Please Don’t Run, Hillary

[seemslikeadream]

Feminism, Hell and Hillary Clinton
Frank Bruni Frank Bruni FEB. 9, 2016

I’m 51. My health is decent. And while my mother died young, there’s longevity elsewhere in the family tree.

I could live to see an openly gay presidential candidate with a real chance of victory.

Will there be a “special place in hell” for me if I, as a gay man, don’t support him or her?

I can guess Madeleine Albright’s answer. She more or less told women that they’re damned if they’re not on Hillary Clinton’s team.

I’m still trying to get my head around that — and around Gloria Steinem’s breathtakingly demeaning assertion that young women who back Bernie Sanders are in thrall to pheromones, not ideas or idealism, and angling to score dates with the young bucks in the Sanders brigade.

That’s right, “democratic socialism” is a known aphrodisiac: the oyster of politics. There’s nothing like denunciations of oligarchs to put you in the mood.

Also, has Steinem forgotten about lesbians? More than a few of them support Sanders, and it’s not because of the way some 26-year-old doctoral candidate looks in his L. L. Bean flannel.

There’s a weird strain of thought swirling around Clinton’s campaign: that we should vote for her because she’s a woman. Or that she’s inoculated from certain flaws or accusations by dint of gender. Or that, at the least, there’s an onus on forward-looking people who care about gender inequality to promote her candidacy.

I care about gender inequality, and I don’t buy it. It’s bad logic. It’s even worse strategy. People don’t vote out of shame. They vote out of hope.

Perhaps that was among the lessons of Clinton’s defeat in New Hampshire on Tuesday, where she lost to Sanders among all women by at least seven percentage points, according to exit polling, and among women under 30 by more than 60 points.

Clinton is on sturdy ground, morally and tactically, when she mentions a double standard for women. So are her surrogates. Actually, there are so many double standards that you couldn’t fit them in a column eight times the length of this one, and she has bumped into plenty, including, yes, the fuss over her raised voice.

But the argument that she’s somehow not a full-fledged member of the establishment because she’s a woman — as she contended during the most recent Democratic debate — is nonsense. On that night, she also echoed a past statement to CBS News that she “cannot imagine anyone being more of an outsider than the first woman president.”

Really? Anyone? Off the top of my head I can think of a person who might quibble with that. His name is Barack Obama.

Admittedly, there’s no easy way to navigate the terrain she inhabits. Eight years ago, she denied her campaign the romantic sweep of Obama’s by playing down and trying to correct for gender. This time around, she was advised, rightly, not to repeat that mistake. But how to do that without going too far?

I think she started out perfectly, with incontestable reflections on women’s challenges in the workplace and with casual asides about the historic nature of her bid. Discussing her age, she said, “I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States.”

But more recently, things have fallen out of whack. Bill Clinton’s diatribe about the misogyny of some Sanders supporters sounded like a defensive outsourcing of blame for the Clinton campaign’s disappointments in the polls and the returns: the narrowest of victories in Iowa followed by the resounding New Hampshire defeat.

The Clintons are always quick to point fingers and slow to look in the mirror. On top of which, Bill Clinton’s invocation of sexism felt too pat, his citation of gross language on Twitter (which, sadly, brims with it) too easy.

Clinton’s gender indeed matters. Just as you couldn’t properly evaluate Obama’s arc without factoring in race, you can’t see her accurately without recognizing that she’s a woman of her time, with all the attendant obstacles, hurts, compromises and tenacity.

That informs — and, ideally, illuminates — her perspective. And her presidency would carry a powerful, constructive symbolism that can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.

But those are considerations among many, many others in taking her measure and in casting a vote. To focus only or primarily on them is more reductive than respectful, and to tell women in particular what kind of politics they should practice is the antithesis of feminism, which advocates independence and choices.

We’re all complicated people voting for complicated people. We’re not census subgroups falling in line.

I’ll go to the barricades for that imagined gay candidate if he or she has talents I trust, positions I respect and a character I admire. If not, I’ll probably go elsewhere, because being gay won’t be the sum of that person, just as womanhood isn’t where Clinton begins and ends.

[Grizzly]

Seehttps://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/com ... ut_gloria/
Now might be a good time to talk about Gloria Steinem’s time as a CIA asset… -,

[norton ash]

Madeline Albright will get a corner office in hell, as will Hillary too some day.

[Luther Blissett]

I'm almost sure that Gloria Steinem's comments are taken a little out-of-context and that she didn't quite mean what it seems like she meant.

[82_28]

Though Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide over Hillary Clinton, he will likely receive fewer delegates than she will.

Sanders won 60 percent of the vote, but thanks to the Democratic Party’s nominating system, he leaves the Granite State with at least 13 delegates while she leaves with at least 15 delegates.

New Hampshire has 24 “pledged” delegates, which are allotted based on the popular vote. Sanders has 13, and Clinton has 9, with 2 currently allotted to neither.

But under Democratic National Committee rules, New Hampshire also has 8 “superdelegates,” party officials who are free to commit to whomever they like, regardless of how their state votes. Their votes count the same as delegates won through the primary.

New Hampshire has 8 superdelegates, 6 of which are committed to Hillary Clinton, giving her a total of 15 delegates from New Hampshire as of Wednesday at 9 a.m.

The state’s 2 remaining superdelegates remain uncommitted.

In the overall delegate count, Clinton holds a commanding lead after a razor-thin victory in Iowa and a shellacking in New Hampshire. Clinton has 394 delegates, both super and electorally assigned, to only 42 for Sanders.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/10/hilla ... fter-loss/

OK this is fucked up and bullshit.

[Cordelia]

Seehttps://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/com ... ut_gloria/
Now might be a good time to talk about Gloria Steinem’s time as a CIA asset… -,

I'd like to see this, but this link didn't link for me.



She explained to me why as I've gotten older I've become more radical in my dislike of her. Thank you Gloria.

[seemslikeadream]

she's rich
she's old
she's white

[82_28]

[Luther Blissett]

Though Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary in a landslide over Hillary Clinton, he will likely receive fewer delegates than she will.

Sanders won 60 percent of the vote, but thanks to the Democratic Party’s nominating system, he leaves the Granite State with at least 13 delegates while she leaves with at least 15 delegates.

New Hampshire has 24 “pledged” delegates, which are allotted based on the popular vote. Sanders has 13, and Clinton has 9, with 2 currently allotted to neither.

But under Democratic National Committee rules, New Hampshire also has 8 “superdelegates,” party officials who are free to commit to whomever they like, regardless of how their state votes. Their votes count the same as delegates won through the primary.

New Hampshire has 8 superdelegates, 6 of which are committed to Hillary Clinton, giving her a total of 15 delegates from New Hampshire as of Wednesday at 9 a.m.

The state’s 2 remaining superdelegates remain uncommitted.

In the overall delegate count, Clinton holds a commanding lead after a razor-thin victory in Iowa and a shellacking in New Hampshire. Clinton has 394 delegates, both super and electorally assigned, to only 42 for Sanders.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/10/hilla ... fter-loss/

OK this is fucked up and bullshit.

Just get out the vote! Are you registered?!?

[82_28]

Sorta. I gave up after Nader and Kucinich and having to begrudgingly go with Dean in the caucus. Didn't register because democrats are a shoe in in WA (at least western WA Seattle area) and didn't like the fact that not liking Obama was indistinguishable from being a racist (don't like him because he's black? type shit). I have to re-register. I will though.

[Luther Blissett]

That should have been green, my bad. I think that get out the vote campaigns are intended to neuter grassroots efforts, direct democracy, and deradicalize social movements, because the implication is that voting is the prime expression of political engagement.

And clearly to New Hampshireans, registering and voting doesn't matter.

[Burnt Hill]

That should have been green, my bad. I think that get out the vote campaigns are intended to neuter grassroots efforts, direct democracy, and deradicalize social movements, because the implication is that voting is the prime expression of political engagement.

And clearly to New Hampshireans, registering and voting doesn't matter.

Thanks for clearing that up Luther Blissett, as my head was spinning and my fingers typing in a cynical mini rage.

[conniption]

link

stopimperialism

CounterPunch Radio – Diana Johnstone (Ep. 30)
February 9, 2016


Listen to CounterPunch Radio with Diana Johnstone

This week Eric sits down with journalist Diana Johnstone, author of the new book Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton available from CounterPunch Books. Eric and Diana discuss the myriad ways in which Hillary Clinton has made herself into the embodiment of the military-industrial complex and the Empire, including her unabashed warmongering, shameless love affairs with Saudi Arabia and Israel, and continued belligerence toward Russia. Johnstone argues that Clinton represents an imminent threat to not just the United States, but the entire world, and that her worldview is as insidious as it is incompatible with peace. The conversation touches on Yugoslavia, Libya, and Honduras in order to illustrate Clinton’s cynicism, pathological lying, and complete disregard for human suffering. All this and much more in this wide-ranging interview.

Intro and outtro: David Vest – Freight Train Rollin’
Interlude: The Mekons – Last Night on Earth

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^ Thanks

[Nordic]

I'd like to issue a world-wide internet challenge:

Find a photo of HRC with a smile on her face that actually looks sincere. Must have been taken in the last 25 years.