This is yet another reason to despise her: her supporters are in the main self-victimizers, who love to punch themselves in the face and then show the bruises on national TV. They have no integrity, don’t pretend to, don’t even pretend to know what youre talking about when you refer to “integrity,” and will do anything to be elected to whatever office she aspires to at the moment. I can easily imagine an Obama supporter or a McCain supporter saying, “My guy is all wet is on issue A (or B or C), and I’m furious at him…” but a Hillary supporter is true-blue, loyal to Hillary herself, not her issues, and they identify with HER personally, rather than what she stands for, which is nothing.
Yes, but we can all spell “Clinton”.
This is true of a portion of the supporters of any politician - including Obama.
What’s not to hate? She’s a proven liar and has no concept of the meanings of honor and integrity.
It’s been very interesting replies with personal feelings and understandable reasons for them, and factual information too, in this thread; thanks for posting them! Of course, I don’t hate her now any more than I did before, but I get a sense from where the negative feelings might stem, which is what I was curious about.
My mom, a lifelong, informed Democrat, bolted in 1992 thanks to the Clintons and has since become a semi-credulous senior-citizen Republican. The mere mention of the names “Hillary” or “Clinton” still agitates her.
She is of Italian heritage, and said if Mrs. C were ever president, she was taking my dad and moving to Italy, because at least Italian corruption and venality are things she can cope with.
Lots of good reasons to despise HRC are listed above, but my main two are:
- Her smug, condescending demeanor. This comes through in all her public speeches, as if she were a kindergarten teacher lecturing to children.
- The way she put up with a serial-philandering husband. Many people (particularly woman) cannot forgive her for her spineless acceptance of Bill’s wicked ways.
Those are reasons I (and many) despise her. Neither are good reasons to vote against her. I do vote against her every chance I get, but that is because she is so bleeding liberal, which is a totally separate issue…TRM
Do be careful about what you accept as fact vs. rationalization. At least a large portion of the hatred you see from both the right-wing partisans and the Obama partisans is not reasoned but visceral, as you can see here, and many of them will even admit to that.
In that light, some things you see listed above can be seen in other ways:
-
Carpetbagging - she was elected to the Senate because the voters of New York put her there. A majority were convinced she’d be the best choice for the job. Any of them who preferred somebody else could have voted for them, such as, erm, well … Anyway, this complaint is actually about democracy itself, or perhaps the aggregate intelligence of the NY electorate, not Hillary Clinton.
-
Ambition - well, duh! What top-level pol doesn’t have a heavy dose of that? She’s no different at all.
-
Attempting to implement public health care - the pretzel logic there is breathtaking.
-
Use of her first name - so what? Very common when there are 2 prominent pols with the same last name.
-
Iraq vote - valid, but only if most of the Senate and House get condemned for it equally.
-
Forgiving and sticking with her husband, at least in public - how do we know what the volume of the arguments were in private, and how is it anybody else’s damn business anyway?
-
“Liar/corrupt/honor/integrity/etc.” - examples are rarely offered.
Well, there’s always the “dodging sniper fire” thing, but that massively predates widespread Hillary-bashing.
Keep in mind that although plenty of people dislike her for real, actual reasons, there is often more than a faint whiff of sexism floating around as well. During the election there was this weird, gross smirking about her “pantsuits” - what the hell else is a female politician supposed to wear? A skirt suit or a pant suit, and she wore the latter. All of that had this real “ballbusting bitch” air to it, in the sense of “a woman with ambition is sexless and gross”.
It was very widespread as early as the 1992 primaries, but only among GOP partisans and their Fox spokespersons.
It only became common among Democrats, and only a faction of them at that, in the 2008 primaries, and for the most part it subsided into mere bewilderment when Obama picked her for State.
-Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 1992, the latter is from a 60 Minutes interview.
You can’t be dissin’ Tammy Wynette and stay at home moms and expect the love.
I am tired of hearing this oversimplification in every discussion about women and success. There are plenty of strong women who are *not *bitches–I’ve worked for a couple of them. There are plenty who are (I only saw five minutes of “The Devil Wears Prada” but I would say that Meryl Streep’s character was the prototypical bitch), and there are plenty of men in leadership positions who are [insert favorite invective here].
My impression of Hillary Clinton is that she will mow anyone down to get what she wants, rather than seek collaborative solutions. I don’t hate her, and I don’t think she’s a bitch, but that’s one reason I would have been hesitant to vote for her.
Er… that should read, “was massively predated by widespread Hillary-bashing.”
Her self-serving ego was shown when she killed any hope for health care reform 15 years ago.
Everybody on both sides knew it was inevitable. The Health care corporations and their Lobbyees had prepared their battle plan to defend the territory they felt most important. Then Hillary, without any existing authority just a lot of camera time, Hijacked the reform movement, and grabbed the banner out from under everybody. She developed her own ridiculous plan, and refused to compromise on anything, and scared the hell out of everyone. Then when it became clear nobody was going to pass the “Hillary Clinton, blessed be the oh so smart one, Health care plan that saves the world”, and that the result would be negotiated by people who were actually elected. She folded her tent, took her ball and went home having only manged to poison the entire effort.
The Clintons frightened the hell out of conservatives. Bill is a centrist (e.g., dismantling the Nixonian welfare system) and Hillary a little right-of-center (e.g., she was a notorious Iraqi war hawk). This non-liberal Democratic appeal that wins elections was clearly going to hurt the Republicans. They could see the writing on the wall with Hillary later gaining the White House herself.
So they start The Big Lie campaign about how liberal they were, etc. It’s all about smear, smear and smear again. Don’t let facts enter into the discussion.
(Note that the Clintons actively courted the liberal vote, but didn’t actually do anything like allow gays in the military, start national healthcare, etc. So I could understand liberals hating the Clintons.)
Good point. But my aim with this thread was not to be convinced that Hillary Clinton deserves being “hated”, and I am not. I was interested in why some people invest so much negative feelings toward her, and the posters in this thread has enlightened me, for which I’m thankful. It’s been a good thread. But of course, the subject if she is rightfully “hated” (this is an unnessary hard word, which is why I put it in quotation marks) itself deserves a debate, but that is another thread (which, I’m sure, there are plenty and exhaustive in the catacombs of Great Debates).
I think many people, not saying you personally, use that excuse to justify their hatred of her. One can look at it in the way you listed above, or one can look at it as her keeping her family together and being forgiving, as god always tells people to do. So if some conservative religious person makes a big deal about her, I simply look down on their hypocrisy. Bill’s cheating was a personal family issue and none of us not named Clinton should have any say or criticism in how she handled it. Its not like he was beating her. She came out of the Lewinsky thing looking better and morally superior as far as I’m concerned.
All the reasons I hate her have been listed. However, I wouldn’t punch her in the face. But I would never vote for her.
Pantsuits. I have a serious problem with pantsuits.