To be fair, that’s most politicians, for reasons that range from the legitimate to the spurious - and none moreso than the current WH occupant who can change his position on an issue to the diametric opposite one in the course of the same sentence.
It makes it much harder to ding her for her actual mistakes when her detractors are so busy making up bullshit about her.
Indeed she has more in common with Trump than just old friendship.
Yes, that is true of most politicians. And most politicians know, or should, that once you get a reputation for something, almost every story about you becomes viewed through that lens. That’s why I’m surprised more of them haven’t figured out that being straight forward and acting like you don’t give a damn is the best policy. I’d argue that Joe Biden’s shoot from the hip mentality has gotten him a lot further than most politicians’ overly scripted and fabricated personas.
Of course, the most talented pols fabricate a persona and make you think it’s authentic. But since we all recognize that Clinton is pretty much the definition of a conventional politician, there’s not much point in fretting over how her own words hurt her, even when taken somewhat out of context. A calculated, careful politician isn’t supposed to run into that problem very often.
In a very superficial way. Clinton changes positions because she’s thought about them. Trump changes positions because he hasn’t thought about them.
As for Clinton’s reputation, since much of it is based on decades of right-wing lies about her, I’m not surprised that her current detractors are keen to encourage others to view her through that lens. And taking her own words out of context and imposing new false narratives on them to “hurt her” is a longstanding practice among those detractors (e.g. “What difference does it make?”).
She certainly has plenty of legitimate things to criticize, and yet the bullshit keeps getting piled on anyway.
Clinton changes positions because of the political ramifications of her positions. Note her position on DLs for illegals in 2008. That changed in the same debate because she found out that she got to the left of her party. She was mercilessly mocked by Obama, Dodd, and Edwards for having a position when she was the first speaker and adopting a new one after everyone else had spoken.
Then in the campaign there was her flip flop on TPP, which was mocked by Vox because she knew very well what was in it and she had supported it. Until she decided to run for President.
That’s politics. What matters is whether the legit stiff can swing enough votes. Look, my hero is John McCain, I still love the guy, one of the few politiicans I truly admire. And I HATED a lot of the BS that got slung at him during his run for President.
But he also did some things I couldn’t defend that in hindsight make me realize the public made the right choice. He was too impulsive and was impatient to learn about any issues outside his wheelhouse. And even the issues he did know a lot about were informed more by his emotional response to them than anything else. And also, as a principled man with a reputation for being principled, when he has strayed from those principles the media made a big deal out of it.
Clinton, like McCain, has a public image and she lives and dies by that public image. She’s secretive, calculated, inauthentic, but also knowledgeable, moderate, responsible, and loved by those who know her well. But much as McCain shit the bed when he picked Sarah Palin and “suspended” his campaign over the financial crisis, her emails and wall Street speeches were just super stupid and it exposed another one of her weaknesses: she didn’t actually understand her public image, it’s upsides and downsides, and she didn’t have anyone near her who had the guts to explain it to her.
Holy crap. I agree with pretty much all of that. What has happened to the world?
Interestingly Hillary’s reputation, and that of her book, suddenly rose massively on Amazon, after they deleted over 900 reviews out of 1600.
Telegraph 2017 09 14
Interestingly one-sided presentation of your own damn cite, Evan. Do you think it possible that many of those “reviews” were silly attempts at game-playing, unrelated to changes of “reputation” as you claim?
I should imagine that is true of most Amazon reviews. Or indeed of YouTubers. And IMDB comments, although oft-times more amusing than the other too, sometimes display partisanship unrelated to watching the wretched film. Certainly to prominent directors and also to actresses.
However, a stalinist pruning of adverse thought by managers doesn’t seem quite a free and frank discussion leading to synthesis. Don’t want to get censored and shut-up ? Fawn like your life depended on it.
Literally in the case of Uncle Joe.
I don’t get the sense from that article that it was only negative reviews that were purged. It seems sensible for me to purge reviews from people who obviously have not read the book and are just using Amazon reviews as a sounding board for their political views, pro or anti-Hillary. Same sort of shit happened with an acquaintance/friend’s bar/restaurant on Yelp because of some perhaps politically incorrect goings-on at his place that got some local coverage. All of a sudden, there was an influx of the offenderati posting shit about his place who have never even been there. Yelp actually did end up purging all those fake reviews. As well they should have. I have no issues with Amazon doing the same.
(To be honest, said friend didn’t give a shit and actually wore it as a badge of honor, printing up some of the more scathing reviews, framing them, and putting them around his bar. Of course, he used to be a professional wrestling promoter back in the day, so he’s definitely of the any publicity is good publicity sort.)