MTP Roundtable Verdict on Hillary Clinton's Talking Points: Poppycock and Balderdash

K Gardner

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Sun May-25-08 12:57 PM
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MTP Roundtable Verdict on Hillary Clinton's Talking Points: Poppycock and Balderdash

Poppycock pop�py�cock \ˈp�-pē-ˌk�k\
Function: noun
Etymology: Dutch dialect pappekak, literally, soft dung, from Dutch pap pap + kak dung
Date: 1865 : empty talk or writing : nonsense

Balderdash: absurdity, babble, balderdash, baloney, bananas, blather, bombast, BS, bull, bunk, claptrap, craziness, drivel, fatuity, flightiness, folly, foolishness, fun, gab, gas, gibberish, giddiness, gobbledygook, hogwash, hooey, hot air, imprudence, inanity, irrationality, jazz, jest, jive, joke, ludicrousness, madness, mumbo jumbo, palaver, poppycock, prattle, pretense, ranting, rashness, rot, rubbish, scrawl, scribble, senselessness, silliness, soft soap, stupidity, thoughtlessness, trash, tripe, twaddle

Excerpts from Meet the Press, May 25, 2008

*On Clinton's Assertion that she was Citing Historical Reference Point*

MS. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, neither historical parallel that she offered were true, because Clinton had already sewed up the nomination by June, and in Bobby Kennedy's case, he'd only gotten into the race like six weeks prior to his assassination. I don't think she even needs to argue. She should acknowledge that party unity probably is hurt, but that this election is so unique that having more people vote and more people registered and more people excited is worth taking it to June. The problem is that the argument that the Clintons supporters have sometimes made is the superdelegates shouldn't even decide in June. They should wait until August, end of August, because who knows what might happen in the summer--a gaff, another pastor coming out of the woodwork, or, God forbid, what this thought suggested. And I think once it played into that, it became much more troubling.

MS. MAUREEN DOWD: Well, I think her timing was excruciatingly bad. I mean, right after the anniversary of King's death, right before the anniversary of Bobby's death, right when we learn the tragic news about Teddy Kennedy, and right when she and Bill seem engaged in kind of a hostile takeover of Obama's vice presidential mansion. So, beyond that, I think it gave delegates and a lot of Democrats the creeps, because basically the only reason she is still is in the race is that something bad will happen. Of course she doesn't wish him bodily harm, but she does want--she does wish him ill in the sense that they want a big horrible story that would debilitate him to break.

MS. IFILL: Exactly. Why would you even suggest it? And the backdrop is what's important. There's probably no one who's ever been in a room with Barack Obama at one of these huge rallies or even just seen a photograph of it where it hasn't crossed their mind, if you're of a certain age and survived and lived through these assassinations and assassination attempts. So the question with, with the Clintons especially is we know that they are wordsmiths, that we know that they very carefully think about what it is they say. She's said this several times before. And so you have to think what do they think people would think? We've heard her campaign spokesman say things like, you know, "Who knows what could happen?" Well, they could suspend their campaign and still come back if something happened. That's not what she's arguing. And so, you know, unfortunately, it poked a sore that, that keeps existing throughout this campaign, and it, and it never is going to go away. A lot of women feel that sores have been poked and a lot of African-Americans feel sores have been poked. The future of party unity lies in them not continuing to reopen these scabs.

*On Clinton's Assertion that her Husband Didn't "Win" Until June*

MR. RUSSERT: He had locked down the nomination in April of 1992.

MR. MEACHAM: Right. It is a technicality that I think probably President Reagan didn't ultimately get the number you needed until June. It's kind of irrelevant. It depends on--to use another Clintonism--what's the meaning of June? Because clearly things are moving in Obama's direction. The Clinton campaign privately will, with great anguish in their voice, acknowledge that. The candidate may not. But I think this is a great example of what our colleague Michael Kinsley called a gaff in Washington. It's when someone tells the truth by accident, and I think this is exactly what Maureen and Gwen were saying. It's not that she wishes him bodily harm, it is that she is counting on cataclysm. And at this point, at this hour in, you know, Memorial Day, you do wonder whether this is ultimately good for a party that, by every mathematical and every atmospheric measure, should be burying John McCain in the polls. I wonder if Senator Clinton may not go down in a way as President Reagan, Governor Reagan did in 1976 and Senator Kennedy did in 1980, as someone who ran a very strong primary challenge, but who ultimately did represent one of the reasons the party lost in November.

*On Clinton's Chances for the Vice-Presidency*

MS. MARCUS: Not so good. I think if that's the goal, this was a bad way to get there. I would differ a little bit from some of the people around the table who thought this was intentional and raising a specter. I don't see the political advantage for Senator Clinton in having said what she said. The way I see it is, if you take exhaustion and you add a very heavy dose of self-pity, because she does believe that she's being elbowed out of the race, and even though the historical examples are, in fact, not true that June is the regular month for having races decided in the Democratic primary, if you add the exhaustion and the self-pity, you're going to get dumb remarks. I think this was a dumb remark.

MS. IFILL: That she said in March to Time magazine.

MS. MARCUS: That she said in March to Time magazine. I think there was elements of self-pity going on then. I just don't see what she hoped to gain, and I think, to get back to Tim's question, she has a good deal to lose, both in the question of whether she and/or her husband would like to be the vice presidential candidate, and in terms of her future standing in the party. Because one of the things that's in, I believe, her mind, and certainly in the mind of her advisers is how this ends and how it ends in a way that leaves her looking good as she exits the stage for right now.

*On Clinton's Assertion That Misogyny and Gender Bias are Responsible for her Difficulties in this Campaign*

MS. DOWD: I think it's poppycock, really. I mean, Hillary Clinton has allowed women to visualize a woman as president for the first time, in the way Colin Powell allowed people to visualize an African-American. And she dominated the debates, she, she proved that a woman can have as much tenacity and gall as any man on earth. We, we can visualize her facing down Ahmadinejad. But the thing is, Hillary hurts feminism when she uses it as opportunism. And she has a history of covering up her own mistakes behind sexism. She did it with health care right after health care didn't pass. She didn't admit that she was abrasive or mismanaged it or blew off good advice or was too secretive. She said that she was a Rorschach test for gender and that many men thought of a female boss they didn't like when they looked at her. And now she's doing the same thing, and it's very--you know, in a way it's the moral equivalent of Sharptonism. It's this victimhood and angry and turning women against men and saying that the men are trying to take it away from us, in the same way she's turning Florida and Michigan and riling up and comparing them to suffragettes and slaves. And it's very damaging to feminism.

MS. IFILL: Just something, keep in mind what her audience is at this stage. Her audience, assuming she's trying to get out of this campaign with something intact and with some sort of power base intact, her audience is the truly, deeply angry women out there, who I run into, and I know who you hear from, who say, "How could you do this to us? They believe that Hillary Clinton is not the beginning of the road, but the end of the road for women in--and--with a shot at the White House. My thinking is, we didn't know two years, or we never heard of, a couple years ago that Barack Obama would be in this position. We didn't know eight years ago that she was going to be in the Senate. So things change a lot. But the despair and the anger and the fury about this is real. And that's what she's speaking to.

MS. GOODWIN: But, you know, despair and sadness is understandable, but resentments, when you let resentments fester, I think it poisons a part of you. And what you don't want women to take away, instead of seeing her as a champion who actually did some great things for women, see her instead as a victim, it doesn't help the next women coming along. So I just wish those resentments could go on--could go away.

*On Caucuses, Campaign Mismanagement and Fraud*

MR. RUSSERT: (Iowa happened).. at a time when sexism and misogyny and gender was not being talked about as a detriment to the campaign.

MS. DOWD: Yeah. It's inexplicable, because Harold Ickes, who works for Hillary, helped write these rules, right, about the caucuses. So I, you know, the--there's--Michelle Cottle has a piece in The New Republic quoting different people anonymously inside the Clinton campaign about saying what went wrong, and one of them said that the mismanagement of money borders on fraud, because this was someone who had raised a quarter of a billion dollars and still now has had to give 20 million of her own money because of mismanagement and still didn't have a campaign in half the states she needed.

<Snipped: Full Transcript at Link>