Oh PLEASE!

Oh please! Can we not all go swooning and sobbing over Rebecca Traister's passive-aggressive treatment of Hillary and her campaign?

Clinton stood alongside Barack and Michelle Obama before a crowd of 33,000 people outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the spot where the architects of the nation had endowed its citizens with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — as they built their new country on the backs of enslaved African-Americans and subsidiary women.

The founders did not "endow the citizens." Traister takes the Republican deification of the founders to an even higher level. The document says "all men are created equal."  We chose to interpret that generic "men" as "people," and that is fine, but nationality and citizenship are not specified.  The proper interpretation is "all people" (on earth) are "endowed by the Creator" with these inalienable rights. Americans are not endowed by America's founders with these rights. They are among God-given human rights (the implication is that there are other rights as well), according to the document.

The enormity of the upset came at the end of what had already been a traumatic election for the women and immigrants and people of color to whom Clinton was trying to appeal, and who had spent months being derided, threatened, groped, caricatured, insulted, and humiliated by Donald Trump and his supporters.

I don't know about the groping part, but what was most dramatic at his rallies were the actual physical attacks on people, male and female, who were, usually quietly, protesting Trump and his policies in some way.

Clinton was surely a flawed candidate; but Trump was a catastrophically awful one. The disparity is enough to make one wonder if she ever really had a chance.

This is a meme. In what way was Hillary a flawed candidate? All candidates have flaws. No one is perfect. If Hillary were a man, would she be called "flawed?" This meme had been repeated so often by Election Day that many simply accepted it, and clearly Traister has bought into it.  Hillary is not perfect and was not a perfect candidate, but she was as close to perfect as we are likely to see for a good long time.

In debates, when attacked as a member of the corrupt global oligarchy, Clinton would bleat about being a woman, a grandmother, different from literally everyone else ever to have been on a general-election presidential-debate stage, yet her claims never really landed.

Excuse me? "Bleat?" Words mean things. The metaphor here is that of a nanny goat. Insulting.

White women voters have consistently marked their ballots Republican since the 1970s: 56 percent of them voted for Romney over Obama in 2012, 53 percent for McCain over Obama in 2008, 55 percent for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004.

Not sure what the point of this is. It explains nothing. Romney and McCain lost. Bush won. What is the point?

“Crying as if someone died” is a text message I received from more than one friend last week. And it is as if someone died: a dream of what we could have been, of the president we could have had. And about the loss of one of the most inspiring (and sure, flawed, but good God am I tired of having to always acknowledge that she was flawed) leaders many of us will know.

And she doubles down on the "flaw? meme.

The media narrative about the wretchedness of her political skills has obscured the fact that Hillary Clinton was a pretty great candidate for the presidency. Not a magnetic or inspiring speaker, no. The bearer of way too much awkward baggage, yes. But also: steady and strong and strategic and smart. Despite being under investigation by Congress and the FBI and the media, despite having her State Department emails made public, despite having her campaign staff’s emails hacked, despite being married to a man whose legislative and personal history made him deeply problematic, and despite the rolling waves of sexism directed at her and the racism directed at her predecessor and political partner Obama, she literally won the popularity contest.

"The wretchedness of her political skills," the media meme Traister does nothing to banish. Hillary did everything she was supposed to do, and she did it all thoroughly and assiduously. She listened to the people. She took note of their concerns. She did her homework. She worked out solutions with expert advisors.  Let's completely ignore that the purpose of the investigations was to do exactly what they accomplished: tarnish her image politically, hobble her, defeat her bid for the highest office in the land. There was never a legitimate reason for Benghazi - come server - come email investigations. The purpose was #NeverHillary. They accomplished that.

Let's leave WJC out of this.  He was not running. She was.  He did leave office with a 60% approval rating, so what was the point there?

Why this November 14 New York Magazine article is suddenly circulating today is beyond me.  Like every post-mortem so far, it is a balloon-drop of possibilities. Back in May 2016, Traister told us how she came to Hillary slowly, and judging from some of her TV appearances, a little grudgingly.  We can see this opus as a glass half full: we are glad she got there at all.  Or we can view it as half-empty: setting up the article within the frame of the founders-as-demi-gods meme.  This stands as a premise she does nothing to shatter.



To circulate this uncritically as "read-cry-share?" Sorry. Traister needs to shed a lot more of her hidden anti-Hillary baggage before I would do that.  Read it, by all means, but do so with your virtual red pen not with a box of tissues.

Getting to know ... and love ... Hillary Clinton

I've never felt entirely comfortable with Rebecca Traister portrayed as a "pro-Hillary" commentator (as Melissa Harris Perry cast her).  My instinct was correct according to her New York Magazine article.  She once was, she admits in this article a "young Hillary-hater."  But a few days with Hillary on the primary trail have elicited an article well worth a read.

Hillary Clinton vs. Herself

By Rebecca Traister

There’s nothing simple about this candidacy—or candidate.

Photographs by Brigitte Lacombe

Clinton speaking at the Louisville Slugger Hall of Fame on May 10.

In a locker room at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, people are waiting in line to get their pictures taken with Hillary Clinton before a rally in the school’s gym. It’s a kid-heavy crowd, and Clinton has been chatting easily with them.

But soon there’s only one family left and the mood shifts. Francine and David Wheeler are there with their 13-year-old son, Nate, and his 17-month-old brother, Matty, who’s scrambling around on the floor. They carry a stack of photographs of their other son, Benjamin, who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when he was 6. David presses the photos of his dead son on Clinton with the urgency of a parent desperate to keep other parents from having to show politicians pictures of their dead 6-year-olds.

Leaning in toward Wheeler as if they are colleagues mapping out a strategy, Clinton speaks in a voice that is low and serious. “We have to be as organized and focused as they are to beat them and undermine them,” she says. “We are going to be relentless and determined and focused … They are experts at scaring people, telling them, ‘They’re going to take your guns’ … We need the same level of intensity. Intensity is more important than numbers.” Clinton tells Wheeler that she has already discussed gun control with Chuck Schumer, who will likely be leading the Senate Democrats in 2017; she talks about the differences between state and federal law and between regulatory and legislative fixes, and describes the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which extended the protections of the Second Amendment, as “a terrible decision.” She is practically swelling, Hulk-like, with her desire to describe to this family how she’s going to solve the problem of gun violence, even though it is clear that their real problem — the absence of their middle child — is unsolvable. When Matty grabs the front of his diaper, Clinton laughs, suggesting that he either needs a change or is pretending to be a baseball player. She is warm, present, engaged, but not sappy. For Clinton, the highest act of emotional respect is perhaps to find something to do, not just something to say. “I’m going to do everything I can,” she tells Wheeler. “Everything I can.”

Read more >>>>

Unlike Traister, Aaron Loeb is not a famous author or commentator. But he was, for a long stretch of the primary season a fence-sitter.  His article in Medium is an Odyssey with some good healthy helpings of the history of Republican strategies against prior good, solid Democratic candidates.

Aaron Loeb

The Case For and Against Clinton

Less than 100 years ago…

There are women alive today in the United States who were born without the right to vote. We are on the verge of nominating the first woman in our history to be a major-party candidate. On the other side, we are on the verge of nominating the first major-party candidate to have never held political office since Eisenhower. Eisenhower beat Hitler. Donald Trump thinks Hitler had a lot of good ideas.

On one hand, we have a potential to yet again move our country forward, past its darkest histories of prejudice, exclusion, and failing to live up to its own ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all its people. On the other hand, we have a man who has expressly stated that America needs to move backwards to the “good old days.”

Personally, I began this long, bruising, ugly primary feeling thrilled at the prospect of a Sanders or Clinton candidacy. It seemed like the Republicans were going to throw up all over themselves, while lighting themselves on fire, while tripping on a garbage can. And they certainly did that! But meanwhile, the Democratic primary has descended into hyperbole, lies and nonsense — mostly targeted at Hillary Clinton — and driven a harsh wedge between friends. Support for either candidate has now become a kind of moral litmus test: if you support Clinton, you are no true liberal and you don’t care about working people; if you support Sanders, you are a privileged white male and you don’t care about women’s reproductive rights, or the rights of minorities. And while it’s categorically obvious that there are true liberals who support Clinton and there are women and minorities supporting Sanders, these simplistic shibboleths have taken hold: Clinton is “conservative”; Sanders is “progressive.”

I’ve found the growing divide confounding and depressing and remained undecided until recently. I’ve leaned Sanders (after Michigan); I’ve leaned Clinton (early on and after New York). When it became clear Clinton had locked the primary, I thought of splitting my vote: Sanders in the June 7 primary; Clinton in the general. But now, I’m firmly for Clinton and will vote for her on June 7 with conviction.

Read more >>>>

Regulars here know that I am not in the habit of recommending articles.  Most of us have loved Hillary so hard and so long that we may be a little blind to sources of criticism.  For different reasons, both of these articles that I happened upon on the same day convey a message that we Still4Hillers do not really need to hear - - - but as we enter the general election season may want to pack in a back pocket as we encounter the #NeverHillary troops.  Traister's "now I know her" moment and Loeb's analysis are two gems to bury in the palm of your hand for the mud-slinging that is to come in just a week.  Ready?  We are ready.  Have been for a very long time. Let's go do this!

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