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Monday, June 8, 2009 12:00 AM

Underestimating Hillary

How Clinton went from controversial runner-up to feminist superhero

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  • Monday, June 8, 2009 07:40 AM

    Divisive dynasty?

    What dynasty? Bill Clinton comes from the humblest of roots in a small state. He served two terms. Two terms is a dynasty? In what way?

    As far as irritation and fury at "hardball tactics", I'll first say that politics is analogous to a contact sport. If you get on the field, you're gonna get hit. But the second thing I don't get with O-followers that were so ready to make these charges on Clinton's tactics was their (still continuing) blindness to the very hardball if not downright Chicago-sleaze tactics of the Obama campaign. Whatever. Some folks are easily fooled. You wanted Obama, you got Obama. Translated, that means you wanted Obama's "liberal" hope and change, but what you wound up with is a guy who gives a good speech and who brings all of the bad of Bill Clinton's circle of neo-liberal DLC advisers and DC insiders with none of the actual commitment to principle that seems to be a part of Hillary's core makeup. Can you say string of broken promises? Sure you can!

    "As first lady and later as the first serious female presidential candidate, she put on and discarded so many personas that it was hard to figure out who she really was"

    Um...no. The only way that could be true is if you allowed yourself to be led around by the "Yes, we can (but you'll find out later that we won't") BS of the Obama campaign and its own (aforementioned) hardball tactics. (Who inserted race into the campaign? Hint: Not HRC.)

    From the firing of Bush's well-liked but compromised global AIDS coordinator, Mark Dybul, to challenging Hamid Karzhai on an odious Aghanistan law severely restricting women's rights, Clinton has been every inch the leader who once proclaimed, in 1995, that "women's rights are human rights." Those who missed her passionate defense of abortion at a Washington, DC, hearing back in April owe it to themselves to watch.

    It would have been better if you'd un-hypnotized yourself, recognized what a strong woman and leader she is back when it mattered and voted for her instead. I don't think we'd be throwing trillions at the banks while help for actual homeowners lags, and I doubt we'd be taking the word of big healthcare and insurance companies about cutting costs on the one hand while they work to undermine the push for true universal healthcare (not health insurance) on the other.

    ***

    Before I posted this, I couldn't help but be amazed at the asinine comment of JC Miller on the "million dead Iraqi" thing. Does this dimwit lay the entire Iraq War at the feet of HRC? Does he/she not know that Obama wasn't around when the vote for the AUMF took place and has said that if he had been, he didn't know how he would have voted? (I think given Obama's track record on state secrets, FISA, warrentless detention without trial for indefinite terms up to forever, how he would have voted had he been in the senate is not hard to figure out.) Does JC not know about the escalation of the AfPak war and the toll on civilians in terms of lost lives and the displacement of refugees? Gimme an 'effin break!

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