In his Chicago Tribune column yesterday John Kass presented two characterization of Hillary Clinton. The first was as the “old lady whispering ‘Hush!'”. The second, even more apt, was as Frank Underwood in a pantsuit. Here’s that whole section of his column:
You know the room, that big green room with the red balloon. The picture of the cow jumping over the moon. And the comb and the brush and the bowlful of mush.
And the old lady whispering, “hush.”
So why would Hillary whisper “hush” to young people feeling the Bern?
Because she wants to be president of the United States and rule the world, and fulfill her destiny as queen of the new American political establishment.
And she doesn’t need Sanders supporters ruining things.
Which is why her campaign has been working so hard to get Sanders voters to simmer down.
Sanders is the candidate with the momentum on the Democratic side. His voters believe that he believes in something. And I think he does. I disagree with his views, but he does stand for something.
And Hillary Clinton? What does she stand for? What does she believe in?
Herself. Power. That’s about it.
She’s like Frank Underwood in pantsuits.
She’ll play the gender card, she’ll pander to race, she’ll force you to parse her sentences. These are tactics, not core principles.
I think that would be quite damaging if anyone were paying attention. Fortunately for Sec. Clinton no one is.
I do think that Mr. Kass has put his finger on something important. Unless something dramatic changes this presidential campaign will be entirely about tactics rather than principles because neither of the likely candidates has any core principles to speak of.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-30/democracy-pathocracy-rise-political-psychopath
Is John Kass a friend of yours Dave? Because I can’t think of any other reason why you’d highlight his content-free, dishonest and ultimately dull column.
Has Hillary Clinton ever wavered on abortion? On equal pay for women? On civil rights? On parental leave? On early childhood education? No.
She has core principles, she just doesn’t have what old white men with no interest in women or children would recognize as principles. You and Kass are both wearing your testosterone blinkers.
And the distaste this man shows for Hillary’s ambition! Jesus Christ, it’s a near parody of sexist stupidity. Ambitious? A presidential candidate? Why, I never.
Let’s see. Hillary Clinton has flipped positions on same sex marriage, gun control, Iraq War, states issuing drivers licenses to illegals, and on trade has flipped back and forth about 4 times. Says a Republican hack? No, says David Axelrod. Just recently.
Not to mention her flips on Syria (Assad and arming rebels), the Cuba embargo, the Keystone pipeline and coal legislation, the ethanol mandate……… No doubt she is, ahem, “evolving.”
Unbelievable that polls indicate majorities believe such a principled person to be inordinately malleable and untrustworthy. Unbelievable.
At least we know her memory is intact and she’s good at dodging sniper fire. Got it on film.
Just a second. Wait. What………….?
Guarneri:
Donald Trump flips more in any given hour of the day.
And the question was not whether Hillary is a great example of consistency, she clearly is not, it was whether she has any core principles. She quite clearly does.
Civil rights. Women’s rights around the world. Women’s rights domestically, including equal pay, access to birth control and choice on abortion. Early childhood education. Family leave.
She’s been all about children and women and civil rights since she got into public service, and has wavered on none of those positions.
But of course to white men Cuba is somehow more important than equal pay for women or civil rights or a woman’s right to choose.
Surprise, surprise.
I don’t agree Clinton has been a champion of women’s rights given her support of regimes in which women are treated like chattel or support of sanctions and bombing that have disproportionately fallen on women and children.
Her conception of equal rights is for 50% of the global elite to be female.
Oh please, Michael, your defense of HRC is beneath you. And, like most good social progressive hacks, when one of their own’s warts are being discussed, the knee-jerk tactic is to tact “right,” and go into the flaws of your political opponents. You did the same when Obama’s missteps were highlighted, by instantly doing a moral equivalence laser beam onto Geo. Bush. Now you’re being duplicitous in order to cover for this awful woman, bringing in Trump as a straw man — someone who ironically has gotten few rave reviews on this site. But, I guess that’s what one does when there is only a toothpick crutch of a defense for such a ruthless, self-serving candidate as Hillary has been.
Also, I totally think Hillary’s support for woman has been superficial, at best. She either walks over women to get where she wants to go, or ignores them entirely if they don’t form some kind of helpful constituency who will vote for her.
You are being a bit harsh on both Trump and Clinton. They are both true to some core principles. Hillary is true to her social principles. Trump, look at his tax plan, holds true to that most important of all GOP values, (massive) tax cuts for the wealthy. Now, on nearly everything else they are all over the place.
Steve
Drew- They wrote a whole book on sociopathy within the corporate world. “Snakes In Suits”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QUCOAS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1
Steve
HRC may have remained consistent in politically supporting the liberal women’s issues, but of course her behavior with regard to the women involved with her husband was utterly disgraceful. That’s what makes her political positions merely opportunistic, not principled. It is highly unlikely that she’ll change those positions, but that’s because she has a voting coalition to support it, not because of her core values.
Jan:
Elections are choices between A and B. So when you criticize A, it is not strange or wrong to point out that B is better. That’s kind of the whole point of the election, choosing Meh over Yuck.
Ben:
Spoken like a Bernie Bro. No one will ever be pure enough. (Especially not a woman.) No one will ever come up to the standard of the man from Vermont who has never been involved in serious partisan politics and has never had to compromise because he’s never really tried to accomplish anything.
What in God’s name do you think we’re going to do, cut relations with every foreign country that fails to come up to Vermonter standards of moral perfection? Who would that leave? Denmark? Oh, wait, no Denmark is keeping refugees out, and surely that’s as morally reprehensible, right? Netherlands? No, they’ve helped us bomb people. France, ditto. Russia? Definitely not. Japan? Sorry, no, they’re sexist as hell.
Come on man, grow up. This is a superpower – the superpower – not a tiny, rustic, 100% white state full of expat Manhattanites riding bikes to the co-op for their organic kale.
Do you realize that if we shut down relations with every country that treats women like shit we’d be saying good-bye to the entire Muslim world? That’d show Donald Trump who can really trash Muslims.
CStanley:
Her commitment to women’s issues preceded her marriage, and her husband’s infidelity. So, what, you think she has a time machine? Is it the same one Obama used to plant his birth certificate in the past?
Bernie Bros need to understand some basic politics. Let’s start with this: Paul Ryan exists.
So, Bernie will have a lovely first day in the Oval when he will forward all his wondrous plans to Paul Ryan, who will ball them up and toss them in the trash.
Day 2? Um. . . Well, we know the sainted Bernie can never compromise. So he will accomplish what exactly? Would that be. . . nothing? The job will be fighting Ryan in the trenches. Is Bernie the man for that? Don’t make me laugh. He’s never had a fight in his life.
Free ponies for everyone! Just as soon as Paul Ryan agrees! Which will be never! Yay! Feel the Bern!
Well, I think Michael’s arguments probably foretell a lot of what we’ll hear in the coming months. Clinton’s supporters will claim any criticism, especially by white men, is nothing more than testosterone and sexism (irony alert).
No Michael, I just think that her political ambitions also preceded her marriage. And it’s not as though I think she opposes women’s rights and equality- clearly in the abstract, and as it benefitted her personally, she would be in favor. When it came to supporting individual women who’d been wronged though, not so much.
“When it came to supporting individual women who’d been wronged though, not so much.”
Having affairs means they were wronged? Really?
Steve
Andy:
I’ll only call sexism when it’s true. It’ll be true a lot, because as shocking as it will seem to many, many people who don’t have a vagina (or the imagination to see anything from the other side) sexism is very much alive and well.
And I won’t be intimidated by people yapping about playing this or that “card,” because that crap is over. Racism is real. Sexism is real. 90% of people who deny it are. . .wait for it while the suspense builds. . . white men. I know: surprise!
In white male world no one is a victim but white men, and Jesus, has any group ever whined more over less? Poor Drew can barely get out of bed in the morning for fear that someone non-white and non-male might criticize him.
Michael,
Clinton’s foreign policy is half moral crusade and half realpolitik embrace of the repressive theocratic monarchy. If you look past the hippie idealism Sanders’ main point is that the schizo approach has been a disaster for America. And he’s right.
Steve I’m not interested in rehashing all of it but clearly there were allegations of nonconsensual activities to put it mildly. And Hillary recently went on the record agreeing with the current feminist meme that all alleged rape victims should be believed, hoping I guess that the young women are too young to know how she trashed the reputations of multiple women who had accused Bill of groping or raping them.
Give it a rest, Michael. Plenty of us who are endowed with vaginas despise Hillary too.
MM:
You want to apply a single standard across the board in our relations with foreign countries? Your standard either has to be very low, or it’s isolationism time, because the list of countries that agree with us on all our values is really very, very small. Canada maybe. Half a dozen European countries.
CStanley:
The point is not despising Hillary, you are of course free to despise Hillary. The question is why. And it does not pass the laugh test to imagine that voters make their decisions entirely unaffected by their prejudices. That’s not the way humans work.
If Trump has done on useful thing, he’s made that point crystal clear: it’s not about policy for most voters, it’s emotion. People are by their nature biased.
If Trump has done on useful thing, he’s made that point crystal clear: it’s not about policy for most voters, it’s emotion. People are by their nature biased.
Completely agree with you on that, but the degree to which our politicians are taking advantage of people’s natures keeps ramping up, to the point of malpractice in governance.
Michael,
“Has Hillary Clinton ever wavered on abortion? On equal pay for women? On civil rights? On parental leave? On early childhood education?”
She’s been consistent on most of those, but those aren’t core principles, they are policy goals. We can list many more policy goals where she demonstrably hasn’t been consistent. We can only guess at her core principles and values based on what she’s done, what she’s said and the positions she’s taken. We aren’t mind-readers after all and we can’t see what’s really in her heart. But we can certainly judge her record, and question what that record signifies. Doing that is not sexist regardless of your opinion on what motivates people who disagree with you.
My own wife – a very successful, white, PhD Engineer who leans left, actively works on women’s issues (particularly women in STEM) and has won awards for the same – does not trust Clinton nor does she believe Clinton has much in terms of core principles that aren’t subsumed by her ambition. She does like Clinton’s stances on women’s issues, but that’s about it. On everything else she thinks Clinton is the conniving triangulator that’s become her reputation. If me and my wife both have the same basic view of Clinton (and we do) I guess that means we are both sexists? Or motivated by sexism? I don’t know, you tell us.
“And it does not pass the laugh test to imagine that voters make their decisions entirely unaffected by their prejudices.”
Which also includes you. It also does not pass the laugh test to imagine that you, uniquely, can know the motivations of people you don’t know, particularly people who aren’t like you, yet you anointed yourself with that ability and use it imprudently. One might conclude you aren’t entirely unaffected by your own prejudices….
Well that’s a fascinating argument, Michael: “Once we exclude all the ways Hillary has opposed equality, we can say she’s committed to equality! Plus, you’re a pure Berniebro so shut up.”
Notice how rapidly accusations of Berniebrodom, originally referring to non-existant hate-tweeters, is now thrown at anyone critical of Clinton’s past actions. Clinton and Obama are expressions of liberal self-identity: criticism of those two means criticizing their followers.