Last August, after Hillary Clinton‘s inexplicable defense of lobbyists at the Yearly Kos convention, I noted the thread that was tying together her conflicts with the other candidates and asked a question:
Clinton’s defense of lobbyists…[is] actually of a piece with her last three conflicts with Obama, around his plans to meet with foreign leaders, his Pakistan policy, and his remarks on the use of tactical nuclear weapons. I am starting to think there’s actually less calculation going into these fights than meets the eye. In each instance, she is defending her vision of nuanced reality against a clear position on one side of an issue or the other, even though her support for nuance then makes her look like she’s taking firm, other-side positions that are not the ones she actually articulated….
Could her commitment to nuanced realism be not just the thing that makes her seem hard-headed and experienced but also her Achilles heel?
I think today we may have our answer: Yes. At least, John Edwards seems to think so. His “The Politics of Parsing” video has gone viral (more than 230,000 views and counting) and today, his campaign released a new video that takes us back to that moment last summer:
