Steven D currently has a frontpaged diary up here called Guess Who Believes in Election Fraud? It is about some recent Hillary Clinton remarks at a speech in Ohio.
She said:
Referring to presidential races, Clinton said, “This country deserves to have an electoral system that has integrity. I know there’s been a problem here in Ohio, and I hope everybody from Ohio is watching this election like a hawk. Don’t let them pull anything over your eyes again.”
Without naming Blackwell, Clinton said, “One of the people running for high office is actually running the election. That should not be permitted. It’s a conflict of interest. … We’ve got to take back our democracy.”
Now I have no quarrel with Steven D. I am GLAD that he made this post.
I just want to go a little further here.
Into groupthink waters.
And the possible future of our country.
More below.
So…here’s Steven D’s title again.
Guess Who Believes in Election Fraud?
As if her concern about vote fraud is some sort of surprise.
There is currently a shitstorm going on both at dKos and My Left Wing regarding Maryscott O’Connors’ recent dKos post regarding the dangers of “groupthink” in left blogworld. Something is Rotten in Blogmark: Final Update
Ironically…but not unexpectedly, as least by me…the group has come down quite solidly on the side of the idea that there IS no “groupthink”.
Clomp clomp clomp.
Deep.
Well Bunkies and Bunkettes, I am here to tell you that there certainly IS a groupthink mentality going on, and the left blogworld business as usual trashing of Hillary Clinton is a prime example.
Even when you AGREE with her, the snark is on.
It is implicit right in the title of Steven D’s post.
Guess Who Believes in Election Fraud?
As if this is some kind of surprise coming from a heretofore stupid, plodding centrist.
Well, check it out.
This woman has been there since before many (Most?) of us knew the difference between a Democrat and our Mama’s left nipple. (If of course we were lucky enough to be breast fed.)
She was a member of House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry staff. She was working for all she was worth to get Nixon impeached in 1974. She was 26 years old.
What were y’all doing in 1974?
For that matter…not to be too age specific about it…what were you doing WHENEVER you were 26? (If you have even REACHED that grand old age yet?)
Yup.
I thought so.
Me too.
Hillary Clinton is not shallow. She is a deep politics politician. Something of a political genius. On the evidence. If politics were chess, she would be a world class grandmaster. And these statements about vote fraud should come as no surprise.
Now I do not agree with her tactics at present, but then…I am not a political genius. Also on the evidence. I am a political OBSERVER, because my views are too far out to ever win an election and I’ll be damned if I’ll spend my life playing games with assholes in little rooms. I’m OK with that, too. I just attended a little fundraiser for a dKos-approved style “New Dem”, and what I saw there turned my stomach. I have little to no patience or tolerance for upper middle class twits, no matter WHAT their supposed politics, and the room was FULL of them. There was another “New Dem” politician working the room who claimed to be a musician. I had my doubts, just on his handshake and smile. (Count Basie-“I don’t need to audition people anymore. I can tell how they play by the way they carry their case.” Yup.) I went to his website, and sure enough, he can’t even sing in tune. Another faker. So it goes. A bar FULL of fakers, mostly. (Except for my friend “R”, if he is looking in here. And the bartender, who was doing a REAL job. And possibly of course a couple of others. See my recent post Meet-up in the Working-class Boonies for the other side of that story as far as I am concerned. The REAL left.)
However…that’s what makes politics. “EVERYBODY wants ta get into de act!!!”
My current observation regarding Hillary is that she may have painted herself into a centrist corner (now THERE’S an image right out of M.C. Escher) from which she may never recover, but she has had a very clear view of what is up with the right wing of this country for about 40 years.
And by hook or by crook, she has ACTED upon that view.
I quote:
Pretty damned avant-garde statement for a major Democrat eight years ago.
Pretty damned avant-garde for a major Democrat even now.
More? Sure.
Substitute Butch for Nixon, the NSA trolling thing for Watergate, and Iraq for Vietnam and you have something that no major figure in the Democratic Party except possibly Russ Feingold would DARE to say publicly today.
Including Hillary Clinton.
She has made her centrist bed in an attempt to gain enough power to DO something about what is happening here in America, and one of the problems with making a successful big time political bed is that you are then forced to lie in it. And I DO mean “lie”. The poker of politics EMPHASIZES the bluff. I still think that she is about a 4 to 1 favorite to win the Democratic nomination…not least because she tacks with the shifting winds of popular opinion in a MOST amazingly graceful manner (Witness her handling of the Lieberman brouhaha so far. Remember…Connecticut is right across the street from her own NY power base. Dangerous. Like a great defensive fighter, she is there/not there almost simultaneously.)
And I think it is pick ’em between Hillary and McCain as far as the Presidential election is concerned. Neck and neck, and polls be damned. (McCain being the Hillary of the right. He’s tacked with the shifting winds over there and as a result has been given the keys to the mainstream Ratpub bank. Money buys nominations. In BOTH parties.)
If I were FORCED to pick between them, to put my money where my mouth is, I would lay it down for Hillary. Not because I am a leftist, but because the giant albatross of the Butch administration’s eight years of mistakes can and will be exploited by any really savvy, courageous politician in an open electoral process.
Which terms…savvy, courageous…apply pretty much exclusively to Hillary Clinton as far as the current likely field of Dem Presidential candidates is concerned.
I would only aim them at two other major Dems…Feingold and Dean. Neither of whom has much of a chance. Dean blew his chance already, and Feingold is too radical AND a Jew. Also John Conyers, who is too old to run. And probably too smart, as well.
Gore? He is a piece of lead, and I believe he knows it. GOOD lead, but not ready for prime time as a candidate. Never was; never will be. His silver/lead alloy spoon weighs too heavily upon his tongue.
The rest? Edwards, Warner, Biden, Clark? Also rans. Bet on it.
So Hillary believes in election fraud?
What a SURPRISE!!! She watched as Bill was railroaded into political impotence by media fraud and what had all the earmarks of an intel honeytrap. She of ALL people knows to what lengths the right will go to stay in power.
Once again, in case anybody missed it.
She didn’t say that the vast right-wing conspiracy was STARTED to go after Bill. I am quite sure that she does not think that it has been defeated, either.
And what are the vote fraud efforts that have managed to give us the most evil administration in the entire history of this nation?
They are part of that vast right-wing conspiracy.
Duh.
So where is the surprise, here?
There should BE none.
I said above:”…the giant albatross of the Butch administration’s eight years of mistakes can and will be exploited by any really savvy, courageous politician in an open electoral process.”
The kicker in that statement?
The words “open electoral process.”
Hillary knows this.
Thus we hear this part of her emerging platform.
Watch her.
She’s the real deal.
AG
