On her MSBNC show this afternoon, Mitchell stated that "all of us" originally thought John McCain had made a political mistake when he changed positions and came out of in favor of expanded oil drilling.
Mitchell was chatting with former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers and Republican strategist Doug MacKinnon. The subject was the just-announced Dem energy plan, that claims to make some limited provision for expanded offshore drilling. Mitchell made no bones of the fact that the politics now favor the advocates of expanded drilling, and that Dems were caught off guard.
View video here.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Dee Dee, this is a step back for Pelosi & team. They had to accept some form of oil drilling. They really got behind the curve of where the American people were on this issue.
Myers, who earlier had repeated the Dem mantra about not being able to "drill our way" out of the problem, responded by claiming that the best-case scenario would be for additional oil to come online in 10-15 years, and that even then that it "might or might not" affect the price of gas. Right. Supply and demand is no more reliable a law than, say, gravity. But she acknowledged that "it is something politically that the Speaker and the leadership in the congress decided they had to do to get this bill passed."
Responding, Mitchell let the cat out of the bag when it comes to her cohort.
MITCHELL: Coming from California, perhaps she was a little bit late to see the shift. Frankly, all of us, when we first heard John McCain shift on off-shore drilling in Florida, when he went in the Everglades, Doug, I for one thought that was politically tone-deaf, and in fact, it was adept.
True, Andrea tried to save herself with her "I for one" emendation. But too late. Clearly many Republicans and free-market advocates in academic and business circles had been pushing for expanded drilling for years. Myers mentioned that the moratorium on off-shore drilling has been fought in the House for 26 years. There were obviously passionate advocates on both sides.
So when Andrea said "all of us," and "we" initially thought McCain's move was a mistake, just whom did she have in mind?
