Tag: Clinton email

Why the Democrats Lost

hillary
Hillary: too much hedging, not enough honesty

W.J. Astore

I’ve read a lot of articles on why the Democrats lost the presidency.  All sorts of reasons have been cited.  Some people have blamed Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein.  Others have blamed Comey and the FBI, or Republicans for voter suppression, or white women for voting for Trump, or a message that was too liberal or progressive or too supportive of diversity (too much LGBTQ and transsexuals sharing bathrooms with little girls, and so on).

All of this is nonsense.  The Democrats lost because they fielded a candidate whose personal negatives were too high, whose image as a thoroughly establishment candidate was out of tune with too many people, people seeking change at almost any price.

Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses in this election were legion.  She was an indifferent campaigner.  She chose a man who was largely unknown as her running mate.  She refused to embrace a progressive agenda.  She ran as the only “sane” alternative to her rival, but she had no clear message of her own: just more of the same.  Her motto, “stronger together,” was insipid.  She ran as a hawk on national defense.  Finally, too many people were just tired of the Clintons, just as too many Republicans were tired of the Bushes, hence the early exit by Jeb! Bush.

Here’s what I wrote just after Hillary clinched the nomination in early June:

I remember the first commercial Hillary made, the announcement of her candidacy.  A tedious spot, it focused on her grandmotherly qualities.  It had no vision, no bite, and little hope.  It was about trying to make us feel comfortable with Hillary.  Hey, she’s a mom and a grandma!  Other women like her!  She’s just like us!

It went downhill from there.  Hillary’s campaign has been carefully scripted and modulated, the opposite of impassioned.  Vapidness replaced vision.  That’s why a democratic socialist Jew from Vermont via Brooklyn [Bernie Sanders] gave her a run for her money, because she had no passion or vision and he did (and does).

For me, the defining moment of their debates came when Bernie argued strongly for a $15.00 minimum wage for workers and Hillary was content with offering workers a $12.00 wage. (More than enough, peasants!)  Combine that moment with her infamous statement about the gobs of money she made in three speeches to Goldman Sachs (“Well, that’s what they offered”) and you get a clear sense of who she is and what she’s about.

A quick note: A nursing aide making Hillary’s generous $12.00 hourly wage at 40 hours a week would take 28 years to earn the $675,000 that Clinton “earned” in a few short hours giving those speeches.

As Peter Van Buren explained at his blog, We Meant Well, Hillary’s email controversy “in many voters’ minds became shorthand for a range of issues related to trust, ethics, and propriety, including the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play, and the Goldman-Sachs speeches.”

Too many people simply didn’t trust Hillary.  I myself didn’t vote for Trump, but I also couldn’t vote for Clinton. For different reasons, I didn’t trust either one.

Hillary could have settled the email controversy fairly easily.  Recall that the story broke back in March of 2015.  All she had to say then was, “I was stupid — and careless — and I’m sorry. I learned my lesson. It won’t happen again.”

But no … being Hillary means never having to say you’re sorry.  Not in a contrite and sincere and fulsome way.

And that’s the primary reason why the Democrats lost the election.

Hillary Clinton’s Email Fiasco

Trust me!
Trust me!

W.J. Astore

Once again, Hillary Clinton is in the news for the wrong reason.  She used a private email account while she was Secretary of State, rather than an official government email account.  As a result, not all of her (unclassified) emails are part of the public record. Many may be “lost,” consigned to the dustbin of history, whether by accident or design is hard to say.  In the press conference she then gave to explain herself, she was less than forthcoming.  And it now appears that her email server wasn’t even encrypted for the first three months she served as Secretary of State, meaning her official emails were eminently hackable and readable by foreign governments.

Just another meaningless scandal, right?  No — what this reveals is the arrogance of power. Official rules may apply to “little people” like you and me, but to the Clintons, those rules can be ignored.  They think they can do whatever they want.  It’s a clear double standard, and it’s just one more reason why the prospect of Hillary Clinton as president disturbs me.

I remember when Hillary Clinton served as First Lady and worked on health care reform in the early 1990s.  Her right-hand man was Ira Magaziner.  I’d heard of Magaziner since he had served as an outside consultant to my hometown. According to Wikipedia:

“After Oxford, Magaziner and a group of former Brown students attempted to implement social democratic reforms in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts. These reforms included starting an agricultural cooperative, supporting liberal candidates for city council, strengthening the union movement, and printing a progressive town newspaper. Magaziner soon abandoned the project, after the group recognized that the effects of foreign business competition on the local manufacturing base would undercut their efforts.”

Not as I heard it.  Magaziner thought he could come to Brockton and serve as its “instant expert,” remaking the city in his image without paying much attention to the desires of the locals.  Brockton is working-class, fairly conservative, and tough-minded, proud of its championship boxers (Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler).  The people of Brockton were less than enamored with Magaziner and his fellow “experts” telling them what to do and how to do it.  So Magaziner withdrew, mission unaccomplished.

Magaziner then took his know-it-all approach and applied it to health care reform, working hand-in-hand with Hillary Clinton and her team.  They concocted a massive reform of the health care system with no buy-in from major stakeholders.  Arrogant policy wonks, they believed their ideas and reforms were so brilliant and compelling they’d easily win assent from Congress.  Instead, they fell flat on their faces.

Nobody likes being dictated to.  And nobody likes people who make their own rules while dancing on the heads of the little people. Hillary’s latest fiasco once again reminds us of her imperious nature, her arrogance, her lack of political deftness.

She’d make a formidable empress.  But a president?  No thanks.