Seventy percent of the country is against the Iraq War now. A great majority of American believe it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place. With a country that is this united against the war, are we really going to have two presidential candidates that voted for the Iraq War?
If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary, both of the major party candidates will have been wrong on the war. Why??? Why on God's green earth would we do that?
Hillary's camp seems to believe that being wrong on the war only helps them. They are now touting her positions on "national security" as one of her advantages against Barack Obama. They claim that McCain can't call Senator Clinton weak on defense because she nearly agrees with him. Wow, what a terrible strategy!
Look at what senior strategist for the Clinton campaign, Mark Penn wrote:
Based on what they know of her and her experience, voters believe Hillary is fully ready to be commander in chief. She will be strong and right... The Republicans will not be able to play the national security card against Hillary Clinton, like they are now doing against Senator Obama, and that makes her a fundamentally stronger candidate against John McCain.
Are we really going to re-do 2004 where the Democrats argued that being a weaker kind of Republican is the best foreign policy tack. "We were for the war, but not quite as much as the Republicans." I can't think of a worse campaign strategy.
We've come so far, we can't go back to the same old establishment candidates at this late juncture. I don't think Hillary Clinton is establishment because her last name is Clinton. I think she's establishment because she never shed the idea that the Republican framing on national security is right. We can't go back to that. We've come too far to go back to the same old choices.