Goodmouthing

Online discussions that I have seen about whether Hillary Clinton did or did not say that Senator Bernie Sanders is unqualified to be President of the United States have broken down mainly long factional lines, with Clinton supporters saying that she didn't, and Sanders supporters either saying that she did, or, if she didn't, she said something just as bad to justify his response.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about.

The United States of America is home to literally tens, if not a hundred or more, of millions of people who meet the Constitutional requirement for the office of President. Given such a large pool of possible candidates, it's a safe bet that for most of them, the single biggest obstacle between them and the White House is that they aren't politicians, and the money that it requires to get one's message out to enough voters to have a reasonable shot at winning.

But you would never gather that from listening to politicians talk about their opposition. And I think that this has less to do with their actual opinions on the subject than it does with the reactions of the public. Has Mrs. Clinton, I think, simply come out and said "Yes, I think that Senator Sanders is qualified to be President," that sentence would have been used against her, by Sanders supporters, if not the Sanders Campaign itself.

Which is too bad, because having bogus arguments about who's bad and who's good leaves little time for the discussion we should be having - who's good, and who's better.