Thursday, April 28, 2016

Behind every successful man is a woman, laughing at him



     When the Tuesday results came in, and Trump had swept the Republican primaries in all five states—Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island—suddenly it seemed very real. The man could really be the Republican presidential candidate in November.
      And while that most likely means Hillary Clinton will dice him like a Veg-o-matic, nothing is certain in this world. People certainly hate Hillary Clinton, for ... well, whatever flimsy surrogate they wave around—Benghazi, emails, the death of Vince Foster, if they're Republicans. The war in Iraq, Goldman Sachs, not being Bernie Sanders if they're left wing Democrats. 
     As to where her gender fits into all this, well, it'll take a sharper mind than mine to sort that out. It's easy to assume the GOP hates her because she's a woman since they do seem to go out of their way to scorn women, like Ted Cruz's already-notorious commercial that's about women's restrooms but is addressed to their lords and masters, men.
     But Bill Clinton isn't a woman, and Republicans hate him just as much as they do Hillary.
     Trump came pretty close to denouncing Clinton for her gender Tuesday night. Flush with victory, he lit into his opponent-to-be for what one can assume is her most glaring fault. 
    “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote,” Trump said, during a rambling speech that he turned into a news conference when he ran out of things to say. "The only thing she's got going is the women's card. And the beautiful thing is, women don't like her."
    How that is germane ... well, it goes without saying, though within hours the Clinton campaign had a strong video response online, taking Trump's words and ramming them up his ass, where they belong.
     What Trump is groping at, I think, reflects the common bully belief that oppressed groups are really entitled. Just as Republicans said Obama became president because he was black— since African-Americans just show up and leapfrog into seats of power— when the truth is he became president in spite of it, so many voters aren't embracing Clinton because she's a woman, but they're overcoming their unspoken disdain they have for women and supporting her anyway, because she's smart and talented and the best person for the job.
    To me, the most telling aspect is that Hillary had a speech prepared, while Trump winged it. That's why his fans love him, I know. But a thinking person does not want a president who wings it when preparation is a possibility.
     She certainly is a flawed candidate. But like Democracy as defined by Winston Churchill as "the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried for time to time," so Hillary Clinton is the worst candidate, except for all the others that are trying right now. Compared to them, she's Moses and Jefferson in one except, as Trump keeps pointing out, female.
  

37 comments:

  1. I have to completely disagree. The major reason liberals are more accepting of her pro-war stances, slow acceptance of LGBT rights, continued support of for-profit prisons, defending fracking etc, etc (etc) is because we have a chance to put a woman in charge. Many people WANT a more equitable society as well as a more representative one when it comes to their government and sadly they are being suckered into another moderate presidential candidate who will do very little to break down our oligarchical political system.

    Will look forwarded to being "corrected" by someone paid by a PAC to influence online opinion about her though.

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    1. Are you speaking for them, guessing, or as one of them? How does her "pro-war stance" compare to Ted Cruz's make-the-stand-glow stance? Or her "slow acceptance of LGBT rights" compare to the GOP's? I couldn't care what her gender is, all I know is she's far ahead of fabulists like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.

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    2. Speaking as a liberal who feels alienated by the Democratic Party (which I will no longer consider supporting in any significant way as an organization besides most likely voting for the candidates therein). I don't feel like I need to compare her to any other candidates as far as my criticism goes. I think this NYT article does a good job of highlighting her role in Libya (and no, Benghazi is of no particular concern to me): http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?_r=0

      I was also reading into Bill Clinton's sex scandals as well earlier this week. I was a kid during his presidency and only had a passing knowledge of Monica Lewinski, but I was surprised to learn he had a string of scandals starting decades before that Hillary aware of and only stood by as the victimization continued.

      No politician is perfect and all will bring in assort d problems; it is just disappointing to see one that apologized for her Iraq vote by advocating for a new war (which Obama ultimately called his greatest failure of memory serves), expects people to not care about private email servers or Wallstreet speeches and claims to be fighting for women when she steamrolled Monica.

      There's nothing there that screams genuine to me and a lot of red flags.

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    3. Will also note that I scoffed when my deeply Libertarian journalism professor told me Clinton was a monster, because I would have been very much behind her had she won the nom in 2008. Unfortunately, the joke was on me because I started looking into her after that, believing he was just being ridiculous.

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    4. A monster with a lifetime record of effective service. Much of the monsterish details are truly exaggerations and fabrications.

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    5. There are probably some folks that won't vote for Bernie because he's Jewish.

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  2. Column nails it, although the truth will hurt those who continue to deny the obvious. Most important point is TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED, GET OUT AND VOTE IN NOVEMBER. Is that a picture of a young NS with your mother? Adorable...what a punim!

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  3. Hillary is probably one of the worst democrat candidates in a long time. For how smart she supposedly is she is really flawed. How ever I would rather have her selecting Supreme Court Judges, Federal Judges and other people that presidents put in leading positions. Trump would set the country back 100 years with those powers in his hands.

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  4. Not all GOPers hate Bill Clinton, George W. Bush seems to have a genuine friendship with Bill. Also some Republicans who were in congress in the Clinton years had respect for him, as they worked together to balance the budget. I expect there will be less partisanship between Republicans and Hillary, then there has been with President Obama. Some Republicans have hinted they would prefer Hillary over Trump as President. In any case I value the value of my IRA, and believe having Hillary as President would be the best choice for continued economic growth.

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    1. I think you meant George H.W. Bush has a friendship with Bill Clinton, which he does. They're often palling around..
      No sane person wants anything to do with his halfwit son!

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  5. We're not electing a king. And even kings can't deliver on all their promisies or fulfill all the wishes of their supporters. We think of him as an authoritarian figure, but it was Otto von Bismark who observed that politics is "the art of the possible, the attainable...the second best." If you can look at all the candidates and not see that Hillary is far and away the one most capable of achieving progressive goals and defending the achievments of the recent past in the face of that reality, and if you think her husband's sins should weigh at all on that, you're not thinking very clearly.

    Tom Evans

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    1. TE-It's not so much his sins as hers,for staying with someone like that and playing the doormat looking the other way, just for political gain. One would expect better her.

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    2. Let me get this straight...you're blaming someone for not leaving her husband?

      I know Trump's supporters blithely shrug off his four marriages, but when did staying married become something to condemn?

      As for "political gain," unless you're a great confidante of the Clintons, you know nothing about her motivations, or his, for doing anything related to their marriage.

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    3. Take it easy, Bitter. She is the one who claimed she would never be a "stand by your man" Tammy Wynnette type. Nor am I a Trump supporter, but not because of his 3 marriages. At any rate that is not the main reason or only reason I don't support Mrs. Clinton.

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    4. She's supposed to be the feminist, as another here said. Why didn't see her husband as a predator? These weren't all ladies looking for a quick fling. She turned on them rather than on him. We'll have to agree to disagree.

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    5. Prying into the personal lives of strangers and condemning them for supposedly falling short of their standards is a Republican speciality.

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    6. Well I will say that sometimes private lives should be highlighted; for example Larry Craig's bathroom adventures would have been much less noteworthy (besides an example of bad judgement) had he not supported laws which were meant to make the lives of LGBT Americans worse.

      I also don't go as far as to say Clinton is not a Feminist because of her actions BUT it is noteworthy in the sense that she wants to be a hero for women, sexually abused or worse.

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    7. Sorry to disappoint you, Neil, but not liking Clinton for whatever reasons doesn't make one a Republican.

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    8. May I suggest a tranquilizer for you "unknown?"

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    9. Private: I never said it did. I said it is a Republican specialty. Birds fly, but flying doesn't make you a bird.

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    10. Paul-Don't forget she took funds from Saudis that mistreat women.

      It looks like one has to be a Billary fan around here or else...

      At least Sanders did better than anyone expected and that says something about some Democrats and how they feel about Hillary. Nor does it mean that they are delusional.

      Unfortunately,Trump did better than anyone expected as well.

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  6. Neil, please tell me that's the vagaries of the English language, and you didn't just label Bernie Sanders as a "fabulist"?

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  7. I'm not sure what you mean by "vagaries of the English language." A fabulist is someone who tells fables, such as that a "political revolution" will enable him to do all kinds of things that until now have been politically impossible.

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  8. Trump gave his first prepared speech yesterday, on foreign policy, with teleprompters. As far as I can tell, it wasn't much of an improvement over his off-the-cuff rambling. The most generous thing you can say is that he avoided any patently absurd howlers, like saying Japan should develop its own nukes or Mexico will pay for a fence to keep its rapists in.

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    1. Exactly. A person who spins "elaborate, dishonest stories." I did not, I'll point out, say there aren't plenty of people who fall for them, so no need to insist that they're not STORIES, they're TRUE. Small kids say the same about Santa.

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    2. For those who can't stomach Hillary or Republicans/ Libertarians as a matter of principle.

      SOCIALIST PARTY USA:

      Mimi Soltysik Angela Walker
      Emidio "Mimi" Soltysik (California)
      Presidential Nominee

      Angela Walker (Wisconsin)
      Vice Presidential Nominee

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    3. Someday, the great Elizabeth Warren will run, hopefully.

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    4. The establishment Republicans leaders won't go for Trump. His numerous followers will riot if they don't get the nomination,he'll go independent thus splitting the Republican party and then voila! Too bad we can't get better choices on the Dem side.

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    5. Hillary is a moderate Republican. Just look into Wall St, war votes and fracking business. She's pro woman only when it suits her.

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  9. To say there aren't plenty of people who voted against Obama because he was black is one thing, but to say he won in spite of being black is a disingenuous leap. Would a white newbie senator who previously had been a nondescript state senator from Illinois ever have been given the spotlight Obama was given by the party? Would he have granted the kind of breakthrough status he got from the media had he been just some white guy challenging the frontrunner Hillary? Come on. You can keep your nonracist cred and still acknowledge the obvious. Even many good liberals have done so.

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    1. Obama did not emerge from the womb as a U.S. Senator, even a newbie one, nor as a state senator, however "nondescript." When people say he became president in spite of being black, they mean that he had to overcome the obstacles, prejudices, problems and challenges that America throws in the way of every single black person who treads its soil. Show me someone who denies this, and I'll show you someone who not only believes that Obama became president because he was black, but probably voted against him for that reason and not much else.

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    2. You mean like John F. Kennedy? Yup, might happen.

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    3. Citing Jack Kennedy might serve as a counter argument as well. After all, he did allegedly get 110% of the Catholic vote...in Chicago anyway. He didn't get my vote, but 18-year-olds couldn't vote then and I was in San Diego at the time.

      jor

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    4. It disproves your point about Obama getting his shot because of his color. Of course, another aspect can be spied, giving you a pretext to ignore the point.

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    5. Jackie O may have stayed with a philanderer but at least only for a million dollars put into her private account by an inlaw. I say, ruin the bastard's political career. Humiliate them. Vengeance!

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  10. Well this is certainly a more interesting article than the one on the lounge singers or silly commercials. What are those editors thinking about asking you to write that in the paper, if it was their idea.

    Oh and enough about the Japanese mascot bear fad please.

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