I watched the speech last night, and what I saw was in some ways sad, and in some ways enlightening. She gave a great speech, but we knew she could do that already. What was sad was realizing how far her candidacy could have gone if she was not tied to her husband’s gang. And yes, that is how I perceive the DLC, as a gang.
It’s clear that as a politician she has a galvanizing effect on women of all ages, and she had that effect even when she was merely the First Lady. But the need or desire to establish a power base from within the Democratic Party required her to seek out and enlist in the same group of people who had backed her husband, a deeply flawed and frankly overrated President. And that is the tragedy of her campaign and of her political career.
And the continuing tragedy will be if she remains tied to this same old tired brand of Republican Lite politics. Because she doesn’t have to do so. Like Al Gore, after 2000, she can reinvent herself, and become a major figure on the world stage whether she chooses to stay in the Senate or do something else entirely. Gore only broke out of that old mindset after he lost, and lost in the worst way, by allowing himself to be led around by the nose by the same establishment consultants and DLC hacks who parasitically rode Bill Clinton’s charisma to electoral victories and claimed them as their own successes. When Gore stepped away from that group of illegitimate power hungry fools, he became his own man, and a far better human being.
Yet, the question remains: will she? Will she willingly divorce herself from Bill and his gang of old style, lobbyist ridden, “play the game just like the wingnuts” group of DLC “Bubba Bill” loving men (and a few women, too) who destroyed her own chance at the brass ring of American politics with a flawed and divisive strategy of campaigning? Or will she break free of them, both literally and figuratively to emerge as a new force, with a new persona all her own? She has that opportunity. There are millions of people who would follow her in pursuit of whatever goal she sets for herself, and those people will do so regardless of any financial support or political insider backing she might lay clam to as Bill’s heir.
She doesn’t need Bill anymore. Frankly, she ought to divorce him. Literally. It would be the best thing she could do for herself as a person. He’s the dead albatross around her neck in every way imaginable; politically, personally and spiritually. He sucked away all the decency and integrity from her primary campaign, and he will always do so. He can’t help himself. He didn’t acquire the name “Big Dog” out of nowhere after all.
I’d like to see her do that. Leave Bill in the dust of his legacy and move on. I don’t think she will, but for herself and the millions of American women for whom she has become an icon, a symbol of all their own hopes, dreams and desires for freedom and equality and justice, it would be the best thing that could ever happen to her.
I’ve skimmed print, radio, internet and TV coverage of Hillary’s disappointed supporters. I’ve watched and heard pledged delegates pronounce from the floor they’re ambivalent about Obama, he’s not the real deal, he’s short on accomplishments, he hasn’t reached out to Hillary supporters, Hillary lost an unfair, rigged primary process. Worse I’ve seen and heard dozens of Hillary delegates state they’ll either not vote or vote for McCain for all the above reasons. WTF!? I swear these people are batshit insane. GET. THE. FUCK. OVER. IT! Don’t they realize or care for the future make up of the Supreme Court, for their sons and daughters sent off to fight in Iran and Syria and Russia? McCain is truly a certified whack-job. And how in the hell does a delegate look into a camera from the convention floor, tear down and criticize the presumptive nominee and then state they’re voting Republican? How? Someone tell me why in the hell they’re not escorted from the premises, stripped of their credentials and told to get the hell out of Dodge? You’re a goddamned Democrat delegate to the Democrat convention and you go public with a pledge to vote for McCain. Oh man. These freaks need some harsh bitch slapping. Want to take bets on how many Republicans pull the same stunt during their convention and are still welcome at the wet bar? Are welcome freaking anywhere in the entire state of Minnesota? Hell, they’d end up in GITMO. Democrats should have no use for these traitors. Unbelievable. Words fail.
CNN had no problem finding a PUMA immediately after Hillary’s speech. She was tearing up, and then said Obama’s got a “thin resume”, didn’t know if she would vote for him, at a minimum might sit it out.
I think they are a small and dwindling group of people, but the perception of their numbers has been magnified by the media. After Hillary’s speech last night I flipped to CNN and by God if they didn’t find the one black female Clinton backer who still refuses to vote for Obama. We have to understand how the media echo chamber works to tranmogrify a small group of crazed and bitter people into a mass movement much like an illusionist pretends to escape a death trap of knives and swords.
Steven D, I disagree to a point. I’ve sat for a few days watching and listening to all this. Usually when the media latch on to an outlier on an issue it shows up. You recognize on channel after channel the same small group of people the networks use to drive home a skewed position. In this instance I’m not seeing the same 1/2 dozen individuals making the rounds. National polling on this issue produces anywhere from 10% to 30% of Hillary supporters claiming they’ll either sit out or vote Republican, and it tends toward the higher number in most polls. These are sample results not over the last week, but results you can see maintained since Hillary conceded. It’s irrational lunacy for a true Democrat to vote for McCain yet a great many will do it. Politicians rightly come in for harsh criticism when acting out of personal interest or fits of anger and revenge. These are elected Democrat delegates yet they’re not castigated in similar fashion. They plan on committing an act in the voting booth contrary to the best interests of the nation as viewed by their chosen party. They confess to this heresy on camera, on national television at the convention. Stripping them of their credentials and barring them from the premises is the least that should be done.
…but she’s just as power mad as he is.
I think that it’s too late for that now. She’s not going to give up the brand that easily.
I’m sure in her moments she wishes that she hadn’t gone down to the lowest common denominator race-baiting Obama. She would still have the black vote, or at least, half of it.
I had the same thought this morning. However, I think it might happen – especially if Bill’s convention speech is seen as undercutting her effort to be a team player.
Hillary needs a Big Dog like a fish needs a bicycle, eh?
Might work.
Hillary is still the lying, back-stabbing individual she was during the campaign. She’s the guy who stood by her husband when he least deserved it, when she had every right to say frankly, I’m disgusted at his childish behavior.
And she ran her campaign incredibly poorly. She proved herself to be anything but a leader even with her own staff.
It doesn’t matter what she does or doesn’t do with Bill. I would never vote for her, period. I don’t trust that she’d do a good job, period.
“I would never vote for her, period. I don’t trust that she’d do a good job, period.
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So Lisa, Obama loses and it’s Hillary vs McCain (2nd term!) in 2012. You’re pulling the lever for McCain? Sitting out? What?
I might actually make good on my promise to myself to leave the country. My boys will be getting close to draft age during McCain’s tenure.
I don’t pretend to speak for Lisa, Steve, but I basically share her opinion.
My quick .02 (gotta go work): this seems like a pretty far-flung hypothetical, at this point, to weigh against as strong a conviction against Hillary as we now have.
Given a first term & also having done a bad job — while considering that God’s Own Party may be even farther in disarray than it is now, & with the national economy even further into the shitter, I don’t believe it’s a given that McSame would actually seek a second term.
(Note my side-stepping around the age issue. St. Ronnie was the rarest of political animals; a pig’s ear like McSame wouldn’t be so easily gilded.)
So, imho, you’re basically asking about Hillary vs the generic Republican. Again, given personal conviction as to how far Hillary actually is from a GOP candidate who’s likely to have moved center-wise, I don’t see an easy call.
Very personally, I still plan to be living in New York State & believe we’ll stay sufficiently blue for me to be able to sit it out quite comfortably, if it comes to that.
Yes wilderness, it is unlikely new wars with various nations would actually spill over onto U.S. soil. I suppose that constitutes “sit it out quite comfortably” if “comfortably” means you’re not personally getting shot at or dodging mortar fire. Then again all our comfort levels may be a bit compromised once the accountants finally demand military expenditures be considered part of the budget. Roads, schools, the FDA, CDC, your local police and fire departments and a slew of other agencies just might have to suffer even more so that the Republican succeeding McCain can nurture his xenophobic base.
The sad thing is that electing a President now means everything and control of Congress means nothing. But that is what the lesson of 2006 has shown us: The Imperial President is all that matters. Bush got his way on every major policy dispute despite control of the House and Senate by Democrats.
It’s as if we elect a Caesar every 4 years from a small list of possibilities that the elites have chosen for us.
Until Congress takes back the authority and power that it frittered away, that is how the situation will remain.
One more SCOTUS and this country won’t be recognizeable.
Don’t make me go there and list how the Clinton’s failures enabled the “successes” of the Bush administration for the rich and war-hungry.
that she was cash strapped last February. Dodn’t think she needed to know. A great woman was destroyed by her husband’s cronies–you got it.
She could have asked. She needed to have better judgment re who to trust.
to keep her behind home ministering to his needs.
That’s why I think he had diarrhea of the mouth during the primaries. He may have been defending her, but he was burying her at the same time.
that turned us to Obama. It’s PC these days to blame sexism for her downfall–but if that’s true, was Mark Penn’s and even her husband’s. They wanted a figurehead, to get back into power. And don’t forget her big money donors, who STILL don’t want to give up.
FYI – this ain’t me, but gotta say I’m proud of ’em.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/349180
That’s a great story. Too bad we will only see it on the pages of The Nation.
got some local media attention in the denverpost, and rkymtnnews.
good on them.
Thanks for the tip!
When I first heard about them, I just laughed. But they are for real.
By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008; A01
(excerpt)
“I hate Obama so much that I’m going to devote as much time to McCain as I did to Hillary,” said Adita Blanco, a Democrat from Edward, Okla., who has never voted for a Republican. “Obama has nothing. He has no experience. The Democratic Party doesn’t care about us. You couldn’t treat [Clinton] any worse.”
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I’m open to alternate opinions. Someone make a case this woman shouldn’t have her credentials yanked and be excluded from further participation in the convention process. She made a public statement to the media that she is going to work diligently for McCain’s election. She made the statement while presenting herself as a loyal Democrat, as my understanding of the delegate selection process requires only the most committed Democrats are chosen. There is no Hillary Party, there is a Democrat Party. So, make the case, she stays. I say she goes.
is now on TV touting McCain after she was chucked out of her delegate status.
I can’t believe these single-issue broads. There was one of them on Democracy Now! this morning…just wanting to vote for her candidate in nomination, no other strategy–like voting for Cynthia McKinney, for example–except for this woman who has lost, lost, LOST. I know Amy Goodman is cooler than most of us, but she pressed and pressed her to the point of exasperation.
Don’t these PUMAs know that this is about the Supreme Court, too???
Steve,
With all due respect, by wistfully musing about “how far her candidacy could have gone if she was not tied to her husband’s gang,” you are in fact wistfully musing about a candidate who is not Hillary Clinton. To be Hillary Clinton, candidate for her party’s nomination in 2008 is to be the person who: (1) was deeply a part of that DLC gang herself — and worse, you forget that it was she who brought the Loathsome Dick Morris onto the scene to try to out GOP the the GOP; (2) who rose to prominence not at all on her own but because of her marriage, her First-Lady-dom, and all of the visibility and contacts that came with it. Please spare us the suggestion that she is a noble woman led astray by “Bill’s gang.” Shit, she’s the damn capo of the gang.
No, she is a deeply compromised individual, and I didn’t mean to imply she is any sort noble person (though many of her followers believe she is), at present. But she has the opportunity to remake herself, much like Al Gore had after his defeat. I don’t think she will take that opportunity, but it’s there for her if she chooses to do so.
Gotcha. Thanks for the response. I too-quickly assumed that you had suddenly played host to a Hillhoroid pod. I have to admit that for all the shortcomings that I perceived in the speech, it did display her talents in a way that gave this Hillary basher some pause.
Oh, and props for this: “her husband, a deeply flawed and frankly overrated President.”
I know the Bush years have been very, very bad, but they do not retroactively turn Bill Clinton’s presidency into a festival of progressivism. It failed even on the crassest political terms — since he managed to lose Congress. The revisionist view of the Clinton years that we were all treated to duringhte primary nauseated me.