Hillary, Hillary, Hillary: An Open Letter to the Former Future President
Dear Hillary:
What happened? No really, what the fuck just happened to you? I can't for the life of me figure out how a once-promising presidential campaign -- a sure thing for Pete's sake -- turned into a pathetic embarrassment? You've had such a head start in this quest to occupy the Oval Office. I mean, literally, you and Bill have been planning it since at least January 1993 when he became president. Was there a more plausible, natural, inevitable scenario than you following in his larger-than-life footsteps? And Chelsea after you? The Clinton Dynasty. Has such a regal ring to it, doesn't it?
But then 2008 rolled around and something terrible happened. Both you and Bill lost that famous mojo. It started in Iowa, where you were all but certain to win. Everyone, including yourself, anointed you the Queen of the Ball before the dance even began. And then you lost. Some inexperienced kid named Barack Obama came out of nowhere and stole your thunder. And then you sat down and cried. In front of the cameras, and the good folks of New Hampshire felt sorry and gave you their state. And just like that The Comeback Twins came back yet again. Never count out a Clinton, huh?. Ahh, but then came February. Damn February. The junior Senator from Illinois, that pesky Kid, won big on Super Tuesday -- despite your pickups in NY, NJ, CA and a few others -- and later in the month racked up an impressive string of eleven consecutive wins. Ouch. That's when the chorus of "Hillary Should Quit" calls officially began. But you'd have nothing of the sort. This was a battle, and you were in it till then end. And we admired you for it.
March was much kinder to you, as was April and May. You won big key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and trounced The Kid in Appalachia. You even managed to obtain more delegates and popular votes in these three months than The Kid. But the "Hillary Should Quit" calls kept coming, weighing you down and casting an ominous cloud over your campaign. The endorsements kept going to Obama too (Richardson, Edwards, etc) and the superdelegates began to flow to your opponent in anything but a trickle, until he had more of them than you. Many even started to desert you, switching their allegiance. But you pressed on. Even with Bill out there accused of playing the race card and pissing off as many people as he once impressed, especially in the black community. To many, perhaps the "first black president" wasn't so black after all.
Then there were the many boneheaded comments you made. You remember, like the time you basically said that while you and the GOP's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain, were tough enough and experienced enough to be commander-in-chief, Obama merely had "a speech." Didn't you realize how that irresponsible blunder would come back to haunt the party in November? Or how about the one where you told everyone that the "hard-working whites" won't vote for Obama. Honestly, Hill, with all those fancy degrees and years of elite lawyering, didn't you realize that some things were meant to be privately thought but not publicly voiced? And so the "Hillary Should Quit" calls continued unabated. Yet we were still in your corner.
You vowed to stay in the race and fight until the very last American exercised his or her inalienable right to vote. You vowed to fight for women everywhere. To be a role model for young girls. To show them that women can be just as tough, just as resilient, just as determined, just as ambitious and just as successful as a man. Your campaign was no longer merely about becoming president. It became a lesson for the history books. A paradigm-changing feminist movement. And we applauded your determination and stuck by you.
You parsed and nuanced and molded the process to fit your end-goal of ultimately snagging the nomination from the grip of The Kid by convincing the superdelegates that you had the better narrative. That you were the more electable candidate. Since neither you or The Kid would end the campaign with enough pledged delegates to win, in an effort to make your case even more compelling, you threw as much shit up on the wall as you possibly could in the desperate hope that something would stick, ie that you had more popular votes; that we should re-seat Michigan and Florida's delegates; that only you could win back the Reagan Democrats. At this point, while we continued to support you, we grew a little leery of your motives and a tad weary of your disingenuousness.
No matter how many "Hillary Should Quit" cries we heard, we still believed in you and went along for the ride, no matter how bumpy. We defended you wherever and whenever we could. Like Bill, we made excuses for you, and chalked up your blind ambition and your regrettable gaffes to long days, late nights and the general stress of the campaign trail. We vowed to support your valiant fight till the end, right along with you, no matter how taxing it became.
And then the unthinkable occurred. When asked last week by South Dakota's Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper about all this "Hillary Should Quit" nonsense, you said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don't understand it." Jeez, Hillary, are you out of your fucking mind? Even if you didn't mean it, to suggest that as a justification to stay in the race, Obama could be assassinated before the primary season is over, is perhaps the most shocking, shameful, morally reprehensible thing you could have possibly ever said. How could you? Do you realize that with that one comment you threw away whatever shot you may have had to fulfill your dream of convincing, brainwashing and/or bullying the super D's into handing you the nomination? How could you implode like that? It was a despicable act of desperation and, quite frankly, it was pathetic. With that one reckless opportunistic blunder you not only threw away the campaign, but your legacy as well. A once valiant warrior, you are now just a sad footnote in history. An embarrassment. I suspect you will never recover politically from your monumentally insensitive RFK comment, made in the very same week that Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor.
And so I can no longer support this destructive campaign of yours. It's time for me to say "Hillary Should Quit." You have taken your insatiable hunger for the presidency too far. You've let so many of us down. You will not be president. You will not be vice president. It's time to step aside and let the Democratic Party and the nation heal, ultimately with Obama as our nominee and hopefully our president as well. It's time for something different. You just convinced me that America needs more than politics as usual, especially your kind. I am so disappointed, Hillary.
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Mr. Ostroy,
You nailed it with this peice! Every word of it reads as if I would have written it myself! All of her initial supporters whom were happy to be on her side in the beginning, now feel that the Clinton's have disgraced themselves and now the Democratic party....so now...shame on you Hillary Clinton!!.
Obama 2008!!
Calling her sad is part of the problem she has been facing since the beginning of this madness. What is sad is calling someone who is neck and neck with Obama and who has won all the key states needed for victory in November sad, and who, without her support and her voters, Obama will lost in November for sure.
Enough with the threats, OK? If Hillary supporters are that vain and selfish that they are willing to risk the future of the country and their children's futures by helping McCain get elected, all because they didn't get their way, there's no reasoning with them.
Fortunately, it's only a radical minority that are playing that childish game. The vast majority of Hillary supporters are more rational.
But that's the point of being DEMOCRATS, isn't it?
I would have voted for Hillary had she gotten the nomination, but she's lost.
As soon as she admits it, you will see Obama overtake and pass McCain in all polls, because he will convince most former Hillary supporters that he CAN win. And the sooner she lets him devote himself full-time to this end, the sooner we can all feel confident that we don't have to deal with another four years of the war-profiteering, no-foreign policy, no domestic policy madness we've had for the last 8 years.
For myself, I'd like to have that peace of mind BEFORE the election. Really. I'm likely to explode if this doesn't end soon.
And don't hand me that crap about her "being a better choice" than Obama, or even McCain.
They might all suck, they might all be just OK - but the only one who has a chance to be exceptional is Obama, the one who most likely WILL suck is McCain.
The thing about the RFK comment was that when you are obsessed about something whether it be drugs, power or food it completely takes over. Then compulsion rears it ugly head too. She may never have even spoken this to anyone else, but it has been hiding in her subconscious and just came to the surface. She continues to be outstrategized by the new kid and "they" don't understand how this happened. When reality finally kicks in, "they" are going to come crashing down to earth very, very, hard. Too bad and too sad.
I'll bookmark this post/article(?) for future reference, along with Keith Olbermann's 5/23 Special Comment, to keep if I ever need to explain to someone why Senator Clinton didn't make it to the VP post.
No more dynasties now, please. I don't think this country can take it.
Thanks for seeing it clearly, Andy. This latest, and most egregious, "misspeak" just can't be given a pass.
Way to go, Andy. Put it out there exactly as we've known it to be. I mean, HOW COULD SHE?
Exactly what I am thinking. Keith Olberman's BURN recounted five instances when she referred to RFK-in- June, only she left out the direct reference to his assassination in three. The reminder was there anyway. The idea seemed to be to keep beating the drum keeping the image she meant to convey alive. And just in case we didn't get it (stupid poor white Amreicans that we are) she had to spell it out for us one more time. She is truly a contemptible liar, unfit to be dog catcher.
Very good post, Andy. I admire you for being honest, more of Hillary supporters need to speak up before she self destruct.
I agree with the gist of what you are saying, but you leave out two key moments.
Just before super Tuesday, there was South Carolina. No big deal that she lost big or that blacks came out big for Obama. What was big was that was the first inkling of just how far the Clintons would go to try and win this and just how blind they were to the fact that America was embracing Obama's positive message. Their strategy was clear: sacrifice black votes (which serve to make Obama look like the black candidate) in exchange for the more numerous votes of white people for whom race was an issue whether spoken or unspoken.
SuperTuesday wasn't such a loss. They ended the day just about even. I thought it was a loss for Obama at the time, because I thought with them at a deadlock, the remaining states would lean toward the more established candidate.
But, like a fighter who has punched himself out, Hillary came out for the post-Super primaries with nothing. No money. No organization. No plan. So certain was she that she'd have it locked up, that she gave Obama a walk through 12 contests, allowing him to pile up an unsurmountable lead during the least watched portion of the run. Whatever she did after that was too little too late.
And, rather than recognize it, what has happened since has been a long, embarrassing and damaging case of denial.
Sad. Very, very sad.
Those two key moments, plus the war vote, are the reasons why she lost the momentum in the first place, imo, but not why she's trolling now at the end of the ill advised roadtrip.
That whole thing with spending millions on pastries and blowing everything before Super Tuesday will come back to haunt every aspiring candidate as a worst case scenario. Hopefully this was the last time a good candidate hired staff out of old friendship instead of talent.
SethBLiNK - one thing that you forgot to mention, she has NEVER held the "pledged" delegate lead. Her lead was ALWAYS due to the super delegates.
Obama walked away with 20 more pledged delegates than Hillary did out of the February 5th contests. (This does not include the lead he had from the January contests nor any after February 5th - it only includes those held on Feb. 5th.)
I like the way you think Seth. I have read a few of your posts and your analysis is spot on.
I supported Clinton till NC and PA, after which, the lack of ongoing momentum being aparent to me at least, I had to stop, and now I'm an Obama guy. But puh-leeze. This entire primary process has been punctuated at intervals by a rash of scoldings by self-proclaimed supporters, especially of Clinton, who, because a candidate says something clumsy to an editorial board of a paper published in the middle of nowhere or a to a tiny clot of wellwishers in the rain, etc., must now, with staged and well-lit regret , be thrown to the wolves before being burned at the stake after the tar and feathers dry.
Well, it's crap, this whole line of faux-thoughtful emoting. Clinton's not your gal; I can appreciate that, but then I suspect she never really was, because the RFK flap is too much ado about somebody very tired saying 'anything can happen' in a clumsy way, which when taken out of context by luminaries like Drudge and his new competitors at Politico, turned into another opportunity for convenient outrage all over the the MSM and the internets and in the conversation of everybody else who is just plain tired of having Hillary to kick around anymore.
Nobody says you have to like anybody. Nobody says you have to have high-faluting reasons for it. Like who you like. And don't like who you don't like. But don't keep coming up with these low reasons for high dudgeon.
If you check the history of Andy's blogs (click the see profile button) you will seethat he was indeed a Clinton supporter. FYI
Well, I think the point he was trying to make was that her desperation in justifying an unjustifiable perpetuation of a campaign wasn't mean-spirited, just so over-the-top lame that she can't be taken seriously at any level anymore.
The simple fact is that if she dropped out and Obama was assassinated, she'd still be chosen at the convention as the nominee. Conspiracy theories would, of course, promulgate, but she'd have been nominated. So the comment was, especially for such a "qualified and experienced" candidate, both crude and dumb, representing a new low for the campaign where almost any other answer would have been at least acceptable - or at least less insulting to one's intelligence.
It'd be like someone in your family declaring that they're going to inherit his/her parent's house - but doing so in the hospital in the waiting room when the remaining parent is having heart bypass surgery while the rest of the family were there. Just gross and utterly tasteless. We know the brat isn't going to barge into the operating room and pull on wires, but it doesn't change the fact that the comment was vile.
If Obama were to be assassinated now, there's almost no chance that Obama-pledged delegates would consider her.
CORRECTION:
Andy Ostroy said:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March was much kinder to you, as was April and May. [...] You even managed to obtain more delegates and popular votes in these three months than The Kid.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
According to Real Clear Politics, at the beginning of March, Obama had a lead of 155 pledged delegates and around 100 overall delegates. Now his lead in both categories had increased to 158 and 195.
It is not possible for Clinton to get more delegates than Obama and for Obama's lead to increase during the same time span. I think your mistake was in only counting pledged delegates from states that voted during those months. Obama picked up some extra pledged delegates when delegates from earlier races that were finally sorted out. It is not fair to simply ignore these delegate.
The key point is that Obama's delegate leads (both pledged and overall) increased during the time span you mention. In fact his lead in overall delegates nearly doubled.
Obama took more delegates than Clinton each month until PA started on April 22nd.
March was 'kinder' to her, as she only lost it by 3 delegates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_democratic_primary
*sigh* Count the number of delegates available to win ONLY in April and May. Then calculate the distribution. Andy's point was that in the contest in April and May, Clinton's margin of victory was greater. While it is true that the delegate math ended up going to Obama, the writer's statement wasn't about the whole campaign, but just April and May.
Jeez, while reading, doesn't anyong actually comprehend anymore?
Great post! I hope that thwe clintons will take the time ponder your wise words and counsel here. It would serve well if they took your words to heart and acted accordingly.
Welcome, former Hillary supporter.
Almost more than the assassination reference, the rant by Bill over the weekend, with the frequent references to "they" who want Hillary to bow out and are putting pressure on the campaign and on the superdelegates and on and on. Here we go with the unnamed "they" as in a nefarious conspiracy to deny the rightful person the nomination.
Now we have a vast right, er, LEFt wing conspiracy against Hillary Clinton. Does it hit anybody else that the Clintons are obsessed that they are being conspired against every time something bad happens to them? It seems to me there is some dynamic that is very wrong if that is the reaction whenever the chips are down.
It's called paranoia, plain and simple. Do we need a paranoid person in the White House?
No
No Clintons '08, '12
What exactly is the "legacy" that she has thrown away? Any explanation enhanced by a fact, or even two, would be greatly appreciated.
Her legacy as the first woman president is the legacy that she threw away.
I am and most likely always will be a Bill Clinton. I have never liked her. I saw her speak a couple a years ago and realize then why I didn't like her. In a few words: she is fake. Thre is something about her that's not attractive.
Anyway better late than never. Welcome home Man
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