Hillary is bugging the crap out of me.
I want to like her. I like the idea of woman president. I think we should evaluate candidates based on their policy issues and leadership skills, and not whether or not we could envision tossing back a brewsky with them.
So, okay. Let’s be adults. Let’s line up the three Democratic candidates and compare their policy proposals. Frankly, the differences between them are shades of grey. Very, very subtle differences. If you care about national health care, each has a plan. There isn’t a huge, huge difference between any of the plans. Any of the three options would be better than the status quo.
And, still, Hillary bugs me.
Maybe the fact that she bugs me comes from some hidden sexism programmed in me as a youth. Maybe the part of her that bugs me comes from society teaching me that women leaders are shrill. So, I’ve given her second, third, fourth chances.
Everybody hates her inner smug-smartypants-humorless-girl-from-third-grade. At the risk of morphing into David Brooks and reducing all politics to a high school lunchroom, let me just say that in the third grade, I was the space-cadet-girl-who-read-Little-House-In-the-Prairie-under-my-math-textbook. Hillary wins the prize for Least Fun to Party With.
She and Bill have been dreadful for the past few weeks. Their accusations of Obama being a Reagan-lover were stupid and juvenile. Bill has been too visible and aggressive in South Carolina. This isn’t a woman hating thing. It’s a Clinton hating thing.
I’m actually dismayed that Hillary is ahead in the Florida polls.
The New York Times endorsed Hillary today. But their opinion writers have been pounding her for weeks. Collins tells Bill to go home. Dowd writes, "Bill’s transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and
bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless
— and seamy." Kristof mocks Hillary’s experience. This endorsement from the Times must be their way of limiting damage to the likely Democratic candidate. As Democrats, this Hillary hatred is bad for business. It could push moderates into the McCain camp in November.
But we need to be honest that her low likability scores are a liability for us. Likability is a factor in elections. It shouldn’t be dismissed as an irrelevant factor that only people with low policy knowledge use to make decisions. It will affect how she operates in Washington and abroad. The return of Bill into DC politics is something that few are looking forward to. If Obama loses, he’s going to be Al Gore II – the martyred candidate that we wished had won.
Hillary better clean up her act now. Tell Bill to go back to his cushy charity job. Stop the low blows against Obama. Reduce the arrogance and attitude. But in the meantime, I’m a Obama girl.
Apt. 11d 
Virtually the only scenario in which the Republicans can retain the White House starts with a McCain-Hillary matchup. As such, doesn’t the Times’ pair of endorsements carry a quasi-Democratic death wish?
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I’m also an Obama girl. (well, Obama Mama, maybe). Clinton (both of them) also annoys me, but not because she was the smug girl whose hand shot up for every question (also, a reader of something behind the math or spelling or whatever textbook the rest of the kids were doing). She annoys me because she’s taken the low road in this battle. I want everyone to pretend they love each other, while debating the policies. Obama’s doing it (for the most part).
I’m not really willing to take the Hillary hate from the other side of the aisle into consideration, ’cause I don’t want to let them choose for me. But, I personally see clearly which candidate I prefer.
(BTW, Florida doesn’t count for the Dems — they’ve stripped them of their delegates).
But, Obama has to win the nomination. I was worried about the Clinton tactics, but, have since realized that whatever tactics they use will be used again in the general election. So, he has to be able to handle them. If he can’t win the nomination because of the attacks, or because of latent racism, or because of the establishment, he’d face the same problems in the general election.
(except maybe the establishment).
bj
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Well, I will vote for McCain over either Edwards or Clinton, and am leaning towards Obama over McCain. On the other hand, if my state (Virginia) is in play, the Demmies are coasting to victory.
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Their accusations of Obama being a Reagan-lover were stupid and juvenile.
As opposed to the manufactured LBJ-MLK drama?
I’m still waiting for people to remember that it was Michelle Obama who started the shit-slinging.
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Tell it Laura girl! I am an Obama guy.
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I became pro-Obama when I heard read the Steinem piece comparing the burden of race and gender and the LBJ-MLK quote, before I’d read any of the spin. (I know this, ’cause I signed onto the Obama site at midnight to give him money). The comments struck a nerve.
If Obama had run a radio advertisement featuring the LBJ-MLK quote, taken out of context and then followed it up with quotes that Clinton loved LBJ (of “How many kids did you kill today” fame), I’d have some sympathy. But, he didn’t. The Reagan ridiculousness was a paid advertisement. More of those shenanigans, and Clinton would loose my money if she became the nominee (not my vote, under no condition can I imagine voting for the republican choices).
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Way to go Siobhan! I am an Edwards fan because I think both Obama and Hillary have lacked the character I want in a president. And I have a soft spot for crusaders.
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I am incredibly torn about this decision, and constantly wondering how much sexism I’ve internalized, and how that’s staining my feelings about Hillary. But there are real issues where she and I (and her husband, for that matter), part ways.
I’ve got to decide pretty soon, because the absentee ballot is already here.
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Yeah, what everyone has said. I have spent a lot of time wondering about my own openness to a woman leader. (Ironic, as I myself am a leader at my office and have personally had to fight many battles against the ‘shrill’ label.) If I think back to before this all started, I remember not being for Hillary because I disagreed with her policies — most importantly her vote for the war.
Recently I’ve heard a couple of things that have made me think. First, countering my fears that Obama might not be experienced enough, I read a piece (I think in the NYT?) that said well, if you really care about experience, Dick Cheney’s your man. (Gulp.) Secondly, on NPR I heard a piece about relations with Cuba. Every single candidate was taking the same old stupid line WRT Cuba … except Obama. It seemed to reinforce to me that we need to get away from the business-as-usual thing.
I’m an Illinois voter and I’ll be doing the “vote early at your local library” thing that’s new this year … and I’m doing it tomorrow. So, like landismom, I better decide. And it’s really looking like Obama.
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I still like Hilary. I don’t hate her smart-kid thing. (Also, I don’t pay much attention to the various stupid things people say at this stage in the campaign; I’m sure Obama will say something stupid sometime too.) Mainly it bugs me that she’s so easy to mock – Slate has a story on how “she’s Tracy Flick!” – when Obama just seems unmockable. Can you imagine how it would come off if someone compared Obama to a black television or film character with even vaguely negative qualities? Why is that?
I may vote for Obama, because I agree that likeability is important in the general election. He’s great, and it’s good for us to have a candidate who can’t be mocked! But I’m tired of the Hilary bashing.
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I could have (and should have) written this post… THANKS!
I really want to like her. I didn’t like her when she was First Lady, because it seemed to me that most of her accomplishments were due to Bill.
Then she ran for Senate, won, and seemed to be a good Senator — Sure, she has a personality that isn’t exactly pleasant, but many women of her generation, playing in the ‘boys club’ aren’t exactly nice folks. I could handle that…
Then they started her Presidential campaign. Either she’s powerless to run the campaign she wants (so she’s really not someone who should be President) or this IS the campaign she wants, and if so, I don’t want her.
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Could someone give me an example of what about Hillary is so unpleasant? Something she has done? Or does regularly? I honestly do not get it.
I know personality/likability “matters.” But it shouldn’t. I have totally been tuning out all this campaigning and just focusing on the policies the candidates propose.
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I don’t think one can explain likability, and that it is very conflated with prejudice. I had this conversation with someone a long time ago, and took the stand that vote against Clinton because other people find her unlikeable is to support the prejudices of others, and that’s the road to H*.
But, my problem with her now is that I do not like the campaign she is running. As I already said in this thread, I think the Dems need to be singing the “We’re a happy family” song. I don’t care if it’s fake. I read Obama’s comments and I read hers, and hers are less successful at (perhaps) “faking” the “happy family.”
Policy doesn’t help me — I think the policy differences between the candidates are so minimal that they will be overwhelmed by the facts on the ground when they become president. They can come up with all the complicated health care/social security/education/energy plans they want. But, in 2009, they’re going to be cleaning up messes. Big messes that no one (including Clinton) understands until they dig through the closets they’ve been hiding everything in in the White House.
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I agree with you, af. It seems that Hillary, although also a trailblazing candidate, can be mocked at will. Obama, however, is in kid glove territory. I still don’t know who I’ll vote for, but the double standard is crystal clear and pretty annoying.
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The Slate Flick video is pretty funny, you know. But, it mocks Obama as well. Obama is being cast as the Metzler character. the sports jock, buffoon, and incompetant who doesn’t know anything and is going to win a popularity contest. Those of us who like Obama find that just as much of a mock (for the Harvard educated, community organizer, and senator) as the Flick portrayal of Clinton.
The Pollitt article about Clinton, which reports the much uglier bashing of Clinton over the years (“daughter of Satan”), is of a different character, but, I can’t really understand the motivations of the Limbaugh crowd.
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Wendy, here is a quote (at the time she was running for Senate) from Brad DeLong, who worked in the Clinton White House, now teaches at Berkeley and runs a Dem-oriented blog and who in my reading of him has had very little nice to say about any Reep ever:
“..My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.
So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation’s health-care system…
Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch–the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president..”
Is that ‘likeability’? Sort of, a little bit. More of it is cluelessness that others have positions and values and have climbed their own greasy poles to some power, and that their interests need to be taken account of. I really see her as the second coming of Jimmy Carter. I was extremely happy when Carter won, and very saddened as I saw the whole thing go to ashes around him Carter changed my view of what a good President had to be (‘different from Jimmy Carter’!) – I think Obama’s style is such that he can appeal to the middle far more than she.
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HRC does seem to have learned a lot since the health care debacle. It would help if she had been Senator of a state where she had more of a fight to get elected, rather than basically walking in.
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The Tao of Obama
I know: Taoism is not really a good analytic framework for US politics (largely because Taoism is, in itself, anti-analytic, but that is another story…). Too much weirdness about keeping people uninformed and hiding the weapons and all that. But
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“The Pollitt article about Clinton, which reports the much uglier bashing of Clinton over the years (“daughter of Satan”), is of a different character, but, I can’t really understand the motivations of the Limbaugh crowd. ”
Posted by: bj
My take on their motivations: (1) Clinton took their presidency. In 1992, the GOP had had it for twelve years straight, and for 16 of the previous 22. Basically, since 1968 life seemed good for the GOP presidency – Nixon had to work overtime to blow it, and that was only for one term. After Desert Storm, Bush I seemed to be a shoe-in. The shock must have been horrible.
(2) Clinton was a perfect Freudian projection target. By now, it’s clear that (a) most GOP politicians and influentials made d*mn sure that they didn’t go to Viet Nam, (b) they they’ll screw man, woman or dog, (c) they’ll take anybody’s money (and I mean *anybody’s* money). Bill was the perfect person to accuse of everything, so as to deflect attention from the GOP.
(3) Clinton raised taxes on the rich. Some say that that was everything. Note that the NYT editorial policy went whackjob on him for the entire 8 years. Only after Dubya was elected did they decide that politeness was needed.
(4) It’s fun, and without visible consequences. If one was a right-winger during the 1990’s, one could publicly curse out the president without being an America Hater, could organize and prepare for armed rebellion without being a traitor, and could publicly lie like a wh*reson and still be part of the Moral Majority. That wasn’t true in the 1980’s, and ceased to be true that day in 2001 when everything changed – Inauguration Day, not 9/11.
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