Should Clinton Reject and Denounce Geraldine Ferraro?

Great Debates
141

“He’s for the war because he voted to fund it” is a canard, which has been used to slander politicians before. There’s quite a big difference between “we’re already in the war, so let’s give the troops enough body armor that they don’t get shredded like financial records at Enron” and “Hey guys, let’s go open up a financial black hole in the middle of nowhere!”

Economics is not my strong suit, but I can tell you this: from where I’m standing, we’re in this mess largely because of free trade. Now, don’t color me unappreciative of Clinton’s efforts to balance the budget. In fact, his budget management skills look better and better every day by comparison to the new Republican ideal of high spending and low returns. But Clinton’s financial policy was positively Reaganesque: cut welfare, install libertarian free-market mayhem to the greatest extent possible without losing the Democratic voter base, and throw money at the Air Force to bomb secret targets. In fact, if we’re going to talk about military policy, President Clinton was much like a more pragmatic version of his successor, wasting moderate amounts of money on badly-targeted surgical strikes instead of wasting gargantuan sums of cash on badly-thought-out full-scale warfare. It would be fair to say that Clinton’s military policy was less destructive, but give him another 8 years and who knows what hatred the Clintons will have engendered for America around the world?

Do I need to remind you that the USA PATRIOT Act came to seed during Clinton’s presidency and he was a supporter of it? Or that the Clintons endorsed the Gores’ music censorship racket by bringing Al in as a running mate? Tipper only withdrew from the PMRC once it became politically imperative to do so.

And free trade, covert war, covert domestic surveillance and artistic censorship have a better track record, I suppose? Not to mention that Mrs. Clinton already has a proven track record of failing to implement UHC.

Quit being disingenuous. I said no such thing and I deny your thinly-veiled implicit accusations in the strongest of terms.

Racist this, racist that. Who’s playing the race card now?

I’m not a Democrat, nor am I drinking any Democratic Party Kool-Aid, hate-tinged or not.

142

Right. Because discussing race is “playing the race card.” Just pathetic.

Obama will be discussing “racist this, racist that” all day long tomorrow by the way if you haven’t heard. He’ll be giving a speech on race. I guess that means you think he’ll be playing the race card. I don’t.

143

No, I’m not being facetious. The other side saw that ad as so self-evidently retarded that I guess they can’t imagine it working for those that didn’t see it that way. As for me, what I thought was retarded was Obama’s use of Bill Clinton’s speech as the entirety of one of his ads in Texas.

Saying she would have won by bigger margins is not something that can be proven/disproven of course so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.

I think you may have a point on nudging on racism nowadays vs. in the past; however, I don’t think it follows that remarks like hers shouldn’t be made because otherwise it leaves that pink elephant unpronounced. I like my pink elephants brought into the light. Obama certainly does (on all other issues).

144

More != Better. Enough said.

This is where using voting records is kind of tricky and not necessarily fair to either side. The AUMF was very straightforward. The war funding bills were very much not. As with all funding & appropriations bills, they contained language about enough other appropriations that voting against it does not send a simple anti-war message. I don’t blame Hillary for voting for it any more than I blame Obama.

Channeling MLK is a bad thing exactly why? MLK channeled Gandhi, who in turn channeled Thoreau, Ruskin, and the Bhagavad Gita. Time has proved that MLK and MKG were genuine articles. Perhaps the same is true of Obama, perhaps not. Only time will tell.

But you can be sure that MLK and MKG were bedeviled by almost exactly the same criticisms 9th Floor levies above. White guilt, post-colonial guilt, empty and contradictory message, unmeetable ideals, you name it. These criticisms are neither original nor particularly interesting.

I am not going to go out on a limb and say that one day we will remember Obama the way we remember the forebears he self-consciously references. I honestly don’t know. But the fact that someone is willing to bet on it whereas 9th Floor isn’t says more about their personal preferences than it does about any candidate.

145

Both propositions are equally unprovable. HRC ran the ad, she won. Concluding that the former drove the latter is a nice specimen of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

I don’t really have a normative position on whether these kinds of remarks should or should not be made. It all comes down to whose votes you are trying to capture. If you think that an appeal to racism, no, racialism is a pink elephant that needs to come out of the closet, then Ferraro made that remark for your consumption.

146

True enough, my opinions say more about me than any candidate in the end. And that’s true for everyone.

The AUMF was still an “A” and not a declaration of war and could have been used carrots and sticks more, and based on the global intelligence reports at the time I find Obama’s position to be leftist. Beyond that, it’s Monday morning QB’ing.

And yes, more foreign policy experience is better than less foreign policy experience. Although Obama did try to claim foreign policy sensibility by having been 6 years old in Indonesia. I thought that was a bit of a stretch.

As for channeling MLK and whether or not Obama will be Gandhi or Jesus Christ (as German press has been saying) remains to be seen, as you say. I might consider it if I didn’t already have what I consider to be a better option already on the table: Hillary Clinton with Bill Clinton by her side.

147

Yes, it is post hoc ergo propter hoc if it’s asserted to be the reason. I don’t. I simply say she ran the ads and she won. The fact that it happened doesn’t make it untrue either. Like I said, it can’t be proven/disproven either way. I thought it was a good ad.

I don’t find that her remarks were an appeal to racism or racialism. I find her remarks to have pointed out Obama’s race appeal. What was for my consumption isn’t that I am a racist (as I will trust you’re not implying) but that I liked the fact that someone stood up and said the truth about Obama’s appeal’s sleight of hand that uses race. It was, to me, a case of someone pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Not an appeal to my racism. Maybe that’s the only kind of consumption you can imagine for that comment, and that’s fair enough, but that’s not how I took it.

148

Absolutely. But there are some things that really can be demonstrated deductively or inductively, and sometimes this just means that there are serious objective differences among candidates.

If you pull out the knife, you have to take responsibility if you ultimately use it. If what you say is true, then HRC showed either a shocking unawareness or indifference to the consequences of what was already known as a historic vote.

As in so many things, quality is superior to quantity. Since more = better for you, do you think we should bring back Henry Kissinger?

Understood. I voted for WJC in my very first presidential election. I look back on his administration with great affection, warts included.

149

Flag on that play. You said “the ad worked”. We cannot conclude from the result that it worked. All we can conclude is that it did not hurt her badly enough to lose.

Bolded for emphasis. To my eye, this screams racism. It is spectacularly obvious that Bill Clinton garnered tremendous appeal partly because he is a white male. No one really needed to point this out, let alone raise it as a major driver of his appeal. Yet for Obama, you seem to see that a congruent source of his strength is the equivalent of him wearing no clothes.

I do not “know what is in your heart”, but if this isn’t racism, then I just don’t know what is.

150

He has neither quantity nor quality in foreign policy experience. She has quantity and quality foreign policy experience as well as warts. I’ll take her.

She did take responsibility for voting to pull out the knife, has said so, and stated she regrets the vote in retrospect. Doesn’t, in my view, make her responsible for the decision to go to war and to suggest so is playing politics with the war and a ludicrous attempt to suggest that it demonstrates better ‘judgment’ than an entire lifetime of experience’s judgements both good and bad taken altogether. It’s positions like those that rub me the wrong way to imply he’s a svengali on having been against the war. Who knows how he would have voted if he’d actually been in the Senate? That can’t be proven either. But we know he took the speech off his site and then voted to fund the war. Which, I agree, is not the same as saying he supported the war. But it doesn’t show the converse either so we’re left with taking his word for how he would have voted if he was actually on the spot. I’d like to not find out what he does when actually on the spot as POTUS for the first time. No time to take chances.

There are serious objective differences among the candidates, I agree.

151

Flag on your flag. We can’t conclude that it “didn’t HURT her badly enough to lose” at all. That states that it hurt her collectively among the voters. Can’t know that. May have helped her win. Once again, can’t be proven either way. I assert that it helped and that it worked. But, yes, that is my assertion not a logical proof nor can I hold it out as one.

Bill Clinton did not get elected due to his race as a novelty act. That’s absurd.

152

Her foreign policy experience is nowhere as good as she claims, and if it simply is greater than his, why the need to exagerrate?

Whatever think may have happened does not count as a fact,and I’m not going to argue with you over your imagination.

More of your opinion.

I didn’t say that. In fact, you make a lot of assumptions about what I’ve said in four sentences. You should stick to reading what is actually there, and not what you think is there. Now, what I said was that Bill’s role in the 90’ boom is debatable. Saying that Bill get’s zero credit for the economic boom would be just as incorrect as your possibly saying that Bill gets all of the credit for the economy. The president is by no means the sole factor on the US economy.

Not admitting, but certainly a cite. You seem to imply that putting another Clinton back in office will bring back the economic prosperity of the first Clinton administration. I’d like to know how that will work.

Once again, we find ourselves in the realm of what you think I said. I said that the idea that Hillary is just another way to get Bill into the White House is potentially demeaning to Hillary. Do you see it differently? Why?

153

Yes, of course my posts are “more of my opinion.” As are yours.

As for your opinion that putting HRC as POTUS is a way of getting Bill back and that’s demeaning to her, I say so what? Maybe it is demeaning to her. Who cares? My goal isn’t to “not demean” HRC. My goal is the best POTUS. I think she’s better than Obama and Bill adds a bonus. Demeaning or not, indeed.

As for your “I’m not going to argue with you over your imagination” remark, that’s just fine because once things get personally ugly like that I’m not interested in being insulted. Have a good one.

154

Let’s not forget that she did so without even bothering to take the minimal amount of time it would have taken to read a piddly 90 page report called the National Intelligence Estimate. You know, the report that called into question all the so-called evidence that was used to justify her vote. She was briefed. That was good enough for her.

I wonder if it was good enough for the more than 3,000 dead soldiers’ widows, parents and children.

That is utter crap. If someone needs your authorization before doing something, and you give them that authorization, then when they go and do it, you are responsible. Without that document, George W. Bush could not have waged this war.

Period.

And it is not “playing politics with the war” to point out this very basic fact.

155

Instead of reading the report, she spoke directly with the author.

She took responsibility for the vote. It’s not the same as declaring war. Period.

156

A clever reversal, I guess. But I wasn’t accusing you of playing the race card because you mentioned race; I accused you of playing the race card because you used the word “racist” a handful of times in a couple of sentences, deliberately exploiting the emotional power of that word.

By that standard, LBJ and GWB both have the Clintons and Senator Obama outclassed. Is that what you really mean to say here?

Bullshit. It’s fine and dandy to claim that a truly principled anti-war politician would vote against funding the war effort, but that’s not how it works in the real world. In the real world, the war funding bills are all about protecting American lives. The war itself, isn’t. Considering that Senator Clinton is apparently running on a national security (or is it “home security”?) platform, it would befit her supporters to take a look at who’s directly helped GWB put American lives in danger and who hasn’t.

It is if you paraphrase it like that, but the reality is that growing up in another culture does make one more sensitive to the multicultural world and to the difference in cultural ideals and practices. It’s a nuanced and subtle understanding which would no doubt give Senator Obama a head start on diplomatic relations which almost all American presidents have been sorely lacking.

QFT.

Her half-hearted apologies and misdirection attempts are as transparent as her husband’s. No, even more so. And you’re being disingenuous again: the claim (Shayna’s excellent point notwithstanding) has generally been that Senator Clinton was presented with an opportunity to do her part to deny authorization of military force and she didn’t take it–which is objectively true, whether or not you claim that she alone is responsible for the war, which most people on both sides don’t claim. IOW, her “foreign policy experience” amounts to warmongery, unless you count standing next to podiums for eight years, which I don’t consider serious foreign policy work.

Once again, you’re being either disingenuous or dense, perhaps intentionally so. Maeglin did not say that WJC got elected due to his race as a novelty act. He said:

Which is about as close to objectively true as you can get in these matters. Being a WASP male gave him a leg up on the competition, because every single winner of an American presidential race or even (AFAIK) major-party nomination race, throughout history, has been white, Anglo-Saxon and male, and all but one President has been Protestant. Bill Clinton, like every other even-moderately-successful presidential candidate in American history, garnered tremendous appeal by being a white male.

More intellectual dishonesty. The claim that HRC “declared war” is a straw man. Nobody has claimed that.

157

ROFL This is one of the funniest lines I think I’ve read on here so far.

158

If you feel it’s insulting, go ahead and report it.

It’s clear to me that further responding to your posts is futile. Your position is based solely on your own rather agressive opinions and any further discussion is only going to result in you reposting them. You have no cites for your claims that Hillary will bring back the economic boom. You have no cites for Hillary deserving equal credit in Bill Clinton’s administration. You have absolutely nothing but your opinion.

159

**Quote:
Originally Posted by 9thFloor
Bill Clinton did not get elected due to his race as a novelty act. That’s absurd.
Once again, you’re being either disingenuous or dense, perhaps intentionally so. Maeglin did not say that WJC got elected due to his race as a novelty act. He said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maeglin
It is spectacularly obvious that Bill Clinton garnered tremendous appeal partly because he is a white male.**

First of all, you’ve called me a liar. Second of all, you’ve called me dense. Stop that now.

Third, and finally, I didn’t say that Maeglin said that Bill Clinton got elected due to his race as a novelty act. I pointed out that unlike whatever benefit Bill got for being white, it WASN’T that of using race as a novelty act as Obama is doing and to suggest that they’re comparable is absurd:

"Ferraro has no reason to be sorry, said Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial. All she did was “point to an obvious fact: Obama’s race does work in his favor. It’s essential to his self-portrait as a man who could heal America’s divisions, racial and otherwise.” Obama might “resent any hint that he had it easier than a white man in his position,” but he can blame the Democratic party’s history of pushing racial preferences if he unfairly feels the sting of the “affirmative-action stigma.”

“Tone down the outrage, said Paul Mirengoff in the Power Line blog, and you’ll see that Ferraro’s comments were “true at several levels.” It is undeniable that “if Obama were white, he would not be capturing 80 to 90 percent of the African-American vote in Democratic primaries against a candidate towards whom African-Americans previously were quite well disposed. And without that general level of black support, Obama would be winning many fewer delegates.” Sorry, but those are the facts.”

160

No, I don’t think it qualifies as a reportable offense and I’m not going to report it.

Instead, as I indicated, I’m done chatting with you since you get personal and ugly.

Nice try to make it seem that you’re the one that chose to stop replying first though. LOL

P.S. Oh yes, and you have absolutely nothing but your opinions too. :rolleyes: