Look, I know some of you hate Hillary Clinton. I don’t. And I’m not going to spend the next two years reading Hillary Hate in my comments section. Whether men acknowledge it or not, there is a strong gendered subtext to most of the violent attacks made on her. (A friend told me the other night that of course I wasn’t imagining it, and said the only reason he could come up with were mother issues — which is what female bloggers decided back then, because there was no other obvious explanation for why white male progressives adored one corporatist centrist candidate, and despised the other.)
But whatever. I went through this in 2007-08, and I’m not going to go through it again in my own living room.
I don’t want to stifle debate. But at least here, it will be respectful and fact-based. If you need to bash Hillary Clinton, go do it at Democratic Underground or Daily Kos, where you will find many kindred spirits.
I’d prefer Warren. She’d pull everything to the left, except Israel policy perhaps. Gender doesn’t matter, policy does. And Warren has acquitted herself very favorably. She never faced the Iraq AUMF vote, but I can’t imagine her voting for it. Due to gridlock, I can’t see the next President doing much on the domestic front; the GOP has gotten almost everything it wanted already. Only Democrats are trying to gut Social Security and privatize local schools, it would appear. It’d be nice to see a real SOB (or DOB) Attorney General who cleans house with banksters, white collar crime, and localized public-private petty corruption. Wouldn’t it be great to see a bunch of sanctimonious pasty-faced Ferguson court personnel sweat it out as they’re frog-marched out of their own court building into a DOJ paddy wagon? Multiplied by 1000? I’d also love to see major indictments against a number of national politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Well, Jay, those are great wishes but only that, as is your idea that Warren would move things to the left. I’m from Massachusetts and I voted for her. She is not a Liberal! I have emails from her to prove it. I voted for her because she has great knowledge about banking etc and can keep the conversation in the Senate fact-based. No promise from me for future votes. As for Hillary, at this point why would anybody believe anything the great megaphone and all the elites who blow it, say about her. Does anybody doubt that the lady is intelligent enough to do the correct thing in all areas? Is there no memory left of the Clinton derangement syndrome, a syndrome much more virulent than the Bush DS, and far preceding it? The megaphone people take us for fools, but fuck them, I don’t even listen. I doubt I would vote for Hillary, but I will tell you one thing, she would make right wing heads explode, and that would be a good thing. And she would certainly have more balls in standing up to the Right Wing (and they know it and will not confront her) than the current holder of the Oval office who should have driven a stake through the Republican vampire heart in 2009, except for one factoid: he’s one of them!
Dare I hope that this means I won’t have to skip over blather like some of the stuff Imho does? And his ilk.
I am sooo tired of that garbage and we haven’t even really started yet and we’ve still got two years to go.
It’s funny. Over the past 40-50 years people have let go of a little bit of racism, a lot of anti-gay, and they don’t feel any worse or better. You’d think they’d realize they could dump the sexism and it wouldn’t cost them a thing. But nooo. They’ve doubled down instead. It’s worse now, not better. And we’ve gone so far backward, most of the time they don’t even see their sexist crap for what it is.
I do not understand how Hillary deals with it so elegantly.
Thank-you Susie!! Also FireDogLake and Huffpoo have started early and often with the Hillary Hate. Nothing fact based, just pearl-clutching male pathos. I am done with those sites for the next two years. I fear this is going to be a long and ugly campaign against her, aberrant from anything we have ever seen.
Thank you for that Susie.
Yeah the Hillary hate when Obama was much the same, maybe even to the right. yes and all the bros were trying to be cool or something I dunno.
As far as I was concerned, Obama was not working class as much as HRC, but he was “cool”, FWIW.
Did/does she suck up to the AIPAC/Ysroel lobby, for instance? Yes, so does eveybody else, incuding Bernie Sanders (big surprise, huh?), so did Paul Wellstone , so does Al Franken.
Long-time reader here, delurking to praise and second your righteous rant, Susie. And to thank you for years of faithful, first-rate blogging. You are first on my reading list each morning.
I see Hilary as someone who’s hit triple after triple, only to keep running into an army of sexists blocking third base. All feminism really asks is for sexists to stop standing in the way.
I’m not a Hilary hater (I ended up being an alternate delegate for her in my state convention that year). I mostly supported her because Obama was just so awful, and he and his supporters so unbearably smug. And I knew she would put up more of a fight than Obama (I just can’t believe how many of Bush’s hold over political appointees are still around).
I think she is super smart and capable. But her politics are absolutely despicable and up for sale to the highest bidder, just like the rest. Indefensible. The only reason I can’t hate her is the fact that she makes all the heads explode of all the kinds of people I detest. Right from the time she made that Tammy Wynette stand by your man comment, I kind of liked her and wished she was the one running instead of Bill. But that’s like voting for Bush because he was the kind of alcoholic you could have a beer with.
Well, Jay, those are great wishes but only that, as is your idea that Warren would move things to the left. I’m from Massachusetts and I voted for her. She is not a Liberal! I have emails from her to prove it.
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Just out of curiosity, what kind of issues and email responses are you talking about, Andre?
I’ve found the same thing with my Senators’ canned email responses regarding social security “reform” and the TPP deal (Merkley, and Wyden, who just knows TPP will create jobs for Oregon, although how he would know about the secret details that might specifically benefit Oregon, I can’t imagine.) These guys have way more liberal/progressive cred than I think either one deserves (especially Wyden, who might as well be a Republican, like Warren, who actually *was* a Rupublican, until long after an age where that could have been excused as youthful foolishness)
It would be nice if there was a website that collected all the senators’ and congress critters’ canned responses on various subjects, and maybe translated them from Weasle into English. Maybe there is such a website.