Entitlement

wow, you're all clearly more sexist than you are racist, huh? a brown man i guess i should take solace in the power of the brotherhood which transcends all color divisions to strike down the sisters!

oh, and for the record i am pretty sure that some of what franke-ruta says is correct. implicit attitudes which track race & sex & class are real. no one is a saint. but though one can make an aggregate case, finger pointing specifically is kind of low. additionally, there is a case where if you focus on this sort of thing outside of the psychological laboratory you're really going to start a never ending conversation about who the most biased is.

I don't think she has any obvious electoral strengths vis-a-vis Obama or (especially) Edwards.

Isn't the fact that she's "the front-runner by a substantial margin" an obvious electoral strength?

This is great. I think Yglesias cares very much about his feminist bona fides. The whole thing makes me giddy.

michesmith--being the front-runner for the *primaries* really has no bearing on an "electability" argument.

It is exactly that "presumption", that sense of owning the nomination because, well, she is Hillary, that is the most sick making aspect of her candidacy and personality.
As to her being the "frontrunner", hmmm, definitions definitions. Sorta like her being the most polarizing or having the highest negatives now isn't it?
This is exactly why the Apple ObamaRama is such a hit and her campaign's counter YouTube is so weak. Just so weak.

Perhaps the young woman didn't say much and got real quiet because she's the one with the bias, supporting Hillary because she's a woman and a democrat and not having much other justification for voting for her. Perhaps I am just projecting, I know I wouldn't be able to come up with many reasons to support her.

being the front-runner for the *primaries* really has no bearing on an "electability" argument.

Especially given that she's the primary frontrunner for reasons (name recognition and connections to her husband's donor network) which are relatively unconnected to success in the general, where name recognition is a given and a broader set of campaign skills is needed than the mere ability to raise cash. Aside from campaign issues, her policies are actually bad and far more conservative than any liberal should want to see in a Democratic nominee. This point can't be emphasized enough.

Ha Ha! After many years of denying it, Matt finds that he is now part of the patriarchy and liable for all of the patriarchy's evils. You don't find Hillary unsatisfying because of your own thoughts and experiences. You are just an idiot cultured by the patriarchy you grew up in and take part in.

Did you get your patriarchy check last month Matt? I am now collecting a fat wad of cash each month because of my enormous 9" patriarchy. I now get to objectify women instead of allowing them to objectify me like Garance just did to you. Boobies!

If you don't find patriarchy theory terribly useful, fulfilling, or testable, you may wish to speak to that sometime unless you are afraid of Amanda and your sensitive new age guy cred.

max,Christmas -- I agree that name recognition alone doesn't guarantee success in the general. However, there are a lot of things that this particular name represents (fund raising outside usual Democratic circles, ruthless campaigning, third way etc) that are undeniable strengths for the general election. For example, wouldn't her hawkish positioning be an asset after the primaries, especially with the security moms (or whatever the hell they're being called now)? I am no fan of Hillary, but I don't buy any of MY's arguments against her.

I would just be infuriated if Clinton (or Obama) were nominated and lost, and then I heard someone say, "Well, at least we proved that a woman / black man can be a major party nominee for the Presidency". I feel about the same way about anyone who would support Hillary as a woman even though they didn't like any of her positions on issues. There are an awful lot of things at stake in the 2008 election, much more than most elections, and if employment opportunity for blacks and women is at the top of someone's issues list, they're crazy.

What the hell! Name one "flaw" of Jack Reed. Seriously. I'm waiting.

MY suggests that Hillary sucks because she lacks certain strengths that either Obama or Edwards possess. It seems to me that she also has plenty of strengths that the other candidates lack. Furthermore, the current polling numbers indicate that the electorate are holding Obama and Edwards up to an equal standard, even if MY refuses to do so.

. For example, wouldn't her hawkish positioning be an asset after the primaries, especially with the security moms (or whatever the hell they're being called now)?

No.

What the hell! Name one "flaw" of Jack Reed. Seriously. I'm waiting.

He was a filthy no good commie !
But, if you mean the senator, well he did vote to make it harder to file class action lawsuits. Alright, I'm reaching.

For example, wouldn't her hawkish positioning be an asset after the primaries

No - in fact, it's her biggest, most unexploited weakness. Her position on Iraq in essentially the same as Kerry's in 2004 - "I voted for the war, but I didn't really vote for the war, and I didn't vote for this war, but I still don't regret my vote, and I'm going to keep the troops in Iraq as president." It's a tortured bit of triangulation that leaves her too dovish to win over the hawks on the right, too hawkish to win the support of the moderates and liberals who just want the war to end, and too muddled and craven to look like anything other than a weasel move. It's precisely the sort of positioning that confirms the long-running media narrative of the Clintons as hollow opportunists who'll do anything for a vote.

There are an awful lot of things at stake in the 2008 election, much more than most elections, and if employment opportunity for blacks and women is at the top of someone's issues list, they're crazy.

Let's also not forget that as far as employment opportunities for blacks and women go, this is only one job. It's a big job, and an important job, and a very symbolic job, but that's all it is. I'm a lot more impressed by Clinton's support for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which will help lots and lots of women, than I am by her presidential campaign, which will advance the career of one (already powerful, well-off) woman, while offering up a rather misleading and mixed symbol (women can become president, too!... as long as they're wealthy, white women with very close connections to a previous male president's political machine).

To address the other side of the debate from the one I addressed in the TAPPED thread: Can you explain the gender gap in polls with any explanation other than the one GFR points to?

C'mon, Matt, the only reason to oppose Clinton is that you're a dood. It's just like only an anti-Semite would ever oppose AIPAC.

The best evidence as to Edwards' electoral strength v. Clinton's is the odds. But I can't find Edwards v. Giuliani (the most likely and currently the strongest GOP nominee) and Clinton v. Giuliani.

So I fall back on the second-best evidence, the most recent head-to-head polls. They show Edwards and Clinton both losing to Giuliani by four and a half percent, and Obama by 2.2%.

His wife's illness has caused the odds of Edwards winning the nomination to fall by a quarter or more. I would think it injures his prospects in November 2008 as well.

So why believe Edwards is the most electable candidate? Why believe he's more electable than Clinton?

Can you explain the gender gap in polls with any explanation other than the one GFR points to?

I'm sure that there's plenty of sexism at work, and I'm sure there's some women who identify more strongly with Clinton than with other candidates because she's a woman. Sexist opposition to Clinton does not make her a good candidate, however, any more than thuggish right-wing opposition does. Clinton's defenders still need to justify Clinton's candidacy on the merits, not simply because bad people don't like her.

Hi Matt,

Well, I guess my question to you is why do you think there is this gender gap within the Democratic Party on the topic of Clinton? I think it's pretty clear that both men and women are reacting to Clinton in reasonably gendered ways, and the Gallup folks whose poll I cited said that there seems to be something unusual going on here beyond the usual issues-based gender gap one finds in general election contexts, because this is an intra-party gap of significant proportions. Maybe it's only the women who are reacting in a gendered way, but I think not.

And I don't think you're a sexist. I think you're a man, and that our magazine has a lot of male writers, as do all the other political mags, and that even if you're completely neutral, the relevant non-neutrality of the women is not being publicly expressed with the volume and frequency it should be if we were actually trying to figure out what progressives think.

And you're right: No one is entitled to a nomination. But women have been especially unentitled to such, and Hillary Clinton is the first -- the first -- to get as close as she is. I don't see her as the front-runner, either. I see her as a front-runner/underdog who rather than being inevitable will have to fight an uphill battle for the nomination and an even tougher one for the presidency.

Clinton may not make the best president ever, but I know she gets the lives of women in a way no other person who has been so close to a nomination has. To use the parlance of 1991-92, she "gets it." There is a whole secondary conversation in our office among the women, and also between the women at different magazines, and among women in general (as I'm sure there is among men), about our lives and work environments and about how we feel about our place in society. Most women are afraid to bring this secondary conversation -- which is often the primary conversation of our lives -- into mixed company. It seems too confrontational, and it too clearly marks us as other, and men HATE to hear about it.

But how are you supposed to be an opinion writer if you feel you can never really say what you think when it comes to the issues that matter most to you? It seems to me that it's not possible to be both intellectually honest and that intellectually cautious, and that, in fact, the fear of ever revealing the secondary conversation, or the problem that it is primary for many women even though secondary to the world, makes it hard for women to engage in certain debates. And so they clam up.

This is what I was trying to get at. You write that you don't see that "there are some important issues where she's likely to make a better president than would the available alternatives." But what if just knowing that she understands the secondary conversation means that women (not all, but maybe enough) trust her to do the right thing for their lives? What if her approach to women is a kind of dog whistle politics that women can hear but the men around them can't? Or that sounds to them only like an unpleasant and tinny screech?

I have not made an argument that Clinton is the absolutely best candidate because I'm not sure that she is yet, and because it's too early say that, even if I thought it was the case. A lot of stuff has to happen between now and January, and there may be a lot of relevant surprises along the way. Who knows what will happen. Her campaign could collapse -- heck, she could be diagnosed with breast cancer. (Not that there's any hint of that.)

Anyway, I want you -- and your readers -- to know I meant no aspersions against you.

GFR

"Can you explain the gender gap in polls with any explanation other than the one GFR points to?"
Why does male sexism have to be the major explainer. E.G. Al Sharpton had significantly higher support among blacks than whites when he ran for president in 2004. Perhaps you could explain his underperformance among whites as a product of racism, or you could say he far overperformed among blacks because he was also black, spoke better to black issues, was active in civil rights. Similarly, Hillary's persona to the public (mostly not paying attention right now) is that of 1) The most credible chance for a female president in American History 2) She is perceived among the general public as closely associated with health care/education, etc. which are bigger issues for women than men http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=ind_focus.story&STORY=/www/story/03-22-2007/0004551691&EDATE=THU+Mar+22+2007,+03:48+PM
3) She is perceived as a woman who was wronged by her husband and handled this in front of the country with dignity, something that women are more apt to sympathize with than men.
That said, I am sure there is a degree of subtle sexism involved, but I don't think it explains as much as garance does.

Sorry for the long URL, I don't think you can fix comments after the fact.

Hillary Clinton does not get me or my life or my women friends and my women friend's lives. We will never support a candidate who has not pledged to end the occupation of Iraq. Never. I know only a single person who will support Clinton, a man who thinks she is a stronger candidate than Obama or Edwards. No matter the strength; we will not support a person who has betrayed the movement for peace which is what Clinton has done.

What if every woman friend I have hears the whistle and it is whistling, we do not want a warrior princess in the White House? Hear that whistle? Are you listening?

I think it's pretty unlikely that Hillary or Obama could get elected. The New Republic cover story on him was unintentionally devastating: do you really think Americans are going to elect someone whose career ambition after attending these cushy schools was to be a "community organizer" -"community" in most people's minds a sort of euphemism for people who don't have jobs and don't really want them. I'd be pretty surprised if Edwards doesn't get a big jump in the polls after that incredibly moving press conference, worthy of Hollywood. And the Dems have on the bench a tried and true presidential winner, Gore, who was right from the start on the most important immediate issue facing the country (Iraq) and pretty much owns the other biggest one.

Garance Franke-Ruta, when you hear the whistle of Hillary Clinton explaining why she has supported and continues to support the occupation of Iraq and has promised to continue to do so through her presidency, let us know.

Garance, none of that represents a convincing argument for why Hillary Clinton is the best Democratic candidate. It doesn't even represent an argument for why Clinton is the best candidate to represent women's interests. To make any sort of case along those lines, you have to talk about what policies she's advocated in the past and what policies she would be likely to advance as president. On that level, Hillary Clinton just doesn't score very well at all. She's a reflexively hawkish, reflexively centrist candidate at a time when we need a progressive leader to undo the damage of a hawkish foreign policy. Your pro-Clinton arguments have never challenged this; in fact they've barely even addressed this. Your recent comment is an explanation for liking Clinton, but it's not a justification for supporting her candidacy.

Probably the stupidest part of this subtle sexism argument is that, so far, I have only seen it deployed against exactly the sort of people who would give any serious woman candidate an extra bump because, deep down, they want to see a woman President.

The gender gap is what, 10 points? The only poll to really break it down I have seen was 29% of men support her, 39% of women.

Which means about 10% of women democratic voters base their decision on their gender (if you take the gender gap reading of the polls literally).

An interesting tidbit yes, but not really a compelling case that Hillary is absolutely the feminist candidate. 10% is really a rather small number in this context.

I will plead guilty to both being a man and on the fringe of this demographic (47), but I am not in favor of Hillary to be the nominee for several rational reasons:

1. The most important thing I can think of right now is to have the Democrats win the presidency. I feel that her profund negatives with a sizable group of the electorate -- fairly or unfairly -- mean that she is less likely to win than either Edwards or Obama.

2. Her support for the war in Iraq and continued justifications for so doing.

3. Her constant need to calculate and calibrate every statement she makes for what she perceives to be maximum political advantage. And the people like Mark Penn who shape her notion of what is advantageous.

4. Her judgment -- almost every problem that Bill had (with the obvious exception of Monicagate) seemed to have originated in some form or fashion with Hillary and her business associates and colleagues. I thought her strategic decisions on health care were dubious.

5. There are more progressive candidates with greater appeal to me -- Edwards and Obama.

Now you may disagree with my assessment of these issues, but don't tell me that they arise from the fact that Hillary is a woman. That's insulting and unfair.

By the way, Bill wasn't initally my first choice in 1992, but I supported him vigorously once he became the presumptive nominee and I would do the same for Hillary.

Umm, GFR, if you like jillary because you KNOW she gets the lives of women better than men, then don't you have to accept it as right that men should be more supportive of one of the other candidates because a male candidate will better understand the lives if men?

I don't really think it's wise to accept either of those positions are valid. But you can't argue that it's okay for women to like Hillary because she's a woman and then argue that it's wrong for men to like Obama because he's a man. Well, you can argue it but you won't come off too well if you do so.

Hillary is wrong on every issue I care about. She sides with the DLC over the base. I do not believe that she will end this war, because her stated position seems to be made only grudgingly. I believe she will start a war with Iran, because she has some really heavy ties and the DLC. She is terrible on freedom of speech, from her flag burning amendment to her condemnations of the media and video games. Her campaign has made statements indicating that Hillary will not reduce the power of the presidency, and will instead assert herself as the same sort of Imperial president that Bush has.

Let's not pretend that there aren't some really serious issues here that would be off putting to a large number of Democrats. A disparity in support among genders can be accounted for in several ways. It can be because men oppose her and women have no preference for her in particular. It can be that men oppose her and women support her. Or it can be because Men don't care one way or another and women support her. So far, GFR is the only one who has outright stated that gender bias has had a serious influence on her position.

Didn't I read a few weeks back that women tend to get their knowledge of current events from the men in their lives? Is it OK for me to derive from that datum that maybe Hillary's gender gap isn't as substantive as GFR is trying to make it seem? Or does that mean I'm a bad person? I need to run these things by some kind of vetting authority.

I'd like to see data on people's attitudes towards Hillary compared to their attitudes towards Bill. I dislike Hillary and hope she won't be the Dem nominee. But my attitude towards Bill Clinton is exactly the same.

Well, I've voted in a number of elections, and my gut feeling is that Clinton would not win. It's very unusual for an American electorate to be unexpectedly progressive.

And I'm pretty sure that Clinton would not start cancelling the power grabs Bush has made. In fact, I'd be surprised if she didn't just continue down that primrose path.

And that takes us right past her DLC background and the company she keeps.

One time I did vote for a woman because I wanted to advance women's rights, and boy did I regret that. Anyone from Washington State who remembers Dixie Lee Ray will know what I'm saying. In fact, where I live now we are still paying for the WPPS boondoggle.

Well, that's what the nominating process is for. Should be interesting at the precinct level next year.

dj, I think it demonstrates once again how teh evil patriarchy works to control information and thought.

Come on men, let's not pretend we aren't all sexists and misogynists. Amanda says all white people are racists.

I'm pretty sure that Clinton would not start cancelling the power grabs Bush has made. In fact, I'd be surprised if she didn't just continue down that primrose path.

This is actually one of my prime concerns of all of our candidates. I fear we're going to be hearing about Unitary Executives, and secret meetings with the veep, and PATRIOT for a long long time to come.

But I do agree, I am very wary that President Clinton would roll these back on her own initiative.

I dislike Hillary and hope she won't be the Dem nominee. But my attitude towards Bill Clinton is exactly the same.

My attitude is almost exactly the same. If Hillary had Bill's wicked charisma, at least I would feel assured that America would embrace her; so she would be a good nominee from a "we must beat the GOP" standpoint, however much I might loathe both Clintons' approach to being Democrats. But she doesn't even have THAT -- she's got the egregious gratuitous centrism, but without the teflon. It's the worst of all worlds.

Other things being equal, it counts in Clinton's favor that her candidacy would be a breakthrough for women. Ditto Obama, for African Americans.

A classic (late 19th century) dilemma repeats itsef.

As to Edwards v. either Clinton or Obama, there exists a mild but appreciable presumption in favor of the latter two.

Regardless of the outcome, 2008 is a watershed year, a year in which it was plain to see that being female or black did not exclude anyone from the nomination of the party favored to win the upcoming presidential election.

GFR makes yet another point, that it counts in Clinton's favor that among the candidates she has a unique appreciation of the needs of a majority of the population. Not a decisive consideration, but, as the physicists say, non-trivial.

GFR makes yet another point, that it counts in Clinton's favor that among the candidates she has a unique appreciation of the needs of a majority of the population. Not a decisive consideration, but, as the physicists say, non-trivial.

Iraq, Free Trade, Bankruptcy Bill, Civil Rights, Environment... I want to know she has an appreciation of the needs of lower and middle class Americans.

I think she understands Health Care. I am not sure she doesn't now see that as a third rail she in particular needs to avoid.

Even a few weeks ago, I was ready to support Hillary Clinton. The stance on iraq was bothering, but I believed she could be counted on to end the occupation. Now, we know otherwise and I am too troubled by this to dismiss what I consider a betrayal of the movement for peace. The reason Clinton would never say she had made a mistake in supporting the war and occupation, was that she never believed she had made a mistake. How could I ever vote for such a person?

Aw, c'mon. I think this is more obvious than you're realizing. Hillary is a *woman* who could *get elected.* The breaking of that particular barrier has policy implications all its own that I think many women, for simple and not entirely wrong-headed reasons, are attracted by. What's the difference between voting for a candidate because she's a woman who could *get elected* and voting for a candidate because she or he is a Democrat and could *get elected*, a position many of us, male and female, have held our nose and taken?

So, no, no one should be entitled to be a candidate if they don't offer some "strong, affirmative" attraction to the voter... but the fact that Hillary is a woman is, in fact, a strong, affirmative attraction to many women (and perhaps some men as well). And that's an area of policy where Hillary is, whatever else one may think of her, just plain better than the other candidates on the table, some of whom are electable, but none of whom combine that quality with a double X chromosome.

Now, you have every right to say, hey, the breaking of barriers and the advancement of female leadership is important, but less important to me right now than issue Y, so I'm voting for candidate Y instead. But Garance has every right to also note that that is a position more likely to be taken by men than women, cause it... you know... *is*.

I am male, decidedly opposed to nominating the warmongering HRC, and I like to think that I base this on reasons other than gender, so my first reaction wasn't to back up GFR here. Neverthless, I think she may be on to something:

Candidates with a red-statish, "moderate" personal/cultural profile have a lot more leeway to run on a strongly progressive platform while still being portrayed in the media as "serious". Thus black and female candidates have to go out of their way to show that they're not the same old kind of bad liberal - Obama accomplishes this by bloviating about religion and national unity, Clinton by supporting the war. If Obama talked like John Edwards, everybody would just say, old news, yet another urban black victim-narrative tax-and-spend liberal who they'll never vote for in Peoria. If Clinton talked like Jim Webb, all the talking heads would go on and on about how she doesn't understand the troops, isn't tough on national security, with a very gendered subtext to the whole thing. There are basically three possible responses to this state of affairs from progressives. 1) We could just damn the torpedoes, run Barbara Boxer/John Lewis; and lose a lot of elections, 2) we could just unite behind progresive southern he-men in every election, in effect banning blacks and women from the presidency indefinitely (even if we don't like or deliberately aim for this side-effect) or 3) we could cut the black/female candidates a bit of slack for lapsing into "centrist" CW garbage more than the southern he-men. 2) seems to be the preferred tack of a significant chunk of the white male lefty blogosphere, but it wouldn't surprise me all that it would be a lot less preferred by women, who have to face this kind of stereotyping in their daily lives and for whom the de facto restriction of Dem candidates to lefty white men obviously has a more directly exclusionary effect.

Isn't it also somewhat troubling that Hillary's front runner status is largely derived from the fact that her husband was President. (Much in the same way that Bush's path to the presidency was made much easier by the fact that his father was President). I'm just not that comfortable with these quasi-dynastic presumptions to high public office.

Now, you have every right to say, hey, the breaking of barriers and the advancement of female leadership is important, but less important to me right now than issue Y, so I'm voting for candidate Y instead. But Garance has every right to also note that that is a position more likely to be taken by men than women, cause it... you know... *is*.

Nina makes excellent points. But I actually think Hillary would be the candidate who offers up the largest possibility of *not* getting elected. When combined with my many differences over various issues Y, it's just not close.

Jose, your points are well-taken, but they presume that Hillary is actually more progressive than she conveys. I am not sure that is true though--in fact I kind of think it isn't true.

Why can't we simply be against Hillary because she triangulates like mad? No need to throw sexism in there.

I'd prefer a president who doesn't give the impression of trying to pander to the largest number of people.

By the way, what could Hillary Clinton possibly understand about the needs of women that John Edwards or Barack Obama do not understand and are not sympathetic to? Clinton already botched health care change once, Edwards will not botch health care, nor will Obama.

Now, you have every right to say, hey, the breaking of barriers and the advancement of female leadership is important, but less important to me right now than issue Y, so I'm voting for candidate Y instead.

Breaking barriers is important, but "issue Y" happens to include ending an unjust, immoral, and insane war, establishing a sane and just foreign policy in its place, cleaning up after eight years of criminal government, and ending legalized torture. And that's before we even get to universal health care and global warming. The symbolic victory of electing the first female president does not and cannot outweigh the massive, massive evil that Hillary Clinton either cannot, will not or has no interest in ending.

My mother wanted Bobby Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy as a candidate in 1968, but in the end she felt Humphrey would work to end the war in Vietnam and she strongly supported Humphrey. This is different, Hillary Clinton shows no regrets about occupying Iraq. How can this be dismissed? How can I turn from this because a person is a woman or an Asian or African or Hispanic American? There are other fine Democratic candidates, beyond Obama and Edwards. Hillary Clinton is not Eleanor Roosevelt.

The New York Times tells us tonight:

"Despite the infusion of American and Iraqi troops to Baghdad this year, suicide bombings, a hallmark of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, have been rising."

No, I can only support a candidate pledged to leave Iraq.

By the way, what could Hillary Clinton possibly understand about the needs of women that John Edwards or Barack Obama do not understand and are not sympathetic to?

I don't dispute that there are things Edwards and Obama can't "get" in the same way Clinton can. But I fail to see how having an EXECUTIVE that "gets" women's issues is really the issue. We need a LEGISLATURE that gets women's issues, and an executive that actually takes seriously its responsibility for faithful execution of those laws.

If Lucille Ball were running- I'd support her wholeheartedly. But, Hillary isn't funny, sympathetic, or particularly gifted. Plus, she's in the pocket of Apartheid Israel. She stinks.

The comments through the thread are most important in helping me understand why I have such a feeling of disappointment, beyond the simple emotion of becoming all but unable to bear the news from Iraq.

We will be years however in undoing the damage done to this country by this Administration, and I do not want any of the same from a president who worries about being thought too humanistic. Clinton playing tough is again not for me.

When the fortunes of the new nation were just rising from their lowest ebb, and British forces were maltreating American prisoners, George Washington declared that this new nation stood for humanitarian principles that we would adhere to no matter how low the enemy sunk. We would not treat their prisoners as they had ours.

At the conclusion of the debate over the abnegation of these standards and our recent descent into a maelstrom of torture, the junior senator from New York adverted to Washington's stance and opposed the Military Commissions Act with remarkable eloquence.

It was a moment historians decades and centuries hence will commend her for.

Yet Christmas is of the opinion that a President Clinton would not lift a finger to end torture, and is unconcerned to end massive, massive evil.

ANY DEMOCRAT--CLINTON, OBAMA, EDWARDS, GORE, RICHARDSON--IS MASSIVELY MASSIVELY BETTER THAN GIULIANI, ROMNEY, MCCAIN WOULD PROVE TO BE. THE PARTY OF PREVENTIVE WAR AND DESPICABLE TORTURE MUST BE STRIPPED OF ITS CONTROL OF EXECUTIVE POWER.

Please show the link for the speech by Hillary Clinton against the Military Commissions Act. That would be helpful.

Yet Christmas is of the opinion that a President Clinton would not lift a finger to end torture, and is unconcerned to end massive, massive evil.

I'm sure there would be less torture under a Hillary Clinton administration than there is under the current regime - if for no other reason than there are probably fewer torture enthusiasts surrounding her than there are surrounding Bush - but given that the practice of outsourcing torture started under her husband, and given both Clintons' noted preference for a powerful and relatively unchecked executive branch, I don't see any reason to believe that Clinton has any ideological commitment to ending America's ongoing use of torture.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=264039

Link to Clinton speech opposing the torture act.

Trevor: Watch what you say. Lucille Ball was a Communist.

In 1953, Ball was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities because she had registered to vote in the Communist party primary election in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence (per FBI FOIA-released documents in this declassified FBI file.

Let those who see no reason to believe that Clinton has any ideological commitment to ending America's ongoing use of torture read her speech.

And if you had to name one Democratic senator who lead on civil liberties issues in the age of Bush, it wouldn't be Clinton - it would be Feingold. Hell, if you named ten or twenty Democratic senators who lead on civil liberties issues, you wouldn't see Clinton on there. It's just not an issue that moves her. Yes, she voted against the MCA - most Democrats did, you'll notice - and she spoke out against it. By then she'd already voted for the Patriot Act - twice - and opposed Feingold's censure of Bush over the NSA surveillance. She's tepid at best on this topic, and we can't afford to have the next president be someone who's ambivalent about restoring a shredded bill of rights.

Let those who see no reason to believe that Clinton has any ideological commitment to ending America's ongoing use of torture read her speech

One floor speech does not make up for the rest of her entire record. She didn't just vote for the Patriot Act, she voted to reauthorize it and against Feingold's filibuster of it. She voted against censuring Bush for illegal wiretaps. And her husband used the CIA to torture people. This doesn't really inspire confidence at a time when we need the mechanics of torture and government surveillance to be dismantled.

Pollwatcher, that was nice of you and the speech is fine and I can understand and will think carefully of your defense.

Christmas, I still agree with you but there is a difference between any Democratic candidate this Administration which I need to keep in mind. Russ Feingold has been heroic however, and Clinton has not supported Feingold nor ever acknowledged John Murtha.

As the link says, "according to at least one article they actually tried to get Egypt to comply with the torture convention and eventually cut ties to them when they refused. There was nothing like the concerted legal effort to justify torture that we've seen from the Bush administration." I don't myself know what role Ms. Clinton played in determining the rendition policy of President Clinton's administration.

On final passage of the a bill to extend and modify authorities needed to combat terrorism, and for other purposes, March 2, 2006, ten senators voted no. Among those voting yes were Senators Boxer, Clinton, Dayton, Kennedy, Schumer, and Obama.

Pollwatcher, your argument is worthwhile but Hillary Clinton is simply a supporter of occupying Iraq and I cannot excuse that. Clinton is just not a political leader I trust or want to rely on. Had there been any show that she understood the cares of peace advocates, I would relent.

Hillary Clinton's speech opposing the Military Commissions Act was fine, but I want other such speeches and there must be such a speech on Iraq. The interview in the New York Times on Iraq was liked being slapped in the face by Clinton.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/opinion/l23iraq.html

A Test for Congress on the War

To the Editor:

"Clinton Camp Challenges Obama on Iraq":

Let's not be distracted by the Clinton campaign's attacks on Senator Barack Obama and be clear about the history.

Until very recently, Hillary Rodham Clinton was one of the chief hawks in the Senate. She supported President Bush's Iraq war policies for years after her authorization vote in 2002, long after it became obvious that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and no connections to Al Qaeda and after it was perfectly clear that pursuing Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and around the world, instead of getting bogged down in Iraq, was really the only strategic course of action for fighting terrorism successfully.

We must recognize Senator Clinton's poor judgment, not just in her initial vote, but for helping make possible the whole disastrous, dangerous mess we are in today, for which she still seems to take no responsibility.

Eric Chivian
Boston, March 22, 2007

Also, delivered around the same time as her MCA speech: Clinton's assertion that the president should have the authority to authorize torture in "ticking bomb" scenarios.

I think you really missed the point of Garance's post, Matt. I didn't see anywhere that she thinks Hillary is "entitled" to the nomination. Normally I think you are very perceptive, but you missed the boat here.
Scott gets it right ("I don't think she's arguing that I oppose Clinton because I'm a man in some reductive sense. Rather, as I read her she's claiming that 1)the male dominated pundit class is not likely to have representative views of what Democrats think of Clinton, and 2)people's judgments can never be fully abstracted from their social circumstances. Both of these points are, I think, correct. How would I evaluate Clinton if I had experienced an enormous amount of sexism in my life? I have no idea. I make the best judgments I can based on what I know, but that's not an all-seeing or infallible perspective (to put it mildly.)").

I recommend you read him, and then re-read Garance.

Thank you for the links, Christmas. Hillary Clinton is not my kind of candidate.

I believe that the english language has a term for making a generalization about an entire class of persons, say, males between a certain age, and then using that generalization to draw specific conclusions about a specific person.

OK, then give Hillary Clinton the policies of John Edwards or Barack Obama and any ability to admit a mistake, a grievous mistake, and I will support her. I do not care whether a candidate is a woman or a man, I want a candidate who will end this disastrous occupation and Clinton has told us she will not do so.

She's been subjected to a lot of frankly demented criticism over the years, a lot of unfair news coverage, a lot of misogyny and tons of other stuff I don't care to be associated with.

None of which is your fault, Matt, nor are you associating yourself with it by criticizing Hillary Clinton on the issues, or on her approach to politics.

What matters to me is that the world of 2007 is very different from that of 1995, and the Clintons and their DLC buddies seem very much trapped in a 1995 mindset. Hillarycare has just gone down in flames, the Gingrich Rebellion has taken over Congress, and the Clintonian approach is to play a combination of defense and political smallball - pushing tiny symbolic issues to gain the favor of a particular slice of voters - to survive politically.

The problem is, that only works for a particular individual. For a party, for a movement, survival isn't the issue - it's changing the country in the direction that you believe is right and good. And to do that, you need to say what your vision is, so you can win over the electorate to your vision.

That's what Bill Clinton failed to do in his second term when he had the luxury, and it's what Hillary Clinton is showing no signs of being interested in doing now.

She may well win the nomination, and if so, she may well win the election. And if she does, she will be a better President than any Republican who is running, or who might run.

But that's as far as it goes. If she wins, the Dems will be saddled with a President of their own party who won't do much to lead the country in the direction the party wants to go. We'll be in a box that we'll only be able to get out of by attacking the President we elected, the President who's supposedly on our side.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304

January 20, 2006

I Will Not Support Hillary Clinton for President
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges....

Molly Ivins knew more than a year ago that she could not support Hillary Clinton. I held out hoping for some sign that I could, but no more. "Enough."

Voting for Hillary is the best way to marginalize the left-wing for a generation. Bill did his best, but W's terrible presidency has given us another chance. Voting for Hillary in any way would be a disaster.

So, Molly Ivins was a woman and Ivins appealed as other women to Hillary Clinton to show compassion and courage, but there was never such a show and now there is a toughening to show us who Clinton really is.

So is Matt not representative of what Democrats think of Hillary because Matt is male? Or because Matt is a member of the pundit class? Or does it have to be both?

I'm trying to determine if females are representative of what Democrats think of Hillary, pundits are, female pundits are, or just anyone that is not a male pundit?

Who is representative of what Democrats think of Hillary?
And just what "group" are any pundits representative of?

And who appointed GFR or MY a pundit anyway, because near as I can tell, neither of them can hammer a six-inch spike through a board with their penis, so they sure as hell ain't representative of me!

Yoyo:

"Voting for Hillary is the best way to marginalize the left-wing for a generation."

I had not thought about this, but it is definitely so and not healthy for the Democratic Party or domestic policy.

The male-dominated donor class sure loves Hillary.

In voting for the Iraq war resolution, Hillary Clinton opposed a new doctrine of preemption, opposed an immediate attack, and opposed an attack intended to topple Saddam from power (a goal she would have sought to achieve by means other than invasion). She favored pressing for a UN resolution that would order Saddam to disarm.

At the time, President Bush was trusted and popular. He said he was concerned to secure the authorization of the United Nations before acting (or so Clinton said she construed what he had said in his speech at Cincinatti.)
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html

President Bush used the authority granted to implement a policy of preemption, attacked within months, seeking to topple Saddam from power by means of invasion.

But the policies favored by Clinton need no apology.

Pollwatcher, I am sympathetic to your defense but there could not have been the slightest doubt in any reasonable person's mind when the Iraq war resolution was passed George Bush was going to rush to war and the resolution all that was needed for the rush. At least let there be honesty, Hillary Clinton could never have doubted there would be a war when the resolution was passed and never since has she shown doubt.

All you are doing is showing me how clearly Clinton supported the war from the beginning and never has stopped.

John Emerson is right about how easily Clinton has raised money from men, and Clinton would turn her back on many Democratic Party liberals in the presidency since she has already done just this repeatedly.

Sigh... what RT said. And I have to register my astonishment at the Hillary-understands-our-lives theory: don't these people know that our chances to recover our national integrity are at stake? I'm a woman and live in a sort of bleak awareness that I will never be able to 'have it all' because no one will reliably pick up slack for me, but I honestly think there are more pressing matters for the next POTUS to handle than, say, a 2010 Children's Immunization and Vision Screening Act, or something similarly Clintonesque. Sheesh, can't refinishing the floors-- affirmations and political 'conversations' (as if HRC had a damned bit of interest in anything I'd say, anyway)-- wait until the country's foundations are repaired?

Perfect tone, Latts. Sure, there is no way HRC is ever going to listen to me, and I can do my own floors.

New York Times, March 15:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a ''remaining military as well as political mission'' in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military....

The United States' security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state ''that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda,'' she said. ''It is right in the heart of the oil region,'' she said....

(Senator Barack Obama, a rival of Mrs. Clinton, has said that if elected president, he might keep a small number of troops in Iraq.)

...Under her strategy American troops would remain virtual bystanders if Shiites and Sunnis killed each other in sectarian attacks. ''That may be inevitable,'' she said. ''And it certainly may be the only way to concentrate the attention of the parties.''

Asked if Americans would endure having troops in Iraq who do nothing to stop sectarian attacks there, she replied: ''Look, I think the American people are done with Iraq. I think they are at a point where, whether they thought it was a good idea or not, they have seen misjudgment and blunder after blunder, and their attitude is, What is this getting us? What is this doing for us?''

''No one wants to sit by and see mass killing,'' she added. ''It's going on every day! Thousands of people are dying every month in Iraq. Our presence there is not stopping it. And there is no potential opportunity I can imagine where it could. This is an Iraqi problem; we cannot save the Iraqis from themselves. If we had a different attitude going in there, if we had stopped the looting immediately, if we had asserted our authority -- you can go down the lines, if, if, if -- ''

That is exactly the hideous reasoning why after all this discussion I know more clearly than ever that I will never support Hillary Clinton and will instead actively oppose her. What a horrid attitude both for America and for Iraq, and what remarkable bold lying. Warrior Princess Clinton will keep American forces in Iraq forever, for al-Qaeda, Iran, Kurds, iraqi military and oil, but American soldiers will not do anything. What garbage, what lying.

The horrid Warrior Princess!

Read the hideous transparent transcript of Hillary Clinton that Pollwatcher has excerpted so well for us, and we can understand why Clinton has always supported war and occupation in Iraq and wants to do so as president.

...We cannot save Iraqis, but we will occupy Iraq forever while we are not saving Iraqis... Lies or craziness.

My father is conservative. However, he's not fond of the current Administration, nor of what the Republicans become.

But.

He has heard the Rush show, has gotten the right wing emails, and has absorbed the "Hitlery" meme. He will never in his life vote for Hillary Clinton. She has too much baggage from over a decade of smear.

He might vote for Obama or Edwards, however.

I suspect that there are other people like my father out there. Now, I wouldn't support her anyway just based on what I understand about her views and her platform. But even if I did favor her, I wouldn't support her candidacy, if for no other reason than the fact that I know that guys like my dad would never consider voting for her, not in a million, billion years.

Rather, to reach the conclusion that someone should be the nominee, you need to have some strong affirmative arguments in their favor.

The affirmative argument in Hilary's favor is that she is a woman, and that all of us (man and woman alike) have an obligation to vote for her to break that patriarchical system that has dominated this country since its founding. Votes against Hillary are votes to perpetuate the patriarchy.

Joseph, no offense, but we're not going to need your father in 2008. We can easily win that election without a single Republican vote because the war will still be on going, the Republican nominee will have to stand solidly behind both the war and Bush to maintain his base, and that will make him radioactive to Independent voters.

I don't like Hillary at all, but the fact that Republicans hate her isn't a good reason not to vote for her. also, your father probably voted for Bush. Most all Republicans voted for Bush. This is all their fault, everything that's happened these last 9 years. They have no right to wash their hands of it and pretend they didn't know what kind of man Bush was. The rest of us did.

If we are still occupying Iraq in a year, as we probably will be, then I cannot believe a Democratic candidate who has not promised to end the occupation will be nominated. No matter how Hillary Clinton campaigns, supporting the occupation of Iraq will be her undoing and pointing figures at Barack Obama will not work.

one thing that is like a compulsion to vote for Hillary, despite agreeing substantially with what Matt has written, is my alomst irrational urge to elect Hillary because that is the one thing the remaining 29%'ers who support Bush would hate the most.

if they oppose it, ram it down their throats. no quarter.

It's surely true to say that in his infinite sagacity, George Bush has created a sitution in Iraq from which there is no tolerable way out. Communal fears and vengeance have been unleashed and a civil war has commenced.

Whenever American troops withdraw, it's likely that that war will intensify. So far as I can see, that's a fact that has to be recognized, and has been, by both Clinton and Obama. Both have said they envisage trying to time the withdrawal so as to hold down the slaughter; both also see that withdrawal must come sooner rather than later.

Obama was correct to oppose the war outright. But now both Clinton and Obama confront a dreadful imbroglio that cannot be escaped with honor.

It would be madness for an opponent of the war to suppose that the candidate of the party that began the war and has sustained the war should be reelected in preference to the candidate of the party that has in the House voted for withdrawal from the war.

The Iraq War De-Escalation Act proposed by Senator Obama "would maintain a military presence in the region for force protection, training of Iraqi forces, and pursuing international terrorists." Is this continued occupation? Must opponents of the war turn to Kucinich?

Obama's history on choice is not the best, for those who care; Clinton has been quite good in working against right-wing arguments on this issue.

A lot of this misses the question, which is whether you'll vote for Clinton if she runs against McCain.

Believe it, if Clinton wins and 70% of the people want us out of Iraq in 2009, we're out of there.

In fact, referring to the Nixon-to-China precedent, Clinton might be the best able to get us out.

Alternately, if you think the developing dictatorship in America is the greater threat, it might be better to give the would-be dictators enough rope so they can hang themselves.

'Cause really, there's no doubt about worldwide trends. A dictatorship here will go the same way as the Spanish or Greek or Argentinian dictatorships, or any of the other dictatorships we've propped up over the past 60 years.

During our civil war there was a strong feeling that the war was payment in blood for the moral evil of slavery. Maybe we're in default again.

Let me be the Polly Prissypants and say that rather than grouse about the primaries and our candidates, I put forth the proposition that we have the best slate of potential presidents we have had in a long time.
Edwards is either an honest, sincerely good man or he can fake it well and he makes the right noises. Even if he is too pretty our benchmark is W.
Hillary has experience none of the other candidates do, short of Khalid Sheik Mohammed's forthcoming Manchurian Candidacy for the GOP. You just know she's been investigated to the tune of 110 million taxpayer dollars and that means clean, baby. She also has a vendetta list not dissimilar from mine and I for one would like to see some scum chased back to the pine forests of the south for a generation or two. If you think she could have voted against the war you are charmingly naive and learned nothing about how the media works for the GOP (Jew-Hating Peacenik Traitor Vince Foster Lesbian Pro Terrorist New York Liberal! and I missed a few....sorry Joe Conason).
Obama is the candidate of hope. The fact that he is running, let alone with the experience he has in civil rights and Chicago politics, is a milestone. you can quibble about his blackness, or his smiliness, or his whatever, but he is a player. The GOP hasn't paid someone to shoot him yet.
Bill Richardson is a bit of a dark horse (fnar, fnork) but he makes the right noises and he has executive experience and foreign policy experience and does not appear to suck.
Like all of our candidates, they are not W: preening rich frat boys divested from accountability floating from one daddy-bought gig to the next leaving a wake of disaster and heartache they can't perceive as their doing.
And like it or not, we have made our bed in Iraq, and whoever comes next is not going to get do-overs or a clean slate because it is Uncle Sam's name on the catastrophe. We will be living, as a nation and a people, with the results of eight years of criminal conduct and profound sleazery that even the magic of Bill Clinton, First Dude and Honorary African American, will be unable to fix.

Whatever the outcome of the preliminaries I will vote for the Democrat because the GOP has demonstrated again and again that they are liars, thieves, low-life child molesters and scum who believe none of the conservative principles they blather and consistently exceed the evil they accuse the other side of committing.

My take is that all three of the leading Democratic candidates are electable. To those who are skeptical, please remember that Kerry, a not-particularly-strong candidate, almost beat Bush in 2004, when (a) 9-11 was still a relatively fresh memory, (b) the Iraq war was much more popular than today, (c) the economy was good (better IMO than it will be in 2008), and (d) Bush had the advantage of incumbency (and except in rare cases like 1932 or 1980 or the three-way race in 1992 it *is* an advantage). Yet even then, the change of about one percent of the vote in Ohio would have elected Kerry, and Ohio seems to have become a much less Republican state since then.

What about the polls showing Giuliani leading the Democratic candidates? I think it's important to remember that Giuliani has had almost nothing but good publicity--"America's Mayor" etc. Very little so far on his mobbed-up police chief, multiple marriages, etc. Even with that, he only barely leads the Democratic candidates in most polls, even though the publicity on Hillary has been largely negative, and even though a lot of people still aren't familiar with Obama. (I am not in any event sure that Giuliani will get the nomination--a lot of Republicans are still unfamiliar with his liberal views on some of their key social issues--but even if he does I see him as far from invulnerable in the general election.)

(About Obama: I know a lot of people are worried that black candidates don't do as well in elections as they do in polls, but that doesn't seem to have been the case in 2006. Black Republicans lost badly, but that was because they were Republicans, not because they were blacks, and in most cases their defeat was no worse than polls predicted, *some* polls in Maryland being the only exception. Harold Ford narrowly lost in the red state of Tennessee but actually came much closer than the late polls had indicated.)

Then there is Bush's persistent unpopularity (not just among Democrats but among Independents)--yet he is just popular enough *among Republicans* that no candidate with a chance for the nomination can really repudiate him and win in the GOP primaries. Anyway, to those who say "Bush won't be on the ballot in 2008" I defy you to show me one case where the unpopularity of an incumbent president did not adversely affect his party's chosen succesor, even when that successor was a person of quite different views. Bryan hated Cleveland, Cox didn't care much for Wilson, etc., but they still lost largely because the president had made his party unpopular under *any* candidate. I bet that few people who now express pessimism about Democratic chances in 2008 expected the Democrats to win 30 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate in 2006...

Yes, Fox and the right-wing spin machine will take on any of the Democratic candidates. But their tactics barely worked even in 2004--and failed in 2006.

I am not here concerned with the merits of the Democratic candidates on policy. I'm just saying that I don't agree that any of them "can't win."

I agree that merely increasing the number of democratic member states is unlikely help with the enforcement problem plaguing the United Nations. The number democratic member-states is already high, yet enforcement is feeble at best: Adding more democratic states (or more rules!) is unlikely to improve this situation.

thanks

thanks

Thank you..

thanks

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