a witness on the scene.
That’s assuming he doesn’t have a wink and a nod now. I recently read an article in the Atlantic that described Obama representatives asking when the press would do any investigating of Bill Clinton’s post-presidential affairs.
Ahh, here it is. Marc Ambinder, December 2007 edition:
Everybody pretty much knows what’s going on, and in an era where Giuliani’s serial marriages seem to be an issue for some people, and Clinton’s marriage certainly is a factor in why she’s a serious candidate to begin with, it sure seems funny that this isn’t being covered.
[shrug] If she tolerates her husband’s infidelity, that makes her neither more nor less fit to be POTUS.
In her particular case, it does, because the fact is she wouldn’t be where she is today if she wasn’t Bill Clinton’s wife. If she were somehow tolerating his infidelity, it would be seen by lots of folks as the price she pays for power.
That would be kind of at odds with this image she’s trying to cobble together, especially with women and young girls, as the embodiment of their decades of struggle to win equality and respect. Most Republican women I know don’t buy this, even as they respect other Democratic women as people who truly made it on their own, and Hillary has faced criticism on this front from liberal quarters as well.
So yeah, if the press were to cover this, per the wishes of the Obama staff, the knives would be out in the Clinton camp - they’d be accusing right-wing conspiracies all over again. Guarantee it. But the fact remains that this is fair game, and sooner or later it will get a hearing. If the Democrats don’t bring this to the fore, the Republicans will.
Frankly, not to do so would be a disservice. This issue requires an open airing.
There is also a part of her image that she needs to overcome.
Namely, that Bill wouldn’t be where he is today if he weren’t Hilary’s husband. The deal was, that she would help him get as far as he could in politics, and then he would give her a chance to implement her ideas. You know, all that co-President stuff that they were trying to sell for a while. Then the health care debacle, and later the Lewinsky thing blew up in their faces. Or more properly, blew up onto their cocktail dresses.
Hilary had been doing her best, starting with the Gennifer Flowers interviews and even claiming she believed Bill had been keeping his zipper under control. But that is in direct opposition to the image she wants to present now, of the strong independent woman who doesn’t need to take shit from anyone.
But thru out Bill’s career, she did. She agreed to look the other way while he chased other women, in return for access to power. That’s why she was pissed after he got caught - not because he was doing it, she knew about that for years, but because it was a public scandal, and it meant that the Clinton administration was going to be paralyzed. And they were, and it has taken until now for her to get back into position for a shot at the White House.
But she has still to put up with Bill, because she needs him for campaigning. He is seen as likable and popular, with a certain subset of the electorate. She is seen as either a ball-breaking bitch, the Ice Queen of policy wonks, or a political whore who has compromised her principles in return for access to political power.
She isn’t the only one who has done any of these things. But she wants to pretend she hasn’t.
It takes a village, but most of them have to be in denial.
Regards,
Shodan
Which, still, makes her neither more nor less fit to be POTUS.
Sure it does - if she’s tolerating his cheating, we’re entitled to ask why. If we judge that she stays with him for admirable reasons, that’s a gold star for her. If we judge that she stays with him for calculating reasons, some count it as a mark against her character.
None of this has ever been off limits in American political campaigning, so we shouldn’t guess that Senator Clinton should be treated kindly with regard to these questions.
Why? She’s a woman in American politics, and you have to make allowances. In the next generation, a woman may reach her level of prominence without riding a man’s coattails, but that time is not now. And if those coattails are sticky with semen, well, sacrifices must be made. It is with her as with her husband, in a cartoon I remember from the Clinton Admin: A citizen at his door tells a pollster, “Well, I think the lousy, lying, cheating, draft-dodging, pot-puffing womanizer is doing a good job.” And so he did, inestimably good in comparison with his predecessor and his successor. And Hillary will do a good job, and none the worse for a bit of calculating cynicism in her marital life.
Are there women of great attainment in American politics who haven’t ridden any coattails? Apart from the normal ones associated with party politics?
I would say that Condi Rice has managed to make a bit of a name for herself without a husband to help pave the way.
Yes, but she’s never held an elected office and I doubt she ever will. And while there are no doubt women in politics whose success is not attributable to their husbands, I spoke only of women of HRC’s level of prominence. There are not more than handful of women in the Senate, and when was the last time a woman was considered a serious candidate for POTUS?
She doesn’t appear to be interested in holding elected office (and I can’t say I blame her), but I’m sure if she decided to run for office, even as high an office as President, she would do tolerably well.
Well, I looked for comparison at the White House Project’s “8 in '08”. All of them are women with significant political stature, (governors, mayors, senators) spanning the political spectrum. But only one member became prominent in politics because of who her husband was.
Care to guess who that woman is?