One thing’s for sure, I’ll never marry her. Hell, I’m not even going to go to California and marry Bill Clinton.
Now that we’ve gotten the entire extent of my give-a-shittitude about her romantic life out of the way, I see no reason to talk about it when we’re discussing her as a candidate for public office. When I was single and dating, I didn’t consider potential girlfriends based on their health care policies, either.
I think that giving a shit about politicians’ sex lives is one of many ways in which we diminish our body politic.
Depends on whether people are counting on you to keep the Democratic party from splitting apart. If a nobody Democrat votes for McCain, nobody gives a shit. But if a party leader betrays the party, lots of people give a shit.
She was all over the place. Making a crack about “typical male” stupidity in the very midst of condemning sexism. Complaining that sexism has to take a back seat to racism because the media care more about one than the other. Ascribing to Obama urban stereotypes of uppity black male pimps (which Maddow informed her was popular in hip-hop culture) while demonstrating that she understood practically nothing about his gesture. It was just a trainwreck.
Personally, I don’t give all that much of a shit about it either.
For kevja, This Article, from 2006. Here is a more recent Newsweek article.
Whether you believe it or not, in a general election campaign, it is going to be raised as an issue by someone, very probably the Religious Right, and like every other “Oooo, could this hurt them?” issue, played until it’s dead.
The biggest concern I have about Barack Obama is that he is apparently able to inspire the kind of fanatical hatred that the OP demonstrates. I worry about any leader who attracts this kind of followers.
Obama has NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! The kind of feelings some of us have about Clinton come absolutely and completely from the way she’s conducted her campaign and the actions of herself and her surrogates (such as Ferraro).
Obama isn’t sending us secret communiques dictating the proper focus for the two-minute hate here. If anything, he’s bent over backward to be gracious, courteous and positive about Clinton. He’s constantly shown class and grace when speaking of her, congratulating her for her wins. She’s finally been toning down her rhetoric in regard to him, at least until tonight. But don’t imagine that Ferraro is speaking ex tempore and outside the knowledge of the campaign. That’s naive.
Edited: Also, this is a battle for the heart of the Democratic Party. It’s a battle between Dean’s “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” and the Clintons’ Democratic Leadership Council. The bad feeling is at least partly because the progressive wing is battling the corporatist wing for control. And that’s damn fucking important.
And therein lies part of my problem. So many Democrats act like if you don’t goosestep to the tune being played by Mr. “I’ll just go over to Syria and talk to him in person”, you are an inconsequential piece of SHIT.
The truth is that there are a number of registered Democrats who have supported Clinton and have voted for her who will NOT vote for Obama.
Obama’s supporters were not even close to the first people to dislike Hillary Clinton. They’re way in back of the line, actually- and it’s hardly a one-way street:
Awhile back here I suggested that Hillary would need to do a complex balancing act, backing Obama in the general election without being overly effusive about it.
I think I was wrong about that. She’s done such a good job of poisoning the atmosphere for potential Democratic voters, while stirring deep hostility and resentment among her followers, that she can afford to assume the mantle of the Good Democrat and stump wholeheartedly for Obama in the general campaign.
A goodly number of Clinton devotees will think "Hillary is such a SAINT, turning the other cheek after all the TERRIBLE things they’ve done to her. That doesn’t mean that I have to. I’ll vote for McCain. Just four years, and then HILLARY IN '12! IF NOT HER, WHO? IF NOT THEN, WHEN!!?! (Repeat ad nauseam).
This is one of the deep mysteries of the campaign for me. The candidate who the dominant spin says is a lightweight who’s instilled unthinking hero worship among followers is supposed to be Obama.
In reality, it’s turned out to be Hillary Clinton.
That’s why I’m so surprised. Obama seems like such a classy guy. What is it about him that’s attracting the crazies? It’s like seeing a crowd of loonies following Tom Hanks around, carving swastikas in their foreheads and screaming out how they’re going to kill his enemies to prove how much they love him.
So in the space of a single paragraph, you’re saying it’s ridiculous to hold Obama responsible for everything his followers do in his name and it’s equally ridiculous to think that Clinton isn’t responsible for everything her followers do in her name. Well, I suppose you’ve got all the bases covered now.
But he’s not, at least not in any disproportionate number.
There has not been a single presidential candidate in the last hundred years who hasn’t attracted his share of whack jobs. This applies to all parties, all candidates. Obama’s supporters, as a whole, seem no more or less crazy than anyone else’s. I think you’re suffering from some sort of confirmation bias. Or maybe spouting this sort of bullshit just makes you feel better.
Don’t be a moron.
The paragraph you quoted wasn’t about all the followers of each candidate, nor about their responsibility for their followers’ actions. It was about the attitudes and the positions of the candidates themselves, and about the action of one single supporter of Hillary Clinton who, while perhaps not officially connected to the Clinton campaign, is a famous Democratic Party insider. Completely different from your ridiculous interpretation of the paragraph.
It isn’t, of course. From my perspective, however, what I don’t understand about this attitude is that the policy differences between Obama and Clinton are so vanishingly small that I just can’t imagine what would motivate someone to vote against their (apparent) political proclivities. It makes me wonder what criteria you’re using to allocate your vote in the first place. Would you mind explaining what it is you find so repugnant about Obama that you’re willing to actively damage the chances of policies you support being implemented? (This question goes equally to any Obama supporter who, should Clinton be nominated would vote for McCain rather than her).
It perplexes me greatly that people can become so bitterly divided over so little clear air.
Lib,
You said what I’ve been thinking. At some point (to mix metaphors) you gotta quit being nice and cut the head off of the snake.
Whatever she does after she quits, she has already put herself ahead of the party and has already harmed the chances of Obama in the fall–and all of it by twisting the truth and taking the low road at every oppotunity. (For just one example, she cares not a whit about the remaining voters–her original plan was to have it over in February, thus depriving ALL of those downstream voters of their oppoortuntity to be heard. But now she’s got people all up in arms thinking that Obama doesn’t want their voices heard, and that’s poisonous.)
The only solution is for the supers to step up and end this thing. If that causes a defection of her supporters, then we just go find other voters.
