Sen. Clinton & John Edwards "Our Guys Should Talk" - Said On Live Mic At NAACP Convention

Wow. This is a blockbuster story for several reasons: 1, it points to a collusion between two presidential candidates to deliberately cause the exclusion of of other candidates they perceive as weak, and 2, the conversation was intended to be private, but the mic was live.

Apparently, according to Fox News , this is what happened:

Clinton, Edwards Want to 86 Gravel, Kucinich?

At the end of an NAACP Presidential Forum in Detroit in which fringe candidates Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich repeatedly upstaged the top two tiers, John Edwards approached Hillary Clinton at her podium and, perhaps forgetting that microphones were still on, can clearly be heard saying "we should think about at some point... maybe some time in the fall, we'll try to have a more serious debate with a smaller group of people."

Hillary agreed with Edwards, saying “We’ve got to cut the numbers of these, because they are just being trivialized.” Edwards responded “And they’re not serious. They’re not serious,” then walked away. Hillary caught up to him to add "I think there was an effort by our campaign to do that, but it somehow got detoured," saying "We’ve gotta get back to it." While shaking Dennis Kucinich's hand, she added “our guys should talk.”

This is a serious breech of the idea that all presidential candidates are serious and should be given air time. Moreover it reveals what the Clinton and Edwards camps actually think of their opponents. Plus, particularly for Senator Clinton, it's just plain bad PR. It reinforces the perception of some observers that she's calculating and can't be trusted.

Here's the video:



I'll stay tuned to this story.