Politics

Pelosi: Hillary’s Votes Don’t Matter. What’s Important Is She’s A Woman [VIDEO]

Alex Griswold Media Reporter
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When asked during her weekly press conference about whether then-New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq War should be “disqualifying,” Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said what was actually “important” was to elect a woman president. (VIDEO: Liberal Senator Mocks Hillary For Lying About Her Immigrant Grandparents)

QUESTION: [Former Rhode Island Governor] Lincoln Chaffee said earlier this week that any Democrat who voted for the Iraq war should be disqualified as being your party’s nominee. You called the Iraq war among other things ‘a grotesque mistake.’ He was obviously implying that Hillary Clinton should not be the nominee. If you don’t agree with Lincoln Chaffee, why not?

PELOSI: If we are relitigating the Iraq War, let me say that in the House of Representatives, we saw things differently in a majority of the House Democrats voting against the Iraq War… I was top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee at the time. As such, I was required to receive all of the intelligence… all the information the White House had on going into Iraq. And I said at the time, the intelligence does not support the threat. I had better access than most people, I couldn’t really say what I saw.

But I don’t think a vote on a war 13 years ago, 14 years ago; the vote was ’02, so that many years ago… I mean this was wrong all around. Having said it, that was then, this is now. We go forward. And I do not think that Hillary Clinton took on that, nor did I think the vote John Kerry took on it disqualifies him for being president.

Again, Hillary Clinton has been a strong — she comes to this, yes, as a woman. It happens to be that she’s a woman. She’s so qualified. She has had great national security experience as a member of the Armed Services Committee and as Secretary of State. And for these and so many reasons she’ll be one of the strongest, best prepared people to enter the Oval Office in a long time. There are some others, but she will be among the best prepared to serve as president.

A war vote is a vote that everybody makes on the basis of what think know, what they believe, who they trust. There’s large number of people in both who supported the war, unfortunately because the consequences have been terrible in terms of what it meant to our veterans and the rest of that, but no, the answer is no. I don’t think it should disqualify her.

What’s important is what it would mean to elect a woman president of the United States. It’s a very major consideration. A very qualified woman to be president of the United States, not just that she is a woman, but a very qualified one. When I became even Whip, certainly Leader, and for sure Speaker, the response was so overwhelming from people saying how encouraged they were that we had broken not the glass ceiling, that’s nothing. We’re talk about the marble ceiling…

Most people don’t even know there is a Speaker; that’s not, shall we say, a common awareness. So imagine if that was the response, then what it mean to have a woman president, not only to the American people and women in our country and families, but to the world to see that other countries have had women…

Elections are about the future. They’re not about what happened 13 years ago. They’re about the future, and that’s really what people want to hear.

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[h/t RealClearPolitics]

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