I mainly just find it kind of funny that the Presidency is THE benchmark. I know all the reasons why it is and I accept that it is, but I’m pretty sure Governor Napolitano, Justice O’Connor, and god knows how many other women holding high public office never had this kind of publicity.
I always thought that the Supreme Court would be the ultimate cool job, far better than the Presidency. (And before anyone freaks out, I am not recommending that Clinton be appointed to the SC. I just think it would be a great job.)
Oh hell yeah. Tenure for life? You could decide a case based on whether or not you liked how one of the representing lawyers dressed, and have your staff turn that into a 100-page dissenting opinion. 
I wouldn’t have a problem putting Hillary on the Supreme Court.
It’s one thing to call your opponent inexperienced. It’s quite another to say that your opponent is so unfit to be president that even the nominee of the opposing party would make a better US president than your opponent from the same party.
And it is especially heinous if you do this
- If you have such similar policy positions with your opponent from the same party
- That opponent has a high probability of being your party’s nominee (which he did at the time the comments were made).
So yes: she was using a scorched-earth strategy. And yes: shame on her.
And to refresh your memory:
Someone with better political memory than me: Has this happened before in recent history, during the primaries? That is, a Democrat praising the Republican nominee as being a better candidate for president than a fellow Democrat? Or vice versa?
Really? I’m not certain she’d be qualified myself.
As a historical question: how often has a Senator become a Supreme Court Justice?
Excluding the praising of McCain issue, the fact that she claimed Obama was inexperienced was not outrageous. It makes sense for any politician to point this out about their opponent.
What is outrageous is that people fell for that as an argument to choose her over him, given the she has only been a Senator a tad longer than him and has only been a First Lady before that. Being First Lady does not give you any relevant experience that you can use in your bid for the presidency. People using her “experience” as a reason to pick her over Obama are just plain stupid.
FWIW, I didn’t care too much which of the two of them won the nomination. Both are historic candidacies, and both have similar positions. After her praise of McCain over Obama, and after her ludicrous last-minute attempts to stop the inevitable (using arguments like “I have the popular vote”, which she knows does not count in this primary process), she went a couple of notches down in my book.
I should also note that the fact that Obama went to the same church as Rev Wright brought him down a couple of notches too, since it seems unlikely that in the 20 years that Obama saw him preach, he never said anything as controversial as the things that were all over the media a couple of months ago (on the other hand, I’m not familiar with Black churches, and maybe having a preacher say bombastic things is to be expected, and you can’t find a Black church that doesn’t have a preacher who says such stuff, although I find this unlikely)
Somewhat tandentially related, Maureen Dowd has a column on the right wing’s demonization of Michelle Obama.
My guess is he more went to that church and remained a member due to the list of notable people in the congregation than because he bought in to inflammatory comments from the minister. He’s a politician, they want to rub elbows with those who can propel their career so they go where those people are. IIRC Bush campaigned at Bob Jones University notorious for bigotry and racism. McCain has Hagee. I suspect you could delve into the past of any politician and find notable associations with less than savory people.
Besides, is it so surprising that a minister of a predominantly African-American church expresses the angst of that community?
I’m almost certain that it never happened at the Presidential-race level. The only time I can recall that happening at any level is the time when a bunch of LaRouchies got themselves onto the Democratic ballot in Illinois during the 80s.
I wasn’t intending to pick on you, Polerius. There are many examples in almost any primary thread you can find on the board. People are shocked, SHOCKED! that a candidate would find a vulnerable point in a challenger and exploit it to try to win votes.
Why was he perceptionally vulnerable on that point? Because he was not a national figure until recently - was it 2004? Clinton has been a public figure longer, so has McCain. It’s not a huge leap to see that McCain was going to use the same tactic and if Clinton hadn’t used it, there would be questions as to why she hadn’t.
I hear your concern but don’t share your angst on this subject.
As I suggested a few posts ago, Suse, there is a moderately respectful way one colleague suggests ways in which she or he might hold an advantage over an opponent (cf. virtually all of Obama’s references to Clinton this past year), and there is the scorched earth way of doing things, which characterizes a desperate (or clueless–I’d vote “desperate” here) candidate willing to trash anyone or anything, especially the standing of her or his opponent, in order to accrue a few more critical votes.
When you choose option “B” you raise animosity all around and create an unbreathable atmosphere. It’s disingenuous, in my view, to do that and then to claim, with furrowed brow, "I don’t get where all this ill-will stems from. Who, me? "
All the more so when the bridge burning candidate is, by her own admission, a veteran savvy politician who ought to know better.
I think you’re being a tad disingenuous about what people objected to. It wasn’t the charge of “inexperience,” per se (as fatuous as that was coming from Hillary), but the breech of normal, intra-party ettiquette in suggesting that the candidate of the opposition party would be a better choice in the General Election that her opponent in her own party – especially since the nomination of the candidate she was attacking was already virtually assured. He wasn’t a marginal candidate. She wasn’t just trying to attack a “weak spot,” she was trying to cripple her own party if she couldn’t be the nominee.
ArchiveGuy, thanks very much for posting this encapsulation of your wife’s professional experience. I feel as though these kinds of problems (which are real and have serious material consequences–not just touchy feely emotional effects) are little understood in our “postfeminist” world. This debate would have been more cordial from the start, I think, if people had a greater understanding of how much hurt and resentment such experiences fuel. (And thanks also for your kind words)
EddyTeddyFreddy, you’re right that the PUMA viewpoint feeds into bad feminist/female stereotypes. Let’s hope that this movement is short-lived and small (as I genuinely believe it will be). Recall that Gloria Steinem’s op-ed in the NYT, controversial though it was, made very clear that she would support Barack in the event that Hillary lost. PUMA et al are marginal groups that have organized to mobilize what, among the broader population of disappointed Hillary supporters, is really just a feeling right now. It’s a feeling that I think will dissipate so long as Barack and others do what’s necessary to make people feel respected, welcomed, listened to.
Hippy Hollow, you are a brave woman. Perhaps you should run for office yourself? 
Seriously, do you care to say whether you are planning to vote in the election? (Your closing words suggested that you will.)
Suse, you are awesome eloquent.
Okay, so maybe we’re not as young as I’d like to think: you, me, and Barack Obama. But does it at least mean that we’re all likely to have had a favorite Monkee?? Do you think Barack liked Peter, Mike, Micky or Davy?
Hippy is a guy. 
See, here it is again. An implication that they have not been listened to, have not been respected or welcomed.
If they have been made to feel unwelcome by the Obama crowd it is due to their overt arm-twisting. The notion that they are owed or entitled because they had something stolen from them and if they do not get the…whatever it is…they demand they are voting for the other guy. That is most certainly not a route to achieve respect or welcome particularly when the grievance is based on entirely false assumptions.
If instead they had been understandably disappointed in their candidate’s loss but communicated that they were still willing to get the unmitigated disaster of the Bush years behind us by seeing Obama win presidency then it would have been a downright lovefest between the two camps.
:smack:
Has there been time for any of this? We are not even one week from HRC’s concession speech.
Well I think the idea is to give them the benefit of the doubt; that they will get there. To recognize that their vision of HRC as first woman prez was not deluded, but meaningful (as BO is doing in his speeches) and move on from there.
I guess what I’m thinking is 1 part patience, 1 part understanding, and 1 part you catch more flies wtih honey.
Of course it was not deluded. Had it not been for Obama running (and even with Obama, had she given more attention to the caucus states), she would almost certainly have been the Democratic nominee, and very likely the next president.
The fact that you phrased it that way, that they want some assurances that their choice was not crazy or deluded, seems to me to indicate that this post-primary-irrational/emotional behavior may be all due to huge insecurities on the part of those voters.