The right has become unhinged, and many of the criticisms they lob are just absurd. Look at what they lob against Obama.
He is a fascist
He is a communist
He is the anti-christ
He is a dictator
Providing health insurance is the worst thing to happen in the history of the US
Obama wants to repeal the 2nd amendment
So when I hear criticism of Hillary, I assume because the the loudest voices on the right have utterly destroyed their credibility as informed critical thinkers, that most of their criticisms are patently false. Right now the right is promoting the idea that she is part of some international cabal of bankers, that she killed 30 people, that she is personally responsible for the deaths in Benghazi, etc. But I put as much weight on those criticisms as I do when those same people claimed Obama was the antichrist.
Are there valid, factually accurate criticisms of Hillary? I will be supporting her in the election, and no matter what people throw at her I think she is more qualified than Trump. There would need to be some serious, serious skeletons in her closet to make her a worse choice than Trump. But are there valid reasons to dislike her as a politician?
I personally don’t see why she is so unpopular. She comes across as wooden and not as a good politician (meaning she isn’t good at the social skills voters look for). Other than that, what have you got?
Only 5% of funding for the Clinton foundation goes to Charity? It is actually 89%.
America needs two or more informed, responsible, moral parties. We don’t have that anymore.
I think one compelling argument - not so much against Hillary, but against her type - is that America needs someone who “speaks bluntly and plainly.” Bernie and Trump both went for that style; although Trump is a buffoon.
But Hillary just comes across as a practiced, rehearsed, insincere, polished Washington insider politician, and a large chunk of the American electorate yearns for someone who is simply sincere and just shoots straight and “tells it like it is.”
Has little by the way of accomplishments as a politician.
As a Senator, her accomplishments are few and she got the big issue of her tenure, Iraq, badly wrong.
As Sec of State she was pretty much sidelined by Obama and his team (some of her former aides like Vali Nasr have mentioned this) and her signature policies were the “reset twith Russia” and Libya. How did those work out,
I think she is an ambitious woman, who will; work behind the scenes with carrots and sticks to get what she wants, and will guard her secrets. Basically, as Velocity says, a polished politician rather than a Mr. Smith goes to Washington type. That said as a Liberal in the face of hard nose give no quarter opposition from the other side, I think this is just what we need.
She may not be the most warm likeable grandmotherly person, but she will get the job done.
In 2005, she hopped on board the moral panic over video games and rode it hard. She crowned it by introducing the “Family Entertainment Protection Act”, which was intended to create content-based restrictions on the sale of video games, with criminal penalties. I regard the bill as a attack on free speech aimed–as so many have been–at a new medium in the process of becoming an art form. While it did not pass and was therefore never tested in court, a nearly identical California law was struck down by the Supreme Court; both were, in my opinion, blatantly unconstitutional. Either she was taken in by a moral panic, or she was trying to exploit it for political gain, and I weigh that against her.
Sorry, but that’s the best criticism I’ve got: She introduced a bad bill a little over a decade ago, which never amounted to anything and is unlikely to be revisited in light of Supreme Court precedent.
It’s certainly not going to stop me from voting for her now.
Lack of charisma is a meaningful negative, I think. A politician’s job is to work with others to get things done, even when others initially don’t want to follow you. Charisma/social skills/social ease is a part of the skillset you need to get things done. That said, maybe she’s a completely different person behind closed doors with other politicians, who knows.
But besides the usual gripes about politicians generally (pandering, evasive, etc…), one thing that bothers me about Clinton is that she is sometimes divisive for no useful purpose. It might be excusable for off-the-cuff commentary, but she does this even in prepared remarks. The “basket of deplorables” comment comes to mind. There are plenty of useful ways to express outrage over Trump’s prejudicial viewpoints for political gain; there’s little value in attacking Trump’s supporters in the process. “[A lot of kids] think work is a four-letter word” is another that sticks in my mind; can’t you find a way to express the importance of hard work that doesn’t alienate people?
So the same people who decry “political correctness” want criticisms directed their way to be couched in genteel language so as not to hurt?
My, my, my, what sensitive souls.
For me, I hated her and Bill for all the scandals when he was president. As the years passed and Hillary became a Senator and then SoS, I calmed down and actually started to like her. Her biggest problem these days is her penchant for secrecy and not being easily forthcoming. It’s likely the reason she set up the private email server, it’s what got her in trouble with the pneumonia, etc. Obviously, the beatings from the media and the right wing from the last 25-30 years took a toll on her, but she needs to find a way to get over that and be more forthright since it seems she wants to stay in politics and the public eye
Are there any credible reports about her temper? There seems to be a popular myth that she is mean, intolerant of subordinates, and has a profane mouth. I’m personally not offended by an adult who uses profanity, but this seems to be a persistent criticism. Is it true?
This is probably true, but I don’t for the life of me see why it’s supposed to be a problem. It seems to me that politicians ought to change their positions to reflect the shifting views of their constituency; we elect them to represent us, after all. (I will grant that promising one thing because it’s popular but doing something else once actually in office is a problem, but that’s a separate issue. Doing what the people elected you to do while successfully concealing the fact that you would, personally, have preferred to do something else is not, IMO, a problem.)
I’ve gone on record elsewhere to the effect that running the world’s only superpower is not a job for amateurs. I’ll extend that and point out that it’s not done effectively from inside a goddamned goldfish bowl either.
I don’t want to step on any unexcluded middle landmines, so I’ll concede that there’s a happy medium to be found between utter transparency and utter opacity, and I would not quibble against an assertion that Secretary Clinton has not found it. I would quibble against an assertion that any president has.
Huh? I don’t understand how your comment follows from mine. My opinion was Clinton should avoid making statements that offend or alienate others when those statements serve no useful purpose, and that she has a tendency to do this.
In the “basket of deplorables” example specifically, I expect Clinton to avoid generalized criticisms of Trump supporters. It has nothing to do with whether or not the supporters deserve the criticisms, or the manner in which the criticisms are phrased. It has everything to do with pissing people off without getting any corresponding benefit.
As a democrat, my criticism of her is that she is essentially a republican. I’ll never forgive her Iraq vote and if she was running against anyone else, I wouldn’t vote for her. If I had wanted to vote for a race baiting war monger, I’d have joined the GOP, but Trump is a straight up fascist so I’m with her.
I had a similar thought the other day - Hillary would definitely make a great #2: give her a task, tell her to get it done. 20 minutes later, it’s done and she has a complete report on your desk explaining what she did and why.
And as President, she’ll have the same competency. The problem is, I don’t know that she’ll be able to sell her plans, particularly to the public at large. She is reportedly very personable in small groups, so making deals with Congress is probably doable. But if Congress balks, I don’t know that she can use the bully pulpit.
I was (still am) a Bernie democrat, and the main two things I held against Hillary during the primary season were 1. she is too much of a war hawk, and 2. she is much too cosy with Wall Street.
I still am disturbed by those two things. I don’t give a crap about charisma, or folksy charm,or what happened in the 1990’s. I don’t pick candidates based on their acting skills. On social issues she has mainly been progressive, and her platform is quite progressive. That I do like.
The crazyright has thrown feces at her for decades now, so it is hard to see her clearly through the muck of lies. I could go into what I think her good qualities are; there are quite a few. But that’s not purpose of this thread . . .
Pretty much. I am a social liberal and I think she is pretty much a social liberal, so I really have no beef with her there. Which is of some importance because I often tend to vote social policy first.
Economically she seems like a bland corporatist, which generates a resounding ‘meh’ from me. I expect she’ll mostly be a MOR centrist Democrat/moderate Republican sort, which I cannot in anyway get enthused about, but can probably tolerate at a Federal level.
On foreign policy she has almost always respresented the hawkish wing of the Democratic Party and I have quite a few problems with that. It could rise to the level of a disqualifying issue for me except for the fact that better a sane, somewhat pragmatic hawk than a lunatic ultra-hawk. Given the competition it’s a no-brainer
Why is she the only one who seems to be blamed for the Iraq vote? Was she the deciding vote in a tie or something? I just don’t get this criticism of her. The blame for the Iraq war falls fully on Bush and Cheney, in my opinion, not the individual Senators who trusted them to use the war authorization wisely.