Nothing wrong with Hillary Clinton (other than her advisors and her husband)*
I tend to favor Senator Obama, but to be honest -- when Senator Clinton's thoughtful side comes out, she makes me wonder why in hell I ever thought I wouldn't want her to be president or that she couldn't do a truly fine job in that office.
But when former Prez Bill opens his mouth and gives us all a "Hey look at me MY WIFE is running for president so it's still all about me!!!" I begin to understand why so many people despised him when he was in office -- although the rest of us loved him madly any time we thought about or looked at the wreckage of the Reagan/Bush administrations (their admitted agenda was to bankrupt the country and thereby have a damn good excuse for gutting any social welfare programs -- "Starve the Beast" Grover Norquist's strategy.
But now, bringing our happy memory of him THEN up to the harshly-lit NOW, he's lost it. He's still trying to play the same game as when he still had charm and juice, kind of like an NFL quarterback whose legs just aren't there anymore, but still thinks he can scramble away from 22-year-old linebackers.
(Gawrr -- remember when he called a press conference to tell off the press that they were making the election be about him but it was supposed to be about HER -- except by doing so, he made it be about him saying it WASN'T about him)
If only she could have said "Bill -- I'm running for President, so why don't you go spend the year in Thailand screwing teenage hookers and don't come back until after the election is over." Of course she couldn't.
And then, there was the adamant advice of Billy-sanctioned advisers about how tough, how hard, how always in attack mode she had to be, advice that has truly hurt her bid to be known for who SHE is and what SHE can do rather than be known for who HE WAS (so far -- it still ain't over, regardless of what would have best served the TV talking heads)
The other day, she made a case for an economic policy that was do downright impressive and convincing, I thought the way I said above -- "Damn -- that person would be a fine president."
But by afternoon, she was turning my stomach as she twisted Senator Obama's words, calling out "ELITIST ELITIST ELITIST" (the Willie Horton-izing N-word denunciation doesn't work anymore, not in public). It was obvious she knew damn well all he really was saying was that small town people had been lied to so much by Reagan and Bush AND Clinton and Bush they had become bitter and frustrated ABOUT THE POLITICAL PROCESS, so bitter and angry that the only POLITICAL things they were willing to put energy in were the ones they believed in and that we all always believed were protected in the Bill of Rights (guns and religion) and the only thing the politicians had done for them was to whip up fear and dislike of OTHERNESS.
So we were WAAYYYY past the door into Bizarro World when the married couple who took home $109 million over the past 6 years was calling the black kid raised by a single mother -- HE was an elitist -- pure Poppy Bush doo-doo.
Remember that he, the Yalee son of a rich family denounced Mike Dukakis -- the son of an immigrant, that DUKAKIS was elitist. In other words, the Republican approach by those in the GOP who took over and replaced race-baiting for conservatism to say "They THINK they're better than you..." never finishing that sentence to say what I think is what they truly believe: "But WE KNOW we are."
Some of it is, of course, being poorly advised.
Some of it is, of course, not being able to tell your spouse and a former president of the USA -- whose improbable rise to power was now being done by someone else -- not able to tell him to fuck off.
And of course some of it is deciding to accept those people's ideas of who she should be rather than having confidence in being who she is. ("But we elected Bill, and he told us to run YOUR campaign, so how can you argue with us? ATTACK!"
Let's see what happens over the coming months -- NOW her supporters are claiming the "DECIDING" primary will be in Puerto Rico -- not in Pennsylvania or Indiana as they've claimed all along (which makes me think they've seen some polls we haven't).
*************************
* And the fact that she has in her, to SOME EXTENT, exactly what they convinced her she had to show all the time, the nasty attack mode. It was NOT alien to her personality -- just yesterday I read about the Valedictorian address she delivered at her Wellesley graduation, and even then, in addition to seeing ahead and stating excellent objectives, she just couldn't resist savaging the person she disagreed with, Senator Edward Brooke. (To be fair, Senator Brooke really was an irrelevant asshole -- two examples: (1) he was a black man in the Nixonian Republican party, (2) he proposed solving the problem of urban youth gang wars with free tickets to Major League Baseball games)
But when former Prez Bill opens his mouth and gives us all a "Hey look at me MY WIFE is running for president so it's still all about me!!!" I begin to understand why so many people despised him when he was in office -- although the rest of us loved him madly any time we thought about or looked at the wreckage of the Reagan/Bush administrations (their admitted agenda was to bankrupt the country and thereby have a damn good excuse for gutting any social welfare programs -- "Starve the Beast" Grover Norquist's strategy.
But now, bringing our happy memory of him THEN up to the harshly-lit NOW, he's lost it. He's still trying to play the same game as when he still had charm and juice, kind of like an NFL quarterback whose legs just aren't there anymore, but still thinks he can scramble away from 22-year-old linebackers.
(Gawrr -- remember when he called a press conference to tell off the press that they were making the election be about him but it was supposed to be about HER -- except by doing so, he made it be about him saying it WASN'T about him)
If only she could have said "Bill -- I'm running for President, so why don't you go spend the year in Thailand screwing teenage hookers and don't come back until after the election is over." Of course she couldn't.
And then, there was the adamant advice of Billy-sanctioned advisers about how tough, how hard, how always in attack mode she had to be, advice that has truly hurt her bid to be known for who SHE is and what SHE can do rather than be known for who HE WAS (so far -- it still ain't over, regardless of what would have best served the TV talking heads)
The other day, she made a case for an economic policy that was do downright impressive and convincing, I thought the way I said above -- "Damn -- that person would be a fine president."
But by afternoon, she was turning my stomach as she twisted Senator Obama's words, calling out "ELITIST ELITIST ELITIST" (the Willie Horton-izing N-word denunciation doesn't work anymore, not in public). It was obvious she knew damn well all he really was saying was that small town people had been lied to so much by Reagan and Bush AND Clinton and Bush they had become bitter and frustrated ABOUT THE POLITICAL PROCESS, so bitter and angry that the only POLITICAL things they were willing to put energy in were the ones they believed in and that we all always believed were protected in the Bill of Rights (guns and religion) and the only thing the politicians had done for them was to whip up fear and dislike of OTHERNESS.
So we were WAAYYYY past the door into Bizarro World when the married couple who took home $109 million over the past 6 years was calling the black kid raised by a single mother -- HE was an elitist -- pure Poppy Bush doo-doo.
Remember that he, the Yalee son of a rich family denounced Mike Dukakis -- the son of an immigrant, that DUKAKIS was elitist. In other words, the Republican approach by those in the GOP who took over and replaced race-baiting for conservatism to say "They THINK they're better than you..." never finishing that sentence to say what I think is what they truly believe: "But WE KNOW we are."
Some of it is, of course, being poorly advised.
Some of it is, of course, not being able to tell your spouse and a former president of the USA -- whose improbable rise to power was now being done by someone else -- not able to tell him to fuck off.
And of course some of it is deciding to accept those people's ideas of who she should be rather than having confidence in being who she is. ("But we elected Bill, and he told us to run YOUR campaign, so how can you argue with us? ATTACK!"
Let's see what happens over the coming months -- NOW her supporters are claiming the "DECIDING" primary will be in Puerto Rico -- not in Pennsylvania or Indiana as they've claimed all along (which makes me think they've seen some polls we haven't).
*************************
* And the fact that she has in her, to SOME EXTENT, exactly what they convinced her she had to show all the time, the nasty attack mode. It was NOT alien to her personality -- just yesterday I read about the Valedictorian address she delivered at her Wellesley graduation, and even then, in addition to seeing ahead and stating excellent objectives, she just couldn't resist savaging the person she disagreed with, Senator Edward Brooke. (To be fair, Senator Brooke really was an irrelevant asshole -- two examples: (1) he was a black man in the Nixonian Republican party, (2) he proposed solving the problem of urban youth gang wars with free tickets to Major League Baseball games)
posted by Saintperle at
11:56 AM
