Clinton campaign made "disqualify / unqualified" word of the day -- Sanders Played It Well

[GreatGazoo]

He embedded that word into a series of sentences that each pair it with a different issue that Team Clinton doesn't want to talk about.

"I don't believe that she is qualified if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special-interest funds."

"I don't think that you are qualified if you get 15 million dollars from Wall Street through your Super PAC,"

"I don't think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.

I don't think you are qualified if you've supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent paying jobs."

"I don't think that you are qualified if you supported the Panama Free Trade Agreement! Something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries."

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-not-qualified-be-president-n552141

The MSM broke it's Bernie blackout to cover this widely. Many of them only use the first part of the quote but any of these sentences stand alone. Brilliant use of their desperate attack to push them further down. He's going to be fantastic in the general election.

[jfern]

1. I think they actually thought Bernie would just remain the usual harmless Mr. Nice Guy

They're in shock that he fought back.

[msanthrope]

11. No....they played him. By calling HRC unqualified, he not only adopted her words

but now it looks like he made a sexist remark..... look at her accomplishments, what does a woman have to do to be qualified to run for president according to this man? That's how it's being perceived here in New York. Don't forget this is the state that gladly elected her.

[jfern]

13. Sexist? That word has been rather overused this campaign.

[msanthrope]

15. Yes. And telling people that racism has been overused

Work so well in the southern states didn't it?

[jfern]

16. It's some weak shit to keep claiming there's sexism

[morningfog]

51. It only by one poster desperate to make everything sexism.

[pdsimdars]

35. And whenever a word is overused, it loses its potency. . . people stop paying attention becuase

it has been used too often for thing that really don't apply.

[kristopher]

31. Honesty and integrity are prerequisites for the office of President.--- True or false

[reddread]

58. depends on what you want, representative government or

a crooked scheme

[rachacha]

61. As a fellow New Yorker, let me just say you're full of...

unsubstantiated claims. I've seen your recent posts in other threads, and everyone can see your Transparency report for more examples.

Hillary's record is a disaster in many ways. The argument that she's unqualified has to do the quality of what she has done, not the quantity, and not the fact that she's a woman. Her ability to make good judgements is what's at issue.

Can't we disagree without all the name-calling? If you're going to level a nasty charge at someone, you should at least attempt to back it up with a fact or two. For example, I wouldn't call you antisemitic just because you said something negative Bernie and he happens to be jewish.

[Hortensis]

17. Bernie's shocking ignorance revealed in his

editorial board interview is the origin of the new use of "unqualified" in the campaign. He's just using the usual mislead-the-electorate tactic of trying to spread the charge to the opponent.

It's backfired on him. Now Bernie's being accused of being both unqualified due to ignorance about his own proposals and to being sexist by people who don't understand why he called his female opponent unqualified.

The Atlantic:

The interview is full of vague comments like that one. For example, Sanders complains that executives implicated in the financial crisis haven’t been prosecuted. A board member asked him whether there are actually laws that could have nailed them. “I suspect that there are. Yes,” Sanders answered.

The conversation detoured sideways a bit, as the board asked about what would happen to employees and investors in big banks and Sanders said, not unfairly, that it wasn’t his problem. But then it was back to how to break up the banks, and Sanders still couldn’t offer a coherent answer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/bernie-sanderss-rough-ride-with-the-daily-news/476919/

Washington Post: 9 things Bernie Sanders should’ve known about but didn’t in that Daily News interview https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/05/9-things-bernie-sanders-shouldve-known-about-but-didnt-in-that-daily-news-interview/

[jfern]

18. That NY Daily piece has been addressed elsewhere, it's not the big deal you think it is

[Hortensis]

20. It is a YOOOGE deal being widely discussed.

Look, this was a big eye-opener, and a shocker. Bernie's unshakable confidence in the rightness of his own opinions is inspiring, but after 25 years in Congress he does NOT know how to fix the problems he points out. He has never gotten that far in his thinking and has developed no plans.

He does not know what laws are in place, much less how he could use them.

He does not know what authority governmental agencies have.

He says the president can break up the banks by having Congress pass legislation... (!)

This is why the words "unqualified" and "disqualified" are suddenly out there.

[jfern]

22. Just because the media is going after him doesn't mean it has merit

http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/06/1511490/-Bill-Clinton-Labor-Sec-Robert-Reich-Bernie-absolutely-correct-in-Daily-News-criticism-bonkers

[Hortensis]

28. Here're 3 sections of the interview via WashPost.

You decide. Btw, another 5 questions/responses on foreign policy are at the link. They're being discussed big time too.

1. Breaking up the banks

Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing breaking up the banks?

Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.

Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?

Sanders: Well, I don’t know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.

Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, “Now you must do X, Y and Z?”

Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.

Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?

Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.

2. The legal implications of breaking up a financial institution

Daily News: Well, it does depend on how you do it, I believe. And, I’m a little bit confused because just a few minutes ago you said the U.S. President would have authority to order…

Sanders: No, I did not say we would order. I did not say that we would order. The President is not a dictator.

Daily News: Okay. You would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break it, themselves up. I’m not quite…

Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It’s something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

3. Prosecuting Wall Street executives for the financial collapse of 2008

Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments?

Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes.

Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?

Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don’t. But if I would…yeah, that’s what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that’s illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives.

Daily News: I’m only pressing because you’ve made it such a central part of your campaign. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it.

Considering this is the core of his campaign message, Sanders should know all of the points covered in 1, 2 and 3 inside and out. He should have been able to lecture his interrogators into a stupor with his detailed knowledge. Instead, Sanders sounded slightly better than a college student caught off-guard by a surprise test in his best class just before finals.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/05/9-things-bernie-sanders-shouldve-known-about-but-didnt-in-that-daily-news-interview/

[jfern]

29. Hillary needs to either have the same type of interview or STFU

[pdsimdars]

36. In the park you don't feed the bears, online you don't feel the tr***s

NY Times pretty much debunked that Daily News nonsense. . . . and people trust NYT and Daily News, they know the difference

[Hortensis]

40. Oh, she has. Candidate often do editorial board

interviews, typically meeting with them for one-on-one interviews. It's a chance to advance acquaintance with people whose opinion is important, influence their understanding and coverage, and sometimes to obtain their endorsements.

I guarantee you that Hillary Clinton could have answered the questions put to Sanders extremely knowledgeably. They have basically the same goals, just different methods and timelines.

Sanders: You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

[jfern]

41. She just do softball interviews.

[Hortensis]

42. Imo, very silly notion. Bye.

[thesquanderer]

46. re: "It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that. "

The Met Life decision had only come down the previous week, the judge had not yet even released his written opinion. It's is perfectly reasonable for him to not yet have studied its legal implications. (It had to do with whether Met Life--a financial institution, though not a bank, btw--had properly been categorized as too big to fail.)

[WhiteTara]

55. Of course not, he has a campaign to run

keeping up with news is hard, even when it's about your issues.

[Hortensis]

66. Bernie has no plans for breaking up the banks.

He couldn't discuss the legal issues involved in breaking up the banks because he never studied just how to do it.

Legal issues are not something that were invented a week before. There is a whole body of law involved, but he said "It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that." He should have been able to run on for at least a couple of minutes.

And, since you apparently read some spin on how this one case WAS the beginning and end of "the legal issues involved" (not!!), why didn't he mention it?

If a bank is too big by some measure to be determined by...(economists?), he'll tell the SecTres just break up the banks? Come on.

The whole interview was Bernie being asked HOW he would fix the problems he would be elected to fix, Bernie saying he didn't know, and Bernie repeatedly trying to turn the conversation back to his stump speech -- "Our system is corrupt. We have to break up the big banks."

How? He has no plan. For that or any other of his basic issues. That is why this interview is so shocking.

[thesquanderer]

67. Two things...

1. Everyone keeps quoting, as you did, the following sentence:

"It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that."

That was the answer to a specific question. Many people seem to not read the exact wording of that question.

Daily News: Okay. You saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

The "It" and "that" in his reply refer to "what happened with Metroplitan Life."
So when you say: "since you apparently read some spin on how this one case WAS the beginning and end of "the legal issues involved" (not!!), why didn't he mention it? " -- the answer is, no, it is not some spin I read, it is the actual text. The reason HE doesn't mention Met Life in the sentence is because the questioner mentioned it, and he was responding to that question, so he did not need to. In this context, the "it" and the "that" are pronouns for Met Life.

2. As for your questioning his understanding in general, that's not right either. See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/upshot/yes-bernie-sanders-knows-something-about-breaking-up-banks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

and

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-daily-news_us_5704779ce4b0a506064d8df5

[Hortensis]

68. This legal case began well over a year ago.

Because it is a biggie, interested parties have been discussing the various outcomes and what they could mean since before it was even filed. Top management and legal departments almost of every large financial institution in the nation certainly have. Legislators on both the right and left who are interested in this have.

But not Bernie. "It's something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that."

[Waiting For Everyman]

2. Agree, and he brought a gun to a knife fight.

He did the right thing.

HRC has more to lose in taking the gloves off than Bernie does.

[GreatGazoo]

52. He is hitting her on votes and issues. She is hitting him on labels - "not a Democrat"

By announcing on CNN that they were going to get even dirtier, the Clinton campaign set up a scenario where the media HAD to give Sanders a chance to respond. He gave them nothing but soundbites that go right back to his core issues.

My own metaphor would be more Kung Fu -- using their own attack as an opportunity against them.

[Cheese Sandwich]

3. It's about time Bernie started to defend himself.

They tried to disqualify him by tying him to the Sandy Hook shooting. Really sickening. Really.

She was asked on Morning Joe whether Bernie is qualified.... she strongly implied he isn't qualified by stating her doubts about him.

Nasty. He answered back the best possible way available.

[reformist2]

4. You know you've scored a direct hit when Hillarians howl, "now you take that back or else!"

[msanthrope]

12. Oh no......he just handed HRC a boon. Glad it's out there now. nt

[pdsimdars]

37. ding ding ding. . . . .reformist hits the bell all the way to the top!

[Fairgo]

5. That was extremely well played

When you fling boomerang poo, expect blowback.

[Surya Gayatri]

6. Excellent analysis (KOS): Sanders just lost his last chance at the nomination

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/07/1511720/-Bernie-Sanders-just-lost-his-last-chance-at-the-nomination

"Let me preface my remarks by saying I have been a Hillary Clinton supporter since the start of the campaign, so please take that into account in reading the comments below (nb — while I support Clinton, I am not blindly loyal; I switched from Clinton to Obama in 2008 when I thought Obama had a better shot at winning)

Senator Sanders has been clear of late that he won’t win a majority of delegates, and that his strategy is now to encourage Superdelegates to rally around him as the most electable nominee. His comments this evening have ended his chance at pulling this strategy off.

First, let’s be clear: while a share of Sanders’ more vocal online fans seem to feel that no “real” Democrat would vote for her (it’s always ignorance, or opportunism or — in the case of Superdelegates — fear) Hillary Clinton is very popular in New York State, and a comment like this will reinforce and probably expand her lead in New York State. Thus, Sanders’ ability to close the pledged Delegate gap in order to MAKE a pitch to super delegates will be that much harder.

And, assuming he does get a shot at the Superdelegates? These are Party leaders; many of them elected officials. They’re concerned with the Party’s future, as well as their own. Saying that a former First Lady, former twice-elected US Senator and former Secretary of State for a popular Democratic President is “unqualified”, 11 months after the campaign started, suggests either a lack of basic Party loyalty, or a rash impulsiveness which raises questions about how he’ll conduct a General Election campaign. And, as with NYS voters, many of the Superdelegates like Hillary Clinton; throwing out a line like this, which can’t be easily drawn back from, will lose Sanders a lot of potential good will.

I’d say his campaign is over."

[TMontoya]

23. Good read

I suspect NY will not be kind to him.

[Surya Gayatri]

26. NYers are not easily bamboozled. Bernie's thick, "authentic" Brooklyn accent won't help him...

[TMontoya]

32. You mean?

No one is believing his is a "New Yorker"?

[Surya Gayatri]

34. Not since he pulled out that 40-year-old subway token and tried to take the "F" and "U" lines. LOL!

[TMontoya]

39. Yeah that was really bad looking on his part lol

[Bohemianwriter]

54. Bernie Sanders is a REAL New Yorker..

Hillary already have two other "homestates". She's the immigrant in this context.

So this is Bernie's home terf despite Hillary's disiningenouos attempts to make NY hers.
Just because she lived there 6 months to serve as a Wall Street senator doesn't make her native.
She's a southerner with southern values and a neocon ideology who got NY practically handed to her thanks to political connections.
She would never have had the position she has if not for her marriage with Bill Clinton, and would never have been a senator "from NY" without him.

[Peace Patriot]

7. We need a backfire icon for Clinton "scorched earth" wet blankets.

Not my talent. Anybody?

It really is a phenomenon--the blanks she keeps firing.

Okay, that's too many images. Something simple like maybe a popgun. Gun shoots out a flag that says, "Clinton talking point," or "Clinton talking point no. 37." Bernie icon standing there. Clinton icon: (shoots) "Bang, bang! You're dead!" Bernie: "Not."

That's a cartoon. Needs to be simpler still.

Oh, well. It's late. This has been pretty hilarious, though--Clinton's "scorched earth." One flop after another. And his polls just keep rising. (Bernie 16 pt. jump in PA in one week, now just 6% behind "the inevitable one.&quot

[Joob]

8. I agree, she opened the doors for him and he said what most people think.

And if you don't think that, please explain why those things don't matter for the president of the United States.

I would welcome it, respectfully.

[hollysmom]

9. actually what she said today didn't bother me as much as the rainbows and unicorns dismissiveness.

It was as if she were implying he was senile for a long long time.
I just find her town dismissive and insulting, especially when asked how she will attract the Sanders supporters, It is as if , they are all expected to go to her now that he corralled them. No appeal to them, no offer of any kind, just well you will have no choice. No no one is entitled to my vote, you have to earn it. I admit it I am old and more of a roosevelt style democrat - third way just seem so very corporations over people, Not democratic at all - but then I guess we all have our own definitions.

[msanthrope]

10. Actually.....this is playing badly in the NY media.....it's being perceived as a sexist remark....

As in, if Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to be president, what does a woman have to do to be qualified? Don't forget that New Yorkers elected her, and this is being perceived as what, one of our Senators isn't good enough for you?

[Matt_in_STL]

21. Anyone claiming this is a sexist remark is a simplistic moron

He have plenty of reasons why he feels she is unqualified and not one of them had to do with her being a woman. Just because you cry sexism every time someone comes back at Hillary doesn't make it true and it devalues true and actual sexism.

By your simple identity logic, every attack by Hillary, including her insinuation that Bernie isn't qualified to be president is anti-semitism. Neither makes sense except to those who don't understand nuance or politics in general.

[msanthrope]

24. Yes, dude. Explain to this Democratic woman why her concerns about sexism

are misplaced.

Bernie got up the courage to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton on her qualifications, maybe someday he'll get around to Donald Trump.

[Matt_in_STL]

25. I have more faith in women than you do

In the full context of this quote there is zero sexism as he gives very political reasons why he feels she is not qualified. Most women could read the full transcript and understand that. You have chose to ignore the full transcript and cry wolf.

As far as caring about women, I would have more belief that Hillary supporters cared about women if they pushed Hillary to apologize for all the attacks she made on Bill's sexual abuse victims.

[GreatGazoo]

53. What does gender matter when a person has an obvious conflicts of interest?

I lived in NYC when Clinton got elected Senator. She got Giuliani out of the race early then walked on that no-name dude. Sanders has won 11 elections without help from the MSM or a big party machine. In giving Hillary her only 2 election victories NY did more Hillary than Hillary did for NY.

From Iraq to Panama, mistakes matter. Bernie has been correct and consistent. Hillary has been on every side of every issue but the wrong side of ones that matter most.

btw, No mention of deflectionary sexism here (and no counter to the charges of conflict of interest):
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/bernie-sanders-slams-hillary-clinton-unqualified-article-1.2591526

[Arneoker]

14. To be qualified

Don't you have to have more than slogans such as "Break up the banks," but actual workable approaches that will make something like the positive difference you're pushing? I want the next President to be on my side. I also want them to be competent and know what they're doing, otherwise being on my side means squat.

[fun n serious]

19. Yep.. he's been playing it well.....

:large

[Thinkingabout]

27. Sanders has not told the truth, he flubbed the interview, did not have good answers about

Breaking up the banks which is one of his talking points. What is his source of his claim Hillary has said he was unqualified?

[thesquanderer]

47. He had perfectly good answers about breaking up the banks

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/upshot/yes-bernie-sanders-knows-something-about-breaking-up-banks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

and

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-daily-news_us_5704779ce4b0a506064d8df5

As for Hillary's claim that he is unqualified, it came in roundabout ways, i.e.: the campaign "leaking" that their new strategy was to disqualify him (not denied), and then in an interview, refusing to say that he was qualified despite major prompting. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017350521 and http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511669083

As I posted in another thread: Regardless of any of that, I think most people can recognize campaign rhetoric when they hear it. He's making a rhetorical point about the two candidates' relative qualifications. If you compare the resumes, and look at what the Clinton team is saying about his qualifications (Is he really a democrat? Were his Daily News answers complete enough?), he wants you look at questions about her as well (Isn't she cozy with Wall Street? Didn't she vote for the Iraq war? Didn't she support bad trade deals?), and think about which set of "qualifying" questions is more telling.

[Thinkingabout]

48. So you listened to his interview with the Daily News? He did not have a handle during this

interview and on more than breaking up the banks. Where is his source Hillary said Sanders was not qualified?

[thesquanderer]

49. I read big chunks of it. Didn't listen to it. 52 minutes!

You asked about the banks, so that's the part I answered. But that huffpo link--not a puff piece, btw--addresses some of the other questions as well.

You've repeated the question about where Hillary said he was not qualified, which I already answered. There is (AFAIK) no direct quote, if that's what you're aiming at. It's certainly what she and her campaign are putting forth, though, as I showed. They are raising questions about whether he is qualified. They said it would be their strategy, and you can see it already happening. Bernie could have better phrased his preamble, to be more literally accurate, but the gist is correct*, and he used it to try to score rhetorical points.

ETA: * appropriately summed up in headlines like the one at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/06/clinton-questions-whether-sanders-is-qualified-to-be-president/

[Thinkingabout]

60. I listened to the 52 minutes, it was telling.

[thesquanderer]

50. p.s.: that WAPO headline "Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president"...

Last edited Thu Apr 7, 2016, 09:50 AM - Edit history (1)

...has been widely picked up. Google that exact phrase in quotes, and you'll get 4,690 results. I think that also helps explain why Bernie responded with that phrasing. This was/is clearly the perception that's out there.

ETA: And Hillary certainly isn't walking it back and saying, "oh no, that's not what I meant, of course he's qualified."

[Thinkingabout]

59. She never said he was not qualified, Sanders did say Hillary was not qualified,

Perhaps WaPo was repeating after Sanders, just like the old gossip game, the story grows and grows. You will not find where Hillary said this. Again Google may have links but not where Hillary said it.

[thesquanderer]

62. re: "Perhaps WaPo was repeating after Sanders"

No... the WaPo article is time-stamped 11:39 am. They also posted a story about the "not qualified" speech he gave in response, that story is time-stamped 11:32 pm.

[Thinkingabout]

63. Then maybe if Sanders went back to his source this can be cleared up, if not then it

Appears It was maliciously said and he will remain as the source of misinformation. Drops his honesty standing, and it negates his never ran a dirty campaign.

[thesquanderer]

64. His source was probably...

...the earlier WAPO headline and the other thousands of places it was mirrored.

And the report on CNN that this was going to be their strategy.

And the fact that when Hillary was asked about it, instead of denying it, she danced around it.

Some combination of those things.

He could have been more precise in his choice of words. As I said earlier, Bernie could have better phrased his preamble, to be more literally accurate, but the gist is correct.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

30. I dunno, feels more like stepping into a bear trap.

For all the reasons folks think she might be 'unqualified', the Constitution only gives an age limit that she's easily above, and a 'natural born' citizen bit, that again applies. So legally, she's every bit as qualified as Trump.

She might be a serial liar, a paranoid who tries to keep everything she does away from public eyes, indifferent to national security, an arms salesman to the world, a promoter of fracking and GMO worldwide, a pusher of fossil fuel use, the shepherdess of a disastrous free trade agreement, and a warmonger whose actions have resulted in a coup, the destruction of multiple countries, and the deaths of millions, but none of that technically disqualifies one from being President.

Looks more to me like she deliberately trolled Bernie, and tempted him to descend to her level, then proclaimed that she never really called him 'unqualified' (which, iiuic, she didn't and didn't have to, thanks to the way her interviewer asked things), leaving him to look like he' 'going negative'.

[polly7]

33. Yep. +1000. nt.

[Trajan]

57. It's fair rhetoric ....

He describes those attributes that HUMAN BEINGS dislike ... It doesn't matter that every failed policy position or poor attribute isn't perfectly described in the U.S. Constitution ...

Yeah ..they both meet the constitutional requirement for age ... But now what? ... Is the campaign over?

Both are of age, and so the race is over?

I think there is more to talk about yet, above and beyond how old they are ...

[lakeguy]

38. truth!

[merrily]

43. Qualified-Disqualified - On the most important issue:

Qualified

Disqualified

[baldguy]

45. Actually, Joe Scarborough did - and Clinton chose not to play the "gotcha" game he set up.

But Bernie was ignorant/arrogant/clueless enough to pick up Joe's ball & run with it - and ended up with his foot in his mouth.

[Dem2]

56. He went off half-cocked based on a "word of mouth" comment by a MSM political commentator

That's not well played at all. I hope he decides to dial this back before it's too late.

[Lucinda]

65. No. He really didn't "play it well" at all. n/t