Trump plays the women's card against Hillary

Hillary Clinton speaks during a primary night event in Philadelphia. (Tracie Van Auken / European Pressphoto Agency)

Although I’m somewhat of a political junkie, I’ve managed to tune out Donald Trump; I just haven’t paid that much attention to him. After all, in a presidential election year in which Democrats Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin Omalley have risen up against Republican candidates Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina,  Marco Rubio, etc., to name just a few, can Donald Trump be expected to stand out? Maybe not.

Guess what? Trump got my attention today when he dismissed Hillary Clinton by saying “I think the only card she has is the women’s card.” Evidently, Trump got the attention of quite a few others with that comment: quoted in Business Insider, Matt Lauer asked Trump: 'Do you even care' that so many women have a negative view of you?”

On the East Coast, according to the NY Times, Trump keeps playing the women’s card against Clinton: “He claimed that women do not like Mrs. Clinton, and he has every right to attack her.”

Meanwhile on the West Coast, the LA Times reports: Trump's 'woman's card' jab at Clinton isn't how GOP wanted to get female voters' attention.”

LA Times reporter Cathleen Decker writes: 

When Republican leaders declared after the last losing presidential election that the party had to do more to attract female voters, this was not what they had in mind.

Before a national audience Tuesday night, Donald Trump railed at Hillary Clinton’s qualifications for the White House, describing her as an affirmative action hire by the Democratic Party.

“The only card she has is the woman’s card; she’s got nothing else going,” Trump said Tuesday. “And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. … The beautiful thing is women don’t like her, OK, and look how well I did with women tonight!”

Bluster? Yes. Reality? No.

Trump has grown increasingly popular among Republican women. But one of his biggest weaknesses as he looks toward a probable November clash with Clinton is the broader pool of female voters. They aren’t all rapt Clinton supporters, but they like her far better than they like him.

His routine broadsides against women — mocking Carly Fiorina’s face, raising the specter of Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycles, passing along an unflattering picture of an opponent’s wife and now asserting that Clinton lacks the “strength” and “stamina” to serve as president — do little to endear him.

And describing a two-term U.S. senator and former secretary of State in dismissive, gender-freighted terms plays straight into the Clinton campaign’s hopes of picking up non-Democratic women in November.

At her victory rally on Tuesday, Clinton explicitly made a play for Democrats, independents and “thoughtful” Republicans as she brushed back against an earlier Trump broadside.

“The other day, Mr. Trump accused me of playing the “woman card,’” Clinton declared. “Well, if fighting for women’s healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!”

Gender insults are nothing new for candidate Clinton. During her 2008 run, young men in the audience chanted “iron my shirts” and cable pundits compared her to hectoring mothers and the deranged bunny-boiling character in the film “Fatal Attraction.” One entrepreneur sold the “Hillary nutcracker,” a plastic representation of Clinton with serrated blades lining her inner thighs.

Trump played on another stereotype, of women being too weak and soft to inhabit the White House — ironic, because in the same bout of criticism he cast Clinton as a warmonger. 

In her 2008 campaign, Clinton was reluctant to emphasize the historic nature of her effort to become the first woman president until it was nearly over. This time, she has been more overt, but most of the time her historic reach is most visible in that she is a candidate in a pantsuit and kitten heels, not a button-down and a tie.

It was the mere fact that she is a woman that seemed to set off Trump in recent days. Asked repeatedly in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday about how, exactly, Clinton has played “the woman’s card,” Trump had no meaningful response.

 “How do you call someone on being a woman?” Cuomo asked.

“You just tell them they're playing the woman's card,” Trump replied.

“But what does that mean exactly?” Cuomo said.

“Frankly, if she didn't she would do very poorly,” Trump said. “I know it because I think if she were a man and she was the way she is, she would get virtually no votes.”

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Dishonest Bernie vs. truthtelling Hillary

Photo courtesy of CNN.

Hi friends of Katalusis,

I'm on edge this morning thinking about the NY primary today and hoping that Hillary's win will prove that Americans are better than the reprehensible behavior of Bernie Sanders and his followers indicates. This letter from Hillary's campaign hit my inbox this morning, and it reveals how low Sanders is willing to stoop in order to get what he wants, never mind what he deserves:

Virginia --

I want to let you know about a development that just occurred, because it matters. The tone of this primary matters, and the condition of our party at the end of it will matter as we prepare to face Donald Trump or Ted Cruz this fall.

Earlier today, the Sanders campaign wrote a letter to the Democratic National Committee, falsely accusing us of violating campaign finance law.

You won’t be surprised by what happened next: 26 minutes after the letter was sent, his campaign sent a fundraising email attempting to capitalize on the phony charges.

(Before you read any further, let's get one thing straight: this accusation is false. They're questioning our joint fundraising agreement with the DNC, which allows us to support Democrats running up and down the ticket -- the same fundraising structure used by President Obama in 2008 and 2012.)

This latest incident is part of a troubling pattern of behavior -- occurring just as Bernie’s mathematical odds of winning the nomination dwindle toward zero -- in which Sanders and his team are not just debating us on issues (which we all agree is perfectly fair), but rather attacking Hillary Clinton’s character, integrity, and motivations.

The fact that they include the Democratic Party in these charges -- an organization we want future generations of progressives to trust and support -- further confirms that the Sanders campaign has let things get out of hand in its waning days. To wit:

• Over the weekend, they had protesters outside one of our fundraising events -- one whose proceeds went not just to Hillary for America, but to the Democratic National Committee and 32 state Democratic Parties -- throwing dollar bills at Hillary’s motorcade, as if they were at, shall we say, an adult entertainment venue. This was just days after someone introducing Bernie at a rally called Hillary a “Democratic whore.”
• In last week’s debate, Bernie questioned Hillary’s commitment to fighting climate change because a whopping 0.2% of the money given to our campaign has come from employees of oil and gas companies. Not even 2%, mind you: 0.2%.
• And of course, Sanders spent several days calling Hillary unqualified for the presidency, based on an entirely false claim that Hillary had said the same about him. She hadn’t (and still hasn’t, even after what he said).

To be clear, we welcome a debate on the important issues facing Americans, like how to prevent gun violence, encourage tolerance, and do more to level the playing field for Americans who are counting on us.

But it’s hard to see how anyone -- other than Donald Trump and Ted Cruz -- benefits from this downward spiral of irresponsible and baseless attacks. Right about now is when we ought to be talking about coming together as a progressive movement, not undermining a generation of voters’ faith in the Democratic Party and in the woman who is almost certain to be its nominee.

Thank you for everything you do to support our campaign.

Robby

Robby Mook
Campaign Manager
Hillary for America

The NY Times gets it right once again in endorsing Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, 2015. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Photo courtesy of the NY Times. 

Well, Katalusis friends, considering Hillary Clinton's widespread sexist treatment by the media during the 2008 Democratic primary, it's a pleasure to read that once again, the NY Times has chosen to endorse her.  The Times editorial begins with this blurb:

Voters have the chance
to choose one of the most
broadly and deeply
qualified presidential
candidates in modern history.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JAN. 30, 2016

(Virginia Bergman notes: I object to the Times editorial's insistence on labeling Bill Clinton as her "brilliant and flawed husband." I would ask the Editorial Board to name one so-called brilliant public figure without flaws. A reminder is in order here: all human beings are flawed in one way or another, even the members of the Times editorial board.)

The Times endorsement of Hillary continues:

For the past painful year, the Republican presidential contenders have been bombarding Americans with empty propaganda slogans and competing, bizarrely, to present themselves as the least experienced person for the most important elected job in the world. Democratic primary voters, on the other hand, after a substantive debate over real issues, have the chance to nominate one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.

Hillary Clinton would be the first woman nominated by a major party. She served as a senator from a major state (New York) and as secretary of state — not to mention her experience on the national stage as first lady with her brilliant and flawed husband, President Bill Clinton. The Times editorial board has endorsed her three times for federal office — twice for Senate and once in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary — and is doing so again with confidence and enthusiasm.

Mrs. Clinton’s main opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, has proved to be more formidable than most people, including Mrs. Clinton, anticipated. He has brought income inequality and the lingering pain of the middle class to center stage and pushed Mrs. Clinton a bit more to the left than she might have gone on economic issues. Mr. Sanders has also surfaced important foreign policy questions, including the need for greater restraint in the use of military force.

In the end, though, Mr. Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers. His boldest proposals — to break up the banks and to start all over on health care reform with a Medicare-for-all system — have earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people. But his plans for achieving them aren’t realistic, while Mrs. Clinton has very good, and achievable, proposals in both areas.

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Gloria Steinem addresses Hillary Haters, Democratic Party leaders, and the rampant misogyny in 2008

https://www.hillaryclinton.com

Reading an excerpt from Gloria Steinem’s book, My Life on the Road, brought back all of the angst I experienced in 2008 when Hillary Clinton was dissed by many in the media; thrown under the bus by Democratic Party leaders; and assaulted by a contingent of the electorate that came to be known as Hillary Haters. The stench of misogyny became overpowering throughout the 2008 Democratic primary.

In her usual incisive style, Steinem effectively portrays Hillary’s 2008 experience:

I know Hillary Clinton mostly in the way we all do, as a public figure in good times and bad, one who became part of our lives and even our dreams. I once introduced her to a thousand women in a hotel ballroom. Standing behind her as she spoke, I could see the binder on the lectern with her speech carefully laid out – and also that she wasn’t reading from it. Instead, she was responding to people who had spoken before her, addressing activists and leaders she saw in the audience, and putting their work in a national and global context – all in such clear and graceful sentences that no one would have guessed she hadn’t written them in advance. It was an on-the-spot tour de force, perhaps the best I’ve ever heard.

But what clinched it for me was listening to her speak after a performance of Eve Ensler’s play Necessary Targets, based on interviews with women in one of the camps set up to treat women who had endured unspeakable suffering, humiliation, and torture in the ethnic wars within the former Yugoslavia. To speak to an audience that had just heard these heartbreaking horrors seemed impossible for anyone, and Hillary had the added burden of representing the Clinton administration, which had been criticised for slowness in stopping this genocide. Nonetheless, she rose in the silence, with no possibility of preparing, and began to speak quietly – about suffering, about the importance of serving as witnesses to suffering. Most crucial of all, she admitted this country’s slowness in intervening. By the time she sat down, she had brought the audience together and given us all a shared meeting place: the simple truth.

When she left the White House and decided to run for the US Senate from her new home in New York State – something no first lady, not even Eleanor Roosevelt, had dared to do – I was blindsided by the hostility toward her from some women. They called her cold, calculating, ambitious, and even “unfeminist” for using political experience gained as a wife. These were not the rightwing extremists who had accused the Clintons of everything from perpetrating real estate scams in Arkansas to murdering a White House aide with whom Hillary supposedly had an affair. On the contrary, they mostly agreed with her on the issues, yet some were so opposed to her that they came to be called Hillary Haters. It took me weeks of listening on the road to begin to understand why.

In living rooms from Dallas to Chicago, I noticed that the Hillary Haters often turned out to be the women most like her: white, well educated, and married to or linked with powerful men. They were by no means all such women, but their numbers were still surprising. Also, they hadn’t objected to sons, brothers, and sons-in-law using family connections and political names to further careers – say, the Bushes or the Rockefellers or the Kennedys – yet they objected to Hillary doing the same. The more they talked, the more it was clear that their own husbands hadn’t shared power with them.
If Hillary had a husband who regarded her as an equal – who had always said this country got “two presidents for the price of one” – it only dramatised their own lack of power and respect. After one long night and a lot of wine, one woman told me that Hillary’s marriage made her aware of just how unequal hers was.

Read More:

Other recently published, truth-telling articles on Hillary Clinton:

The World is a Better Place because Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. Here’s Why

Republicans Leveled By Bombshell Report That Clears Hillary Clinton On Benghazi

The déjà vu flavor of the love affair of Democratic Party lefties with Bernie Sanders

 (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Dominick Reuter/Photo montage by Salon) (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Dominick Reuter/Photo montage by Salon)

The current infatuation with Bernie Sanders by the ultra left wing of the Democratic Party has a déjà vu flavor to it. Back in August 2008, I noted here at Katalusis:

Barack Obama gained the rabid support of the Democratic Party’s left wing by promising among other things to first unify the nation and then ride forth to bring peace and harmony to the entire world. He assured his followers that no experience was required to perform this miracle; he would accomplish the feat solely by virtue of his singular personality. As Oprah so eloquently introduced Obama at a rally in South Carolina during the Democratic primary, “He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”
So far the presumptive nominee, also known as “the one,” has not been able to unify his own party ahead of its national convention this August in Denver – even though his coronation is slated to occur before 75,000 onlookers seated in the Mile High Stadium at Invesco Field.

There are, of course, obvious differences between 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama and 2016 candidate Bernie Sanders, a registered independent and self-described socialist, currently seeking the Democratic Party nomination. Age and political experience, for one thing – in those respects, Sanders far outweighs the One in his 2008 heyday. But it must be said that Sanders may even surpass Obama in the promises the Vermont senator makes to score big on major Democratic Party issues on foreign policy, environment, same sex marriage, health care, and the economy.

Adding to the déjà vu experience, Sanders, like his predecessor, is taking aim at frontrunner Hillary Clinton. In an attempt to bring giddy left wing Democrats back to earth, a reminder is in order: as soon as Obama secured the Democratic Party nomination, the candidate who presented himself as above politics, suddenly lunged to the center. Obama’s supporters explained their idol’s about face was necessary in order for him to defeat John McCain in the general election.

Does anyone reading this now care that soon after he took office, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his good intentions, ordered drone invasions of other nations. Keep in mind that our president has seemed unconcerned that innocents, who were not on his secret “kill list,” often died at his behest; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All of the above is to suggest that if he succeeds in winning the Democratic Party’s nomination, Socialist Bernie Sanders may have to do as Obama did in the summer of ’08. Can’t you just see it? Sanders planting his feet firmly on centrist ground and disavowing his long history as a Socialist. “Well,"  his supporters will justifiably ask, “How else can Bernie win the general election?”

Let me suggest here that the Democratic Party might well stick with Hillary Clinton this time around. With Hillary, what you see is what you get, and no about faces will be required in order for her to win the GE. See, folks? What Hillary has got in full measure is authenticity and unlike Obama and Sanders, she doesn’t claim to be above politics.

What's wrong with having two smart people in the White House?

In 2008. a Clinton supporter responded to a criticism of Hillary's run for the Democratic nomination by asking her detractor: “What would be wrong with having two smart people in the White House?”

That question is equally relevant in the 2016 campaign as evidenced by Hillary's in-depth research on policy matters. After reading the article below, one might even wonder who is the smarter of the wedded pair: Hillary or Bill? Personally, I'm very comfortable with the notion of Bill and Hillary discussing national concerns at the dining room table in the White House. Surely the United States would benefit from their combined leadership:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earlier this year, Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign lost count of its experts.

In the months before she began her second run for the White House, Clinton spent hours quizzing economists, lawyers, educators and activists about everything from executive compensation to the latest research on lead paint.

By last fall, the number of experts she had interviewed hit two hundred and her team stopped keeping track.

"It was like I hadn't left Harvard," Roland Fryer, an economist at the university, said of his meeting with Clinton to discuss successful charter school practices. "It was like talking to a colleague and debating over a cup of coffee."

The Democrat isn't an incumbent, and even with competition that's resolute but still far from offering a serious primary challenge, Clinton has a luxury few candidates enjoy: time to hit the books. The results have started to emerge, and Clinton plans to add to them by releasing a new domestic policy proposal nearly every week this summer.

To be sure, politics are at play as Clinton shapes her agenda. She is sidestepping foreign affairs, which has consumed much of the early debate among Republican White House hopefuls eager to paint the former secretary of state with President Barack Obama's record on the world stage.
She is not yet offering specifics on subjects where consensus among Democrats and independent voters will be harder to find: trade, limits on executive pay, regulating the country's finance industry, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

What Clinton debuts in the coming weeks will form the core platform of her campaign and, should she win the nomination and the presidency, her administration. It's an agenda Clinton describes as that of a "pragmatic progressive," centered on families and focused on economic growth, innovation and income inequality.

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Patriarchal Eve and the real Hillary Clinton

Via DailyKos

Since the patriarchal legend of Eve was first circulated in ancient times, women have been widely stereotyped as the source of all evil, labeled from time to time as untrustworthy, inauthentic, overly ambitious, etc.  If all the above sounds familiar, it should - that's pretty much how the media has portrayed Hillary Clinton since she first set foot on the national stage.

Lately, though, I've been struck by the media's pronouncements of changes in how Hillary presents herself as well as her perceived policy shifts. Even though it's to be expected from our still male-dominated sexist media, I'm still taken aback by the repeated failures of the punditry to realize that in most instances Hillary hasn't changed, the media has just begun to perceive her through a non-stereotypical lens.

So this morning, I paused in scanning the online news coverage to reflect on Harry Enten's piece at 538 titled: Hillary Clinton was Liberal. Hillary Clinton is Liberal. And it's fascinating to see how Hillary has ranked in comparison to Barack Obama:

A bunch of reporters have recently discovered a shocking truth: Hillary Clinton is liberal! (I heard a rumor that Columbo has been helping with the investigation.)

We’ve gotten this raft of “Clinton is liberal” exposés as Clinton has revved up her 2016 campaign, speaking out in support of gay marriage, a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. illegally, and criminal justice reform. But what many of these articles miss is that Clinton has always been, by most measures, pretty far to the left. When she’s shifted positions, it has been in concert with the entire Democratic Party.

To see how these different issues fit together to form an overall political ideology, we usually use three metrics: one based on congressional voting record, one based on public statements and one based on fundraising.

Clinton was one of the most liberal members during her time in the Senate. According to an analysis of roll call votes by Voteview, Clinton’s record was more liberal than 70 percent of Democrats in her final term in the Senate. She was more liberal than 85 percent of all members. Her 2008 rival in the Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama, was nearby with a record more liberal than 82 percent of all members — he was not more liberal than Clinton.

Clinton also has a history of very liberal public statements. Clinton rates as a “hard core liberal” per the OnTheIssues.org scale. She is as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and barely more moderate than Bernie Sanders. And while Obama is also a “hard core liberal,” Clinton again was rated as more liberal than Obama.

Sometimes I wonder whether people are confusing Clinton with her husband. Bill Clinton’s statements have been far more moderate. He has also had a more moderate donor base, according to Adam Bonica’s fundraising scores.

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Hillary rises again

Note: This post has been updated to include in Item 2. Secretary Clinton's role in laying the groundwork for the Iran nuclear treaty.
 
Scanning the online news coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch has given me pause. Of course, several of the favorite sexist critiques of her from back when have emerged once again:

1. Hillary is too ambitious: Has any male candidate for the presidency ever been accused of being too ambitious? I can’t think of one. And obviously, it would take considerable ambition to run for the presidency, would it not?

2. Secretary of State Clinton did not accomplish anything: Our current Secretary of State John Kerry points out, the G.W. Bush Administration successfully alienated most of the countries around the globe. During her tenure, Secretary Clinton traveled hundreds of miles to visit foreign leaders and re-establish positive relationships.  For those who continue to label her a hawk while ignoring  her many peace-making efforts, Kerry also noted that Secretary Clinton helped lay the groundwork for the Iran nuclear treaty.

3. Hillary is too polarizing: Her critics overlook her outstanding record for working across the aisle as a U.S. Senator from New York, and they also seem to ignore how polarizing G.W. Bush was throughout his administration and well, take a look at Barack Obama’s record…

4. Hillary is inauthentic: What does that mean? She’s a mature woman who continues to fill different roles, including political leader, wife, mother, and grandmother. Kudos to Hillary for her years of public service while simultaneously keeping her marriage and family together and maintaining several long-term friendships. Like all political leaders, her positions on some issues have evolved over the years, and she recognizes the necessity to appeal to various constituencies. Has any prominent male political leader been repeatedly accused of being inauthentic? For example, George W. Bush, the “compassionate conservative,” or Barack Obama who lunged to the right immediately after receiving the Democratic nomination in 2008?

5. And another thing: I’ve noticed since the 2008 Democratic primary that leading female journalists, including Maureen Dowd, Arianna Huffington, and lately, Ruth Marcus, appear compelled to denigrate Hillary, most likely to show their male colleagues that they aren’t biased in favor of a female presidential candidate. Leading male journalists don’t seem to have any compunctions about supporting their favorite male political leaders.

6. Lastly, Hillary is accused of having a testy relationship with the media; however, the media is never held accountable for its part in this relationship. I would ask her critics if Hillary is to blame for the media’s relentless sexist attacks against her over the years?

What Hillary’s critics have been most troubled by over the years is that this accomplished woman continues undaunted as she successfully maintains both her personal and professional life. And despite their attacks, Hillary rises yet again!

Hillary poised to shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!

Courtesy of Huffington Post

In the video below released on her new campaign website, Clinton said that she was running.



Paige Lavender at the Huffington Post nicely covers Hillary Clinton's launch of her 2016 campaign with poll averages and in-depth background. And you can bet I'm looking forward to reconnecting with blogging friends from 08 to help elect our first woman president and shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 on Sunday.

In a video released on her new campaign website, Clinton said that she was running.

"I'm running for president," Clinton says in the video. "Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion so you can do more than just get by. You can get ahead and stay ahead. Because when families are strong, America is strong."

"So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote. Because it's your time and I hope you'll join me on this journey."

John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman, sent an email to supporters Sunday afternoon telling them that Clinton was running. Podesta said that Clinton was heading to Iowa to meet voters and that there would be a formal kickoff event next month.

Chelsea Clinton also tweeted her support shortly after the announcement: "Very proud of you, Mom!"

Clinton made history when she ran for president in 2008, becoming the first woman to win presidential primary races and nabbing a total of about 18 million votes. She suspended her campaign in June 2008 and urged voters to get behind now-President Barack Obama.

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Our unreformed sexist media still threatened by Hillary

Kathleen Reardon, blogging at the Huffington Post (how did Reardon get a pro-Hillary post published there?!), calls out the media for "poisoning Hillary's well again." She is of course referencing the media's sexist diatribes unleashed against Hillary in 2008. Reardon, professor emerita of USC, writes:

For women around the world, and the U.S. in particular, Hillary Clinton was much more than a presidential candidate for the 2008 election. On the surface, it appears that she suffered a significant loss. But if we look historically at her campaign and how close she came to winning her party's nomination, we see the forging of an important path.
In her own words:

You can be so proud, that from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories; unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee; unremarkable to think that a woman can be president of the United States - and that is truly remarkable, my friends.

Clinton once said that she was a Senator because of women and men who traveled in 1848 to Seneca Falls, N.Y. to participate in the first convention of women's rights in U.S. history. As Clinton explained, "My mother was born before women could vote. My daughter got to vote for her mother for president."

A few paragraphs later, Reardon jumps to present media coverage of a potential Clinton run in 2016:

One of CNN's commentators and a committed Clinton detractor during the 2008 election campaign, Gloria Borger, recently wrote that Democrats have no choice but to defend Hillary Clinton on issues like the email question because she is "their putative nominee." She quoted an unnamed, supposed "Democratic strategist" to "support" the view that Democrats are stuck with Clinton - like it or not.
Referring to Clinton as "Bigfoot Hillary," Borger proposed that there is no one of substance in the Democratic field (dismissing three impressive potential contenders). Borger concludes that should Clinton stumble, the party is in big trouble. Referring to the email matter, she added:

Those Democrats who want to defend her say there's a problem -- they're not quite sure what they're defending, because they're not sure exactly what happened, or why. In other words, the wagons are circled, but the surrogates are left outside.

This is the level of journalism to which we've become accustomed -- baseless sniping at selected candidates. Who are these Democrats? How does Borger know they're unsure? Whose wagons are circled? How about some expert testimony from named sources?

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So what do political candidates do with all that money?

Forgive my cynicism. Prior to the 2008 Democratic primary, I truly got into the biennial political fray, especially during presidential elections. This time around, I’ve routinely cleared out my inbox from the daily onslaught of requests for money from the Democratic Party. And maybe for the first time, I’m asking what on earth political candidates need all that money for? Jeez, the TV networks must make out like bandits during run ups to elections; pity the candidates - I’ve turned them off during their feverish pitches. Not to worry, folks: Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the political process, I’ll do my duty and vote this Thursday.

Anyway, in these closing hours before the 2014 midterms, I noticed an item describing Obama’s attempts to resuscitate his one-time zealous followers on behalf of the Dems, while McConnell stokes the fire for Republicans:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Clashing views from the White House and Republicans about the nation's trajectory are closing out the final week before Election Day.

President Barack Obama on Saturday emphasized economic growth during his tenure while the Senate's Republican leader depicted events he says seem to be spinning out of the White House's control.
Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in their parties' radio and Internet addresses, did find some common ground.

They agreed that many Americans' wages are still falling behind. But Obama blamed Congress for not acting on measures such as the minimum wage, and McConnell faulted Obama for policies he said have failed.

"We've got to harness this momentum and make the right choices so that everyone who works hard can get ahead," Obama said. He stressed the need for policies that make the economy friendlier to women.
"In difficult times, the American people expect real leadership from Washington," the Kentucky senator countered. "What they don't need are more unworkable ideas that often make the problem worse."
The sparring heading into Tuesday's voting underscored the prominent role that Obama has taken in the midterm elections even though he is not on the ballot. Republicans have tried to make the election about the president, especially in states with Republican majorities where Obama's unpopularity runs deeper than in the country as a whole.

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"campaigns controlled by the rich, the secret, the few"

Hillary in Sept. 2014 (Wikipedia).

I'll be voting in the mid-terms - I always vote in national elections, usually for the more liberal candidates who are most often Democrats. This time around, I'm a little - shall we say amused - by the Democratic Party's sudden love affair with Hillary and Bill Clinton. Remember the 2008 primary when the DNC allied itself with the media to trash both Clintons? Six years later, Democrats are ironically turning to the Clintons to salvage the mid-terms for them. And the "power couple" is out there throwing their support to flailing Democratic candidates.

In the meantime, Timothy Egan at the NY Times makes some good points in his column aptly titled, The Disgust Election:

Justice Anthony Kennedy doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy I’d want to share a beer and a brat with, or be stuck next to on a long flight. But I would like for the most influential swing voter on the Supreme Court to step away from his legal aerie, and wade through some of the muck that he and four fellow justices have given us with the 2014 campaign.

How did we lose our democracy? Slowly at first, and then all at once. This fall, voters are more disgusted, more bored and more cynical about the midterm elections than at any time in at least two decades.

It’s so bad that Senator Mitch McConnell is paying people to show up at his rallies and pretend to be excited. There should be plenty of applicants; just 29 percent of the electorate said they were “enthusiastic” about voting this year.

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The Obama years: a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Obama points to the Kansas delegation while giving his address at the
Democratic National Convention in 2004. Via Wikipedia.

 

 

In 2008, Barack Obama preached hope, not cynicism, but anyone who knows me is aware that I was cynical from day one about the young, inexperienced senator’s qualifications for the presidency – and besides I was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter in the primary. Now I feel something akin to pity for our graying second-term president as he’s since learned the magic of his personality on display in Boston 10 years ago has not been sufficient to cure the world’s ills.

But here’s the thing, all things considered, I believe Obama has done a credible job so far in the Oval Office. Politico goes into depth, however, highlighting Obama’s “hits and blunders” on the tenth anniversary this Sunday, July 27, 2014 of his keynote speech at the Democratic Convention.

Dovere and Nather write:

Barack Obama’s Democratic National Convention keynote delivered 10 years ago Sunday evening started his journey to the White House.

Those 18 minutes in Boston reshaped American politics. Obama spent a long passage of his speech extolling Democratic nominee John Kerry, but he wasn’t the one whose presidential prospects most people left the Fleet Center buzzing about. Caught by surprise by a convention keynote that was actually worth watching, the crowd went wild. Even Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson were spotted clapping for him.

A decade later, the speech remains a road map to the Obama agenda — and the many places where he’s fallen short in his term and a half so far.

The parts that hold up well: transitioning from a manufacturing base, the pursuit of enemies (like Osama bin Laden), a cooperative economy, voting rights, solving the “health care crisis,” “a road to opportunity” for the middle class.

But parts come across as the oratorical equivalent of an embarrassing hairdo in a high school yearbook.
The line most associated with the speech — “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America” — is the part that’s probably held up the least well over time.
 

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Hillary Clinton, “the experienced adult in the room”

Bill and Hillary during the 2008 campaign.

Good morning, Katalusis readers, I’ve got another busy day ahead of me tweaking major writing projects in between preparing for dinner guests this evening.

However, while scanning the online news coverage this morning, this piece at Politico titled “A Clinton approach for angrier times” caught my eye, and I wanted to call your attention to it.

Politico's White and Haberman write:

Hillary Clinton has a unique asset if she runs for president — Bill Clinton, who presided over a booming economy and an era of sunny Democratic centrism.

But she also faces a singular challenge: convincing voters who are skeptical of some Wall Street-friendly policies during his tenure that she can connect with their concerns at a time when the wealth gap is massive between the very rich and everyone else.

After a decade and a half of being tethered to her husband’s record, Hillary Clinton established her own political identity as senator and as secretary of state. But a string of questions from interviewers during her book tour about her husband’s tenure as president underscores the ongoing issue she will face reconciling their past with her future.

(Also on POLITICO: Hillary Clinton to 'The Daily Show')

On a broad range of issues from tax policy and Wall Street reform to religious rights, more than a dozen senior Democratic strategists and people who have worked with the former first family told POLITICO that Hillary Clinton will have to craft a platform that reflects the party’s shift left and populist sentiment across the political spectrum that distrusts entrenched interests and worries about growing wage inequality. Some described this balancing act as one of the most significant issues for the potential presidential candidate.

“This is the most important set of conversations going on right now. We are in a different economic era that requires a different kind of response,” said Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network who shaped the economic message for Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign. “Apple isn’t making the same products they were 20 years ago, so you should not expect any Democrat to obey policies that are over 20 years old.” Rosenberg added that no one in the Hillary Clinton orbit underestimates the task she faces.

“Their eyes are wide open. No one thinks it’s going to be an easy election in the primary or in the general,” he said. “Things are very unsettled in American politics right now and no one close to her thinks this would be anything but a very tough race.”

The former first lady has embraced her husband’s overall record, which includes the fastest jobs and economic growth of the past half-century.

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A wave to sister bloggers from 2008 who supported Hillary

High marks in foreign policy with Hillary as SoS.

All of the online chatter about a potential Hillary Clinton run in 2016 is naturally triggering a flashback to 2008, but not necessarily to the Democratic primary or its outcome. Instead, it’s kind of a nostalgia trip in which I’m remembering with affection sister bloggers across the Internet who went all out in support of Hillary. And I’m wondering where they are now and what they’re thinking about in the run up to 2016. Here’s a wave from Virginia at Katalusis to Heidi Li at Heidi Li’s Potpourri, Stray Yellar Dog, Lady Boomer NYC, Puma for Life, Tennessee Guerilla Women, Cine’s World, and other online Hillary supporters too numerous to mention.

In the meantime, John Fetter, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, has published a thought-provoking piece on what a Hillary Clinton presidency might look like. But first, let me remind Fetter that the Obama Administration’s poll ranking in foreign policy was much higher when Clinton was SoS, than it is now with John Kerry holding that top cabinet post.

In one of the most enduring images from the lead-up to the 2008 Democratic primaries, frontrunner Hillary Clinton appeared in a rogue political ad as Big Brother.

It was a take-off on the infamous 1984 Super Bowl commercial that pitted upstart Apple against Big Blue (IBM) and urged consumers to "Think Different." In the campaign makeover two decades later, Clinton is intoning political platitudes on a screen in front of an audience of grey worker drones. A young woman races down the aisle, her Obama T-shirt ablaze with color in a black-and-white world, and launches a hammer at the screen. It explodes, and Clinton disappears. The ad is titled "Vote Different."

Like Apple, Obama styled himself as the younger, hipper, more unconventional alternative to the staid mainstream choice. Obama was so much of an outsider that many believed he'd been born outside the United States, while Clinton, the former first lady, was a consummate insider. He opposed the Iraq War while she voted for it. He embraced "purple America," while she was as Big Blue as you could get. He was a swirl of different flavors, while she was plain vanilla.

Each of these contrasts broke down on closer examination. But in part because he cultivated this image of a disrupter in the mold of Steve Jobs, Obama went on to win the Iowa primary, the Democratic Party nomination, and the presidency. Hillary Clinton had to content herself with secretary of state.

Seven years later, Clinton is considering another run at the presidency. Once again, she is the dominant brand in the marketplace, the one to beat. Just as IBM borrowed some of Apple's shine to reconnect with consumers -- adopting for example a more user-friendly interface -- Hillary will try, if she declares her candidacy, to capitalize on whatever remains of Obama's popularity to become America's first woman president. The right, without an obvious candidate to support, has already poured money into efforts like the website Washington Free Beacon to disrupt her candidacy. Several potential insurgents on the left -- Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders -- are waiting off stage.

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A sober analysis of the tight 2012 presidential race

 

If you doubt whether or not unifying the various factions of the Democratic Party will make a difference in this year’s tight presidential race, read the analysis by the Christian Science Monitor’s Brad Knickerbocker. More specifically, if you believe the nation will be better off under a Democratic Administration for the next four years, Knickerbocker’s report is enough to bring home the most seriously alienated Clinton supporters from the 2008 primary – that would include yours truly. (Even though I continue to be amused by the recent turnaround of the media from denigrating the Clintons in 2008 to praising them in 2012.)

Here’s Knickerbocker:

Early returns are in, and it looks like President Obama got more of a poll bounce right after his party’s convention than Mitt Romney did out of the GOP’s big event.

Gallup’s daily tracking poll for Friday put Obama's job approval rating at 52 percent, the highest it’s been since the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama has also moved to a three-point lead over Mitt Romney among registered voters (48-45 percent), up from Obama's one-point margin over the last nine days.

“It is possible that these upticks are short-lived and that the race will devolve back to a parity by next week,” Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in his morning-after analysis. “On the other hand, if Obama builds on and sustains his higher job approval rating and lead over Romney, it could signal a possible resetting of the presidential race as it enters the remaining three-and-a-half weeks before the first debate on Oct. 3.”

By comparison, Romney’s standing bounced not at all after last week’s Republican convention.

Morning-after convention polls can evaporate pretty quickly, and Friday’s grim jobs report just hours after Obama’s convention speech Thursday night may hasten that. Plus, post-convention bounces going back to 1964 have averaged a healthier five points. Still, an upticked three point plus for Obama in a very close race can make the difference between a second term in office and packing his bags for Chicago come January.

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The “unspeakably boring election so far”

2008: McCain vs. Obama.

2012: Romney vs. Obama.

Confession: when I read Roger Simon’s post at Politico this morning titled “The ‘meh’-ing of the president,” I had to Google the meaning of  'meh' in the urban dictionary, and I quote: “An interjection used to imply indifference towards a subject; ‘verbal shrug’.

Well, yeah, the 2012 presidential campaign is boring, but not more so, I would argue, than the general election became in 2008 after the Democratic primary ended, and we were subjected to the sparring between Obama and McCain, spiced up occasionally by Biden’s gaffes and Palin’s naïve pizzaz.

Anyway, Simon’s injection of humor into the boring, if not tragically uninspiring, presidential campaign of 2012 between Obama and Romney offers momentary relief and encourages reflection on our choices this November. Simon asks:

Where is the fun? Where is the excitement? Where is the sheer heart-pounding, loin-stirring, thrill-going-up-the-leg tingle that is the hallmark of a U.S. presidential race?

Nowhere. The New York Times Magazine made it official Sunday on its “Meh List,” which each week catalogs those aspects of American life that are unspeakably boring.

And there it was at No. 3: “The election so far.”

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Andrew Sullivan’s irrational attacks on Hillary Clinton

Clinton with Masaai dancers, courtesy of New Agenda.

Thatcher, 1981, public domain.

As early as 2007, self-described conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan zealously supported the candidacy of Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary and on into the general election. And Sullivan continues to make excuses for and defend Obama to this day. Simultaneous to his support of Obama, Sullivan has been unrelenting in his attacks on Hillary Clinton. And like many devout supporters of Obama, Sullivan now appears to be aggravated by Clinton’s consistently high approval rating as secretary of state; whereas, Obama’s rating dips off and on to discouraging levels in his run for a second term as president.

At the New Agenda on Monday, Anita Finlay takes Sullivan to task for his latest vituperative remarks targeting Secretary Clinton:

Per an article in the Daily Caller, last Friday’s “Overtime” segment of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” featured Newsweek columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan taking a swipe at Secretary of State Clinton while exalting former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  Wendy Schiller, associate professor at Brown University, argued with Andrew Sullivans’ claims that:

“[Thatcher] absolutely used her femininity, her beauty, her wit [and] her humor to run rings around these stupid men around her” …“But she never — she never said, ‘I’m a woman. I’m being attacked unfairly because I’m a woman.’ She never played that card. She never played the card that Hillary [Clinton] played at some points. She never played the ‘oh you can’t do this to me’ [card]. She played the ‘I’m as hard as nails as everyone, I’m a feminist who doesn’t believe there’s a difference between men and women in the public square and we abide by the same rules and God help you fight with me’ [card].”

Prof. Schiller rightly pointed out:

“[Hillary Clinton] was maligned and abused since the minute she stepped into public life with her husband,” Schiller said. “And in 2008, she took more abuse, and Sarah Palin might be a close second, more abuse than any human being in politics. She never played the woman’s card. She was tough as nails. And she’s running around the world securing peace now.”

Sullivan countered that Hillary rode her husband’s coattails to her current success and put him before herself.  He then declared, “That’s not a feminist.”

There is so much wrong with his statements, it is hard to know where to begin.  But we are dealing with a man who in 2007 said this of then-Senator Clinton:

“…[W]hen I see her again, all my — all the cootie vibes sort of resurrect themselves…I’m sorry.  I must represent a lot of people… I actually find her positions appealing in many ways.  I just can’t stand her.”

Looking through this lens, his statements are suspect, but they are worth discussing because he offers an example of how women are continually trivialized and maligned without cause.

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