Letters to the Editor
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To Anonymous, Part 2
7. As I have said, I have also been offended by the snide sexism directed towards Hillary Clinton. So there we agree on something. (By the way, your admission that it has nudged you towards Hillary means that you are at least minimally moved by your emotions politically.)
Emotions? Not so much, or I would have come around to Hillary sooner. There has certainly been the provocation. What I have been more impressed with is the way she withstands these onslaughts. I posted in another thread that I think she shows courage. (Okay, some might say stubborness.) She is still standing. She is still fighting. For the most part, she has met her opponents (the right wing nut cases and the Chris Matthews and Tim Russerts of the world, with grace and equamanity. This is a personal quality that I admire.
8. I mean, in 1992, when voting for Bill Clinton, who thought we would be getting the welfare reform act that got passed?
I didn't actually like the welfare reform. I have been poor and I have worked with poor, homeless, disabled, and mentally ill people. In all that time, I never met a Cadillac welfare queen. Forcing poor moms to take jobs that, when the child care is deducted leaves them with nothing, only entrenches people in poverty. Working poverty is still poverty. Gone are those subsidies that would have helped those women get education to really move their lives forward.
10. At this point, I would rather see Hillary president than John McCain. The two big reasons I'm against McCain are (1) foreign policy and (2) Supreme Court nominations. There probably are a lot of other things, but those two are sufficient to get me in the polling booth voting for Hillary. I'm just saying that if the Clinton people want us Obama people to get onboard with electing Hillary, then have to talk TO us and not DOWN TO us. That's just the way you sell toothpaste, folks.
Then you know that you have to vote for the Democratic nominee. Why do Clinton supporters sometimes talk down to Obama supporters -- many of whom either wittingly or unwittingly use right wing and Hillary hating talking points? Well that is part of the reason. Progressive Democrats simply reject those talking points. They have heard them before. However, the hope thing leaves many people cold because hope is not a campaign issue. It is emphemeral and emotional. People have said Hillary is a wonk and that she lacks emotion. I think the first is true and I think the latter is probably a functional combination of trying to withstand some of her attackers and of actually being analytical. I have been described as an analytical woman. I like issues, I like logic, and I like to see people who don't muddy up a nice rhetorical discussion by introducing pathos. I love ethos and logos, probably because as someone who has taught critical thinking in connected with writing I just tend to say: "Prove it." Hope, like God, cannot be proven. It's cousin is faith.
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Correction near the end of the last letter:
I love ethos and logos, probably because as someone who has taught critical thinking in connection with writing, I just tend to say: "Prove it."
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...and so what?
This is a 60 year old woman who has been going non stop night and day, trying to convince supporters and non supporters alike that she is NOT phony, DOES know what she is talking about and would make a good leader....if she is tired and has a speck of a tear in her eye, what the hell?
Meanwhile Obama is running around waving his arms in the air like a teenaged cheer leader, hugging one of the Kennedy's every chance he gets, saying nothing really substantial and it is all okay?
Well, it is NOT okay.
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AKA Smith
1. As you can guess, I have a somewhat less charitable intepretation as to why she failed to read the N.I.E. I think she wanted to vote for the war authorization for political reasons and she didn't want to know any inconvenient facts that might intefere with this pre-determined course of action. Even if you don't impute bad faith, though, this was a momentous enough decision that she should have read the full N.I.E. instead of depended on a briefing. Especially since she generally takes the time to learn the picayune details of other policies of much less consequence.
2. Your theory about Bill Clinton is interesting, and something I hadn't thought about before. However, there are other surrogates who have acted in a highly dubious manner, but I'm not going to press the point too much, especially since they seemed to have backed off a bit. (Amazing how these "gaffes" happen alll at once and then just go away. It's almost as if it was, I don't know, orchestrated.)
3. I think I disagree with you about the definition of dirty politicking. For instance, I'm pretty sure under your definition, the Willy Horton ad in 1988 wasn't dirty politicking. I think dirty politicking is like pornography, I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.
4. I'll agree that Hillary's best defense against dirty politicking is that I don't think there's much dirt that hasn't already been thrown at her. Early in the campaign I made the argument was that this, in a perverse way, was an advantage. So I think we partly agree on this.
5. I don't know if I made it clear enough that I was not a fan of the welfare reform bill that was passed. It was actually one of my considerations in not voting for Bill Clinton in 1996 (mind you, if Dole had had the slightest chance of winning, i probably would have pulled the lever for Clinton). This is a good example where Clinton passed a bad piece of legislation to triangulate his way to a second term.
6. Finally, let me note that you repeat the Clinton talking point (or at least imply) that Obama supporters are moved only by some woozy-headed emotional uplift. The idea is that Hillary is the candidate of sober fact and reason, and Obama is the candidate of empty emotionalism. When it is framed that way, you obviously use terms that slant the argument in one direction. I'll admit that Hillary is a wonk's wonk (I've read that she actually out-wonks her husband), but dare I say that Obama is also a candidate of substance? As for trafficking in hope, I seem to recall that this was a big theme in Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Was it so suspect then? I remember after the 2004 election, James Carville made the observation that the Democrats' problem is that they give voters a laundry list while the Republicans give them big themes. In 1992, Bill Clinton gave us both: an inspirational campaign, backed by a laundry list of policy prescriptions. Obviously it worked for him. It remains to be seen whether Hillary is more like her husband or John Kerry.
7. Honestly, I'm waiting for the Clinton people to prove THEIR case. I think it's become an article of faith that Hillary is the candidate of superior knowledge and experience. I've seen it ASSERTED ad nauseum, but I'm not sure I've actually seen it analytically proven.