Hillary Clinton: Classic or Dud?

How many Secretaries of State have run for President immediately following the President they served?

― louise ck (milo z), Friday, September 15, 2017

In the old days all of them!

Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, JQ Adams, etc

SoS was basically "assistant president" until the 20th century

Fred do you really think there's a "moral" way to act as SoS without dismantling the MIC

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), 15. september 2017 22:56 (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes. Just as I think there's a moral way to act as Secretary of Health without instituting Single Payer. It's a fairly simple question, since it's not actually possible for a Secretary of State to singlehandedly dismantle the Military Industrial Complex. But meanwhile Foreign Policy keeps throwing up difficult problems that needs to be handled no matter what. 2011 post Arab Spring is actually a good example, as someone would have to figure out how to handle Saudi reactions to their neighbors inching towards democracy. And if we're going to shit on Clinton, why not shit on her for Bahrain, the country where the US actually allowed the autocrat to crack down on the protestors? Shitting on her for Saudi war crimes that happened while Kerry was SoS is... Well, let's call it weird. And sexism is a fairly good guess as to why someone would do that, though I guess the real explanation just has to do with another brainless Intercept dispatch or something.

I don't think it's possible to act morally without knowledge. If you don't know the situation, you can't take the moral choice. And following that, I don't think it's possible to have sound moral judgement on something you know fuck all about.

OK kev I'll knock it off. That her track record deserves some additional scrutiny because she was running is true. That the same kind and degree of scrutiny would have been received by another former Sec State is highly debatable.

clinton was a worse than average secretary of state w/ no major accomplishments that i can think of. it's telling that the obama administration foreign policy initiative she seems to have been most involved in, the libya intervention, is also the thing obama cites as the worst mistake of his presidency

And we've had a string of worse than average secretaries of state going back to, who, James Baker?

idk "average" is p bad to begin with

kerry's tenure as SoS seemed pretty solid

Obama blamed the French and English for Libya, though.

But I mean, Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and she didn't do anything like the deals with Cuba or Iran. She was definitely not in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize or anything. Competent, I guess. Plenty of stuff to discuss. Foreign Policy is really really difficult, and putting the bar at whether or not she dismantled the Military Industrial Complex is stupid.

but she obviously saw Sec of State as a stepping stone to having even MORE massive influence and privelege to actually control US foreign policy - ie, being President.

Was there any indication that she would have taken a different approach to foreign policy as President?

no!

kerry's tenure as SoS seemed pretty solid

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, September 15, 2017

Don't all reports suggest foreign policy came from the White House?

The foreign policy is coming from... inside the White House!

yo anyone have a pdf of the book

Well, she is - what Trump did was to call her out as part of "the establishment" while he, Donald Trump, was on your side against "them".

This worked as Clinton was imcompetent.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, September 15, 2017 7:23 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hilary might be competent, but was there any kind of vision? She seemed to offer few things to vote for.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, September 15, 2017 8:31 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

68 minutes

lol

Talking about her campign vs a 'might be', after a discussion of her years of running things - and even then..

You are clearly mad at me, with good cause - its gonna be ok Stevie.

Sadly a couple of people are now tweeting this whole damn thing...then again, this level of contempt is classic, and pretty much what my last comment was getting at. Just vote for me because of some citizen's duty/I'm not the other guy, not because I'm putting anything to vote for on the table.

this is why "liberals" love and need Trumps

Hillary's vision for America

During her 2016 campaign for president, Hillary and her team laid out a comprehensive progressive vision for America’s future.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

who could be bothered to look at policy though? maga

there should be tic boxes for the obvious bullshit tho

Steven Attewell (who mostly posts about GoT and AD&D and stuff) has a good read over at LGM about generational expectations in politics.

Yesterday saw an interesting parallel in the realm of health care politics, as at the same time that Hillary Clinton was giving an interview with Ezra Klein where she explained why she thought that single payer, and especially Bernie Sanders’ version of single payer, wouldn’t work, sixteen Democratic Senators endorsed said bill.

I bring this up not to slam Hillary, but rather because I think it illustrates an important phenomena of recent politics: the pace of political change is increasing and at an increasing rate. Even last year, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 proposal to add a public option and Medicare at 55 to the ACA was squarely on the center-left of the Democratic Party – to say nothing of being squarely to the left of the ACA as written and somewhat to the left of all three health care proposals in 2008 – and Bernie Sanders’ proposal was on the left edge of the Democratic Party. Now, supporting single payer in fact as well as in theory has become a requirement for someone to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

And it’s very easy for many politicians or political observers to be wrong-footed when the ground underneath them keeps shifting, especially since perceptions of the politically possible (what I call the policy imagination) are heavily influenced by generational experiences.

Contrary to both the obnoxious over-users of the term neoliberal and those who insist that Hillary Clinton has always been a stalwart progressive, the political history of both Hillary and Bill Clinton was profoundly shaped by witnessing the backlash against George McGovern in 1972, the failure to achieve the left policy agenda in the 1970s, and the repeated electoral victories of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As with many of their generation who started on the New Left and then migrated to the center, the Clintons seem to have come to the conclusion that the American people (or at least the electorate) were permanently hostile to the aspirations of the Left.

It's really about generational expectations in party politics of course, because Bernie obviously went through similar experiences as the Democrats of his time. I didn't read it as exonerating Clinton, either.

Mostly like that, but I do kind of wonder about his "rate of political change" claim -- isn't it always the case that the older generation eventually has that times they are a changin' wake up moment?

I mean anyone who thinks it was hard to see this coming was oblivious to 2008 and its aftermath. Also, the democrats only gave up on single payer like, what, 15 years ago?

Yes. And it's hard to pin down. And the Democrats really need younger folks in succession positions, cf the Axelrod interview that I think Phil D quoted in another one of the politics threads today.

sheesh, not Phil D, Josh in Chicago. Sorry everybody!

Trump, September 2017: Walmart Knockoff Hats and Other Indignities

“I’ve thought a lot about this,” Clinton told me. “And for whatever combination of reasons—some I think I understand, and others I don’t—I am viewed as a threat to powerful forces on both the right and the left. I am still one of the favorite subjects for Fox TV. With the return of [Steve] Bannon to Breitbart, we’ll see him utilizing that publication. It’s because I do speak out, and I do stand up. Sometimes, you know, what I say is not fully appreciated for years, to be honest. At least, it seems to me that way. But I’m going to continue to speak out. And on the left—there is a real manipulation of the left. In addition to those who are calling me names, we know that Russia has really targeted, through their trolls and bots, a lot of accounts—a lot of Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, of people on the left—feeding them a steady diet of nonsense.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/25/hillary-clinton-looks-back-in-anger

presented without comment

If you'd been a target of dirty-trick propaganda as much as HRC has been, you'd probably be as sensitized to it as she is. Yes, it makes it hard for her to see her own shortcomings and weaknesses, but there's no denying she's been unfairly pilloried and smeared for decades.

Yes, I feel bad for this insanely wealthy and powerful person who continually does and says stupid things.

Recognizing how much and how long she's been viciously attacked simply requires you to accept a set of easily established objective facts and to imagine what effect they might have on her psyche. Whether or not you "feel bad for" her is entirely at your option.

Yes.

she is christlike in her suffering, whether you accept her into your heart is up to you

no politician in history has been treated worse

saw Hamilton with no complications

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-what-happened-review_us_59c16721e4b0186c22066d72

america has been gaslighting her since 1992, no shit she's paranoid. she lost the election, she's allowed to be.

I'm glad to learn the word "pullulates" but otherwise Sam Kriss is a not v enlightening choice for this assignment

i know people clown on her & her campaign for that "abuelita" stuff but i would like hillary clinton to be my grandmother. this should probably go in the other thread about posts you shouldn't have posted but whatever fuck it i'm tired

but his emails!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/24/jared-kushner-private-email-white-house-243071

what a sexist country we are :)

Yeah, I wish I had a super rich grandma too.

it's like a reflex with some people, the same way racism is. mrga

Speaking of gaslighting
https://www.facebook.com/thekatiehalpershow/videos/1744449688916026/

man, if this is what you all think of HRC, it makes me wonder what sort of contempt you must have reserved for the likes of Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd or Ted Cruz. it must burn in you like the all-consuming fires of hell. how do you survive it?

it's fine.

j OTM

I think all of the people you mentioned are men, so they're cool

Her book is egregious.

Her book is egregious.