Great question in need of an answer or at least to ponder upon.
Do you see it as Bill bending the rules to gain a 3rd term through Hillary’s candidacy?
Does anyone think for a minute that Bill will not play a very active role – beyond being a supportive `first’ spouse?
Would it be a co-presidency?
Dare we think the unthinkable; 16 years! – the combined Clintons’ presidency.
Dynastic, no? Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton
Under our trashed Constitution, Hillary holds the inalienable right to run for the presidency.
Setting aside the question of is it or is it not “a 3rd term” (depends on what Is, is) what is of great concern is this; – their attitude of entitlement. It’s all theirs and no one should stand in the way. Watch the body language.
Sadly, the Clintons’ campaign reached new lows; playing the race and gender card – whether directly by their own words or through surrogates – confirming that all along they’re a divisive couple.
How can their approach to this campaign unite the party?
Bill and Hillary could have kept their legacy intact – “elder statesman, former president, first lady and great senator” Bill and Hillary could have kept a legacy of the most popular former president in modern history; his perceived record of having presided over a strong economy in the 90s, superficial as that may have been.
By deploying the race and gender card, that legacy is being tarnished and not just in the Afro-American community but also among women. -votes considered significant for a Democratic Party win. Theirs is a strategy that’ll turn away the under 30s (both genders) who have grown up in a society grounded on the principle of merit, willing to say no to affirmative action.
But why are we surprised. The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy told us the Clintons play dirty. They bend the rules. They distort the record.
“I didn’t inhale”
“Depends on what Is, is.”
Yesterday, we saw that line deployed to explain, clarify, the swirl of race baiting. The Clintons are just not credible. Some may disagree.
Hillary, has been deploying the gender card since she made her candidacy official. This week she took it national.
Hillary deployed the gender card in New Hampshire to pull out a win. Terry McAuliffe, her campaign co-chair, was not at all shy. Terry told BBC World Service Update (aired 5:00 AM, on NPR, Jan. 11,2008) that,
“It was experience and the tearful moment that did it for her.”
“A moment of brillantly staged emotion” writes Christopher Caldwell -Financial Times, UK:
Politics of the Personal
(reg.required) (H/T: The Daily Dish)
“Hillary Clinton used a moment of brilliantly staged emotion to win the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday, which every opinion poll had predicted she would lose. As she answered questions in a diner on the morning before the election, Mrs Clinton’s voice began to waver and crack when she said: “It’s not easy … This is very personal for me.”
Although Mrs Clinton’s supporters dispute that the incipient sobs were shammed, their case is weak. In a decade-and-a-half of national scrutiny, Mrs Clinton has shown no hint of breaking down spontaneously.
Emotions can be an electoral trump card, especially if one can show them as Mrs Clinton did, without tears. The key is to appear stirred without appearing weak. Mrs Clinton’s emotion was not only perfectly calibrated but also perfectly timed – for the last newscasts before polls opened in New Hampshire.”
You get the flavor. During 16 years in national politics – suffering 8 years of Ken Starr and Bill’s impeachment, Hillary stood strong. She’s good.
We should be concerned, we now have our very own Karl Rove. It is not a plus.
In fact, it’s my view, the Clintons have gone beyond Karl Rove with the race baiting and use of the gender card. This is a risky strategy that may degenerate beyond a mere divisive debate..
Note to the HRC cheerleaders: Hold your fire. Let’s review Hillary’s pattern, her use of the gender card.
Robert Parry, Consortium News nails it in this essay:
Hillary Plays a Risky `Gender Card’
“Many people who know the Clintons insist that the power couple truly wants what’s best for the American people. It’s just that too often their political needs or their personal foibles overwhelm their responsibility to the public interest.
But rarely could the Clintons’ determination to get their way be more detrimental to both the Democratic Party and the United States than if Hillary Clinton continues to play the “gender card” on behalf of her presidential campaign, especially in what is shaping up as a two-person race against an African-American.
Instead of an inspiring campaign between two trail-blazing politicians, the race could degenerate into a spasm of “identity politics” in which two groups – women and blacks – compete over who has been more unfairly repressed. [.]
A Pattern
On Nov. 1, 2007, after one bruising Democratic debate, Clinton returned to her alma mater, Wellesley College, and declared that “in so many ways, this all women’s college prepared me to compete in the all boys’ club of presidential politics.”
Clinton then urged Wellesley students to help her win the presidency. “We’re ready to shatter that highest glass ceiling,” Clinton said. [NYT, Nov. 2, 2007]
Similarly, after losing the Iowa caucuses to Obama, Clinton and her supporters appealed to women to rally behind one of their own and to take a stand against sexist oppression.
In a New York Times op-ed, feminist Gloria Steinem went so far as to argue that American women have suffered more political and economic discrimination than American black men.
“Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any woman (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter),” Steinem wrote. [NYT, Jan. 8, 2008]
A Bitter Debate
Steinem’s historical arguments threw down a gauntlet to a bitter debate over who’s the bigger victim, blacks or women.
American blacks could reasonably cite their experience with generations of slavery followed by generations of brutal segregation in making the case that giving black men the vote after the Civil War was relatively meaningless.
(emphasis added)
Please read the whole essay
Danger ahead.
That bridge to the 21st that Bill invited us to take with him is broken.
Whatever happened to Bill and Hillary’s invitation to hope?
and,
“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
Did anyone accuse Bill and Hillary of offering false hopes?
Guess that was then. This is now.
Mr. Parry concludes:
“The longer-term danger, however, is that Clinton’s reliance on the “gender card” – especially as Obama resists playing the “race card” – might ultimately pit two important Democratic constituencies against one another.
Identity politics could trump a serious debate over the candidates’ differences on the Iraq War and other pressing issues. In the end, many Americans surely would be turned off by a high-profile squabble over who has the bigger historic grievance, American women or American blacks.
Given the numerical superiority of women over blacks, that argument might help the Clintons achieve their immediate goal of again capturing the Democratic presidential nomination. But it could leave their party – and their nation – even more divided. “
(emphasis added)
““Even more divided?” Oh my.