8th June 2016, 8:14 PM
Why is Hillary Clinton disliked? A thread on another forum made me think of that, and I wrote something up on the subject that I want to post.
There's only one reason why people hate Hillary, consider her a bad candidate, and all the rest: she's a woman. And not only that, but a woman with political ambitions! A woman!
There are two main categories of Hillary-haters now:
1) People who have hated her for decades. These are mostly conservatives who despise her for being a woman who has an interest in high political office. Women aren't supposed to want that kind of thing, but she does! And she's liberal and successful, too! She got off on a wrong foot with the right, with her determination during the Bill Clinton administration to not just be your traditional First Lady, but a First Lady with an actual political agenda, starting with health care. You aren't supposed to push policies as a First Lady, you're supposed to just be the social leader of Washington! And on top of that, add on eight years of Republican lies about the so-called "scandal-plagued" Clinton administration -- that is, eight years of failed attempts to actually connect the Clintons to any real nefarious activity, but that set up people for the "Clintons are corrupt" narrative that never has been true -- and you have a Right who despite Hillary. As my right-wing aunt said years ago, "she's evil, evil, EVIL!"
And on top of that, over the past 25 years the right wing in this country has moved far to the right, as purity became prioritized over getting anything done, and compromise, something required for any policy to actually happen, became demonized. This hurt all Democrats' standing with Republicans, but someone they hated from the beginning like Hillary has surely suffered more -- she's been one of the most-hated figures by the right for decades, after all.
2) Liberals, mostly men and younger women who do not remember the Clinton administration all that well, along with Bernie of course, who are attacking her from the left this primary season. The problem is, while you can make a list of claims about here that sounds like gender is not an issue, it is. Yes, there are real policy issues you can disagree with Hillary about. Bernie did a good job laying out many of those disagreements. But some people took this too far, and descended into gendered criticisms. Given Bernie's heavily male support base this isn't too surprising, but it is disappointing. Whenever someone mentions her tone of voice, doesn't notice that Hillary was criticized far more than Bernie for raising her voice during debates, mentions pretty much any of the so-called scandals or her so-called untrustworthiness, or her vote on Iraq while male Democratic leaders who voted the same way as she did there such as Biden or Kerry get more of a pass, and plenty more, those are gender-based attacks. "Hillary for Prison"? Would any Democrat say that about a male Democrat running in our party's primaries? I doubt it!
Returning to the "corruption" and "untrustworthy" points, because they are so important, both of these claims build on the legacy of all of those manufactured scandals of the '90s, because of the Republican Party's hate for both Clintons, because of her unwillingness to be a traditional First Lady, and such. The email or Benghazi scandals would not be as big a deal without that '90s history, whether or not today's 18 year olds remember it. And while I expect today's super-far-right Republican Party to say such things, it was somewhat shocking to see Democrats attacking her along somewhat similar lines. I know that our political system is getting extremely polarized, and have experienced bad behavior aimed towards people of both genders, it is worse for women. The traits people want to see from a politician are traditionally male speaking traits, and women are punished for speaking like that: women cannot yell like Bernie does because that is looked at negatively, women are "abrasive" and looked on negatively when they speak like men do, and more.
So, Hillary Clinton is "untrustworthy" and a "liar" not because she's less trustworthy than other politicians, she isn't. All politicians say a mixture of true and untrue things, and Hillary ranks well compared to this years' other presidential contenders: Democrats, Republicans. She is every bit as trustworthy as any other politician, for whatever that's worth, and more so than most any Republican. She is called those things because of the Republicans' success at marking her as "scandal-plagued" due to their 24-year-long hate campaign against the Clintons that has turned up pretty much nothing (sorry, I don't think the email scandal is anything significant) and because of conscious and unconscious discrimination against her because of her gender. Women should not be ambitious or want political office, they should be satisfied with planning the house parties for their husbands' wives' get-togethers, after all!
To be clear, of course people can oppose Hillary on purely policy-based grounds, without gender being a factor. You can, and many have, though any liberal should vote for her in November as a statement against the insanity of today's Republican Party, of course! But it's hard to get away from gender stereotypes, unfortunately, and most of us of both genders still think them whether we want to or not, and this has been a HUGE hurdle Hillary has had to struggle past. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, I have always through that her gender was the primary reason why Hillary lost to Obama; his color held him back in this country, but not as much as her gender, it turned out in the end. It's fantastic that this time she finally broke through that last glass ceiling, all that's left is to win in November!
There's only one reason why people hate Hillary, consider her a bad candidate, and all the rest: she's a woman. And not only that, but a woman with political ambitions! A woman!
There are two main categories of Hillary-haters now:
1) People who have hated her for decades. These are mostly conservatives who despise her for being a woman who has an interest in high political office. Women aren't supposed to want that kind of thing, but she does! And she's liberal and successful, too! She got off on a wrong foot with the right, with her determination during the Bill Clinton administration to not just be your traditional First Lady, but a First Lady with an actual political agenda, starting with health care. You aren't supposed to push policies as a First Lady, you're supposed to just be the social leader of Washington! And on top of that, add on eight years of Republican lies about the so-called "scandal-plagued" Clinton administration -- that is, eight years of failed attempts to actually connect the Clintons to any real nefarious activity, but that set up people for the "Clintons are corrupt" narrative that never has been true -- and you have a Right who despite Hillary. As my right-wing aunt said years ago, "she's evil, evil, EVIL!"
And on top of that, over the past 25 years the right wing in this country has moved far to the right, as purity became prioritized over getting anything done, and compromise, something required for any policy to actually happen, became demonized. This hurt all Democrats' standing with Republicans, but someone they hated from the beginning like Hillary has surely suffered more -- she's been one of the most-hated figures by the right for decades, after all.
2) Liberals, mostly men and younger women who do not remember the Clinton administration all that well, along with Bernie of course, who are attacking her from the left this primary season. The problem is, while you can make a list of claims about here that sounds like gender is not an issue, it is. Yes, there are real policy issues you can disagree with Hillary about. Bernie did a good job laying out many of those disagreements. But some people took this too far, and descended into gendered criticisms. Given Bernie's heavily male support base this isn't too surprising, but it is disappointing. Whenever someone mentions her tone of voice, doesn't notice that Hillary was criticized far more than Bernie for raising her voice during debates, mentions pretty much any of the so-called scandals or her so-called untrustworthiness, or her vote on Iraq while male Democratic leaders who voted the same way as she did there such as Biden or Kerry get more of a pass, and plenty more, those are gender-based attacks. "Hillary for Prison"? Would any Democrat say that about a male Democrat running in our party's primaries? I doubt it!
Returning to the "corruption" and "untrustworthy" points, because they are so important, both of these claims build on the legacy of all of those manufactured scandals of the '90s, because of the Republican Party's hate for both Clintons, because of her unwillingness to be a traditional First Lady, and such. The email or Benghazi scandals would not be as big a deal without that '90s history, whether or not today's 18 year olds remember it. And while I expect today's super-far-right Republican Party to say such things, it was somewhat shocking to see Democrats attacking her along somewhat similar lines. I know that our political system is getting extremely polarized, and have experienced bad behavior aimed towards people of both genders, it is worse for women. The traits people want to see from a politician are traditionally male speaking traits, and women are punished for speaking like that: women cannot yell like Bernie does because that is looked at negatively, women are "abrasive" and looked on negatively when they speak like men do, and more.
So, Hillary Clinton is "untrustworthy" and a "liar" not because she's less trustworthy than other politicians, she isn't. All politicians say a mixture of true and untrue things, and Hillary ranks well compared to this years' other presidential contenders: Democrats, Republicans. She is every bit as trustworthy as any other politician, for whatever that's worth, and more so than most any Republican. She is called those things because of the Republicans' success at marking her as "scandal-plagued" due to their 24-year-long hate campaign against the Clintons that has turned up pretty much nothing (sorry, I don't think the email scandal is anything significant) and because of conscious and unconscious discrimination against her because of her gender. Women should not be ambitious or want political office, they should be satisfied with planning the house parties for their husbands' wives' get-togethers, after all!
To be clear, of course people can oppose Hillary on purely policy-based grounds, without gender being a factor. You can, and many have, though any liberal should vote for her in November as a statement against the insanity of today's Republican Party, of course! But it's hard to get away from gender stereotypes, unfortunately, and most of us of both genders still think them whether we want to or not, and this has been a HUGE hurdle Hillary has had to struggle past. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, I have always through that her gender was the primary reason why Hillary lost to Obama; his color held him back in this country, but not as much as her gender, it turned out in the end. It's fantastic that this time she finally broke through that last glass ceiling, all that's left is to win in November!
Dark Jaguar Wrote:I don't recall any mention of "parties" in the constitution.True, they were an unintentional result of how the system was designed. They did come into existence pretty much immediately, though, starting with the Federalists v. the Anti-Federalists, as people quickly realized that you need some kind of organizational structure, having everyone running separately doesn't work well.
Quote:There's that contradiction again. You want to say parties aren't government bodies (they aren't) but that they should be a completely indispensable part of how the government functions. Is that it? Doesn't that sound like a bad idea?Not to me, no. What's so bad about parties? Wouldn't it be horribly confusing if every candidate was independent? And how would you run a campaign, anyway? Would people need to spend even MORE time fundraising? Where would the voter lists come from, would there be a federal voter database available to all candidates? I can't imagine why people in this country would complain about such a thing... :p These details matter.
Quote: I mean, it really does feel like two secretive groups have been theatrically fooling us all into thinking we have a say and just picking our candidates behind the scenes.No, that's more what they used to do, when candidates were chosen in those "smoke-filled [back] rooms", and not in a popular vote. Our current caucus and primary system exists to give actual people more of a say in choosing candidates, and while establishment figures still have the advantage, it succeeds at that. I mean, that's how Obama beat Hillary in '08, through the primary/caucus system.
Quote: Too much of it all is being controlled by a bunch of corrupt officials. The more I see "behind the curtain", the more I hate how it works now.While there certainly is some corruption in politics, I do think that people like to exaggerate how bad it is, sometimes...
Quote: So tell me, in all honesty, if the democratic party died tonight and was replaced by a super-progressive party that more aligned with your own views, would you consider that a good change?Wouldn't it be easier to just make the Democratic Party more liberal? But really, the answer to this question is, can this party actually win? Or would it be like the Green Party, a party with some good ideas (and some ideas I disagree with) but that's too extreme for the electorate? Because you need to either win or influence the winner to make policy.