What is Tucker Carlson talking about? He hasn't a clue.
I've covered Samantha Power before, someone I find very interesting. She's one of Barack Obama's senior foreign policy advisors and a very impressive woman. She gave the briefing on a media call a while back after one of Obama's major Iraq speeches.
But when I saw her on “Tucker” yesterday, I had to do a double take on the questioning. Greg Sargent caught it too and got the video and the transcript.
TUCKER: I'm just wondering very quickly what you think of Senator Clinton's position that Barack Obama is being mean to her partly because she's a woman, and that's wrong, that's out of bounds, that he should stop it. You think that's a legitimate response to his attacks on her?
OBAMA ADVISER SAMANTHA POWER: I'm hoping it was just a colossal slip of the tongue. I can't conceive that Hillary Clinton who, you know, is such a professional, that she would think that somehow points of policy difference come about because of gender difference — that makes no sense to me whatsoever. To think that women in this country will respond to that I think would be, if that what's she's implying, and again, I can't believe that it is, but that would be quite insulting to women voters who are trying to actually make decisions on the merits.
As Greg Sargent wrote, “… .. none of the stuff alleged above by Tucker and Power ever happened.”
This is just sloppy on Tucker's part and Ms. Power goes along then gives an answer that is so silly it's hard to believe she actually said it. First, she doesn't seem to know that Clinton's position was never that Obama was “mean to her.” That's ludicrous. Nobody anywhere, including in any Clinton camp statements I can find, was talking about Obama being “mean to her.” Power has this “oh my gosh that can't possibly be so” patter I've heard before. It's odd. But Tucker managed to spin his own reality and Power joined in.
As for all the “devastating” storylines of the debate this week, especially from commenters around some of the progressive blogs, they really don't understand that most people weren't phased by what happened. Clearly the opponents of Clinton were invigorated by it, which has the potential to be great for the race going forward, especially for someone in the second tier in Iowa as Edwards starts to slip. Dodd? Biden?
Now a large grain of salt alert. Rasmussen actually showed Clinton gaining after the debate, with Obama dipping downwards, and Edwards going up, though still far behind the leader.
Data from the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that on the two nights following the debate (Wednesday and Thursday) Clinton held a 45% to 18% lead over Barack Obama. For Clinton, that's an improvement from Monday and Tuesday nights when her lead over Obama had been 40% to 24%.
John Edwards was at 10% on the first two nights and 12% on Wednesday and Thursday. Bill Richardson went from 5% to 7% during the same time frames.
And remember that vote on Kyl-Lieberman that Obama missed? Well, evidently the talking point that it was called on short notice was utter crap.
Obama was campaigning in New Hampshire when the vote was taken. His campaign blamed his absence on the short notice given when the vote was scheduled. But two senior Democratic Senate aides said senators were advised the night before that the vote would occur the next day.
A spokesman for Obama, however, was adamant Obama did not have enough time to return to Washington for the vote.
Biden, Dodd and Clinton made it into town. If Mr. Obama's team is “adamant” he didn't have enough time it's because someone on his team didn't make sure he was there and he didn't make an effort either.
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