As far as I can tell, the drawbacks of Clinton as a candidate have been talked about extensively–here, on the Internet in general, in traditional media, and in real life. Yet for some reason, a majority of people still prefer her to Trump.
To pile on to the answer …
There has been lots and lots of smoke and very little fire.
And let’s be perfectly clear: the smoke has not originated from the Right alone; mainstream media is also guilty. The NYT had done lots of it - one example in the early point of this election cycle here.
Apathy has not been an issue. Over-attention to every tinfoil accusation and assumption that “someone says” means likely truth have been.
Can you tell me what those scandals are?
Respectfully, for over two decades all we’ve talked about is the latest Clinton scandal trumpeted by the Republican Party. It has been nothing but one accusation after another and one hearing/investigation after another - all covered by the media. The Clintons and these scandals have been a topic of the news media, right wing radio, Fox News, social media, best selling books, etc. for nearly as long as I’ve been politically active (I’m 47). To try and say that the discussion is being silenced is absurd.
It has been talked about, continuously, to the point where the topics have become a part of our lexicon - Whitewater, Travel Gate, Vince Foster, the definition of “is”, the Clinton Foundation, the email scandal, and of course Benghazi-Benghazi-Benghazi. We all have heard it talked about, okay? We all know of the accusations.
And many, many people will still vote for her because at this point we have 20+ years of inflammatory accusations with no merit. The woman has repeatedly faced prolonged and intensive public investigations and nothing - I repeat nothing - has come from any of it. Nothing at all.
I’m no flag-waving, cheering fan of Hillary Clinton. And no, I wasn’t a supporter of Sanders either. But even with my dislike of her I can see that the only scandal here is that the Republican Party has been able to get away with the baseless accusations for so long and that it has worked so effectively. So honestly, she probably could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in NYC and I’d probably not believe it was anything more than another right-wing faux-scandal. That’s what happens when you cry-wolf for decades, no one believes you anymore.
MeanJoe
For me it’s a matter of seeing the “scandals” for what they really are.
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Benghazi. The people responsible are the terrorists who attacked the consulate, not Clinton.
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The Goldman Sachs speech. She’s never given Goldman Sachs any preferential treatment, so why should I care if she gave a speech at one of their meetings?
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Bill’s marital infidelities. Why is this even a scandal. It’s a personal matter between Hillary and Bill.
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The Clinton foundation. There’s no evidence she ever did anyone a favor for donating to the foundation.
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Vince Foster, Seth Rich, and who knows how many other “mysterious” deaths. The Clinton’s had nothing to do with any of them. This one really does head out into right wing loony land.
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The emails. This is the only one with even a little legs. A) The content of the emails does not show any wrongdoing. B) My sincere belief is that she set up the private server to avoid further attacks (like the ones I mention above) from the right. In doing this, she did make an error in judgement. I’m pretty sure she has since learned her lesson. This one error is not anywhere close to disqualifying her from being president.
Honestly, I’m not too fond of her, for reasons unrelated to any of the “scandals” or the talking points raised by Republicans. And I expressed that lack of fondness in the primary, by voting for someone I thought would be a better president than she. But you know what? I don’t have the opportunity any more to choose between her and Sanders (and never had the opportunity to choose between her and Biden, or her and Schweitzer, or any of the other candidates I might have preferred). I now have the opportunity to choose between Clinton and Trump. At this point, my reasons for disliking her, and any other points against her, are irrelevant, unless they rise to the degree that they make her worse than Trump. Which isn’t likely to happen.
Funny how we have been talking about it for twenty years (according to MeanJoe) but you have never heard of any of them.
[ul][li]One news cycle of revelation.[/li][li]One news cycle of “that never happened”.[/li][li]One news cycle of “that doesn’t count”.[/li][li]One news cycle of attempts to change the subject.[/li][li]One news cycle of “that’s old news/Trump/Bush/any Republican is worse”[/li][li]Back to “that never happened”.[/ul][/li]Regards,
Shodan
I hear them talked about a lot. But when I do, they just seem to be smoke and mirrors. I asked a guy the other day about the email scandal because frankly I’d never really looked into it, and he appeared to believe it showed Clinton to be more or less a complete crook. So he told me a bunch of stuff. And about five minutes (nay, three) later after I’d looked at a couple of fact checking sites I found that every single thing he said was complete BS. So I put that to him and he said in essence “fuck Clinton I hate her”
It just seems to be the story all over.
And then Benghazi seems to be a complete clusterfuck in which it’s hard to even get to the bottom of what Clinton is supposed to have done: I mean there was a terrorist attack and some Americans died. This doesn’t seem altogether unusual. Then there seems to be some rumours that the people that died were left unprotected or weren’t warned but no serious news outlet seems to suggest that is actually true. And let’s even assume that it was a US govt fuckup; frankly things go FUBAR all the time, in dangerous places. I don’t mean to downplay the grief of the families of those that died but the number of dead was pretty small. And the same guy I mentioned above said that he was voting for Trump and there was no way he was voting for Clinton because she “didn’t care about American lives”. I mean (a) really? You think Benghazi means that? And (b) so you’re going to vote for Trump who says “why not use nuclear weapons”? Seriously? What is the minimum number of Americans who will die if Trump does that? Let me know your answer in hundreds of thousands, there’s no point in using any smaller unit of measure.
And let’s not even go to the whole issue of how the Pubbies got the world into a war over a lie that cost many, many more American lives than Ben-frickin’-ghazi.
Seriously, there is just no way to take the shit against Clinton seriously. It’s so obviously a case of “I’m going to hate Clinton, now let me make up some crap to justify my hatred” it’s not funny.
Because 99% of the things she is accused of having done are pure bullshit right wing fantasies. She’s more qualified and more honest than the grand majority of politicians we’ve EVER had as a presidential candidate and people are acting like she’s the equivalent of Trump. The only thing there is to be pissed off about is that anyone at all that people on our own side actually believe any of the bullshit.
Funny how you didn’t answer the very simple question.
I’m not American, I don’t live in America, I haven’t been listening to you for 20 years. As a person from another country all we hear is that Hillary is bad but very little details about exactly why this is. And when I ask the very simple question I don’t get a straight answer.
Would anybody else like to enlighten me?
Benghazi: 4 Americans died in an embassy attack. Hillary Clinton is responsible for their deaths somehow. (Of all the things people don’t like about her, her “role” in the Benghazi attack is the most political of charges and falls down with the slightest review of basic facts.)
Emails: Hillary Clinton had a private email server where she received State Department emails. She did this against the advice of many people. Not a great move, but not illegal. Laws may be changed because of this, however. She has apologized, and now the opposition is reduced to reading her words and seeing what statement made 20 years ago contradicts what statement made 2 years ago. I am quite positive they will find something - a 20 year consistency is a sign of madness, and Hillary ain’t crazy.
Lying: She dissembles about herself. The past 24+ years of attacks have done nothing to eliminate this problem.
Ambition: She’s a woman and openly ambitious. This REALLY bothered people in the 1990s.
Granted, Clinton does seem to have a loose understanding of political ethics which is basically push the line of the stated rules and sometimes violate the spirit while staying true to the letter (and sometimes go beyond the letter). However, that doesn’t seem to be something that is even close to unique to her, or to her husband.
Thanks for replying everyone… I have to go to work. But I’m reading replies now…
I just wanted to tell everyone that I’m really glad I asked and I value the responses.
Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk
It’s because, in the liberal mindset, it doesn’t matter that she has committed felonies and then lied about it. After all, she is The Ghoddess Hillary, and that excuses everything.
You know in the other thread you were asked to cite this and you never did.
What felonies has she commited? When was she convicted of a felony? Any chance on a cite, or just your say so?
Mrs. Clinton committed felonies? Wow!
What felonies did she commit?
What felonies, specifically, has she committed?
Even the FBI director couldn’t come up with such a list.
I don’t get upset about her “scandals” because I don’t feel she’s acting willfully maliciously or for personal gain. I feel her underlying goal is appropriate. She may make mistakes, not do everything perfectly, and not get enough buy-in, but that’s not worth getting too upset about.
She’s clumsy from a political perspective, which gives her opponents a lot of ammo. Part of being a good politician is speaking and acting in such a way so that even your opponents feel like they are being heard and understood. Hillary is not like that. She speaks down to her opponents. I don’t fault her too much for that because I generally agree with her ideas and what she’s trying to accomplish.
While I may not personally like Hillary as a friend and would not like working with her because of her personality, I feel she is a hard worker and accomplishes worthwhile things. Of course I’d rather have a President who also gave me warm-fuzzies, but I’m not going to get upset if that’s not the case.