I can do all the analysis I want. I can take this country, hold it up, flip it upside down, turn it around, squint at it a little bit, put it under a microscope…but, yesterday, I just took a quiet moment and tried to actually envision Hillary Clinton being sworn in as our next president. And it just didn’t seem plausible to me. It didn’t seem right. It turned out that I just couldn’t picture it actually happening.
I can’t explain why. Every time I look at the race, I can’t picture anyone else winning either the Democratic nomination or the general election. I mean, even Glenn Beck thinks she will be the next president and, amazingly, he doesn’t seem too worried about the prospect. You might even say that he sounds like he would welcome a Clinton Restoration.
The sentiments expressed by Beck are the kind of sentiments that sometimes lead me to believe that Hillary Clinton can win in a huge transformative landslide.
Beck said he received information from a friend of his, who is also friends with the “Hillary people,” about Clinton’s campaign strategy in 2016. Beck said that when he heard it, he said, “Oh my gosh, she’s going to win the presidency.”
Beck said Clinton’s “people” told his friend: “The right is so stupid. They just don’t get it. You guys are going to all be fighting on Benghazi and everything else, and here’s what Hillary is going to do. [She is going to say], ‘Do you remember when America was good? Do you remember when we had jobs and we were building towards a brighter future, and things were really happening? The Clinton administration, we had it under control. Things were good, and … we’re going to do better. We’re going to replant our flag in the traditional things that you understand.’”
“And this is what made me say, ‘Oh, my gosh, she’s going to win,’” Beck said. “Pat and I both have said in the past, ‘I would so gladly take Bill Clinton right now. Don’t those years seem simple and good [compared to today]?’”
I know Glenn Beck is a crackpot and a demagogue. But the way his mind works isn’t all that unique or unusual. How many people are there in this country who think back on the Clinton Era as a simpler and better time when the economy was going gangbusters?
And, yet, I still have some kind of instinctual feeling that something is going to happen that changes the trajectory that we appear to be on. My brain says Hillary Clinton will be our next president, but my spidey-sense tells me that this is never going to happen.
My brain says Hillary Clinton will be our next president, but my spidey-sense tells me that this is never going to happen.
So who would it be? O’Malley? Certainly not Cuomo or Jay Nixon.
Eugene V. Debs.
No one else is even remotely progressive enough.
There really isn’t anyone else right now. I guess my intuition is telling me that something very fucked up is about to happen that is going to change what we think we know about American politics.
But I have no intuition about what that might be.
However, Eugene Debs ain’t gonna play a part.
Maybe Zombie Eugene V. Debs? (“The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. Also, brains . . . . !”)
” … something very fucked up is about to happen that is going to change what we think we know about American politics. “
Yeah, that’s the other side of it. Its called “The fix is in.” Like, we really don’t get to pick who’s going to be president any more.
But on the other hand, maybe it’s just too early, ever think of that? Why do we think we ought to know who’s going to be president two years ahead?
Why do we think we ought to know who’s going to be president two years ahead?
It’s not just about the President. It’s a proxy fight for the control or at least direction of the Democratic Party. Many people (I’m not going to say most, because Americans aren’t that engaged) who are for or against Hillary Clinton because she is representative of the battlelines of ‘cautious incrementalism’ or ‘bold progressivism’. When people rail about, say, pie-in-the-sky emoprogs or tactically adrift antiestablishmentarians who don’t have a better 2016 alternative to Hillary, they’re going to bat for the underlying principle. Not Hillary herself. Like it or not, she’s more of a figurehead for these movements, not the object or goal.
Viewed in that light, criticizing people for focusing on the 2016 election instead of 2014 is inapt. They’re not obsessed with 2016 to the exclusion of all else, they’re thinking about the Democratic Party’s future for the next several election cycles.
Your comment is very interesting (no snark intended), but also not easy to understand.
It’s clear why people are concerned about the direction of the party, and they have every right to be, whether I agree with their vision or not. But then they are not talking about what is going to be in 2016, but about their hopes or fears. Because they really don’t know what’s going to be in 2016, nor is there any reason why they should at this point. We don’t even know what’s going to be in November of this year.
Everybody wants to be a pundit. They make all kinds of statements dressed up as facts, use various techniques to sound factual, but they are still whistling in the dark. Apparently it’s better to be proven wrong, no matter how wrong, in the future, than to remain open-minded about what we don’t know. Because people won’t remember anyway.
My point is, why do we play along with this nonsense, treating as quasi-facts what really are just wishes and fears? We’re out too far ahead and there is just not enough data. By doing this, we paralyze our own energies and imaginations. It’s like the 24-hour news cycle, talking and talking when we have little or nothing to say.
I think Booman has probably been feeling a lot of pressure to do it because that’s what’s expected from a political commentator. But on the other hand, the absurdity of it now breaks through his Spidey-sense, which Rikyrah has described exactly right.
C’mon, Booman.
The fix is in. It is so in!!!
Al the pie-in-the-sky “intuition” isn’t going to change things.
Not one bit.
Deal wid it.
When people like Glen Beck publicly say things lke “Pat [I assume that’s Pat Buchanan?] and I both have said in the past, `I would so gladly take Bill Clinton right now. Don’t those years seem simple and good [compared to today]?” the fix is in.
What they are saying is that the PermaGov has decided to hire a centrist pro rather than a centrist neophyte to front its centrist business. Why? ‘Cuz the centrist neophyte didn’t have the chops to handle the gig, that’s why.
On the evidence.
So it goes.
She will preside over whatever happens next unless she fucks up and challenges the controllers on some fairly public level…a mistake that I believe she is too canny a politician to make.
Watch.
AG
the problem is, that isn’t a prediction
I pretty much agree with you that the fix is in, or will be. I don’t agree that you know who the fix is in for. In ’08 you were also certain that the fix was in for Hillary, didn’t end up that way.
Glenn Beck is not a team-playing member of the media-military-corporate-oligarch-fundamentalist-industrial complex, and he has no ability to help enforce a “fix”, whatever the hell that means.
Who is the “centrist neophyte” in your scenario here? Genuinely curious.
You have thoroughly proven yourself not to be “genuinely curious,” centerfielddj. Over and over again. You inhabit a so-called liberal/progressive agenda that you wish to promote. Feel free. I only promote the truth(s) that I see, regardless of their position on the false, two-dimensional, left-to-right media-promoted fix hustle.
Enjoy yourself. Kneejerk off as you wish.
It’s what one does when very few others give a damn.
Get used to it.
AG
Well, if Hillary does eventually announce her candidacy, I fully expect our entire media universe to automatically shift into the highest possible gear of their “politics as a game” mode and set their sights on making sure that they do whatever they can to insure the much desired horse-race narrative plays out, whether or not a horse-race even exists. We will be forced to suffer, once again, through the whole sorry mess and insufferable obsessions that our media have with anything Clinton.
For me, one thing will be absolutely certain. There will be a moratorium in my house for the duration of the campaign on anything from Chris Matthews. The instant boner he gets anytime the Clintons are discussed just absolutely freaks me out.
My Spidey-sense says she won’t run. I think O’Malley will be the only one with the infrastructure (not to mention a huge pack of IOUs) who will be ready when she demurs.
And I’m quite OK with that.
But why wouldn’t she run?
Who knows? State of health … Age … Wants to spend more time with her grandchildren … Just can’t face the whole thing again. It’s probably Bill that wants her to run more than she does anyway.
That’s a good one about Bill. With Hillary it’s always Bill out front, like his impeachment. And she comes tiptoeing up from behind. No! My intuition says she’s extremely ambitious: maybe you have never read a more stupid statement. I’d say she has lost all sense of reality about herself: she has nothing particular to offer as a politician, she lacks all conviction, she lacks luster. She and Bill are what I call a Bonnie and Clyde: they do and die together playing out their own psychodrama which they somehow manage to impose of the world.
Very insightful.I think you hit the nail on the head.
DerFarm (3 years ago) mentioned health issues that will prevent her from running
and imo something very f-ed up is bubbling along right now
To date, she has taken every step that one traditionally takes if one is running for prez.
There is simply no doubt she’s planning on running as of today.
Her baggage has baggage.
Then any public figure with any track record is disqualified.
Obama had no baggage, but less experience. Clinton can run on roughly the same policies (which are roughly popular) but on a different personality and narrative.
That’s the change she represents from Obama.
She doesn’t have an original thought politically.
She is a bad candidate with lots of baggage.
Hillary Clinton will be over 69 years old on the day she takes office. Who her vice-president is will be more important than we might think. How many Presidents have been that old when taking office? Even given the longer life-spans of the elite, how many are actually functioning much beyond that age? How many 68-year-olds have undertaken a grueling nationwide campaign?
There’s one consideration.
Here is another. And a quite shocking possibility. Hillary Clinton runs as a Republican and wins.
Another. There is a Supreme Court vacancy.
Obama appoints Hillary Clinton to the only branch of government she’s not yet served in and Republicans confirm her to prevent her winning the Presidency.
And then there’s the possibility that the entire system collapses before January 2017.
That Restoration line of thinking is pretty inventive for folks who have spent the past decade working on sabotage of government. Seems the sabotage line of thinking isn’t quite the grift it used to be. So Beck and Buchanan are seeking to reinvent themselves using Hillary Clinton as a foil (the role they’ve always put the Clintons in).
It seems almost as if those two RWNJ’s are saying, “but at least she’s a white woman”.
Pelosi and Reid are both 74, and neither is about to have to retire due to age. It’s downright routine for people at the top of politics to serve well into their 70’s now. Also remember women live considerably longer than men; Hillary’s life expectancy at 69 will be longer than Romney’s was at 65. I don’t remember too much noise about Romney being too old.
Hillary’s age does disqualify her for the Supreme Court though, so that’s never going to happen. These days you want a justice who can serve 30 years, not 8 like a President.
There are no age qualifications for the Supreme Court. There are political considerations that since Ronald Reagan have benefited the appointment of younger justices. But Beck’s statement leaves open the possibility that Clinton might be one of the few who could make it through Senate confirmation under the conventional scenario for the next two years of the Congress.
Every thing I listed is a “remote” possibility. But each nonetheless could happen.
As could Hillary deciding that it is not in her best interests to run at all.
You mean there aren’t any other women with legal experience and expertise as strong as that of Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagen that could get confirmed? So, we’d have to go with a less qualified senior citizen who has often exhibited poor judgment?
And how often does a SC appointment hinge on merit and how often on political considerations? This would neutralize her in electoral politics. Yes, I’m sure she would be pro-business, but we would not see the RWNJ social decisions.
Who is more unqualified that Clarence Thomas?
Reagan was older when he took office than Hillary would be. He’s the only one who was older, but it didn’t seem to prevent him from getting elected and having a large amount of success in implementing much of his preferred agenda, even with Democrats in partial or full Congressional control during his entire Presidency.
I say let’s get huge majorities in the Senate which are progressive as we can get elected, and try to wrestle a return to majority status in the House as well. That would restrain Hillary’s behavior during her term/terms more than anything else, particularly domestically. And let’s face it, Hillary would be better on foreign policy than the GOP candidate that could plausibly win the Goat Rodeo Primary. And yes, that is extremely faint praise.
We MUST keep the Presidency out of the hands of today’s Republican Party. All else is secondary.
Transformative? If going from a moderate to a slightly-more-to-the-right, much more hawkish and much more corporatist Dem is transformative then, yes, Clinton’s election would be transformative. I’m just not sure of the extent to which Democrats would enjoy the ensuing transformation.
“But, but, but, she’s a woman!” So, too were Queen Mary I, Elizabeth Báthory, and Margaret Thatcher.
“I just took a quiet moment and tried to actually envision Hillary Clinton being sworn in as our next president. And it just didn’t seem plausible to me. It didn’t seem right. It turned out that I just couldn’t picture it actually happening. “
That’s it. That’s exactly how it is with me. The idea of Hillary Clinton actually being president in the year 2016 and for God knows how long after that is just ridiculous. it’s like we’re in a time warp or something.
Well, technically Hillary Clinton could never be President in 2016, unless she gets a spot in the Presidential line of succession.
🙂
I’m with you guys — not seeing HRC in WH. I do see her as nominee, however, which translates to President Jeb Bush — Bush the Third!
The media will have a grand time denigrating her – -and she won’t do herself any favors with her smug sanctimony. Meantime, Jebbers will be promoted as the smart reasonable Bush — having gone through the traditional process of tacking way right, but still being attacked as RINO, and then ‘pivoting’ to merely ‘conservative.’ He’ll be described as the ‘smart’ or ‘good’ Bush, and his appeal to Latinos will carry him over the top.
Voila! President Bush III. No HRC.
You have a macabre sense of humor, whether you know it or not.
VERY possible.
We shall see, soon enough.
Watch.
AG
It’s just that your intuition has been trained to be sexist. We’ve never had a female president, so your intuition says “can’t happen”. Nothing’s certain in politics, but she really is the mostly likely non-incumbent to win since at least Eisenhower and maybe since the 19th century.
She has baggage, but she’s also got a zeppelin to carry it in the fact that the period when her husband was President was the best period in America since at least the mid-60’s.
Yeah, the obvious impediment to view Clinton taking the oath is the fact that the score is 44-0 for one gender.
Think of that – a complete shut out. No wonder it’s hard to wrap our imaginations around that.
Then too, she’s been on the scene for so long and has been such a hated enemy of the right wing for almost two generations now. The idea of her winning? It will destroy the right – and I think it’s hard to picture that destruction, after many battles.
The score was 43-0 for one race. The Right still hasn’t accepted that the score is now 43-1.
The idea of her winning? It will destroy the right – and I think it’s hard to picture that destruction, after many battles.
No, it won’t. The best and biggest insurance policy conservatism will have in the future is centrism. The American right might flail and writhe and shriek at Clinton’s ascendancy, but they’ll be grateful for whatever idiotic centrist fuckjob she inflicts on the public. It’ll give them an ‘in’.
So let’s start taking bets. Will it be financial deregulation? Or how about an overly punitive immigration policy? How about the appointment of pro-social liberalism/pro-corporate USSC justices? Or how about Simpson-Bowles 2.0? Ooo, ooo! I know! How about a major overseas military commitment?
Deathtongue, The President is not a dictator. If we elect a decent Senate, few to none of the horrors you dictate in your last paragraph will happen. If she became foolish enough to lead in moving any one of those horrors, it would use up so much of her political capital she wouldn’t be able to move much of anything else, good or bad. Hard to imagine a power-craving politician wanting to do that to herself.
It’s striking that commenters on these threads disappear the progressive parts of Hillary’s record. She’s far from my favorite Democrat; I’d prefer someone more consistently progressive were our next President. But acting like Hillary is down with today’s GOP agenda is a rather wild lie.
That’s how cognition and not intuition works.
An intuitive recognized no impediment to electing a black man or white woman President in 2008. Don’t know when that shift happened among the electorate — possibly not until 2007 but it could have been earlier.
So, Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan, both fascist fuckwits, were reminiscing about a southern white womanizer being President?
No way!
In my not so humble opinion, any more analysis into their bloviating beyond the first sentence is a waste.
Is she southern? I thought she is a true-blue Repugnant member of the expensive Chicago suburbs and a seven-sister college. Or an I wrong?
Well, from everything I read, the only positive thing mentioned was about Bill, rather than Hillary.
Bill is definitely from Arkansas, a southern state, and even if you consider him an actual Democrat and not a third-way Republican posing as a Democrat, he’s still a womanizer.
So, to sum it all up…you have a couple of fascists waxing poetic about a white, southern man who was also a womanizer. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t really give a flying fuck about what either of them think is worthy of reminiscence.
Yes!
I get no “spidey-sense” one way or the other about the 2016 Presidential election. Although can’t say that I’ve ever noticed that I have any spidey-sense (not withstanding the three times in my life that I bet on a horse race and won, but that was just dumb luck).
Intuition is different. It’s a perception of some relevant factor(s) that elude one’s ability to partially or wholly articulate or define and the non-verbal and emotional parts of our brain take over to infer or draw a conclusion or judgment. One’s wishes, hopes, biases, prejudices, etc. can easily interfere with and/or interrupt the intuitive process.
Calling the 2008 DEM nomination and general election in January 2008 was intuitive. Calling the 2012 general election in 2010 was cognitive.
The advantage Clinton has is a large contingent of true believers who are completely impervious to anything. At this point, we just don’t know how large that contingent is.
Calling the 2008 DEM nomination and general election in January 2008 was intuitive.
I basically called both, though not publicly, when David Geffen publicly supported Obama. Why? Because Geffen doesn’t back losers.
I’m sure Geffen has backed a few losers in his career. For Obama, Geffen meant big money without which he had no chance. For Geffen, it was an opportunity to publicly express his opinion of the Clintons and that was that they are duplicitous. If Geffen’s money and support for Obama is what led you to call those two elections, that would be cognitive and not intuitive.
Again intuitive conclusions/assessments/opinions are absent reasons that can be articulated, and they are experienced as knowing and not guessing. Should add that intuition isn’t encouraged or developed much by individuals in our culture. “I feel x, y or z” is generally a tip off for me that the person isn’t operating intuitively but is at best engaging in sloppy thinking and more likely than not has it completely wrong.
(I did call both publicly.)
I’m sure you’re right. The one thing that struck me was that Geffen would back someone at the time, who was relatively unknown, compared to Hillary. I’ve tried to read a lot about Geffen. It always struck me how people that have dealt with him feel about him. Even Neil Young, who if you remember, had a famous falling out with Geffen still thinks highly of him. It’s hard to define it but it was a big signal at the time.
Here’s my problem with the former Secretary of State. Back in 08 the people who liked her loved her, but they were a minority. IMO she ran a crummy racist campaign, and she she did not connect with the crowds. I see no reason to expect she would do better this time. If she runs I hope the R opposition is very weak.
It’s been six years since Clinton last campaigned for public office. Her lackluster campaigning skills have likely atrophied considerably during that interval. Instead of stumping for Democrats in the midterms she’s fundraising. Fundraising for Democrats is a laudable activity but, in my opinion, it isn’t a patch on getting out in front of the public and speaking to them, thus learning from them what works these days. She seems to be counting on having a phenomenally weak opponent and a groundswell of unconditional love from the Democratic base. Neither may be forthcoming and we may again see Clinton seize defeat from the jaws of victory – only this time it’ll really hurt.
Yup. She’s simply an extremely weak campaigner and will likely be even worse in 2016 due to the caking of rust. I’d even say she’s a weak politician and is much more in the passionless technocrat mode. When she was forced to express emotion in 08′, it verged on the comic. That’s my answer to Booman’s “I can’t explain why” he can’t see Clinton 2.0 Bill is a supreme pol; Hillary ain’t even in the second tier.
So she has a coronation for a primary—no opponent, most likely. Goes up against whatever white male lunatic the Repubs pick and promptly shows she has a glass jaw and a tin ear. The corporate media likely savages her, as they do all Dems, with every Repub talking point parroted verbatim 24/7. Bill attempts to save the day by appearing everywhere and the Right crows that this shows she’s not in charge. Our corporate media has nothing to operate under other than the horse race/whos’s-in-the-lead! approach to “reporting”, so you can imagine how that will play out.
Most American independents (who aren’t actually Repubs) think that the Repubs are a valid, legitimate American political party and that it is respectable to vote for their candidates. They do not understand that the Repubs are now an American fascist party. As Hillary implodes and desperately thrashes about when her leads declines and then evaporates, the Repub white male authority figure will look (and be presented as) the “stronger” figure.
It would be one thing if Hillary was a strong campaigner. She’s not, and is never going to be. Hence the “spidey sense” of impending doom, IMO. If she runs and loses, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as you observe, it will be seen as the greatest political failure in American history, and will officially usher in a new American fascism.
I’ve had trouble seeing Clinton actually win, too. I think maybe for me it’s the fact that she’s already suffered one surprise upset in the ‘008 primaries. I don’t know if it resides just at the intuitive level for me, but I guess my instinct is that while comebacks in politics are always possible, losing at the presidential level is a near insurmountable obstacle to subsequent runs. I guess Nixon made it; has it happened more than once?
Maybe that’s it. Whatever it is, for most of the last year I’ve had this nagging feeling that Hillary won’t get there. I don’t think it’s defeatism (or wishful thinking), or institutional sexism too subtle for me to detect in myself, or even cynicism. I just don’t see her winning, but to borrow from Herb Cain, I don’t have the facts to back it up.
It’s late and I’m not going to even google it, but ol’ Grover Cleveland might have lost and then come back to win. Hell, he might have even lost as an incumbent and then come back for a non-continuous second term.
On second thought, since I’m not a brain-dead trashbag posing as a human being who votes R, I’ll google it and correct it in this here same post!
Damn I’m good.
Cleveland won the popular vote as an incumbent but lost the EC vote. He came back and won a second term later.
Quite a few comebacks to become President: Jefferson, Jackson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I. Pretty influential bunch, actually.
Out of all that list though, how many came back after losing a match-up they were initially heavily favored to win? And Bush I is a special case because he had the vice presidency to run from as a sort of legacy position.
Nixon was a strong favorite against Kennedy in ’60; you neglected to remember that Nixon was running out of the VP spot you claim was a deal-sealer for Bush I but lost anyway. Carter was leading Reagan in polls until after the conventions.
We could also consider the fact that Bill Clinton lost his re-election campaign for Arkansas Governor before winning election and re-election for POTUS.
None of this is dispositive of anything at all. It’ll be up to Hillary and her campaign team, world and national events, the other candidates and their teams, the fates, and us.
If she loses… if that strategy doesn’t work; the reason is simple: American’s have changed since 1993. I certainly have. I no longer see my fellow citizens in the same way. I no longer trust many of them.
I can’t see how that ever changes. Once trust is gone, it never comes back.
Posted elseboard, can’t remember where:
Hillary Clinton is the vehicle in which a radical conservative will ride to the White House in 2020. If she runs in 2016, unless she completely screws up, she’ll win by a very comfortable margin. She won’t be able to get anything passed legislatively that deals with domestic issues, so she’s going to have to start a war to show the Villagers that she can `work with Republicans to get things done’.
She’s still as hawkish as she was in 2008, which means she’ll be more than happy to cut the legs out from under a Democratic led Senate to join with GOPers and conservative Dems in order to get a war in the Middle East so she can prove how `tough’ she is. Her new war in the Middle East will have `bipartisan support’, meaning that conservatives from both sides came together to kill brown people who pray to the wrong god. And since it’s bipartisan, the Press will deem the war declaration as the greatest bipartisan achievement since Reagan, or some dumb ass shit like that.
Since during the debate during the run up to her little war will involve an absolute shit-ton of hippie punching and ignoring of the concerns of black, hispanic and asian voters, she’s not going to get support from either side when it blows up in her face. Which it will. Spectacularly. The conservatives she wooed to get the resolution to go to war passed in the first place will abandon her two seconds after the invasion begins, as is their wont. And after telling the so-called hippies and minority voters to go fuck themselves, she’ll get no support from them. The Press will drop her like a bad habit once the war goes to shit and they remember that she and her husband trashed the place a while back.
She’ll end up like LBJ in 1964 ? totally fucked from every side. She’ll still get the nom in 2020, but enough Dems are going to be so fucking pissed off that if a billionaire ran on an anti-war platform as an independent, she’d loose an ass ton of votes to that billionaire. Which would put Ted Cruz in the White House. And smash the Democratic Party into a billion pieces.
The most important thing to remember about the Clintons is that they are total, complete fuck ups. Bill was a fuck-up who accomplished next to nothing in office, other than paving the way to wipe out all the economic gains made during his time in office. All he’s going to be remembered for is the blow job. Nothing else. Hillary fucked up a guaranteed win in 2008 by hiring shitty, stupid handlers, thinking that the Iraq war vote wasn’t going to hurt her, and sending her walking stereotype of a husband to tell black voters to go fuck themselves in South Carolina. Those two have accomplished nothing, and will continue to accomplish nothing.
My problem isn’t that the Clintons have no accomplishments; it’s that they have a huge list of accomplishments that have been very bad for most people in this country (and a number not in this country). Add in Hillary’s powerful and creepy “prayer group” and she’s simply a non-starter for me.
I wonder if she has a roadmap on how to get back to the 90s or maybe she will run on nostalgia. How did she come up with that one? It is time for her to retire, but she won’t. After all he best bud, President in Waiting McCain, shows the way.
Hopefully she’ll run on nostalgia rather than having a viable plan. Even if she somehow avoids the political fallout of a Simpson-Bowles 2.0, she’ll get a knife in the eye from the aftermath. The Clinton surpluses directly lead to the Bush recession, as surpluses are wont to do. The Democratic Party is fucking lucky that the recession happened on Bush’s watch. They’re not going to get lucky a second time if Sen. Clinton brings back that balanced budget bullshit.
More and more people are realizing that balanced budgets and surpluses often lead to recessions. I’m afraid HRC or Big Dog don’t get that. They brag about surpluses. Just what we need according to them.
LBJ was dreadful on FP. But he was first rate on domestic policy — Civil Rights Acts, Medicare/Medicaid, and the highest minimum wage ever. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 got a few good things going. (The “work study” program was a lifesaver for many college students, myself included.) Head Start (with a major assist from Lady Bird). The Food Stamp Act of 1964. The list is really quite long.
While seemingly minor, Lady Bird’s advocacy for the Highway Beautification Act shifted public consciousness in how we see our everyday environment.
All true, but Big Dog was merely lucky on domestic policy. The tech boom kept him alive. But that surplus at the end of his reign arguably caused the Bush recession (not that I care much for Bush).
Hrc seems to think she is a FP wizard, and she could cause much mischief. On domestic policy I don’t think she has the slightest clue. She would be very happy with a do nothing congress – – sort of like our current guy. That way she can grandstand about it being someone else’s fault. So burn ’em up overseas, we’ll show them.
Other than the 1993 tax increase, Clinton’s economic policies were net negatives. Nothing wrong with budget surpluses when an economy is solid and growth is robust. (And the surplus at the end of Clinton’s term was far too small to cause a recession.) Unfortunately that’s not what was happening in the 1990s. Clinton’s luck was that the retail computer industry began to mature, gas was cheap, and Americans fell in love with high priced SUVs that reinvigorated Detroit. Doubling the US prisoner population created a lot of jobs and also reduced the labor force which is one way to lower the unemployment rate.
What was lost in the 1990s and the decade before and after were the public investments that are the bedrock of a strong, stable, and growing economy. Always a problem in the US because we don’t seem to elect many people with any vision other than preparing for the next war.
My estimation of Hillary was that she was always more liberal than Bill. Maybe ’94 changed that, but that’s what the primaries are for. It’s about moving her left because she needs to.
How can you force Hillary to be more economically populist? Do that and you can get to a transformative presidency.
As for those who say she’ll be a stealth Republican, maybe you can brush off your Nader 2000 buttons.
It’s a mystery to me why people think she is more to the left than Bill. Is it because she’s a woman? And as we all know, women are kind of to the left. You know, like Maggie Thatcher and Sarah Palin.
I go with those who say that she really doesn’t have any particular political convictions. She’s just the front woman of her financial backers.
Yes — it is because she’s a woman and supported equal rights for women. What’s been lost over the subsequent decades is that feminism wasn’t the exclusive domain of the Democratic Party when Clinton came of age. Among white women, it had more to do with educational level and professional aspirations than political party affiliation. Women of color had at least a double whammy working against their equal rights and therefore, were aligned with the Democratic Party.
Other than that (and on women’s rights, have never seen any indication that Bill differs from Hillary), her impulses veer to the right of Bill’s and she has likely influenced Bill on a number of issues. One that we know of is DOMA.
A fair recitation of her full record would credit Hillary for her collaborative policy crafting and public advocacy during Bill’s first term for health care system reform which was to the left of the ACA.
It’s not fair to disappear the Hillarycare effort down the memory hole just because it wasn’t passed into law.
First, the Clinton health care effort was initiated and died in less than two years. Nothing further was done for the remaining six plus years of Clinton’s Presidency.
Second:
That aside, it was a major mistake for Bill to appoint Hillary as the chair of such a major and complex initiative that she had no qualifications for.
As to it being more liberal than Obama’s, conceptually possibly — but as it was impractical, and may not even have been legal, as a national program, it doesn’t matter whether it was liberal or not.
Yes, she will be the next President, barring some type of personal tragedy or scandal.
Hillary’s Clintons have never changed. nearly 50% of this country has negative feelings about her. Before you get out the gate, nearly 50% of people in this country have decided never to vote for her. I always thought this was a ridiculous place for the Democrats to BEGIN an election. IF, at the end, it winds UP that way, ok, but to BEGIN it…in this day and age of Citizens United…seriously?
In your heart and mind, you know that the support for Hillary Clinton is a mile wide and a quarter inch deep.
You know that she’s shown nothing in the entire time of her time in the public spotlight that would make you ‘ stan’ for her.
And, that troubles you.
Disagree with him or not, you believe Barack Obama is a man of great integrity, and smarts, and keeps his own council.
You know that’s not true for Hillary.
You don’t trust her on foreign policy issues. You can’t name one place where you disagree with President Obama where you could say, ‘ Hillary Clinton would have done that better’.
NOT ONE PLACE.
And then, you turn to domestic issues…
You gonna tell me you trust her on that?
Really?
Seriously?
Honestly?
And all of this is settling in the pit of your stomach, and your spidey senses are telling you..
SHE’S NOT THE ONE.
I think this is an offensive view, frankly, of Hillary Clinton.
She does stand for something very specific, and it’s as important as anything anyone stands for in American public life – for which she gets little credit from the right-leaning mainstream media.
Here’s my essay on it – invite you to read it. I really think the nasty, right wing cartoon of Hillary Clinton should vanish with this election.
Hillary Clinton’s Greatest Credential
Forget Establishment `Analysis’ Of The Former Secretary Of State’s Career – She Has One Massive Accomplishment That Is Unmatched In American Politics
https:/medium.com@tomwatson/hillary-clintons-greatest-credential-af4513497d51
You’ve posted this link before. And like last time, it’s just a bunch of glittering generalities.
How about some metrics? Like this right here:
The process is aimed at the 20th anniversary of the Beijing meeting and the Clinton Foundation will partner with other institutions on data, including foundations, civil society organizations, and governments. There will also be a major U.S. component on the lives of women here – and key domestic issues – as well as international data. These include child care, paid leave, equal pay for women, and raising the minimum wage – those issues that some claim Clinton is out of touch with. It was also fascinating to note that the Clinton Global Initiative launched a full girls and women program this spring with a mandate to tie its efforts to all the CGI commitments. The new track, noted its director Penny Abeywardena, “reinforces our belief that girls’ and women’s issues are not independent, but central to every global challenge, from energy efficiency to disaster response.”
That’s potentially a great start! Unfortunately, it’s completely without context. Unless you can attach some numbers or at least some policy outcomes to it, it’s no better than Snowball’s endless cavalcade of non-Windmill committees and town halls made to improve the lives of farm animals.
I found Rikyrah’s comment very incisive. It bears absolutely no resemblance to a “right wing cartoon”.
I was curious to read Tom Watson’s piece. But the link didn’t work. Whoever wants to see it should use this link:
https:/medium.com@tomwatson/hillary-clintons-greatest-credential-af4513497d51
(In his link the words “medium.com” appear in italics, and my browser can’t read italics.)
Watson is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton from way back:
http://tomwatson.typepad.com/tom_watson/2008/03/the-left-splits.html
Whoa … this is odd. “medium.com” came out in italics in mine as well, but I did not type it in italics!
If you want to read the article, search under the title. That’s what I did.
Sorry – no idea why that link copied so strange!
Forward slash is the shorthand delimiter for italics in comments on Scoop blogs like this one. If you want to quickly italicize a word or phrase in your commments, just enclose them in forward slashes.
So the forward slash in the URL italicized the letters immediately after it. I would have expected the italics to extend through the tomwatson bit, but apparently the at-sign terminated them.
It seems so odd to me that the Vice-President is always left out of these conversations. I would prefer Joe over Hillary, but generally my votes have all been cast as “against” the opposition.
People vote their emotions, which is maybe why we’re stuck with a two-party system.
But in this case, I’m afraid Arthur has got it right. Even the ads on your space here reveal the attempts by the PTB to manipulate our feelings about Mrs. Clinton.
My emotions want Uncle Joe. I trust Obama, and Obama trusts Biden. Also, on the campaign trail he will stick in the shiv with a smile.
I would love to see Joe Biden in the White House. I think he would make a fine president. But I’m afraid his age would work against him from the primaries right through the election.
Oops, I meant to reply to Alice’s comment. I agree with everything you said, RT. Especially that last bit…
I’d love for Hillary to run. I think she’d win walking away.
But she won’t. I think she hasn’t the health.
I’ve said so before, I still think I’m right.
But we’ll see.
If HRC does become president I feel positive there will be some sort of nuclear attack. Someone somewhere.
Obama’s speech in Estonia this morning where he came across with all the wisdom and soul one would ask a President to have. Jane Harmon commented that he hit it out of the park. And he did.
Clinton is a thoughtful and eloquent speaker, strong, analytical and intellectual. But she’s always struck me as missing Presidential wisdom and Obama’s speech this morning underscored that difference.
Here’s the unanswered question. Will NATO membership be open should Russia want to join? If the Baltic is considered part of the Atlantic community, Russia does have a Baltic coastline.
Given the extent to which neo-con operatives in the State Department have ginned up the Urkraine crisis to sabotage the rapprochement with Russia (with regard to Syria) and to Iran, I found this speech much more about domestic politics of foreign policy than foreign policy itself.
The US search for the next enemy in order to justify our bloated defense establishment is not going to be sidetracked by that speech. And that has domestic budget consequences that are huge.
neo-con operatives in the State Department are an issue imo, and is there a connection with Hillary? do you think Obama can de-fang them?
I did not hear it the same way. He will not accept the annexation of Crimea or other parts of Ukraine by Russia. And NATO will protect them all and even Ukraine once they join up. Does he ever wonder that Russia did not accept the overthrow of the previous Ukraine government or the threats to close their seaport? And maybe they won’t accept NATO on the doorstep anymore than we would Russian troops in Cuba, Canada or Mexico. His rhetoric is unhelpful. It is time to make peace, not continue with a war of crowd pleasing words that incite and encourage conflict. Do you really want war over the Ukraine?
I just don’t know.
Dynasties are bad for the health of the Republic. Secretary Clinton herself comes across as reasonable yet not really appealing. In the end I have to think she would be a decent president, but in my heart of hearts I would rather have some one much more to the left.
Yet, when I look at the mental defectives of the Daily Kos and their shifting Chorus of Squee about Warren and Sanders and that guy from Maryland, I have to conclude that we are stuck with Clinton. The unstable sands of the purity troll caucus make a poor base for mounting a national campaign.