I can’t decide whether it’s a problem that Bernie Sanders is branded as a socialist or if it’s not a problem because people look on him so favorably despite knowing that he’s a socialist.
Asked for a single word that describes each contender, the most frequent response for Clinton was “liar/dishonest,” followed by “untrustworthy/fake.” For Sanders, the most frequent response was “socialist” and the second most frequent “favorable/good.”
Honestly, if you asked me to describe Hillary Clinton with one word, I don’t think that would be a positive word. I don’t think she’s particularly dishonest or untrustworthy, but “fake” is a decent stand-in for how she comes across to me. It’s been that way since the first time I saw her interviewed back in 1991 or 1992. I think she gets beat up enough, often unfairly, so I don’t generally offer up my visceral reaction to her since it’s unflattering.
In the end, I think she’d be a decent president, but she’d also bring a mentality that, while in no way unique to her, just isn’t going to serve the nation or the party well. The way I look at it, she brings the worst of Obama plus a lot of stuff that is worse than Obama. The biggest problem is obviously how she instinctively thinks about foreign policy. On this issue alone, I’ll be looking for other options as long as other options are even remotely available.
In the end, I simply don’t trust her, but it’s not because I think she’s a liar or in any way uniquely dishonest. I don’t trust too many people on foreign policy, actually. There’s the president and maybe his vice-president. Then there’s folks who I worry are too inexperienced or weak to stand up to the warmongers or steer the ship of state without causing a full-on revolt. I’d put Sanders and Chafee in this category.
To keep us off the shoals of foreign policy disaster, you have to be smart, correct, a little ruthless, quite clever, and probably a little lucky. President Obama has been these things in a very tough foreign policy environment. Clinton won’t even try, and the others don’t have the same talent or in-party support.
I don’t know. I think we’re fucked, honestly.
I just had an e-mail and a voice mail earlier today from one of the regional organizers for Hillary in this part of the state. I have known her for a few years, as she was heavily involved in Hillary’s 2008 campaign. She was wondering if I was supporting Hillary and, if so, would I be willing to speak at an event they are having in late October about why I support her. And honestly, the more I am thinking about it today, the more I realize that I really just don’t know how I feel about her candidacy. I can’t say that I support her at this point. But I can’t honestly say that I am completely on-board for Bernie Sanders, though I generally like his message, tenacity, grit and honesty. I am truly undecided. And if I had to make a choice right now, I would probably have to tell my friend that, “No, I am not yet committed to supporting Hillary”.
Her innate hawkishness just sticks in my craw. And when she is trying to placate people like me who don’t trust her because of that, it just comes off as feeling disingenuous. I am very conflicted right now.
This is exactly how I feel;I am torn and totally undecided. As a woman who came of age when HRC did, I want to be able to support her. The alternatives as presently offered are not sufficient to win my support. It is early days yet. But, it seems that all our choices are of my generation and the GOP seems to be gravitating towards Rubio. Wonder how that would play out?
If Sanders is elected President, I trust that we won’t be going to war unnecessarily for at least 4 years. If he gets absolutely nothing else done, that’s an achievement in today’s world.
Definitely something that I consider.
There was really an amazing article on the op-ed o the WSJ today on Syria by Max Boot. It basically argued for becoming more involved in the war against ISIS.
But if you read the article it contains like ‘may’. As in, if we get tough with ISIS the Iraqis may be more willing to join the fight.
This, essentially, is what his argument came down to: wishful thinking.
In recent months I have started to think Obama has done better than I gave him credit for. In this environment when the default message in the media is for military intervention, his deal with Iran and his resistance against being drawn into a Syrian quagmire looks more and more courageous to me.
Yes. Very much so. History I think will be very kind to him.
W could only hope to reshape the ME as Obama likely will have (in terms of making it less strategically relevant to the USA ) and Obama didn’t even want to but was forced to by W’s mess.
It was horribly wrong to go into Iraq in 2003 as we did, but now that our stupidity has helped create the brutal ISIS situation, which threatens not only Syria but the entire region, I wonder if it’s the right thing for the US to now take a hands off approach, let the Russians deal with it, as opposed to joining with them in a common goal.
I can’t credit Obama with anything on Syria/Russia so far, because it’s been his acquiescence to the neocons — though not totally and at all times — which has gotten us to the dangerous point we are now. A point where one erroneously dropped US bomb on, say, Russian military advisers could lead to the situation dramatically escalating.
We helped create ISIS. I think it would be irresponsible, and ultimately not in our best interests, to just walk away or continue our ineffective bombing/drone measures, which haven’t worked.
Curious that you think Sanders being too weak to stand up to pressure from hawks is worse than electing one. Or that there has not been full on revolt for the last seven yrs. Just sotto voce, usually, in public.
And with the Planned Parenthood attacks, Catholic men are off the table with me.
Must be because a guy with zero FP credentials, a mere four years in national office, and six years in a state legislature is more competent, astute, savvy, etc. than a guy with a long record in office and getting FP questions right, usually in the minority, when it counted. No wonder this country so often ends up in unilateral wars of choice when we choose inexperienced and/or dumb people over experienced and smart people.
The guy “with zero FP credentials, a mere four years in national office, and six years in a state legislature” wasn’t bad. He did okay considering everything he had to deal with. The recent deals with Cuba and Iran are impressive. He even ran on making a deal with Iran in 2008 while his competitors on both sides and the media were calling him naive. And he said growing up in Indonesia helped out a little.
I’ll say the guy we’re talking about is more competent, astute, savvy, etc until Bernie can prove otherwise and beat Hillary in the primary and win the nomination.
I think if Hillary is teachable, the ME and the Ukraine would give her pause over any more excellent adventures. If Russian successes extricate us from any need to make matters worse, we will be lucky.
In Syria, I should have said.
No she’s not. Our political orientations, worldviews, and impulses can change as we mature and have more life experiences, but by mid-life they are set. There is no progressive/liberal hiding inside Clinton that’s been waiting for thirty years to pop out when she becomes president.
We’ve been round and round on this. The factual record that Hillary has established on domestic policy is definitively a liberal/progressive one; she consistently had a voting record around the tenth most liberal Democratic Senator. You personally dislike her and Bill; feel free, but your domestic critiques of her are factually off.
In fact, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard you criticize a single vote or position on domestic policy that she took during her entire Senate term. I’m right with you on criticizing her 2002 Iraq vote and worrying about some of her foreign policy instincts, but I just don’t get the persistent hate.
She’d be so, so far superior to anyone the Republicans will put up.
Why do you my label criticism or negative opinions of the words and actions of a Hillary as hate? Now while I’ll concede that I loathed GWB and Cheney when they were in office, that was a summation of all the objectively, IMH, horrible things they did to this country and other peoples in the world. I also doubt very much that had I ever been in their actual presence that I would have found them in any way pleasant and tolerable, but that’s conjecture on my part and set aside in evaluating their official acts.
I’m also confident that in a personal setting that I’d get along with Clinton. Not buddy-buddy type get along, but casually friendly and non-antagonistic. At least I always have with women in her age group that are similarly strong advocates for women’s rights (supportive of women’s right to choose abortion but felt some discomfort about it and often said they wouldn’t choose that) and equality and politically lean right economically and socially. That back in the day opposed the Vietnam War but subsequently supported a level of US military aggression. While liberalish, actual political affiliation depended more on who they were married to. Not so good at viewing issues through a prism of core principles, values and ethics but first through the prism of their own lives, status, and interests and what seems to be conventionally acceptable at the time.
Same-sex marriage — thirty seconds after the issue is raised is all it takes to recognize that it’s a pure question of equal rights. If one holds equal rights as a core principle. Ten years to get there? Not a core principle. DOMA, which Hillary did urge Bill to support, in 1996 was unconscionable. Later “Marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a women” (her words) gag worthy given what is publicly known her own marriage.
Throwing the Edelmans under the bus for “welfare reform?” I can’t imagine throwing anyone that had been as good to me and for as long as the Edelmans were to her under the bus. Not to mention all the women and children that went under the bus with them.
Not all votes in Congress are created equal. And for some members of Congress many of their votes are close to impossible to sort out as to the authentic position of the member. When it’s not a deciding vote, it may be nothing more than appeasing a constituency or donor or going along with the caucus majority. It’s the handful of major votes, along with what one says about it, that are telling. It’s not only that she voted for the IWR but also that she didn’t bother to read the NIE and her words on the Senate floor. Edwards was worse because he was a co-sponsor of the legislation. Kerry’s not quite as bad because he was truly conflicted up to a point, but not really better because he made a political calculation for his own personal ambitions (heh and got it wrong on both measures).
There was much I found offensive about her 2008 campaign and I wouldn’t respect anyone that did that. Then there were her TV interviews when she was herself — “We can, we saw, he died, ha ha ha.” “We were dead broke when we left the WH.” (That was after her “Rich people, god bless us.”) And her participation in that rightwing Bible study/prayer group and praise for the creepy head of it.
Oh, and I don’t much like or respect women or men that complain, blame others and/or act like a victim when they choose to stay with a serial philandering spouse.
The problem I have with these discussions is the extent to which she can be held accountable for the decisions of Bill.
Two of the most significant policy decisions one the last 20 years were the decision to de-regulate financial institutions and admit give China most favored nation status. Neither policy is remotely liberal. Are those positions fair game?
Voting records are helpful, but they do not reflect an entire ideology. One of the central lines of demarcation between a liberal and the DLC view is Welfare Reform. In 2008 she embraced it.
She also previously embraced NAFTA, and then seemed to be against in 2008.
So on two VERY significant issues she was most definitely NOT liberal.
While it’s fairly well documented that Hillary was Bill Clinton’s closest adviser, it’s only those issues where her involvement is known that are reasonable area for criticism. For me that leaves DOMA and welfare reform.
That’s not a sophisticated nor in-depth approach. Better would be to look closely at all the players in all the anti-New Deal (anti-socialist) legislation promoted by Bill Clinton and track their relationship to Bill and Hillary over the years. Of course many of them have ties to the Obama administration as well.
Vanity Fair: Wall Street Not Remotely Worried About Hillary Clinton’s Rhetoric
The company she keeps includes Lloyd, “I’m doing ‘God’s Work,” Blankfein. Not sure what’s so difficult to understand about this. Particularly from rational thinking Democrats that have no difficulty in connecting the dots from the Koch brothers and Adelson to various GOP politicians and what that means for the public policies of those politicians if they are elected.
The poison was poured into the conversation at the end there, wasn’t it?
How in the holy hell did we go from Blankfein to the Kochs and Adelson? They are not remotely the same political figures. Drawing such a direct line between them is fraudulent rhetoric.
This preposterous association is the tool that is used to sling the next preposterous association: that Clinton is exactly the same as “…various GOP politicians…”.
Completely, offensively ridiculous.
I’m fascinated by what we’re getting here: Hillary’s actions on two issues nearly twenty years ago when she was the First Lady, when she had no vote whatsoever are more important than her entire Senate voting record, when she was a voting member of Congress.
And one of the positions she’s knifed on here is her position on DOMA??
Is Marie3 claiming that Hillary would appoint Supreme Court Justices who would reverse Oberkfell? If not, her point is irrelevant.
This arrives at the feet of a final fraudulent claim we’re subjected to: people never change their political philosophy during their lives. This is not true. I’ve changed many of my viewpoints during my life. Hell, I was opposed to same-sex marriage last century. I also believed the propaganda that Social Security and Medicare would be gone by the time I got older, so saving SS/Medi didn’t animate me much as an issue.
At least I always voted for Democrats. There are many politicians whose records I know well who have made even greater migrations. Some started out as mainstream Republicans and became liberal Democrats. Some have migrated in the other direction.
First — the topic is the DEM primary. Not the general election. I’m not arguing that Clinton’s SCOTUS nominees would be any better or worse than Sanders’ would be. If you wish to make an argument that her’s would be measurably better than Sanders,’ go for it. Otherwise, bringing this up is a straw man.
Second, the sum total of all Hillary’s Senate votes, assuming I would view all of them favorably, a dubious proposition, cannot outweigh her vote (and statements) on the IRW. That was a $4 trillion war that destroyed a country, inflamed a volatile region of the world that is a disaster today, and innumerable deaths and injuries. If I could see in real time (Sept ’02) with the benefit of specialty advisers or access to any of the super-secret intel information, that it would be a giant clusterfuck, why should I support any politician that was less perceptive and astute than me on such a major issue?
Third, didn’t you ask why people are judging Hillary on Bill’s record? While I think his record is atrocious, I merely defined the two issues from that time that from public information do attach to her. Seems generous to me that I don’t speculate as to her involvement on anything else that Bill did.
The damage the Kochs and the Blankfeins have done and want to continuing doing to peoples in this country and abroad are both enormous. Quantifying that damage isn’t possible, but both are in the trillions, somewhat different and somewhat alike. Thus, I consider the comparison apt. A Republican nominee will have the Adelson money and Clinton already and will continue to have Saban’s money. Both are single issue donors and the issue and position on it is exactly the same, and my position on it differs by at least 150 degrees. Others may choose to have a handful of gazillionaires choose the nominees, but that’s not acceptable to me because I know they aren’t plunking down their money for anyone but their own benefit and the expense of 90%+ of the rest of us.
Interpret the facts anyway you want — but please enough of getting all huffy because you don’t want to deal with the facts and factual histories.
I disagree here:
“A Republican nominee will have the Adelson money and Clinton already and will continue to have Saban’s money. Both are single issue donors and the issue and position on it is exactly the same…“.
You were also talking about Blankfein and the Kochs earlier. Each of these men wants no/poor regulation of financial and business institutions, and low taxes on investments and other income. From there, their interests and actions wildly differ.
Regarding your claim re. Saban, Hillary’s support for the Iran nuclear deal throws some sand in the machinery of your argument that she’s a bought pol on Saban’s issue.
Blankfein wants investment firms to have access to the Social Security money. Is Hillary proposing cutting or privatizing Social Security? Blankfein also spreads his political money around for both Democratic and Republican candidates and issues. He’s a supporter of same-sex marriage and other progressive social issues. He also generally keeps a relatively low public profile with politicians and making public comment on issues.
Adelson prioritizes extremely radical positions on Israeli security and Labor laws, and receives GOP Presidential candidates in very high-profile ways. He’s not trying to buy Democratic Party support; he’s trying to destroy the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, and spends way more money than Saban and Adelson in full-speed attempts to achieve those destructions.
The Kochs have a large raft of radical, regressive regulatory, educational and social policies they are successfully moving through State Legislatures in extraordinarily deliberative ways, and are doing their best to move those same regulatory and social policies through Congress and the Judiciary as well. And, of course, they are the highest-profile political plutocrats in the United States, spending particularly obscene amounts of money on Federal, State and local races and issues.
They’re wildly dissimilar. Continuing to refuse to see that would reveal a big, willfully held blind spot from you.
(re: Kochs and Blanfiens) [demage done by] both are in the trillions, somewhat different and somewhat alike. You do understand that within the context of my argument, Koch and Blankfein are examples and that there is wide variation among industrialists and financial services businesses, owners, CEOs, etc., don’t you? And that among industrialists almost all are Republicans but few ascribe to the John Bircher form of “conservatism.” Financial services folks were once all Republicans as well but today are more evenly divided between the two parties. The interactions and overlap between Koch Industries and Wall street are huge. Quibbling over this is ridiculous. They diverge on social issues and the job of government. Both of them want government out of their industries. Both have done well on that measure over the past thirty-five years, but I would say that so far Wall St has done better. But that might just be because we’ve seen the first big bill from them, several trillion dollars, and the bill from basic industries doesn’t come due as quickly as it does from the financial industry.
No, Cinton’s support for the Kerry/Obama Iran deal doesn’t throw kink in her relationship with Saban. Just like the Wall St boys, Saban isn’t worried about poltically expedient statements that Clinton need to make to get elected. Also, she’s alread stated publicly that she will be a better friend to Israel than Obama. I only reference Adelson and Saban because they have been the largest single contributors that share this single issue — but they aren’t alone. Paul Singer for one (mega-GOP donor and also instrumental in moving the LBGT agenda forward on same-sex marriage.) So, far in this election cycle, Adelson, like the Kochs, have indicated that they will spend big but have yet to do so in the public way.
I’m neither blind nor willfully blind. Perhaps your knowledge of and experience in business and economics is insufficient to grasp much of what I write in necessarily short comments. One advantage that FDR had as POTUS was his prior stint in an industry that requires projective thinking and synthetic analysis to get real time decisions more right than wrong. That garbage that AIG wrote? FDR and I would have known that it was toxic the moment in walked in the door.
You described these oligarchs as “single issue donors.” They’re not.
Much worse are your views that when Hillary takes important positions which we like, in this case support for the Iran nuclear deal, she is not sincere and is taking that position merely for political expediency. In this way, you turn your analysis of a good position Clinton takes into a criticism of her, giving her little to no credit at all. I’m suggesting to you that your personal animus for Hillary is getting in the way of your analysis.
How in the world would you know what Saban thinks? Clinton’s position on Iran will lose her donor support from the AIPAC crowd and gain her support from donors like you and me. I would think you would like that, but to absorb that reality would mean that you might have to take a favorable view of Clinton, however briefly. You don’t appear willing to do that.
Hillary has also come out against the Keystone XL pipeline and wants to broaden and speed up law enforcement and gun control reforms; these are among her many campaign positions we support. Would you like to execute backhanded criticisms of Hillary for those positions as well?
You described these oligarchs as “single issue donors.” They’re not.
No I didn’t. That’s your flawed reading or interpretation. Adelson and Saban and a handful like them are single issue (Israel) donors. They are the exception among the mega-donors.
Here’s how Clinton style “triangulation” works: Clinton supports the Obama/Kerry/P-5+1 agreement. Also says that she’ll be a better friend to Israel than Obama.
You run with the first data point and conclude that Clinton is like Obama who you believe is the bestest ever. I take in both data points along with her prior FP record and conclude that she will continue to lean towards military, as opposed to negotiated, solutions. You then spend endless amounts of time on circular arguments to say that I’m wrong. And yet, your opinion is based on a single major date point and mine is based on multiple major data points.
If you were correct and I was wrong, we wouldn’t see this: In a Break With Obama, Hillary Clinton Backs No-Fly Zone in Syria.
Marie3, didn’t we just go over the fact that Adelson is far from a single-issue donor?
A more objective observer might find it much more powerful that Hillary supported a concrete policy (the Iran deal), in comparison with rumors that she expressed earlier in the year a completely nebulous and undefined position in private meetings (better relations with Israel than Obama), a supposed position that Hillary and her campaign has not confirmed or run on, unlike her support for the Iran deal.
How do you describe a nebulous and undefined position which has not been confirmed as a “data point”? What, exactly, would Hillary do that is different from Obama? Do you think the AIPAC crowd believes Hillary’s claims, now that she’s opposed them by supporting the diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue?
Hillary’s foreign policy record gives me concern; it’s one of the reasons I’ve contributed to the Sanders campaign. Nonetheless, I’ll continue to push against factual presentations and characterizations about Hillary such as these. I do not hope to win your full agreement, or much agreement at all, but I hope the Frog Pond is benefiting from these discussions.
Finally, if you believe, on a week when our Air Force murdered over a dozen patients and health care workers at a Afghani hospital, that I believe that Obama’s Presidency is without flaws, you are sorely mistaken. This is another reason I’m supporting Sanders, whose campaign is refusing to run on the anti-Hillary claims you are issuing.
BTW — I’ve always voted for Democrats too. Even when it’s often but a choice between evil and lesser evil. So, you no bragging rights with me on this.
I was drawing attention to their fact that people often do change their ideological and policy views, and that the changes I mentioned from myself pale in comparison to the changes others have gone through, including elected officials.
Pardon me, but the comparison can only be based on what a candidate for office presents at the time he/she first runs for the job. Not how one evaluates the performance of one person that was hired and after almost seven years in office against the resume of a new applicant. The assessment made about Sanders basically said that on FP he would suck without stating any reason for that conclusion and that was from a person that was fine with hiring Obama seven years ago. Sanders has a fine and long resume that suggests he’ll do just fine. Had Obama claimed in 2007 that he’d do well because as a child he lived in Indonesia for a few years, he would have been laughed out of the primary (and I likely would have been one of those laughing), and it seems as silly to me today as it would have been back then.
Bernie has a long record of demonstrating that he’s competent, astute, and savvy. Far more so than either Clinton or Biden on their own have demonstrated. When the elites in either party meet and agree on “the one” and clear the decks for “the one,” the hurdle is incredibly high for a challenger. To date, Sanders has demonstrated that he’s not a guy with a megaphone and a bus and a slavish press like McCain 2000. Or Bradley, a guy without a megaphone and bus and with a slavish press up against a candidate that certain party elites were at best somewhat indifferent to (and that was made known by the difficulty he had in raising funds). What has Clinton proven to you?
Fair enough. He did say he would be okay on FP because he was a youngster in Indonesia. It looks like he was right.
Sanders is going in with a very high bar due to just being a Democrat this year. If you want to be president, there are two parties and you have to play the game. And being publicly critical of the party over the years didn’t do him any favors either. He’s going to need endorsements from party people. Seeing that Bernie doesn’t have a slavish press, megaphone, or bus, he has his work cut out for him.
Hillary’s proven toughness and is willing to work. I don’t see any of the people running for pres right now that are going to out work her. I could be wrong.
I’m not even thinking about the GOP clown car. In the general, the winner gets the honor of having to run against the Democratic nominee with the help of some decent campaigners. I see an ass whupping on the horizon.
Al Gore was sharp enough to go after black voters during the 2000 primary.
Remember, too, how low the bar for Obama on FP. He just had to be an improvement over Bush in the general. I think he has proved to be quite nimble, but has had some unforced errors(cough, Ukraine).
Yup.
“Trust” is an ambiguous term. For example, do I trust Bernie Sanders to be an effective president? Not really.
Why? Because most of the Democrats in Congress would rather vote with the GOP against anything he proposes? Something else?
Does anyone need anything else?
I don’t think the Democrats will control Congress in any case, but I think the candidate who heads the ticket should run on a platform that is supported by the other Democratic candidates for Congress.
How many of them want to run with Bernie? Haven’t they already sold out if they take money from the corporations or billionaires Bernie is running against? Are they not as corrupt as Hillary and Obama? Is Bernie going to help them raise money to replace what they would lose from the corporate sector if Bernie is the nominee? Never mind whether Bernie can raise a billion dollars to fund his own campaign. Who funds the Democrats running with him?
Republican billions funding Republicans in every fight in every state against the Democrats and Bernie Sanders, running as paupers of the people?
Who likes that bet?
I’m with scully and mulder on this one. Have serious trust issues that make me agree with your assessment.
I think this is the son of a bitch about Bernie.
He doesn’t have a built-in caucus. Sure, he caucuses with the Democratic party, and there is a progressive caucus, but what can he actually get done?
Is it 4 years of executive orders followed by a Republican president?
One word for Hillary, if I had to come up with one word, is “technocrat”. Technocrat is both positive and negative, depending on the technocrat. That said, I feel like she could get more shit done, even though some of it I may be against.
This is what sucks about modern elections where policy doesn’t mean anything, and it’s all a personality contest, 24/7, on both sides. I mean, the Republican candidates all believe the same exact things, and are just running to be a particular flavor. On the Democratic side, there are policy differences between Bernie and Hillary, but which one can actually push liberal shit through? I lean Hillary as better able, even though I’d much rather see a Congress, White House and USSC filled with Bernie Sanders.
I trust HRC enough to know that while she may be hawkish (and is it a surprise when the US is an Empire?) she is also still relatively liberal for a candidate that can be elected President.
And I think that although she has plenty of baggage, it’s already all out there. She’s not necessarily on my top 5 list of people I want as President, but that’s a personality thing, never mind policy. Policy requires more than just believing in the right things, never mind saying them. Which is a son of a bitch.
If I could devine that Sanders could win the general, and then govern effectively by creating a caucus of people who are tired of government being a slow, laboring, corrupt piece of shit, then I’d of course want him as President. But I think that Democrats need to stop pinning all hope on the President. We need to take back downticket offices before the President can enact their campaign promises, and as long as Democrats fail to turn out except every 4 years, I feel like even the Presidency will be too little to do what needs to be done.
Meh.
Some interesting thoughts on that here:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/gauis-publius-what-sanders-can-accomplish-by-not-acting.html
one can actually push liberal shit through? I lean Hillary as better able,
Refresh my memory on all the “liberal shit” that Bill Clinton pushed through? IMHO we would have been better off if nothing had been done during those eight years.
We have a reasonably good idea as to the make up of the Congress under Clinton II. Maybe we should try for something different; couldn’t be much worse than what has happened under the last two Democratic Presidents.
My opinion:
Without Bill Clinton we are at war in the Middle East since 1994 … with no end in sight.
Without Bill Clinton and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” it would not now be legal for gays to be in the military.
Without Bill Clinton and the push for Health Care in ’94 we would not now have the ACA
Without Bill Clinton we don’t have Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Why do I think the above? Because the only real opposition to Bill Clinton in ’92 was Jerry Brown. I LOVE Jerry Brown, I was a Brown delegate at the Texas conventions … and G. Bush would have beaten him like a drum.
???
We’ve been at war in the ME since 1991 … with no end in sight. (Or did you overlook all those Clinton bombing runs in Iraq and the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands Iraqi children. Or are you like M. Albright who said that was a price we were prepared to pay? She later apologized for her statement and didn’t dispute that death figure.)
DADT and DOMA is why a couple decades later gays can serve openly in the military?
Well, blimey me. If that’s how the world works, let the GOP shut down all PP offices, and in twenty years all women with have access to affordable, full choice, reproductive freedom. If we can ignore all the interim suffering by gays for a good cause, surely women are as expendable.
Maybe w/o Clinton and another four years of GHWB, we would have elected a DEM in ’96 that knew how to put together another piece in a national health care policy that wouldn’t have been easy to defeat.
I don’t love Jerry Brown. He’s an able administrator but economically more Jesuitical than Keynesian. As a change thinker, he’s weird.
Balls, Marie.
Or are you forgetting that prior to DADT the military would LOOK for you WITH the connivance of the brass???
Spoken like someone who TRULY never served in the military. But, hey! its all good right? Because your dissing a CLINTON. Everyone knows the CLINTONS are the devil personified. Fox News says so.
Well then — the reports about pre and post DADT from gay people and my gay neighbor who served pre and post DADT much be wrong.
Why are you being so protective of Clinton and Colin Powell?
Can you honestly say that you use the same standards to evaluate Democratic politician as you do a Republican? Would you praise DADT had it been instituted by GHWB and Powell?
If I don’t cut any Republican any slack, wouldn’t it be hypocritical to cut a Democrat slack. I admit that tribalism does interfere with even my impulses, evaluations, and opinions. Thus, I’m prone to being a bit soft on “one of my own,” compared to others, but I do work hard not to let it be more than just a little bit. Thus, I find your implied criticism that I’m more critical of Clinton or any Democrat than I’d be of a Republican ludicrous. Disrespectful and betrays a low tolerance for inter-tribal critique and self-critique. Liberal minds just don’t work that way.
I don’t, actually. It doesn’t matter how good your process or logic or logistics are, if your inputs are crap then your output is going to be crap.
The phrase that most describes Democrats of Hillary’s generation is ‘behind the curve’. While their efficacy during the waning years of the Nixon-Reagan coalition is debatable (I think that they were marginally effective), but currently stench of obsolescence in thought clings to the cheap suits of New Democrats. You can see it in the big issues like warhawkery and deficit hysteria but also see it in the little issues like campaigning and filibuster reform.
Gore, HRC, Bill Clinton, Kerry, and even Obama made their bones in an era of American history where the juggernaut alliance of white bucolic identity politics and plutocracy had broken the back of the New Deal and New Left Democrats and left them for dead. They were fighting from a position of ideological disadvantage, so had to cut deals with the corporate class (financial deregulation, capital gains tax cuts, etc.) and social conservatism (crime, drug policy, American exceptionalism, etc.) in order to wield any power at all.
Unfortunately, they got a little too high off of their own supply and as we can see with Obama they really and truly believe in that moderate bullshit. HRC might not believe in bipartisanship, but she’s still under the impression that conservatism is ascendant and what America really wants is a tough-talking deficit scold that won’t upset the cart of neoliberalism. The changes both demographic and strategic from 2000 are completely lost on her and she still talks and campaigns as if it was 1992.
America and the Democratic Party doesn’t need the kind of technocracy that HRC represents. We had no choice but to swallow that substandard tripe back before 2006 because of demographic and structural weakness, but the tides have shifted.
He could stop TTIP and TTP. That would be worth 4 yrs right there. Thanks for that link.
well I don’t trust Hillary to make good FP decisions- domestically I expect she’d be better than a republican esp on SCOTUS appointments, but I don’t expect her to stand up to pressure to rollback progressive gains. I guess for me her tone deafness and inability/ unwillingness to take a stand and orientation towards the haves first makes her untrustworthy in that she’s lost touch with her humanity and it’s all about glitz and sparkling clean things [take a look at the Clinton Foundation website]. I completely support Sanders agenda and trust him to push for it. As far as Sanders FP goes, I trust his pov but don’t know about his expertise, I’m worried about his electability since Fladem’s comments, I trust Biden to continue Obama’s FP and expect he would consult Obama and hope he runs. I guess going back to my Hillary comment, Biden has never lost touch with his humanity, and that comes across clearly.
grammar: should be whom do you trust [accusative case] or, who is it that you trust
ph yes, PP debacle. imo that will change things, how I don’t know. what about that guy who said as a guy he had no problem finding a clinic???? they’re nutz. we could retake the House if this goes on any longer [and, as Tarheel points out, we actually field candidates]
I don’t think it’s a thing, or anyway not much of a negative thing.
I guess since he is a socialist it’s not a problem. Remember when they attacked Obama as a socialist and the numbers for socialism went up? If Sanders message is labeled socialism, well people who like it will just say okay. It’s the message.
If I was from Europe and reading this particular set of comments it would sound like a lot of progressives at this site are going to vote Republican if Hillary wins.
In the primary Hillary can pound sand. If she makes it to the general then she will benefit from my straight-party vote…
With respect to domestic policy, it doesn’t matter which dem is elected unless they have coattails. Currently Hillary is the best bet for that in my opinion, although that might change if Sanders improves his standings further (H. is still crushing him nationally). Any dem president will be to the left of whatever conceivable congressional majority they can put together to pass legislation. But I do think H. might do a better job than Sanders on the margins, of making friends and influencing people in congress, in order to get her priorities passed.
WRT foreign policy, I do worry a bit about H. somewhat aggressive stances re. the middle east, but I also worry that Sanders has no experience at all.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton has a chance of having coattails. She doesn’t put into play any demographics that Barack Obama doesn’t — nor is she really even attempting to.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/04/clinton-far-more-popular-among-women-
of-color-than-among-white-women/
Just one of the reasons why I’m supporting Sanders is that he’s actually trying to make a play for the white working class with economic progressivism. I don’t know how effective it’ll actually be, but I’d rather do that than just sit on my ass and hope that the USSC replacements happen in 2017 and 2018.
A bit early in the cycle to write off the chances of coat tails for either Clinton or sanders.
No, I don’t think it’s too early to say. You might get rich with the death of a wealthy relative or finding a lottery ticket, but if you don’t have a good stock portfolio or lucrative job, your chances of becoming rich are practically nil.
Similarly, if Clinton doesn’t plan to do anything substantially different from Obama then why should I expect for her to have coattails? I’m not sure how strong Sanders’ coattails are, but at least he’s trying. Unless Clinton radically alters her ideological appeal, I fully expect 2016 to look like 2012 plus maybe North Carolina. Maybe she gets lucky and the Republican Party slips on a banana peel.
As for me? I’d rather put my faith in a candidate that at least tries to have a semi-plausible COA. Rather than one who just sits on her ass and hopes everything works out for the best.
” if Clinton doesn’t plan to do anything substantially different from Obama then why should I expect for her to have coattails? “
First, Obama is a pretty good role model for a successful president. So that’s not a bad way to go. Second, have you looked at the clown car the GOP are running? Any dem that can keep the Obama coalition together, and add a few more whites who see what an outrage the GOP has become and are no longer scared away by the scary mooslim, might do very well indeed. But as I say, it’s way too early to prognosticate such outcomes.
Since when did people care about good Presidencies? They care about bad ones, but America (rightly in my opinion) has a ‘so what are you going to do for me in the future‘ problem. No one gets excited about past victories unless it leads to future victories.
First of all, it’s really bad idea if your strategy depends on your opponents making mistakes — or worse, if it depends on peoples’ reactions to those mistakes. Nixon, Reagan, and W. Bush were obviously buffoons that no sane people would vote for. How’d that work out?
Secondly, the Obama coalition will not get us the House nor will it keep the Senate in 2018. A combination of gerrymandering and the 2010/2014 routs puts the House out of reach — if Clinton does just as well as Obama does and the Republican candidate does mostly the same thing that Romney does, raw demographic increase means that she’ll get 6% of the Presidential vote. Not enough to flip the House, which needs about 7-8%.
You mean we’re not supposed to believe that 2016 will be different from 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2012, and 2014 when the Clinton team dominated in the DEM congressional electoral strategies? That doing the same over again won’t produce a different result?
Seriously, don’t get why partisan Democrats can’t see that the same strategy has produced the same negative results over and over again.
Enterprising congresspeople can run against the last shutdown and the 155 that voted for a shutdown recently.
That’s not Hillary Clinton having coattails. If Trump spends the third debate humping the podium like a dog, that says nothing about her campaign’s personal ability to get votes downticket — because something like that would be fungible to any generic candidate.
I pretty much always love your analysis, but on this I’m not seeing things your way. Would Clinton be as good a president as Obama? No way. But then I see him as the greatest president since at least Roosevelt. In some ways I think he’s better than Roosevelt. Maybe if one took Roosevelt’s political skills and mixed in the personal integrity of a Garfield (who didn’t have time in office to do much of anything but was certainly a great man). A great president comes along once in a very long while. I think history will be kind to Obama.
Sanders may be lacking in foreign policy chops but he’s not going to acquiesce to the John McCains of the world. No way do we go to war on his watch unless truly provoked. Same for Hillary. Like you, I don’t care for her instincts. She’s a Democrat caught in the old paradigm that, as a Democrat, one has to be tough. A bit JFK, a bit Bill Clinton. I don’t care for that perspective but we’ve survived such presidents before. I don’t see us invading Iran or anywhere else on her watch.
So in what sense are we fucked? In that things will remain pretty much as they have been?
Still too early to assess — Obama has a major decision on Syria/Russia to make. A major muddle due in large part to his admin’s own poor decision making, a developing situation which easily could result in our tense relations with Russia going seriously south. Putin has been far more right on the Assad situation.
He just needs to back off the certifiably stupid stance of regime change in Damascus and agree generally to work with the Russians in routing ISIS. Neither side, alone, can accomplish that objective, a goal which clearly would benefit both sides.
So, to date, in my book O is the best president since JFK, but not better. Kennedy was willing to buck the military and CIA and begin talking peace with the USSR, and paid the ultimate price. Obama is not so willing, despite having far better assassination insurance, and so kinda goes along all too often.
Of the announced candidates, only Sanders seems capable of seriously challenging the neocon status quo, though he would likely have far too much congressional opposition, even in his own party. And it’s hard to wrap my mind around him being CinC of a country where 95% of the military officers appear to be of the hawkish-to-ultra hawkish mentality.
Despite the fact that I greatly dislike Putin, I have no problem agreeing with you that he “has been far more right on the Assad situation.”
Obama’s problem (and the world’s) is that there are very powerful factions within and without the government that think supporting the Syrian rebels getting rid of Assad and fighting ot at least ignoring the Kurds takes priority over dealing with ISIS. This is totally stupid, but Obama has not been able to sideline them.
Joe Biden merely told the truth, and it didn’t go over that well.
http://mideastshuffle.com/2014/10/04/biden-turks-saudis-uae-funded-and-armed-al-nusra-and-al-qaeda/
imo our president is playing those factions after they tried to back him into a corner re: military force. just sayin’ [note Tarheel dem’s comment yesterday about how this is playing out; don’t underestimate the Black Guy]
Considering what Sanders is doing, how he is doing it, and just THAT he is doing it, I can’t understand how he comes off to you as “weak”. He is clearly a man of great courage, independence, and vision.
As for Hillary, for me it’s not only her character. It’s that she has always hung out with the wrong people.
Tell you what, I don’t know if “trust” is the right word, but the president was so visibly angry, upset, and frustrated that it definitely resonated with me like nothing from him has before. And whichever candidate can do that, they’re the ones most people will trust…
Hilary does not come across as fake to me. Guarded is the word I would use, and with good reason considering the treatment she and her family has been subjected to. When I think of her I think
of this picture. She is a policy wonk, a nerd, and a little social awkward. I kind of like that.
People look on Bernie Sanders’s socialism like they looked on John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism. They don’t think he will capitulate to the socialist pope, whoever that might be. They depend on his common sense approach.
The media prison searchlights of the late 1980s and the entire Clinton administration created an environment in which both Clinton’s hunkered down in ways contrary to their natural political inclinations. Both are walking PTSD cases from the shock of the difference between the treatment of Presidents before them and their treatment at the hands of the media. It is very easy to cast either of them in a position of permanent untrustworthiness as a result of that, which no doubt is what the GOP political operatives intended. They have however wounded, not politically killed, the Clintons.
The problem with with evaluating foreign policy of the Clintons is the 25-year zeitgeist that casts the primary foreign policy skill of a President as being bombastic Trump-like “toughness”. That is, the primary quality is the propensity to saber-rattle. Those Presidents who have been most successful at foreign policy, President Obama included, rarely get props for what they actually did to bring a solid basis for peace and only get props for acts of war if they are solidly successful and exceptionally reward US interests. Some of the best foreign policy Presidents had excellent advisors or Secretaries of State; others had excellent Secretaries of War/Defense.
I suspect that Obama when he first approached office during the transition period got the “troops are going to mutiny” lecture the GOP laid as a trap for the black President. The way off that hook was keeping Gates for continuity and then making Gates walk the plank on gays in the military. Obama’s toughness was quiet, resolute, and effective. McChrystal got cashiered. Petraeus is hard to imagine as a Presidential candidate despite the media continued plumping of him. Allen is gone. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have had a little shake-up but not nearly enough to tame the Brass from trying to play the GOP in Congress to enable their mutiny. Does Sanders have that steadiness to creatively confront an entrenched corrupt military brass? He’s not shown that side of himself yet.
The difficulty in foreign policy is the sets of skills to understand and evolve a flexible but global vision of what to do does not generally inhabit the brain of the person who can persuade highly experienced (and set in their ways) senior staff to actually do it in good faith. Getting the military to at least obey orders and not sabotage policy is a major issue for the civilian politicians who lead the military. Generals typically have a better go of it as President to the extent that they already know the players in the general staff. The same is also true at State/Foreign Service and in the intelligence community. That’s a steep learning curve for someone like Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders. Not as steep for Biden or Clinton–but the vision of how to use the institutions is hamstrung by being co-opted by the institutions.
In the present moment, my sense is that the way to keep us off the shoals of foreign policy disaster is to admit that George W. Bush destroyed an immense amount of American power and presiges (what Hillary Clinton calls “soft power”). That also means that the neoconservative school and responsibility to protect schools of foreign policy have been found to be morally bankrupt and impractical and the realist school has been found to be morally bankrupt. American foreign policy needs to be rebuilt on new or recovered principles and outlook on the world. And quickly or the US will be even that much less of a player in coming events. In this, we all better hope that Obama can play the de facto alliance with Russia, China, and Iran in Syria and Iraq very well. And for the moment that means playing US domestic politics in a way that allows that part of the world to be restabilized before the November 2016 election. If there is a change in political mood and culture in the United States, it now must come from a mind-blowing foreign policy success that knocks the US media out of their games. Or from the grass roots.
I would not prejudge talent absent the challenges to test it. Nor toughness by public ruthlessness.
But the stabilizer in the past has been the sanity of the greater part of Congress. Absent substantial coattails off of this election, we don’t have that prospect even if we get a President of prudence and probity.
Worst of all we have yet another instance of an American four-party factional system housed in two parties. The establishment GOP has shown that it will kowtow to the radical Dixiecrat religious bigots. The establishment Democrats have shown that they would rather sabotage the party than give up power to progressive candidates or lose the benefits of lobbyist financing and the revolving DC door.
It is there, more than in the Presidency, that we are truly fucked. And not even the best Presidential qualities of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and Obama could save us.
And the states are in worse shape (although it is hard to say about California, it is clear that Kansas is a basket case). And the Southern states are partying like it’s 1876 thanks to the Supreme Court voting rights decision. If the 2016 election passes without bloodshed somewhere, we will be more fortunate than it appears at the moment. It is this revolt of white people that I don’t know that Hillary Clinton can handle. The temptation to capitulate to violence is strong. Overreacting in response, however, is the inflammation that those who have been arming themselves have been looking for. What has been going on since Waco is contempt for the law. If Bernie is suspect on foreign policy, Clinton and Biden are suspect on domestic terrorism.
For the public statements that the President, the Vice President, and the current Secretary of State get pilloried for, the results on the ground (outside of Ukraine and the European Union, wonder why?) are moving away from chaos but in some unexpected directions.
At the moment I am quite glad that I don’t have to make a decision about voting until next February. Events will have changed things, and the candidates will have shown more of their capacity for decision-making and organization and principle (generally obscured by the punditry terms “character” and “charisma”).
” The establishment Democrats have shown that they would rather sabotage the party than give up power to progressive candidates”
and, I might add, vice-versa.
This pretty brilliant.
Bernie does have existing connections with some military through his time of the Veteran’s Committee, but I suspect much of the bureaucracy will recoil from him in horror.
I voted for him in Vermont precisely because I thought he could help serve as a break on the default “let’s go to war” position that dominates teh airwaves. But I was never a Sanderista – I never bought the Noam Chomskey view of foreign policy that Bernie mostly has articulated.