Jeff Greenfield has a pretty fair post at Politico explaining how lousy a candidate Hillary Clinton is. For me the most telling quote is this:
A look at Clinton’s political career provides a tougher explanation. Those younger voters who doubt her trustworthiness likely have no memory, or even casual acquaintance with, a 25-year history that includes cattle-futures trading, law firm billing records, muddled sniper fire recollections and the countless other charges of widely varying credibility aimed at her. They may even have suspended judgment about whether her e-mail use was a matter of bad judgment or worse.
But when you look at the positions she has taken on some of the most significant public policy questions of her time, you cannot escape noticing one key pattern: She has always embraced the politically popular stand—indeed, she has gone out of her way to reinforce that stand—and she has shifted her ground in a way that perfectly correlates with the shifts in public opinion.
It’s probably before your time but on his First Family album Vaughn Meader had a great wisecrack: “Vote for the Kennedy of your choice but vote!” Now it’s vote for the Clinton of your choice.
I think that most Democrats aren’t particularly thrilled with Hillary Clinton but are gamely putting up with her on the grounds that she’s the most electable Democrat, a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. Don’t blame me if she’s the candidate and is defeated due to a lack of interest. It’s not as though I haven’t been warning you.
Hillary Clinton has long been preparing to run for President, has acted often with an abundance of caution (which I think is the main cause of the e-mail weirdness), and step-by-step did all of the right things to get elected in 2008.
She established herself as a working Senator, not just a celebrity, building a record of constituent services, including to Wall Street. She used her votes on the Armed Services Committee and on war to deflect any chauvinistic criticism that she’s not tough enough to be commander in chief. And then the Iraq War blew-up the Democratic Party and the financial sector blew-up the economy, and all of the popular positions or stepping-stones to the White were pulled out from beneath her.
. . . White HOUSE . . .
One man’s abundance of caution is another’s conspiracy to evade the Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act, violate the Hatch Act, and commit perjury.
As much as I dislike Hillary Clinton, she is nothing more than an evolving, life-long politician, crafting POV’s that suit her ambitious purposes. The problems with her candidacy, though, really reside outside of her persona and more with those who wistfully and blindly support her — rarely even willing to discuss the twisted and oftentimes corrupt resume of her political past.
Unlike many Bush supporters who railed against him and the policies they opposed, more dems just obliquely go along with unethical, inept candidates, such as HRC, demurely muttering about their discontent but voting for them anyway. Although I can understand this, from the POV of political gamesmanship, why then do they bellow at those republicans for doing the exact same thing? It’s as if they demand their opposition to be better human beings — more ethical, moral, peaceful, frugal, honest etc. — than they demand of their own party elites and themselves!
The two ways to beat Clinton (or maybe Sanders) are closed if they nominate Trump.
He’s not going to take any of Obama’s voters from 2012, and his presence will probably make turnout higher than in 2012. He doesn’t know it yet but he’s dead, unless he’s willing to push his violence beyond the rallies and make voting a spectacle.
She is an awful candidate, but I think we will be recycling those old Louisiana bumper stickers. “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”
Steve
She talked the other day about being quite aware that she lacks the skills of a Bill or a Barack.
Whatever happens, the best the Democrats can hope for is incremental change. Speaker Ryan is not going away. So the job will be to A) Manage foreign policy and B) Find ways to get along with Paul Ryan. That sounds a lot more to me like Hillary than Bernie.
On the other hand, there’s another way to look at it. Maybe when Paul Ryan shoots down 110% of Bernie’s agenda within the first five minutes of Bernie’s presidency, Bernie can spend two years trying to take back the House. And can then take back the House in the mid-terms. Because that’s a thing that happens in reality.
Yeah. That’s what I support Hillary.