You are currently browsing articles tagged Hillary Clinton.
Tags: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton
The only thing Hillary Clinton had to gain from using a private email account and server as Secretary of State was convenience. She wasn’t trying to hide or steal anything. You could argue this server was less secure and made it easier to hack sensitive business, but it’s not like the American government’s servers are exactly impervious to breaches.
The partisanship of the FBI in trying to launch an October surprise may be shockingly reckless, but the press in all its forms was making a small story into a huge one long before Comey’s cohort tried to tip the election. The media may know its biases, but when it comes to scandal–or something that looks like it might pass for it–everyone is all in. That’s why a Secretary of State using a private email account, something Colin Powell also did, has been treated with the utmost importance, though it will not in any way decide foreign policy or create jobs or fix the healthcare system. When it comes to the future of our country, it’s a non-issue masquerading as a vital one.
The opening of Matthew Yglesias’ take on the “scandal” at Vox:
Some time ago, Hillary Clinton and her advisers decided that the best course of action was to apologize for having used a personal email address to conduct government business while serving as secretary of state. Clinton herself was, clearly, not really all that remorseful about this, and it showed in her early efforts to address it. Eventually aides prevailed upon her to express a greater degree of regret, which they hoped would lay the issue to rest.
It did not. Instead, email-related talk has dogged Clinton throughout the election and it has influenced public perceptions of her in an overwhelmingly negative way. July polling showed 56 percent of Americans believed Clinton broke the law by relying on a personal email address with another 36 percent piling on to say the episode showed “bad judgments” albeit not criminality.
Because Clinton herself apologized for it and because it does not appear to be in any way important, Clinton allies, surrogates, and co-partisans have largely not familiarized themselves with the details of the matter, instead saying vaguely that it was an error of judgment and she apologized and America has bigger fish to fry.
This has had the effect of further inscribing and reinscribing the notion that Clinton did something wrong, meaning that every bit of micro-news that puts the scandal back on cable amounts to reminding people of something bad that Clinton did. In total, network newscasts have, remarkably, dedicated more airtime to coverage of Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined.
This is unfortunate because emailgate, like so many Clinton pseudo-scandals before it, is bullshit. The real scandal here is the way a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the US presidential election — overwhelming stories of much more importance, giving the American people a completely skewed impression of one of the two nominees, and creating space for the FBI to intervene in the election in favor of its apparently preferred candidate in a dangerous way.•
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Matthew Yglesias
In last night’s Presidential debate, Donald Trump was slowed by a case of the sniffles and a case of being a complete fucking idiot. The sniffles may go away.
There might something to predictions made by artificial hive minds, though I wouldn’t bet the house on it, let alone the White House. But you do have to credit UNU for knowing before most of us that Trump was a legitimate contender. A few hours before yesterday’s debate, UNU conducted a Reddit AMA and made the predictions below. None of them really required a great leap of intelligence to answer, and only the hideous hotelier’s less-P.U.-than-usual behavior tripped up the AI.
Question:
Who wins the debate tonight? Does it matter for the election?
UNU:
Clinton wins the debate tonight ‘by a lot’ and ‘i believe’ the debate matters for the election.
Question:
Will Trump come off as A. Presidential, or B. Impeachable?
UNU:
Impeachable.
Question:
Will Donald Trump use the phrase “Crooked Hillary” during the debate?
UNU:
It’s likely.
Question:
Will Trump be aggressive, or on his best behavior?
UNU:
Aggressive 99%.
Question:
Lester Holt is doing a good job of controlling the debate?
UNU:
Totally disagree.
Question:
Will Trump blame the media if he does poorly?
UNU:
It’s likely.
Question:
Roughly speaking, how much impact could this debate have on the overall election?
UNU:
Roughly: A lot
Question:
Who would you rather have babysit your kid, the Donald or HRC?
UNU:
Clinton by a lot•
Tags: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, UNU
It’s amusing that the truest thing Hillary Clinton has said during the election season–the “basket of deplorables” line–has caused her grief. The political rise of the hideous hotelier Donald Trump, from his initial announcement of his candidacy forward, has always been about identity politics (identity: white), with the figures of the forgotten, struggling Caucasians of Thomas Frank narratives more noise than signal.
The American middle class has legitimately taken a big step back for four decades, owing to a number of factors (globalization, computerization, tax rates, etc.), but the latest numbers show a huge rebound for middle- and lower-class Americans under President Obama and his worker-friendly policies.
Perhaps that progress will be short lived, with automation and robotics poised to alter the employment landscape numerous times in the coming decades. But the Digital Age challenges have been completely absent from Trump’s rhetoric (if he even knows about them). And his stated policies will reverse the gains made by the average American over the last eight years. His ascent has always been about color and not the color of money.
From Sam Fleming at the Financial Times:
Household incomes surged last year in the US, suggesting American middle class fortunes are improving in defiance of the dark rhetoric that has dominated the presidential election campaign.
A strengthening labour market, higher wages and persistently subdued inflation pushed real median household income up 5.2 per cent between 2014 and 2015 to $56,516, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday. This marked the first gain since the eve of the global financial crisis in 2007 and the first time that inflation-adjusted growth exceeded 5 per cent since the bureau’s records began in 1967.
But the increase in 2015 still brought incomes to just 1.6 per cent below the levels they were hovering at the year before the recession started and they remain 2.4 per cent below their peak in 1999. Income gains were largest at the bottom and middle of the income scale relative to the top, reducing income inequality.
The US election debate has been dominated by the story of long-term income stagnation, with analysts attributing the rise of Donald Trump in part to the shrinking ranks of America’s middle class, rising inequality and the impact of globalisation on household incomes. Tuesday’s strong numbers, which cover the year in which the Republican candidate launched his campaign, cast that narrative in a new light.•
Tags: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Sam Fleming
If you’re Hillary Clinton, do you want Paul Wolfowitz’s endorsement? If fits the narrative of strange bedfellows joining in an effort to defeat Donald Trump, a modern medicine show selling poisons. But it also reminds that you backed the invasion of Iraq, the calamity the former Bush adviser helped enact. It’s not likely to make much difference in voting booths, but it is another indication we have an establishment versus insurgent election, with the mutineer an Ahab, horribly ill-suited to steer the ship.
Gordon Repinski’s has a smart Spiegel interview with Wolfowitz, who largely blames the failings of the intelligence community for the invasion and President Obama’s non-interventionist policies for the fall of Syria and the rise of ISIS. It is a selective view of history. An excerpt:
Question:
Recently, 50 former senior Republican security officials declared Donald Trump to be a security risk. Is he?
Paul Wolfowitz:
Yes, he is.
Question:
Why?
Paul Wolfowitz:
He says he admires Putin, that Saddam Hussein was killing terrorists, that the Chinese were impressive because they were tough on Tiananmen Square. That is pretty disturbing.
Question:
Do you think it’s time for people like you to speak out against Trump?
Paul Wolfowitz:
It’s complicated. Trump says that it is precisely we and our policies that are responsible for the mess in Iraq. But I certainly think it’s important to speak up and say how unacceptable he is. I’m always more than willing to do that.
Question:
Are you afraid of the possible consequences a Trump presidency would have on foreign and security policy?
Paul Wolfowitz:
The only way you can be comfortable about Trump’s foreign policy, is to think he doesn’t really mean anything he says. That’s a pretty uncomfortable place to be in. Our security depends on having good relationships with our allies. Trump mainly shows contempt for them. And he seems to be unconcerned about the Russian aggression in Ukraine. By doing this he tells them that they can go ahead and do what they are doing. That is dangerous. …
Question:
Why wasn’t the Republican Party able to stop Donald Trump?
Paul Wolfowitz:
Obviously, there’s unhappiness among the population. The Bernie Sanders phenomenon shows that it’s not confined to Republicans. There is a general sentiment that the country is on the wrong track. Against that background of pessimism, someone like Trump can be successful in getting the nomination.
Question:
Who are you going to vote for in November?
Paul Wolfowitz:
I wish there were somebody I could be comfortable voting for. I might have to vote for Hillary Clinton, even though I have big reservations about her.•
Tags: Donald Trump, Gordon Repinski, Hillary Clinton, Paul Wlfowitz
After an exhaustive search, Michael Wolff finally located two Americans more unlikable than him–Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton–and he’s not letting go.
Wolff recently wrote a really good Hollywood Reporter profile of Trump, who desperately needs a food taster, but you’ll pry that pint of Häagen-Dazs from his cold, dead hands. In the same publication, he now writes of the final leg of a contest between two figures many voters see as a racist comb over versus a lying pantsuit, though anyone finding parity in the misdeeds of Trump, a virulently bigoted Berlusconi who aims to be a Mussolini, and Clinton, a politically expedient person but a solid Washington practitioner who’ll likely keep the trains running on time, is forcing a false equivalency.
It’s an entertaining piece as Wolff’s always are, though as is often the case with the writer, everyone in the article but him is depicted as an unknowing dolt. Additionally, Wolff’s portrayal of Trump voters as struggling, uneducated whites buys into a narrative that’s way overstated. His line that makes most sense is that it’s odd Hillary seems so driven to be likable in an election where that quality seems to not be an asset. Wolff ultimately gives Trump a greater chance at victory than any other major pundit or pollster.
An excerpt:
The Democrats’ strongest card was to present Trump as an existential threat and to foresee the breakdown of democracy’s fail-safe mechanisms. This also was quite an alarming approach. The guttural “Lock her up!” chants at the RNC seemed extreme enough. But in a way, the Democrats’ position was much more radical. Trump cannot be allowed; Trump is immoral; Trump is — the ultimate disqualifier — insane. In other words, if Duck Dynasty-type voters carry the day in November, that would not be an example of democracy but a failure of it.
The historic departure here is in arguing legitimacy over policies. In this, the Democrats appear to have two fears. The first is that traditional political techniques don’t work anymore and that Trump has significantly more mastery over the new techniques. The Democrats have spent $68 million on advertising so far. Trump: $6 million. How do you fight someone who doesn’t have to spend? The second is that the party’s own policies, pushed left by Bernie Sanders and focused on usually undependable young voters, are up against a backlash that it doesn’t know how to defuse and is opposed to accommodating — a protest vote by culturally adrift, undereducated white voters without precise political moorings, an identity group the Democrats hardly knew had an identity (this already may be a cliched portrait of the Trump voter, a broad approximation of people whom the media doesn’t know). As President Obama acknowledged, seeming to scratch his head, it’s not right nor left anymore, but something much more fundamental and frightening — but beyond that, he seemed as clueless as anyone.
The Democrats’ approach, in a convention whose television ratings outpaced the Republicans until the final day (Trump himself remains a bigger draw than Hillary) was to argue that there is an onrushing Trump apocalypse, but not to address any of the issues causing people to vote for the apocalypse. “Some people are angry, I get that,” said former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, but, more clearly, she was wholly bewildered, and not getting at all — along with the entire lineup of Democratic speakers — whatever it is that’s bothering Trump voters. In fact, if anything, the Democrats doubled down on many of the issues and cultural currents that seem most threatening to the Trump side, rather believing that Trump’s illegitimacy gave them the freedom to go increasingly left.
One drawback of successful propaganda is that instead of fooling everybody else, you only fool yourself.•
Tags: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Michael Wolff
I’m disappointed a relatively sober-minded person like James Baker can’t see past partisanship in regards to Donald Trump, Daddy Warbucks as an aspiring war criminal, but it’s no surprise Donald Rumsfeld supports the odious GOP nominee.
Rumsfeld, and unmitigated disaster as W’s Defense Secretary (Trump agrees), is still using his bullshit fog-of-war lexicon of obfuscation, deeming Trump a “known unknown,” and arguing Hillary should be indicted, a comment he makes without a seeming shred of self-awareness of the piles of dead bodies that were needlessly rendered such by both his willful actions and gross incompetence.
From David Martosko at the Daily Mail:
An animated Rumsfeld, 83, was even more eager to talk about the Trump phenomenon, saying that a year ago ‘you could count on one hand’ the number of people who thought he would be the GOP nominee.
While the former defense secretary said he and Trump have never met, he agrees with the real estate tycoon about what Trump calls the potential for a ‘Trojan horse’ infiltration of terrorists among the Syrian refugees whom the Obama administration has been resettling in the U.S.
‘He’s absolutely right,’ he said. ‘Anyone who thinks the radical Islamists are not going to try to utilize every venue they can find to infiltrate in the United States, and in western European countries, to achieve their goals – these people just don’t get it.’ …
Rumsfeld framed the choice between Clinton and Trump in terms political historians will find familiar, relying on the words he used in 2002 to describe questions about the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to spot weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“Mrs. Clinton is a known known. Donald Trump is a known unknown who’s a recent entry into the equation,’ he said, attributing the insight to his wife.
‘And I am a lot more comfortable with a known unknown, who I will support, than with a known known who is unacceptable.’•
Tags: David Martosko, Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton
The 1993 version of Hillary Clinton probably would have been far more appreciated in 2016 than this year’s model, but that iteration wasn’t so popular back then. Soon after her husband’s first inauguration, Michael Kelly published “Saint Hillary,” a NYT Magazine article that concerned what Clinton believed was her spiritual mission as the freshly minted First Lady.
Her views seem New Agey in retrospect and were no doubt spurred in part by grief over her father’s death, but Kelly, who was later killed as an Iraq embed, did unwittingly pen the piece at the perfect time to capture the moment prior to the sea change in the culture due to the decentralization of the media, the rise of the Internet and the emergence of Reality TV. It was just before our communications matured and we regressed. Any deep conversation now is just waiting to be trolled. We’re better but we’re worse.
An excerpt:
Driven by the increasingly common view that something is terribly awry with modern life, Mrs. Clinton is searching for not merely programmatic answers but for The Answer. Something in the Meaning of It All line, something that would inform everything from her imminent and all-encompassing health care proposal to ways in which the state might encourage parents not to let their children wander all hours of the night in shopping malls.
When it is suggested that she sounds as though she’s trying to come up with a sort of unified-field theory of life, she says, excitedly, “That’s right, that’s exactly right!”
She is, it develops in the course of two long conversations, looking for a way of looking at looking at the world that would marry conservatism and liberalism, and capitalism and statism, that would tie together practically everything: the way we are, the way we were, the faults of man and the word of God, the end of Communism and the beginning of the third millennium, crime in the streets and on Wall Street, teen-age mothers and foul-mouthed children and frightening drunks in the parks, the cynicism of the press and the corrupting role of television, the breakdown of civility and the loss of community.
The point of all this is not abstract or small. What Mrs. Clinton seems — in all apparent sincerity — to have in mind is leading the way to something on the order of a Reformation: the remaking of the American way of politics, government, indeed life. A lot of people, contemplating such a task, might fall prey to self doubts. Mrs. Clinton does not blink.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she says. “But we can’t get scared away from it because it is an overwhelming task.’
The difficulty is bound to be increased by the awkward fact that a good deal of what Mrs. Clinton sees as wrong right now with the American way of life can be traced, at least in part, to the last great attempt to find The Answer: the liberal experiments in the reshaping of society that were the work of the intellectual elite of . . . Mrs. Clinton’s generation.
THE CRUSADE OF HILLARY Rodham Clinton began on April 6 in Austin, Tex. There, speaking from notes she had scribbled on the plane, she moved swiftly past the usual thanks and jokes to wade into an extraordinary speech: a passionate, at times slightly incoherent, call for national spiritual renewal.
The Western world, she said, needed to be made anew. America suffered from a “sleeping sickness of the soul,” a “sense that somehow economic growth and prosperity, political democracy and freedom are not enough — that we lack at some core level meaning in our individual lives and meaning collectively, that sense that our lives are part of some greater effort, that we are connected to one another, that community means that we have a place where we belong no matter who we are.”
She spoke of “cities that are filled with hopeless girls with babies and angry boys with guns” as only the most visible signs of a nation crippled by “alienation and despair and hopelessness,” a nation that was in the throes of a “crisis of meaning.”
“What do our governmental institutions mean? What do our lives in today’s world mean?” she asked. “What does it mean in today’s world to pursue not only vocations, to be part of institutions, but to be human?”
These questions, she said, led to the larger question: “Who will lead us out of this spiritual vacuum?” The answer to that was “all of us,” all required “to play our part in redefining what our lives are and what they should be.”
“Let us be willing,” she urged in conclusion, “to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the 20th century, moving into a new millennium.”•
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Michael Kelly
Donald Trump, Pinochet with a line of men’s fragrances, would seem to have a proper path forward in the GOP race. With the next month of Republican primaries favoring far-right pols, and the trio of Kasich, Rubio and Bush subtracting from one another, the Reality TV realtor need only outpace Ted Cruz, a rat trap of a man and the only person in America more unlikable than him. Trump isn’t a true conservative, but he’s clearly communicated his intention to “Make America Great White Again.” At this point, his campaign can’t be disqualified by anything he says, no matter how repugnant, but will instead rise or fall based on how many caucasians in the U.S. deeply resent no longer being able to use the N-word without consequence.
It’s not as easy to see a similar road to success for the other upstart, Bernie Sanders, despite his rousing N.H. win and Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities. Until the race moves past Super Tuesday, the Vermont Senator will walk headlong into an unforgiving slate of mostly Southern states where he’ll have to pick up non-white voters, something he’s thus far shown little flair for. Sanders could be trailing badly by the time we move deeper into March, so he needs to change that reality before the South Carolina primary.
From Edward Luce in the Financial Times:
Nobody knows better than the Clintons the power of early state momentum.
In his victory speech, Mr Sanders said he was travelling to New York on Wednesday — “but not to raise money from Wall Street.” In fact, he will be breakfasting with the Reverend Al Sharpton, the radical black pastor, who seems likely to endorse him. Other black celebrities have been lined up.
Mr Sanders has two weeks, and the media wind at his back, to turn South Carolina into another victory. If he pulls that off, he will join Mr Trump as odds-on favourite to win his party’s nomination. The polls say Mrs Clinton will halt Mr Sanders’ progress south of the Mason-Dixon Line. But pre-New Hampshire polls are now virtually worthless. Anything could happen.
Both parties may be on course to endorse candidates who repudiate much of what they stand for.
If there was ever a moment Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, was tempted to run for the White House, it may be fast approaching.•
Tags: Bernie Sander, Donald Trump, Edward Luce, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz
If the overall American economy continues to brighten over the next two years, particularly employment and wage growth, a couple of very different potential candidates for the Presidency almost surely have no chance: Mitt Romney and Elizabeth Warren. The former’s greatest claim, valid or not, is that he’s a money man who can turn things around; the latter is seen as a populist who can dismantle and reorganize a failed system. Should another recession occur, however, particularly a second Great Recession, protest candidates of all sorts are back on the table.
In “FT Predictions: The World in 2015,” Edward Luce answers the most obvious question about the next U.S. national election:
“Will a serious rival emerge to Hillary Clinton in 2015?
No. We will not know the name of the Republican nominee until 2016. Even then, he — there are no female hopefuls among the 20 or so names doing the rounds — will be so bruised that Mrs Clinton will begin the general election with a head start.
In the Democratic field, she will be challenged by one or two second-tier candidates, such as James Webb, the former Virginia senator, and Martin O’Malley, the outgoing governor of Maryland. But Mrs Clinton will keep her grip on the primaries. Her only real threat, Elizabeth Warren, the populist senator from Massachusetts, will decline to run in spite of strong urging from the liberal left. When it comes to it, Ms Warren will not want to stand in the path of the election of America’s first female president.”
Tags: Edward Luce, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, James Webb, Martin O’Malley, Mitt Romney
Two major questions about a potential Hillary Clinton White House:
- Would she still be willing to do big and bold things as she tried to with heath-care reform during her husband’s administration, or has the price exacted from her during that time and from President Obama over the Affordable Care Act made her wary about attempting anything beyond incrementalism?
- Would she be a neocon’s dream on foreign policy?
There are other questions regarding the undue influence of corporations in our democratic process, but I think those have been unfortunately answered already with the Clintons knee-deep in that kind of money.
From a new Spiegel interview with Clinton conducted by Marc Hujer and Holger Stark, some spying-related word association:
“Spiegel:
Edward Snowden.
Hillary Clinton:
You know, I think he is a poor messenger for the message that he’s trying to take credit for. He came into the National Security Agency apparently with the purpose of trying to gather a lot of information, and most of what he gathered had nothing to do with surveillance in the United States, but obviously around the world. And I think he could have provoked the debate in our country without stealing and distributing material that was government property and was of some consequence. And then for him to go first to China and then to Russia raises a lot of questions, but he is going to have to make his own choices. If he returns to the United States, he will certainly stand trial, but he will have an opportunity to speak out and to make his case in both a legal way and a public fashion.
Spiegel:
We actually wanted to talk about your book and not about the NSA, but since it became known on Friday that a member of the German intelligence agency was arrested who had admitted that he acted as a spy for a US intelligence service, the issue of the NSA has gained a new dimension. Given the tense political climate, do you believe the CIA could seriously come up with idea of infiltrating German intelligence?
Hillary Clinton:
Well, I know that your government is conducting a criminal investigation, and we will learn more as the facts are developed. And I know nothing other than what I read. But clearly, we have to do a much better job in working together between Germany and the United States to sort out what the appropriate lines of cooperation are on intelligence and security. I think the cooperation is necessary for our security, but we don’t want to undermine it by raising doubts again and again. Clearly, the surveillance on Chancellor Merkel’s phone was absolutely wrong. The president said that. I think that he made it very clear it was unacceptable. Where are the lines on both sides? That’s what we have to work out.”
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Holger Stark, Marc Hujer
I was fairly certain that a second term for President Obama wouldn’t chasten Republicans, wouldn’t make them more amenable to compromise. But I’m still pretty stunned by the intensity of the continued rejection of reason, even if only because it’s such a tactical mistake. And when GOP Chairman Reince Priebus announces a year later that the party is readying attacks on Hillary Clinton based on Benghazi, her healthcare reform attempt in the 1990s and other losing issues, you know the Right is still tone deaf to anything outside the echo chamber.
The GOP’s major problem is that it’s become a party of antiquated zealots funded by wealthy opportunists. When you walk into a national election knowing that you will lose a large majority of women, Latinos, African-Americans, Independents, gay voters and youth voters, you have very slim margins–you are in trouble. But with money streaming in from above and angry threats being shouted from the ground, the tendency has been to make things not better but worse. You shut down the government, for instance, when the vast majority of Americans, even much of the Republican base, is vehemently opposed to such a gambit.
It’s horrible that several Americans died in the Benghazi attacks, and it’s fine to investigate what occurred to try to ensure it doesn’t happen again. But I think most adults realize that in a region exploding with discontent, instability and civil war, danger abounds. That’s very different than invading the wrong country, getting 5,000 of our soldiers killed, maybe 100,000 Iraqis and spending a trillion dollars, as the GOP did.
I don’t know if Clinton will run for President in 2016 or if she will be the Democratic nominee if she does enter the race, but I know this strategy against her isn’t a winning one, and the Republicans seem unable to divine one in a country of shifting demographics. There is the potential that 2012, when the GOP lost nine out of ten swing states, may seem to them in the near future like the good old days.
From Talking Points Memo:
“Asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt if the RNC began to look at Clinton as the Democrats’ presumed nominee, Priebus said the RNC’s research shop already turned its attention to the former State Department leader.
‘I think that we have to be very aggressive on what she’s done or hasn’t done,’ the chairman said, according to a transcript of Hewitt’s radio show. ‘And the things that she is famous for, like a botched health care rollout in the 90s, and Benghazi, and the things that she is involved with that are or went obviously pretty badly, we need to focus in on.’
Priebus said that although the RNC was looking toward the 2014 midterms, the committee could still suss out some of the ‘rough stuff’ about Clinton.”
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Reince Priebus
George Will, who is not a confirmed yahoo like many in his party, nonetheless sucks at math. Right before he predicted Romney would beat Obama in a landslide despite the polls saying the opposite, he also set Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming President at a very low number. Clinton may or may not be elected to the highest office in the land, but his statement already seems foolish. From a September 24, 2012 interview on Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing:
“Alec Baldwin:
What do you think her political future is?
George Will:
Zero. There’s a whole generation of coming candidates. Andrew Cuomo in New York. Governor O’Malley in Maryland. Countless people. Paul Ryan. All kinds of good people out there.”
Tags: George Will, Hillary Clinton
“There’s a mighty judgement coming, though I could be wrong,” sang the poet. The stars are aligning for just such a reckoning for the GOP over the next three years.
Back before the 2012 election, there were people who believed the Republican Congress would be more conciliatory toward President Obama if he won reelection, especially if he swept most of the swing states. Obama himself used that reasoning during the campaign, though I don’t know if he truly believed it. But things have only gotten worse. From immigration to voting rights to women’s rights, the GOP has been emboldened somehow to double down on antagonizing as many people as possible outside of their white, male base. They’ve learned nothing.
The party’s hold on Congress has largely been enabled by gerrymandering and not the will of the people. But it’s really only delayed the waterloo. If Hilary Clinton runs for President the next time around and wins the Democratic nomination, the demographics favor her so powerfully that it could be a devastating defeat for the Republicans. The way many female voters have been angered and the number of young Latinos who are aging into voting eligibility spells a doomsday scenario.
If you lose the large majority of the female, African-American, Latino, Asian American, Jewish, youth and LGBT votes, and you win a smaller portion of the white vote, that spells a rout that could sweep the GOP completely out of power. Of course, I could be wrong. A lot can change between now and then, but the Republicans have so far shown no ability or even desire to change,•
Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
The Hillary Clinton portion of the famous campaign appearance that Bubba made with Arsenio Hall in 1992, when the future President played sax.
I think if you look at their first terms side by side, President Obama has been a far more sure-handed leader than Bill Clinton with far fewer miscues–and during a much more challenging time. Hillary herself, as Secretary of State, has been more commanding than her husband was in foreign affairs. But during this appearance, she was in a supporting role.
I often think of how different relations between the sexes would be in America if at this point in our nation’s history roughly half the Presidents had been men and half women. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, I know, but I don’t think the disconnect is merely because of some celestial difference. I think when you live in an unequal society, things become weird for all involved.
Tags: Arsenio Hall, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton