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.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.