How will Hillary Clinton explain this one to women?

The revelations out of David Axelrod’s forthcoming memoirs just keep coming.

Earlier on Wednesday, we learned that President Barack Obama took offense at the fact that Mitt Romney had complimented him on his ability to turn out voters in urban areas in 2012. We also learned that the president thought about consigning his 2008 rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the Supreme Court.

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And this afternoon, we learned one of the biggest bombshells to emerge thus far from Axelrod’s tell-all. Clinton allegedly planned to appoint her 2008 rival, former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), to serve as her attorney general if she had won the White House in exchange for his endorsement on the campaign trail.

“Hillary’s camp was desperate to escort him out the door,” Axelrod writes.

The Edwards’ deal allegedly came with the condition that he endorsed her bid for President. The Edwards’ deal allegedly came with the condition that he endorsed her bid for President.

“He wants to know that there would be a place for him with Barack down the line,” Axelrod quotes an Edwards advisor saying.

“I recognized a squeeze play when I saw one, and immediately scrambled up some vague assurances.

This is a problem for Clinton.

In the alternate universe in which Clinton secured Edwards’ endorsement, she is soon forced to explain to voters – particularly all those women whom she purported to represent – why her backer, whose support she enthusiastically accepted, had an extramarital affair while his wife was dying of cancer. Not only that, but that he had fathered a child out of wedlock with his mistress and lied about it to the voters.

But beyond that, Edwards later confessed that he had used campaign donations to hide his mistress from the public. Though he was indicted in 2011 on six charges of federal campaign contribution violations, he was acquitted of one and the jury failed to reach a verdict on the remaining five.

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While Edwards is not a convicted criminal, he is a confessed liar and a philanderer. That Hillary Clinton planned to reward a political rival for loyalty rather than competence speaks volumes about her priorities, and that is a lapse in judgment that she should have to answer for.

But what might be most important to the tabloid press, and not to mention the low information voter who is not entirely clear on what an attorney general does, is why the candidate who is vying to represent all women by ascending to the Oval Office was predisposed to reward an adulterous lecher with such a high office.

Of course, this scenario hinges on the unlikely event that the media bothers to press the issue when they finally get the opportunity to ask Clinton why she is running for president. Who knows if they will have time.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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