According to the betting
markets, Hillary Clinton is favored to be our next president. But is this good
news?
Yes and no. Yes, for
obvious reasons. The second and third favored candidates in these markets are
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, both incredible assholes. Either one of them would certainly
inflict lasting damage on the country, if not the world. I believe a Trump or
Cruz presidency would be an even worse disaster than W’s presidency was, and
apparently the American public agrees with me, which is why their chances of
becoming president trail far behind Hillary’s.
But
the bad news in the Hillary story is that she does not measure up to Bernie
Sanders in some important ways. Bernie is focused on the influence of money in
politics, a very serious and deep-rooted problem. Hillary may regard the
influence of money as a problem (most Democrats do), but she also benefits from
well-heeled interests and is not fighting this aspect of corruption the way
Bernie is.
On
the other hand, Hillary does have her strong points. She is moderately liberal
on most issues and this makes her far superior to the GOP candidates. But what
about character? No problem. As far as I’m concerned, her character is fine.
Well
if you will just shut up for a minute, I will explain what I mean.
Hillary
Clinton is a politician whose extraordinary ambition has led her to engage in
some questionable actions in her long career. In other words, she’s a typical
middle-of-the-road politician with her eyes on the White House. When I say
typical, I mean she is not extraordinarily ignorant, as Donald Trump, George W.
Bush, and Ronald Reagan are or were, and she is not extraordinarily sleazy as
Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Richard Nixon are or were. She’s more like Barack
Obama, Gerald Ford, and Dwight Eisenhower – hugely ambitious, willing to pull a
fast one now and then, but not much different in her sense of moral decency
than most people. (Many would consider this description in itself a kind of
damning criticism, but then, these people have never tried to be president, so
what do they know?)
But,
let’s give Bernie his due here: he is, as Bill Maher recently said, “the most
authentic guy to ever run for office.” And this is big. So is the fact that he
has attracted a massive following. But again, I’m looking at the polls and the betting
markets, and they say Hillary is very likely to get the nomination and to win
the presidency. And, despite Bernie’s revolution, the truth is that Hillary has
pulled in quite a few more votes in the primaries than he has.
Now
back to the issue of Hillary’s character: something about this has long puzzled
me. I don’t understand why so many people -- even some Democrats and independents
-- consider her to be unusually untrustworthy. I’ve followed her career since
Bill Clinton was elected president, and nothing she has done strikes me as notably
dishonest. So, to figure out why so many people criticize her character, I
recently sent out emails to people I know who are either Republicans or Bernie
Sanders supporters asking them for specific details on the wrongdoings of
Hillary Clinton. I emphasized in my request that I wanted specific details revealing dishonest actions that benefited Hillary and
not just buzzwords like “Benghazi” or “emails,” etc.
Here
are some of the responses I got:
1. From
a moderate Republican (or Republican leaning independent, I’m not sure):
I think Hillary is a smart woman, but there
have been too many negative circumstances that she has been involved with and I
know a lot of it is from Republicans. The problem with me is that I find it hard
to believe that some of it isn't truthful. The one that bothered more than the
rest was travelgate. I don't even remember all the details, but I know she
fired most of the staff because they wouldn't do what she wanted I believe it
wasn't all above board. Also, I don't think she should have stayed married to
Bill after he got caught getting blow jobs from Monica along with all the
shenanigans with his other girlfriends.
No real details here, but I think Bill’s “shenanigans”
with his girlfriends is an important part of the story, as I will explain below.
2. From
a strongly conservative Republican:
8 years of Obama have been
more than enough for us plus the Supreme Court is now getting full of Liberals
and Hillary is going to continue this for too many more years, so I will vote for
anyone that opposes Hillary…There are dozens of specific issues that I will not
even attempt to put in writing here but …you can get similar info online or by
listening to people like…Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Mike Huckabee just to
name a few.
3. From
a Libertarian Republican:
I don't like
Clinton because she's a woman. Well, at least that's what the pundits and
supporters keep telling me. Actually, despite the circus that is this
presidential primary, the real reason I don't support Clinton is because of her
... wait for it ... stances on political issues!
…I obviously
don't agree with her on economic issues, but the thing that really bothers me
is her hawkish foreign policy. Aside from voting for the Iraq war, she's also
supported stronger action in Syria, including arming rebels and airstrikes
against Assad, the whole Libya intervention, and support for lethal drone strikes
even against US citizens…
It's hard to
say exactly how these choices and stances have benefited her…
4. The
most telling critiques came not from Republicans, but from Bernie supporters. Ricky,
a star student of mine, offered this:
…I think Hillary is a particularly avid
flip-flopper. In fact, I think that she "evolves" on views so
frequently, that the general public (that is to say the people not necessarily
too well-versed in politics) has begun to take notice. Whether it be her stance
on gay marriage, guns, trade deals, or most recently healthcare, she
consistently, in my mind, insults the American voter by assuming that they will
not notice her inconsistency…
Secondly, many people do [not] trust Hillary
because of the establishment and corporate worlds rigging the system to favor
Hillary…
I think a lot of people have seen what a
dishonest campaigner Hillary is. Whether it be claiming that Bernie should take
responsibly for Sandy Hook, claiming that Bernie wants to dismantle The
Affordable Care Act, or trying to paint an inaccurate picture that Bernie is
totally against President Obama is truly infuriating.
I have to agree that Hillary has changed positions,
sometimes, I suspect, for no other reason than to make herself more electable. I’m
not sure she has done this more than most politicians, but she has certainly done
it more than Bernie Sanders has.
5. Another
Bernie supporter wrote this:
Nothing out of the norm for a typical candidate for presidency. She's as corrupt as the rest, it is in my personal belief you can't even make it that far without being connected in some way to handshakes behind closed doors…
Nothing out of the norm for a typical candidate for presidency. She's as corrupt as the rest, it is in my personal belief you can't even make it that far without being connected in some way to handshakes behind closed doors…
As for the
facts: All I can stand behind is that she received classified information to
her personal email. From an outsider looking in my first reaction is big
woop. My second is, well if there is proper protocols and she didn't
follow them then she should receive the proper investigatory/disciplinary
actions…
What benefited
her: I can only deduce that from experience it is a pain in the ass to log into
government email. The real benefit is to not have to deal with the
complications of logging into those VPN portals with the BS 16 character
password you have to change every 3 months.
6. And
another Bernie-ista wrote as follows:
I know this is pretty standard for politicians, but
I don’t trust her for the way she flip flops on issues. A lot of these are really
important, such as LGBT rights, and she acts like she’s always supported LGBT
rights. But it’s like, Bitch, there’s plenty of video and audio evidence to the
contrary.
Also the Arizona primary (or caucus?) stunk to
high heaven, and the fact that lower income housing areas weren’t provided
voting areas seems extremely dubious towards Hillary. That’s the only win she’s
had of the last 8 states, and it looks to me like she cheated.
She is also obviously funded by SuperPacs but
denies up and down that she is. Bernie is funded by the people, and it feels
like she wants to imply that so is she.
Her unethical actions, that I’m referencing, have
all been about attempting to uphold a certain public image. Like I said
earlier, a lot of the stuff I’m referencing is standard for a politician, but
Bernie is consistently doing the right thing, voting the right way, and
defending the lower and middle class, instead of just saying he’s defending
those people. I know it’s a cliché at this point, but Hillary isn’t going to
fight the billionaires that are writing checks for her.
Sorry if I ended up being more Pro-Bernie than
what you were asking for, but my main distaste towards Hillary is that she’s
not Bernie
I believe part of Hillary’s
problem with the “untrustworthy” image is that the contrast with Bernie’s
unusual candor and consistency makes her look bad. But another factor is, as
commenter number 1 pointed out, Bill Clinton’s behavior. Bill had an authentic
scandal surrounding his fooling around with Monica Lewinsky and lying about it.
The Republicans pounced on him and actually succeeded in impeaching him. I believe
a big part of Hillary’s problem is that she is, to an extent, tarred with the brush
that Bill Clinton brought on himself with his cheesy behavior.
The other part is the
constant refrain of the Republicans who, in the 1990s, were so hostile to the
Clintons that they decided that anything they could do to destroy them was fair
game. One consequence of this was the so-called Arkansas Project, generously funded
by Richard Mellon Scaife, whose sole purpose was to find material that could be
used to smear President Clinton. When efforts to find wrongdoing by Scaife and
others failed, as they generally did (note the failed efforts to find
criminality in Vincent Foster’s death, the Whitewater project, Travelgate, and Troopergate,
for example), the GOP fell back on Bill Clinton’s messing around with women.
The fact that they succeeded in impeaching him for the Lewinsky affair put just
enough glue on the Clinton name that, combined with endless Republican
repetitions of essentially false or lame accusations (the Clinton Foundation! Emails!
Benghazi!) the GOP has managed to make Hillary vulnerable to charges of
underhandedness.
Of course, we could also
blame Bernie for being such a decent guy and thereby providing an unflattering
contrast with Hillary as well, but I will refrain from doing so.
In the end, if Hillary
winds up being the Democratic candidate, I will happily vote for her, not only because
I think she would make a good president, but because I would so enjoy sticking it
to all the GOP spinmeisters and sleaze peddlers who have labored so long and
hard to unfairly smear her. Their dirty work has had an effect, but not enough,
it seems, to prevent her from being “the most likely to succeed.”
