Opinion: Hillary Clinton claims snipers pinned her down again
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Gee, bet you can’t guess what Sen. Hillary Clinton’s opening line is on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’?
She says ‘it’s so great to be here.’ A show stopper. But not that. She says she was worried about not making it to the show. And Jay says, ‘Oh.’ And Clinton says, ‘I was pinned down by sniper fire.’ And Jay says, as he did last week, ‘You know in L.A. that might be true actually.’ (Laughter)
After that, things slow down a bit. Clinton sort of but not really explains how she came to tell that Bosnia whopper and the subject gets around to sleep, which most Americans will be about to do when they’re watching Tonight tonight. And Clinton says she’s lucky because she can nap for a few minutes here and there during her impossible campaign days.
She says it’s been ‘a great election so far’ and she sees the Democratic contest with Sen. Barack Obama as....
‘really close.’ She thinks her daughter Chelsea is really smart, not just because the young woman thinks her Mom would make a better president than her Dad.
And they touch on Bill’s recent displays of anger and his wife suggests he’s just protecting his family.
And then Jay comes around to the Michigan-Florida situation, which gets a little awkward, especially if you’re falling asleep.
She says:
‘Take Michigan, for example. The Democratic Party says, ‘Yes, do a revote.’ I said, ‘Do a revote.’ People came forward and said, ‘Look, we’ll give you the money to do it so it doesn’t come out of taxpayer money,’ and Senator Obama’s campaign said, No, they wouldn’t do that. ‘And I’m just asking, how are we going to make sure that we get people from Florida and Michigan to feel like the Democratic Party is on their side. So that when the general election does come, they’re going to think we care about them, and we want their votes come November. So we have to resolve this; otherwise, I think it undermines the whole nominating process.’
And Jay notes:
‘But he wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.’
And Hillary responds:
‘No, but he had a choice to be on it. He just took his name off of it.’
And Jay adds:
‘Well, because the Democrats said it’s not going to count.’
And Hillary starts to explain but realizes she’s getting too deep in the weeds for late-night TV, so she says:
‘The problem is that it’s very ‑‑ it’s not worth going into today. You can read about it. There’s lots of blogs and things written about it. There was a decision about rules, but two states did change the rules, and they weren’t penalized; so Michigan and Florida say, ‘Well, they weren’t penalized, why are we?’ It has to be worked out. That’s my bottom line. Let’s work it out, or let them revote, one of the two.’
So, bottom line, the two of them don’t get the Florida-Michigan situation fixed tonight either.
--Andrew Malcolm