Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, those two members of your book club who keep getting into weird passive-aggressive fights in the kitchen over the protagonist’s motivations, have been engaged in an extremely useful and pressing argument over who is less “qualified” to be president.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reports that Clinton said Sanders had not done his “homework” on Wall Street reform, referring to an interview with the Daily News editorial board in which Sanders came off as less knowledgeable than he likely is. That night, Sanders said that Clinton “has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote-un-quote, not qualified to be president,” which is something Clinton did not, uh, quote-un-quote say.
Sanders continued, via the Times:
“Let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton, I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is, through her ‘super PAC’ taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds.”
He added: “I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement.”
Clinton’s press secretary fired back on Twitter:
The Washington Post reports that Kim Fredrick, 37, an “unbelievably enthusiastic” Clinton supporter, saw Sanders’ comments and was “livid,” prompting her to start the hashtag #HillarySoQualified. Very briefly, it went well:
By early Thursday, however, according to the Washington Post, more than 90,000 tweets—“many of them decidedly Clinton-unfriendly”—went out under the hashtag.
While I’m not sure anything was really hashed out (haha!) re: anyone’s presidential qualifications, we have learned, for the 90th or 100th time, that Twitter is one population Hillary Clinton is unlikely to win over.
Image via Getty.