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Bill Clinton Strikes Again: He Heatedly Argues With A Voter (UPDATED)

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.
May 9th, 2008 | Comments

They must have run out of duct tape at Home Depot — or Hillary Clinton’s advisers must believe that an angry Bill Clinton arguing with a female voter who interrupted him in West Virginia is going to win over people who don’t already support Hillary Clinton. For a veteran politician, he can’t turn a lemon (being interrupted) into lemonade (handling it with skill to win over doubters).

Because here he goes again. Watch the clip below. Here he is arguing with a voter who disputed an assertion he made about Hillary Clinton’s claim that she improved health care under his administration. This IS red meat for those who already love Hillary and want her to fight and denounce Barack Obama all the way to the convention.

But to many independent voters, Republicans, Democrats — and probably superdelegates — when they watch this clip they will think: Do we REALLY want to allow this man to take virtual center stage for four — or EIGHT — more years? Oh, please, Mommy, make him go away…

Some Presidents become more endearing and their political skills actually blossom once when they leave office. They grow on people.

Bill Clinton is growing on many people like a fungus.

Make sure you watch the voter’s comment at the end. Presumably, the Clintons want to win over more than their current supporters, but you’d never know that from Bill Clinton’s defensive and angry response.

UPDATE: In fact, Hillary Clinton DOES deserve some credit for improving health care under Bill Clinton. READ THIS. But rather than rattle-off specifics, Clinton became angry and turned it on the voter, turning himself into a kind of radio talk show host. (At least you can TURN OFF the radio and not listen to talk show hosts.)

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CStanley

I don't know, as someone who has a visceral dislike for both of the Clintons, and feels that Bill's temper issue has been a huge liability for Hillary's campaign, I have to say that this clip didn't hit me the same way as Joe's description of it. I think the questioner was wrong and obnoxious, and the response he gave to that wasn't that out of line. He could have been a bit less emotional about it (I agree that when heckled, it's usually best to either use humor or take the high road in not appearing annoyed or frazzled at all) but compared to previous eruptions from him this was pretty mild. And the fact is he's right on this- just because Hillary ultimately failed doesn't mean that she failed to try, and that Obama supporter is just flat out wrong in her characterization of Hillary holding rallies during the campaign but not after he got elected.

Heh, I thought this was a great line though, even if I didn't agree with the rest of the analysis:
"Bill Clinton is growing on many people like a fungus."

tenmiler

I have to agree, this wasn't really anything shocking to me compared to some of his other ones, and I would add that the "support" he gets from the rest of the crowd helps tamp down anything that makes you want to watch through your fingers.

Of course, the woman who asked the question certainly makes the point I've been making all along, which is what makes her such a pro on healthcare if she had not just the Dems in the Whitehouse but in Congress too and couldn't even get it passed then?

If you ask that to any ardent HRC supporters, sadly you get called an "Obamabot" and if they don't bring up 20 years of a pastor, they'll just ignore the question (and if you're on TalkLeft, the comment gets deleted by Jeralyn within 10 seconds).

leilani

Hey, I'm not a fan of the Clinton's, not by a lngshot, but let's try to at leat preserve the prtense of beibg fair & 'modrate' here, shall we? I don't think he was out of line in the least in his response.. The heckler was ignorant to say that Hillary got into the WH & forgot about her promise to reform health care two weeks later.WTF? Does she not remember that huge boondoggle of a commission (the millions of pages of documents to which WJC referred.)? He had every right in the world to refute her erroneous contention.

Sorry, Mr. Gandleman, but you'd have to be a blindly partisan Obamabot to see anything at all untoward in Clinton's response to that woman. She was not only rude, but she was trying to promulgate a falsehood.

ChrisWWW

Sorry, Mr. Gandleman, but you'd have to be a blindly partisan Obamabot to see anything at all untoward in Clinton's response to that woman.

That's a unnecessary swipe at JG.

By the way, I'm not particularly offended by Clinton's message or tone in this clip, but I'm sure it's impolitic none-the-less.

runasim

It has become too much of knee-jerk reaction to give evrything about the Clintons the worst possible interpretation. That kind of thing has the same effect on me that the aggressive e-mails to superdelegates does It makes me ricochet in the other direction. A little pactising what we're preaching would be in order for a lot of us.

In this case, the woman was out of line, as well. Not deliverng on a promise is not the same as not trying to deliver on a promise. Failure to do so during Clinton's presidency was not due to a lack of hard work. It was due to an inablity to sell, like Bush and his attempt to eliminate Soc. Sec.
BTW, I think she has by far the best heatlh plan now, and giving her ceredit for it has nothing to do with what gut reaction anyone has to the Clintons.

One result of Hillary's defeat is that we will have a lesser form of health insurance reform. IMO.

It's hard to draw the line between an appropriately firm response, and an inappropriately angry repsonse. I think Bill was at the line.
If I were one of the Clintons, I would have crossed that line to give someone a verbal black eye long ago. They are human beings, let's remember,, under a barrage of atacks from day one.

CStanley

runasim: for once we completely agree. I'll have a beer to celebrate- care to join me?

runasim

CStanley,

I think this calls for champagne !!

To your health!!

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