No, I’m not starting a new blog.
I was talking with a friend today who told me that he had voted for Marco Rubio in the recent primary election in South Carolina. He said, “anybody but Clinton.” That’s a sentiment I hear a lot here in South Carolina, mostly from Republicans.
The reason I’m writing this article is to confess that I share a somewhat negative view of Hillary Clinton as well, and that view is the result of being pounded by negative stories about Ms. Clinton going back to her husband’s administration. There was Whitewater, and TravelGate, and most recently the email thing. Who knows how many I’ve forgotten, but that still contribute to my overall negativity. (I was never influenced by the “Clinton body count” rumor or the Vince Foster suicide controversy. They were just too implausible.)
I don’t mean to say that I believe that Hillary Clinton is guilty of serious wrongdoing with any of these issues. I don’t know because I’ve not researched them. But I cannot honestly say whether or not my uninformed opinion of Hillary Clinton caused me to vote for someone else in the primary. I would vote for her in the general election against any Republican candidate.
In the case of Barack Obama, I have researched the stories, and so I don’t get negative vibes about him, even though the list negative claims is staggering. So my conclusion is that debunking is a worthwhile exercise.
Which is pretty much the explanation for birther theories in the first place – propaganda that addresses our tendency to – as you put it – “worship the pile”.
My favorite Clinton “scandal” was the Rose Law Firm billing records. The Republicans already had the original documents, but they demanded that Hillary turn over the photocopies of the original billing records, on the theory that the copies would somehow be different from the originals.
That’s when I became convinced that Republicans were just nuts.
I don’t think the Clintons are particularly corrupt on a scale ranging from Ike and Jimmy Carter (who were probably fairly honest) to Nixon and Ulysses Grant. The rabid right-wing accused FDR and Eleanor of much worse sins than the Clintons — it’s just magnified (dare i say, taken “seriously”) by a media environment that has become your national disgrace.
I have strongly mixed feelings about Hillary.
I was never persuaded by the Whitewater-TravelGate-VinceFoster litany of accusations. I think the Benghazi brouhaha shows a particularly shameful double standard on the part of the Republicans, and the email controversy is probably in a similar category.
I was relatively pleased with her service as both senator and secretary of state, and there is no doubt in my mind that she is more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the presidency than any of her adversaries, though I certainly have policy differences with her.
But there’s no avoiding it — when she is in campaign mode, I find her persona to be sadly and offputtingly inauthentic.
To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, much of today’s journalism consists of transcribing what politicians say and then reporting it.
At the last Republican debate Trump claimed that he was beating Clinton in the polls. He said that there was a new Pew poll which had him ahead. In fact, Pew hasn’t even done a poll on Trump v. Clinton. It was all a lie. but not a single “journalist” on the debate panel challenged him on it. Since he wasn’t challenged, low information voters who were watching probably believe it, when in fact Clinton is leading Trump by double digits in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The television journalists are the worst of the lot.
Gallup Poll Most Admired Woman
1993- Hillary Clinton
1994- Hillary Clinton
1995- Mother Teresa
1996- Mother Teresa
1997-Hillary Clinton
1997- Hillary Clinton
1999- Hillary Clinton
2000- Hillary Clinton
2001-Laura Bush
2002-Hillary Clinton
2003-2015-Hillary Clinton
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1678/most-admired-man-woman.aspx
“Clinton Most Admired Woman For Record 20th time”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/187922/clinton-admired-woman-record-20th-time.aspx
IIRC, Ken Starr vigorously investigated everything in the 90s and yet all he could come up with was a bj.
There have been seven or eight investigations into the Benghazi attacks and at least a few of them run by people who wanted to find something, and they found nothing.
Which means, they need to do another investigation, I guess.
p.s. I think “anybody but Clinton” is the only thing Republicans can say at this point. It sounds better than saying “vote for any Republican, no matter how much you detest him.” Their candidates are the absolute worst, the party is out of control, and they are frightfully embarrassed and embarrassing. They’ve got nothing on Hillary, no matter how much they try–all they have in innuendo. (Just like that’s all they’ve got re Obama).
I like Hillary just fine for President. My issue with her, however, is that I don’t like some things she does while campaigning, and it makes me “trust her” less than a guy like Bernie who is very straightforward. That is, she sometimes takes misleading cheap shots, and it pisses me off. Her record and policies can stand on their own–she doesn’t need to employ cheap political crap and it bothers me when she does it (i.e., I don’t like her insulting my intelligence). But frankly, I blame her political advisers for that crap. She can learn a lot from Bernie and the kind of response Bernie gets to his straightforwardness. People are tired of games.
standard republican fare — fear, uncertainty and doubt aka FUD. blow enough smoke and soon folks’ll think there’s a fire somewhere.
Not until the election heats up. Though they seem to have abandoned Benghaaaaaazi mostly and turned to the “unsecured email server”. Not that I expect this to end any differently.
I wonder how long the media wait until they start digging up dirt on Trump. With all his ex-wives and shady deals, they pretty much act as if he were still just some politically irrelevant media attraction. Shart, I know more about Mark Zuckerberg than about the guy who’s running for President.
To be fair, Zuckerberg is an important person with profound and lasting affect on America, so it’s hardly a fair comparison.
They’ve dug up tons of dirt on Trump. Among these are:
His phony “Trump University” which ripped off students and is being sued by the New York AG
Hiring illegal immigrants
Hiring foreign temp workers when Americans were available
Business ventures gone bust
Sweetheart deals to build golf courses
And on and on..
His supporters don’t care. But his unfavorables are the highest ever by a presidential candidate. Getting 35-40% in Republican primaries is not the same as getting 51% in a general election.
Is there any there there with the email server?
I keep hearing over and over “If it were anyone else, they’d be fired and indicted.”
I know when Fox News talks, people listen, but looking at it objectively, could she be in any real trouble?
The difference is, Zuckerberg is not running for office. He could eat babies in his spare time, it wouldn’t change a thing about what he did (just like Richard Wagner having been an anti-Semite does not diminish the qualitiy of his music), but we hold politicians to much higher standards.
Lupin’s comment from 10 March is historically a little off: there has never been any evidence that President U. S. Grant was corrupt. Yes, there was a small army of crooks in his administration, but he personally was not involved. Elected because he was the Civil War hero, he had no prior experience with politics, was surprisingly naïve, but by all accounts his personal integrity was solid.
I don’t have a cite handy, but Grant also used his final address to congress (now called the State of the Union) to apologize to the legislature and to the American people for his inadequacies as President. I always thought the Bush (Dubya) presidency had some similarities to Grant’s: not necessarily an evil President, possibly even well-intentioned, but definitely in over their heads, and with an extremely evil and corrupt administration.
I am more than happy to apologize to the shades of President Grant; this was off the top of my head and his administration (if not himself) does have a terrible reputation.
Actually, Grant is a President whose reputation has improved quite a bit in recent rankings. He was a very strong backer of Reconstruction and fought hard to crush the KKK. Reconstruction collapsed when Federal troops were withdrawn from the South as part of the compromise to settle the disputed 1876 election, but that was after Grant had left office. He is not in the top 10, but certainly well above Bush II. Above all, he didn’t start any unnecessary wars (though he did play a large role in ending an unavoidable one).
Herbert Hoover is another president with a terrible reputation who, upon further examination, maybe wasn’t as bad as the conventional wisdom would dictate. Near the beginning of Obama’s first term, Kevin Baker wrote an article comparing Hoover’s time to Obama’s, “Barack Hoover Obama: The best and the brightest blow it again.”
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/07/barack-hoover-obama/1/
While Baker acknowledged that Obama “had to contend with a knee-jerk rejectionist Republican Party,” I don’t think he appreciated at the time how truly obstructionist Congressional Republicans would be for the duration of Obama’s presidency.
I strongly disagree with that thesis. Hoover’s policies helped a stock market crash turn into the Great Depression. Obama inherited a financial crisis every bit as serious as that in 1929 (actually more serious) and stopped the job losses within a few months of taking office and has seen very solid, steady growth since then.
Yes, but we have Hoover to thank for Hoover Ball.
Considering Hillary Clinton is still standing strong after 25 years of attacks and scandals, the great majority of them phony and those with any truth to them, usually exaggerated to great proportions, I think she’ll be able to handle Trump in the general election as long as she doesn’t try to match him with insults for all the crap he tries to sling at her. If all she does is match wits with him in a debate on policy and procedure, he’ll likely end up looking quite foolish or will at least reveal he is clueless about both when it comes to the U.S. He can’t study enough or get up to date on the things she has been involved with for years on a regular basis. He also obviously doesn’t care to learn, believing his “great brain” as he referred to it, is more than enough and he only has to look to himself for answers.
Here’s a clip from an article about how some members of the GOP felt about Hillary as Secretary of State, it will be hard for anyone to run legitimate ads about her alleged lack of productivity as such if she only were to respond with the following :
Jeb Bush presented Hillary Clinton with an award for having “dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy.”
Lindsey Graham: “She’s dedicated to her job. She loves her country. And she understands the issues, and there are a lot of them in her job to understand. But more importantly, I think she is a good role model. […] [She is] one of the most effective secretary of states, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime.”
Marco Rubio to Secretary Clinton: “I want to share sentiments of my other colleagues of tremendous respect for the hard work and service that you’ve put in on behalf of our country, both as a member of this chamber and then, obviously, now in—in the role you have.”
Rick Perry on Hillary Clinton: “Very, very capable public servant. Great Secretary of State, first lady, and she’s very capable.”
Condoleezza Rice: “Hillary Clinton is someone I’ve known for a long, long time. She’s a patriot. I think she’s doing a lot of the right things. […] I think she’s doing a fine job. I really do.”
Henry Kissinger: “[Hillary Clinton] ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): “Secretary Clinton is admired and respected around the world. She and I have been friends for many years. We used to travel together… So, I have – I admire the fact that she is admired throughout the world and a very effective Secretary of State.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT): “I happen to like Hillary Clinton; I think she’s done a good job for the… secretary of state’s position, and I have high respect for her and think a great deal of her.”
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Thank you, Secretary Clinton, for your words of inspiration and for the magnificent job you do as the Secretary of State for our nation.”
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO): “[Hillary Clinton] is successful in her own right, no doubt about that, as a senator, successful as Secretary of State.”
Fmr. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) to Hillary Clinton: “You’ve, I think, taken an international leadership role in, I think, raising the pressure levels in Iran.”
Fmr. Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-UT): “I have to say she’s a very impressive public servant. […] And I have to say, I haven’t been around too many people as professional; as well-briefed. […] I have to say, she’s a very, very capable person.”
There are links for each of these in the original article at https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/07/20/gop-praise/
One could put those next to some GOP statements about Donald Trump, and make a pretty effective ad.
And I’m sure that Clinton’s people have been collecting video clips of Trump’s lies and outrageous statements.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, an article in Slate makes the case that conservatives are more likely than liberals to believe in conspiracies.
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/19/conspiracy_theories_are_for_losers_science_explains_why_conservatives_see_sneaky_cabals_in_every_defeat/?source=newsletter
I sure hope so. If Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton can be confident in good odds for the presidency. But she better not be arrogant. She needs to realize that a lot of voters just aren’t that engaged in the process at this point (they have better things to do in their personal lives). So she can’t count on people to just know what a jerk Donald Trump is.
a. The vast majority of Trumpistas consider nearly all of those people part of the hated “establishment”, so that won’t put any dents in their delusions.
b. The term “legitimate political ad” is dangerously close to becoming an oxymoron in this country.
But one of the nice things about Trump is that it takes very little “engagement” to recognize what a jerk he is. Even few months ago, 50% of the people polled were already saying they would be “embarrassed” to have him as president. And his 60% “unfavorable” polling has stayed firm despite the gains he’s made within the GOP.