Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

05.05.16
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Bernie Sanders and the Limits of Non-Politics

 

How can you not love this guy? Well, there’s a way…

 

“I know that the Clinton campaign thinks this campaign is over. They’re wrong,” Sanders said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from New Albany, Indiana. “Maybe it’s over for the insiders and the party establishment but the voters today in Indiana had a different idea.”

Here’s the problem with leading a revolution. Anything that is opposed to it is, by definition, counter-revolutionary. And it isn’t just that: opposition becomes the enemy of progress, it becomes and ill and evil thing. It falls short of perfection, and a revolution doesn’t want to live in a fallen world.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has been incredible. He has changed the tenor of the campaign, and pulled a cautious Hillary Clinton to the left. This is good for policy, of course, but it is also good politics. Forcing her to hedge on trade will be good in November, acolytes of “tacking to the center” be damned. Forcing her to the left on economic inequality will be an enormous boost in the generals, even if it makes pundits itch. Bernie has helped the country, and he has, so far, helped to make sure a Democrat beats Donald Trump.

But it won’t be him. All he can do now is make it harder for Hillary Clinton. And given what he’s done, that’s a damn shame. The legacy of this incredible campaign shouldn’t be the election of Donald Trump. The problem is that Bernie, and a lot of his supporters, seem to feel that math is damnably counter-revolutionary, and so it too must be fought against.

Read more on how Bernie can still help the fight for progress

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04.27.16
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Breaking! Lesser of Two Evils Still Better Than Greater of Two Evils

“Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s card,” Trump said during a news conference at Trump Tower. “And the beautiful thing is, women don’t like her.”

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The new and more Presidential Donald Trump:

“I haven’t quite recovered, it’s early in the morning, from her shouting that message. And I know a lot of people would say you can’t say that about a woman, because, of course, a woman doesn’t shout, but the way she shouted that message was not– ooh, I just, that’s the way she said it. I guess I’ll have to get used to a lot of that over the next four or five months. -On Morning Joe

Yes…and well, we’ll all have to get used to a lot of things. Even those who understood early on- though not early enough- that the Trump phenomenon was something real and dangerous never quite came around to emotionally reconciling ourselves to his nomination. It’s one thing to imagine the hypothetical; it’s another to imagine one of the worst people in America in front of a cavernous arena, filled with fulsome county clerks and backwater ward heelers, decked in their finest patriotic hats, yowling his name every time he mentions “crooked Hillary” and how he’s going to win, as a 200-foot banner with his grotesquely swollen visage unfurls behind him, and the lights around the stadium syncopate in flashes of his name, as he snarls and preens and basks in his Roman glory while the band plays a discordant national anthem, the kind you’d hear if it was interpreted by Stravinsky as he drove a bus straight into a mountain…

Terrible, horrible visions, a nightmare of democracy, and now all be inevitable. His managing to get over 50% in the last six states shows a momentum and acceptance and a rejection of Ted Cruz. Cruz might still compete in a couple of states, and might try to prove that he’s somehow the will of the people, the only way he knows how- by lying– but it is essentially too late. There can still be political fixes, and the conventions will be ugly, but no matter what we’ve entered a howling wilderness, brought on by greedy politics and the dissolution of the Republican Party into a million little hateful camps, driven by anger and institutionalised racism and racist anti-institutionalism. It’s where the broken come not to feel whole, but to break something else. That’s the Trump appeal.

Read more on why you should support Hillary Clinton, even if you don’t like her…

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04.20.16
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Voter Suppression In New York! Or, The Revolution Has Gone Mad

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Remember 2008? As it became clear that Barack Obama was going to win the nomination, Hillary Clinton and her supporters become more fervent that not only would he not, but that he was a weak candidate who couldn’t possibly beat the Republicans (Hillary less so than her supporters and surrogates, honestly). To me, the culmination of this nonsense was when she won West Virginia in mid-May. It was a rout, and the Clinton camp used that to argue that they were better positioned to win in November, because, as the candidates said “I’m winning Catholic voters and Hispanic voters and blue-collar workers and seniors, the kind of people that Sen. McCain will be fighting for in the general election.”

Those of us in the Obama camp were obviously incredulous. There was no way that she was going to win West Virginia in November. Winning the Democratic primary there was about as valuable as in Idaho or Wyoming, places that wouldn’t go blue if a Democrat promised to make potatoes our new currency. She was losing the popular vote, states won, and total voters. There was no case that she should be the nominee.

So basically, this is kind of weird mirror year, no?

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03.11.16
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An Untrue But Fun Defense of Hillary Clinton on Reagan and AIDS

So, everyone is rightly going nuts at Hillary Clinton stating that the Reagan’s- especially Nancy!- started a national conversation on HIV and AIDS in the 80s. This is shockingly, grotesquely untrue. The Reagan administration was deeply callous toward it, soaked as they were in the idea that anything outside the American “norm” was evil and should be disdained, which was baked into the notion that homosexuals deserved it. They laughed during a plague, and of all the crimes of that treacherous admin, that’s one of the highest.

Hillary has since said she misspoke, and since I can’t even begin to parse out the politics of this, I’ll believe her.

But then…what if she didn’t? What if this was intentional. After all, it created a huge firestorm where every left or center publication is practically breaking their fingers to chronicle Reagan’s disgusting response. Which leaves Republicans either defending Hillary Clinton (god forbid!) or agreeing with the accurate history. It basically boils down to this:

Hillary: Reagan was great about AIDS!

Right wing press: Wrong again, Hildebeast! He was terrible and didn’t care. Take that!

At the worst, it brings up a conversation reminding us just how terrible Reagan was, during a time of funerary nostalgia (in this case, sepia-by-proxy), and that every time a Republican says they are the true standard-bearer of his legacy, this is part and parcel of what they mean.

I don’t think that’s why she said what she did. It was probably a combination of muttering praise at a funeral, he ability to reach out to Republicans no matter what is right and good (triangulation!), or just a simple brain freeze. But isn’t it pretty to think so?