With enemies like these, Hillary Clinton might not need friends.
During a breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor Thursday, 2016 Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders said he doesn’t believe Clinton’s vote to give the Bush administration the authority to launch the war in Iraq in 2003 should be “disqualifying.”
“Look, I think we all listened to the debate. I was on the floor during that debate. Bush and Cheney never made the case to me that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction or that a war and an invasion was the only way to resolve that issue,” the Vermont senator said when pressed by the Weekly Standards John McCormack as to whether the Iraq vote should be “disqualifying” for Clinton.
“Other people thought differently,” Sanders continued. “But, you know, everybody makes bad votes in their life and I don’t think anybody is ‘disqualified’ [for that vote].”
Even if Sanders doesn’t believe the vote is disqualifying for Clinton, he did say earlier in the breakfast that he believes it is fair to question what Clinton’s vote for the war says about her “judgement.”
In 2008, President Barack Obama used Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war as a key issue to rally the left in support of his candidacy in the Democratic primary.