In response to the newly aroused Hillary Haters

A couple of years ago, the Daily Kos published Meryl Streep's tribute to Hillary Clinton. The Hate Hillary club is out in full force in 2016 and  doing its best to take Hillary down. It's heartwarming to reread Meryl Streep's tribute to Hillary, a woman whose years of public service have been primarily invested in supporting the downtrodden around the globe.

The Hillary Haters will no doubt continue their attacks on the best qualified candidate for president this year, but it has become increasingly obvious that their warped opinions bear little or no relationship to the real Hillary Clinton. Meryl Streep gets the word out:

 

Read Meryl Streep’s introduction of Hillary Clinton during the recent 2012 Women in the World conference:

Two years ago when Tina Brown and Diane von Furstenberg first envisioned this conference, they asked me to do a play, a reading, called – the name of the play was called Seven. It was taken from transcripts, real testimony from real women activists around the world. I was the Irish one, and I had no idea that the real women would be sitting in the audience while we portrayed them. So I was doing a pretty ghastly Belfast accent. I was just – I was imitating my friend Liam Neeson, really, and I sounded like a fellow. (Laughter). It was really bad.

So I was so mortified when Tina, at the end of the play, invited the real women to come up on stage and I found myself standing next to the great Inez McCormack. (Applause.) And I felt slight next to her, because I’m an actress and she is the real deal. She has put her life on the line. Six of those seven women were with us in the theater that night. The seventh, Mukhtaran Bibi, couldn’t come because she couldn’t get out of Pakistan. You probably remember who she is. She’s the young woman who went to court because she was gang-raped by men in her village as punishment for a perceived slight to their honor by her little brother. All but one of the 14 men accused were acquitted, but Mukhtaran won the small settlement. She won $8,200, which she then used to start schools in her village. More money poured in from international donations when the men were set free. And as a result of her trial, the then president of Pakistan, General Musharraf, went on TV and said, “If you want to be a millionaire, just get yourself raped.”

But that night in the theater two years ago, the other six brave women came up on the stage. Anabella De Leon of Guatemala pointed to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting right in the front row, and said, “I met her and my life changed.” And all weekend long, women from all over the world said the same thing:

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CNN poll: Hillary Haters foiled again!

Nothing like the will of the people to foil the virulent Hillary Haters and their contrived email/Benghazi - whatever - scandals. Jennifer Agiesta, CNN Polling Director, has the latest word, and guess what - Hillary is still head of the pack in both parties for 2016:

Washington (CNN)Hillary Clinton continues to be a dominant force heading into the 2016 presidential election, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. The former secretary of state maintains a broad lead over the field of potential Democratic challengers she could face in a nomination contest and sizable advantages over the leading contenders from the Republican side in general election match-ups.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tops the possible field for the Republican Party's nomination race, followed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson all in a tight cluster.

SEE: The complete CNN/ORC poll

Poll: Double-digit lead for Hillary vs. GOP 01:35

But none of the top candidates in this field gets within 10 points of Hillary Clinton in a series of hypothetical general election matchups. 

Rand Paul comes closest, with 43% saying they'd be more likely to back him while 54% choose Clinton. The two candidates who currently top the GOP field, Bush and Walker, match up equally against Clinton, with each carrying 40% to her 55%. Huckabee gets 41% to Clinton's 55% and Carson has 40% to Clinton's 56%.

In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton holds a nearly 50-point lead over Vice President Joe Biden, her closest competitor in the field, 62% to 15%. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren rounds out the top three on the Democratic side with 10%. No other potential candidate tops 5%.

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Hillary haters never let the facts get in the way of a good story

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

David Brock knows how to throw cold water on the scandal mongering Hillary haters of whatever political stripe:

(CNN)How do Republicans try to breathe new life into an old scandal? We've seen it time and time again. Here's how it works:

Step One: Republicans, with nothing in their arsenal to use against Hillary Clinton, selectively leak to reporters a "scandalous" tidbit -- often one that has been previously reported.

Step Two: The new media bites.

Step Three: The media hyperventilates and suffocates the airwaves with repetition of the same story.

Step Four: Upon further examination, the story falls apart.

This is exactly how the latest media hype, this time over Hillary Clinton's use of emails at the State Department, has played out. And it presents yet another chapter in the Benghazi hoax.

 

The New York Times story about Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account at the State Department is a perfect example of "gotcha" journalism, where reporters will take any bait the Republicans give them without proper vetting. The New York Times has a history of this. (Whitewater, anyone?)

The Times story suggests Secretary Clinton broke federal rules in relation to her email. But the Times' main source for this allegation says Clinton violated no laws. 

Yes, Clinton used a private email account to communicate while she was secretary of state. But so did secretaries of state before her. According to the State Department spokesman Marie Harf, John Kerry is the first secretary of state ever to rely primarily on official State Department email.

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“Defanging a Hillary Basher”

Maureen Dowd, the #1 Hillary basher.

I’ve been meaning to link to Anita Finlay’s post at The New Agenda in which she “defangs a Hillary basher” since it was first published. Finlay's answer to the question, “Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?” remains acutely relevant in the run up to the 2016 election. 

Finlay has reminded me that in 2008, Arianna Huffington and Maureen Dowd were among the most vitriolic media types on the attack against Hillary Clinton. Dowd is already revving up for the next round, but Finlay, and hopefully others, have MoDo's  number:

Maureen Dowd, arguably the most powerful columnist at The New York Times, has made a career of loathing Hillary Clinton, painting her in a negative light as often as possible, whether she has anything to do with the topic at hand or not.

Dowd’s latest columns bash both mother and daughter.  First Dowd trashes Chelsea Clinton for the $75,000 fee she earns making speeches, although she donates every dollar to the Clinton Foundation.  Dowd, on the other hand, receive $30,000 per speech (giving about 12 per year).  No chump change that.  No word on how much she donates, however.

Then Dowd intimates that the only real star in the family (or in politics) is former President Bill, whom she finds equally distasteful, if charismatic…so much so, in fact, that Dowd avers he will have to drag his dull dolt of a wife across the finish line if she runs for President once more.

Since Ms. Dowd was one of the chief Hillary-bashers in 2008 and shows no sign of let up, it might be useful to deconstruct Ms. Dowd’s er, logic, as a tool to neutralize the negative effect her years of denigrating comments have on the reader’s psyche when it comes to Secretary Clinton and her family.

Herewith is a chapter from my book, Dirty Words on Clean Skin…

Women will never break the highest, hardest glass ceiling when other highly regarded women use their platforms to rip each other to shreds for what can only be monetary gain or a personal vendetta:

“Unfortunately for Hillary, there’s no White Bitch Month.”[i]

– Maureen Dowd

The stinging slights offered by several women who had wielded the written word in an effort to cut Hillary Clinton off at the knees were in a class by themselves.

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Hillary Clinton’s stature continues to rise

Secretary Clinton meets with Crown Prince of Bahrain Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, at the Department of State. State Department photo by Michael Gross

It’s still out there in the blogosphere: diehard Hillary haters regurgitating the Obama campaign’s stale  attacks on her character in ’08 after Axelrod, et al realized their candidate couldn’t defeat her in legitimate policy debates. Much to the dismay of her detractors, however, Hillary's stature continues to rise.

As secretary of state,  Hillary's brilliance in foreign policy matters is evidenced in her article on smart power published yesterday, July 18, 2012, in the New Statesman:

As the balance of world power shifts, the US is developing a novel range of diplomatic, social, economic, political and security tools to fix the world’s complex new geopolitical problems.

I touched down in Beijing in May for the fourth round of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue with a jam-packed agenda, but the world’s attention was focused instead on the fate of a blind human rights dissident who had sought refuge in the American embassy. Suddenly, an already delicate trip had become an outsized test of the US-China relationship.

Throughout history, the rise of new powers usually has played out in zero-sum terms. So it is not surprising that the emergence of countries such as China, India and Brazil has raised questions about the future of the global order that the United States, the United Kingdom and our allies have helped build and defend. Against this backdrop, those few days in May took on even greater significance: could the US and China write a new answer to the old question of what happens when an established power and rising power meet?

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