Inspired by this thread, in which it is revealed that several dopers wants to punch her.
I´m European, but follow politics fairly closely, and nobody interested in politics can avoid follow American politics - George W., Obama, the Clintons, etc - so I’m not totally clueless who these guys are, but I’m surprised people put Hillary Clinton on a list they actually want to hit in the face.
She seems like an OK American politician in my eyes; I’m rather to the left, of course, but what harm has she done, to deserve hatred? Aside of being a (woman) politician, of course? I mean, comparing to Cheney or G.W. Bush, for instance, who actually done a lot of harm (having people killed en masse etc), where the hatred of some is quite understandable.
She was an easy bogyman during the Clinton years and it just kinda stuck. She was the wife of a president who was under constant scrutiny from the Republicans (who took the house only two years after Clinton was elected). Gingrich was pretty good at whipping up images of the dreaded liberal, a charge that was pretty easy to pin on Hillary. Hillary was often thought overbearing for a first lady, an image that was reinforced with her fierce advocacy of health reform that just failed miserably. She overstepped her bounds and stepped on toes while she was doing it.
Going into the election season there was a lot of hoopla about how unlikeable Hillary is and how we needed to stop her ascendancy to the presidency at all costs. Ironically many republicans started to cut her a lot of breaks after she strategically ran to the right of Obama during primary season. Her ultimately failed campaign did help toward restoring her image, because really her positions were not nearly as liberal as she was supposed to be. Now she is Secretary of State, a highly respectable position that she is executing as well as could be hoped. Even among republicans Hilary’s stock is rising these days.
As for why some are still anti-Hillary? She’s still perceived as ambitious and therefore fits the “typical politican” designation pretty well. Some people are just always going to find her off-putting, she doesn’t exactly radiate likability to everyone. Ultimately though I suspect that some perceptions just stay with people. She’s already been established as a good joke, she’s a high profile figure who is a premade punchline.
I’ve been doing some soul-searching on the topic, and I think in my case it’s political osmosis. My dad is to the right of Atilla the Hun, as the saying goes, and so Hillary Clinton is a radioactive subject, second only to Jimmy Carter. I guess I kept hearing Hillary=bad! over the years, and so when she was running for prez, my first reaction was horror and revulsion. I’m trying to reevaluate my opion of her based on what I know about her, but as it turns out I don’t know much beyond “she’s a liberal”.
If I ever did vote for her for anything, I’d probably be disinheirited on the spot.
That’s a really good question. By all rights, she should be due some measure of sympathy in the court of public opinion.
I have a hunch that it all comes down to Bill putting her in charge of his healthcare initiative, which Republicans were even less happy about then than they are currently mooted UHC plans now, and the rest is just what happens when the right decides it doesn’t like somebody. Limbaugh et al spring into action, and when you’ve been trashing someone for two, then four, then eight, then sixteen years, it’s a bit embarrassing if you have to tone it down or retract it.
Because she is a strong woman. End of story. If a woman does what a man does to get ahead she is a BITCH. I hope for my daughter it will be different but when even the young buy into it it may be a while.
Oh, it’s not that easy being the sexiest. All those gorgeous models throwing themselves at you, the paparazzi stalking you, the endless interviews with People magazine…
I was hoping that the sexist charge wouldn’t be thrown out quite so soon. I like Hillary and I think she gets the raw end of the deal sometimes. But I’m willing to grant her opponents the benefit of the doubt in regards to being sexist, absent compelling proof. Maybe sexism does play into it, but until you can provide a convincing argument that a significant portion of the population (we’re not just talking about an individual mind you) dislikes a politician because of her gender…well you’re just cluttering the conversation. Besides, apparently a lot of the anti-Hillary crowd are really chomping at the bit to make a particular woman president now.
I just remember last year’s hotly contested primary. Emotions were running so high in my very competitive state that if you voted one way you were called a sexist, and if you voted another you were a racist. Can’t we just first assume that the policies and not the identity are the source of the disagreement? And then if we uncover prejudice (which certainly exists), THEN we raise a fit about it.
I think the extreme distaste covers the political spectrum, though. I am extremely left - perhaps a bit right of Castro & Chavez.
Yet I find HRC repugnant because:
She carpet-bagged into a Senate seat in a state (NY) she did not actually live in until shortly before the election. Although many Senators are not civil servants or lifelong politicians before their election, there is a general sense that serving as First Spouse is not real political preparation for a seat in the nation’s highest legislative body. General feeling among many is that HRC won the seat on name recognition, and possibly even pity for Bill’s constant horndogging and national embarrassment of her during the Lewinsky mess.
Her 2008 campaign shed much light on nasty tactics and greedy aspirations. After a short (undeserved) Senate stay she acted as though she were entitled and perfectly suited to the Presidency. A few impressions and examples, by no means an exhaustive list or sole proof:
In the 2008 campaign she repeatedly attacked Obama for being inexperienced, wrong about political reality, etc. (The “2AM Phone call” commercial)
Tried to change the rules after the game in Michigan and Florida primaries (MI and FL moved up their primary dates and fucked themselves in the general delegate count.) Clinton won both (in FL she was the only name on the ballot), so she and her team fought long and hard to get the delegates counted, though before and during those primaries it was clear they would not. Analogous to trying to include a practice game which you won by forfeit into your NFL record for the season and thus go to the Super Bowl.
In 2008 she employed all manner of despicable PR firms, consultants, and media tactics. (I can’t find the specific example I am thinking of, where she consulted with the “Swift Boat” guy or another propagandist with a history of smearing Democrats. Just one example of the desperate need to be elected that typified her campaign.)
Her supporters, especially those who stuck with her and only her after it was clear she would not be nominated (I realize it may be hypocritical to dislike someone for their fans) tended toward stridency, bitterness, and thinly veiled racism directed at the Democratic candidate. (Google “Clinton PUMA” to discover some foul theories about how it would be better to destroy and sabotage the Party than to elect the guy who beat Clinton.)
She was offered, and accepted, the Secretary of State position as a kind of consolation prize for losing the election. She jumped at the chance to take this powerful position, which I feel that she is unqualified and unsuited for.
In 1992 I sat 3 feet from the stage and heard her give a speech stumping for Bill. She was lively, mesmerizing and charismatic! Yet in the intervening time she has managed with hard work and consistent effort to completey reverse my opinion of her.
If no other New Yorker ran against her in a primary (had she remained a Senator) I would have. Not that I would have gotten 12 votes, but I despise her that much. She ran as classless a race against Obama as was humanly possible, and came off as entitled, whining, illogical, racist, opportunistic, and unqualified for office. Now I’m glad that she isn’t running, because I would have hated going into politics myself.
I’ve admired her ever since she had the courage to dodge sniper fire on a good will mission to Bosnia.
More seriously, she seems like her life is geared towards serving her massive ego. In the recent presidential race, she wasn’t concerned what was good for her party or country, but she was so caught up in the idea of being president that it overrode everything else. So she couldn’t let go, even when it was clear that she lost the primaries - even when it was to the detriment to Obama and her party to continue, because she just couldn’t get past her ego.
I didn’t really have strong opinions about her until the primary campaigns of last year, when it became clear how much better Obama was in every way as a politician and person.
Slight hijack: I notice that Hillary Clinton, of all politicians, is usually called “Hillary” instead of “Sen. Clinton” or “Mrs. Clinton” or just plain “Clinton”. I haven’t make up my mind as to whether this is due to sexism, or because the public is used to “Clinton” being Bill. Maybe it’s both.
That would be Mark Penn, President & CEO of Burson-Marsteller, one of the most morally questionable PR firms around. I first became aware of them in a very memorable segment.
It seems to me that since she’s been Secretary of State, she gets called Clinton more often. For what it’s worth, her presidential campaign signs usually said “Hillary 08” rather than “Clinton 08” so part of that was a conscious move on her and her handler’s part.
I used to really like and really respect Senator Clinton. I thought she was smart, savvy, tough, bullshit-free and willing to take a stand even if it was politically unpopular.
Then came the Iraq War. Later came the hearings about the Iraq War.
When Senator Clinton said she voted in favor of going to war in Iraq based on false and/or misleading information from the President, I lost all faith in her. She —and in all fairness, almost every single Democrat— voted in favor of going to war in Iraq because in the patriotic frenzy of the moment it would have been political suicide not to. The truth would have been refreshing, but anything other than the whole “…Bush mislead me!” song & dance would have worked.
Far from being a smart, savvy, tough, bullshit-free straight-shooter who was willing to take a stand, Mrs. Clinton turned out to be just another politician; a weasel-y ass-kisser who’ll say whatever it takes to stay in office.
I’ll stick with what I said about her when she was still a viable candidate (favorite, even) in the primary.
If she comes back to run for NY Senator again, I may vote for her, depending on who else is running, of course. Carpetbagger or not, she didn’t slack off.
I think that when you have achieved thoroughgoing name recognition and placed your stamp on public consciousness such that the American public knows you by your first name, that’s a feature, not a bug. Just ask Arnold.
126 of 208 Democratic Congressmen and 21 of 50 Democratic Senators voted against it. It would have been political suicide to vote against the Afghanistan war, but not Iraq.
I’m a Democrat who should be a Clinton supporter, but I’m not. I thought her move to NY to run for the senate was pretty transparent, that she didn’t really care abou the interests of New Yorkers, and that it was clear that she would be running for president in 2008. Nevertheless, she was elected and it’s not any of my business who New Yorkers elect.
I will never forgive her Iraq vote, however. I think it is obvious that she new that there was no valid reason for the war, but she voted for it anyway so that the Republicans couldn’t use her vote against the war as proof that she was soft on ‘terrorism.’ It turned out she had more to worry about from her vote for the war.
I spent two years in Iraq as a foreign aid worker, I saw the misery first hand. I lost an Iraqi colleague a month to the war. Coincidentally, a guy I used to work with was in the National Guard and he was killed by an IED in Baghdad. All those people, my friend, the thousands of Iraqis, all of them are nothing but little people to Clinton. If she has to vote to slaughter a few thousands of them so that she can be president, so be it. She is no better than Bush, in fact, I think she is worse: Bush believed the lies, Clinton knew better and still decided to slaughter people for her own benefit. She had a chance to show judgement, leadership and wisdom when she voted on the Iraq war and she blew it, why would she be different as president?
If Clinton had got the nomination in 2008, I had decided that not only would I not vote for her, I would never vote in any election beyond municipal for as long as I live. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
