Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream
My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack's transformational appeal.
For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.
It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.
At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew that she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the Sixties. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an anti-war force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.
But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.
Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.
To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.
To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the Sixties. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?" She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents. [75] Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Truehaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. [all citations from Carl Bernstein's sympathetic biography, A Woman in Charge, 2007, pp. 67,69,70,75, 83]
All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the Sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whom Hillary attacks today represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?
It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American Right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.
It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with Fox News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic super-delegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House whether or not she is the nominee.
Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.
Tom Hayden is with progressivesforobama.blogspot.com and author of Writing for a Democratic Society [City Lights, 2008].
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Wow, Tom, thought t'was only me who detests the likes of Kiki & Lanny Davis on air. When they do, they totally obliterate my mind going bananas on their pro Hillary rah rah team. Kiki is a good parody of hypocrisy par excellence. She mouths Hillary virtues & gives no Obama credit by landing a pretentious smirk cum smile. Practice makes perfect. And if anyone disagrees with her, cam shows her shaking her head with that perfect smile & praise Clinton to high heavens. Wonder how she can smile everytime her Boss lies and get to live with it in the campaign. That is what makes Kiki and Lanny Davis comparable to their ward's detestable & loathable character. Guilt by association.
On the day Hillary loses the nomination, (hope it'll be sooner than June 3rd), I'd like to see Kiki's face again on TV and see how the smirk evolutionizes. And how Lanny eternally lauds Clintonian tactics at every turn can accept defeat and truly mean he will support Obama as nominee. Such blind loyalty for these two- oh, they have been promised jobs in the WH, anyway.
Tell Barbara that Hillary camp rides on free tv ad gains by trampling on Obama. Best thing to do when she appears of her henchmen does, to just have the remote on stand by. Her campaign slogans gives me the creeps everytime they open their mouths.
By the way, Carville should turn actor in creepy movie serials like Tales of the Crypt.
Obama is told to keep a cool head and the Super Delegates will flock to him. They are.
Then they tell him to now go hard, he did, but to late. Billary had a head of steam, fuel by the RACIST hypemen Rush, Hannity ,Wolfson and the whole FOX NEWS crew.
George Stephandopey are Billary plant on ABC delivered Obama a bug for the Illiterate ears of small town Pennsylvanians.
Obama will now have to fight against the racist regime of the Republicans while fighting off the Media Race issue hype and the right wing rhetoric.
Obama has his work cut out for him.
The DNC can't get their shhesh together to now get the Super Delegates to stop this bloodshed before Obama is forced to take off his Gloves and totally throttle both BILLARY and MCCAIN...
I say do it and become the FIGHTER, not the Uniter... This is now a whole different game that will be played from here on out.
OBAMA must get the kitchen, bathroom and the guest house SINK ready.. He needs Indiana for the knock out blow..
MOMMA said knock you out, should be played in his Tour Bus... If they use the RACE CARD, so be it..
It will be Billary's blood that you'll see if Obama take out the big GUNS
The Obliterator threatens nuclear anhihilation, the world sees the US as a threat that must be stopped, and the press gives us bowling scores and sermon outtakes.
When asked for response the press replied, "Zzzzzzzzzzz"
Hillary's negatives among swing voters have been historically high. She is the type of polarizing candidate that will get average Republicans up out of their chairs, into their cars and down to the polls on election day. Unfortunately, she is also the type of candidate that will keep many Democratic voters from doing the same. She is less a candidate that stands for something and more a candidate that stands against something ...somethi
She's know began to Polarize Nations around the world! Seems Britain weighed in on her Oblieverateing Iran comment! Said this isn't the Attitude that need to be taken with Iran! Middle east Nations are calling her a crazy lady for stiring up words of war! It's bad enough Iran is saying they will wipe out Isreal Now we have a crazy white american lady who might be our next President threatening to wipe out Iran! A comment was made from over sea's that she's just like Bush and doing and saying the same end game as he has the last 8 years! Does this sound like a President who can unite the world, let alone the people at home! She's already showen a angry, mad face, and crazy words of war to the Nations of this world! Do you think they wil know TRUEST any thing she says, or want to do for future accomplishments of peace! No Nation will truest her know! She's seen as a loose cannon by Nations, and she sounded like a loose cannon! She destroyed her chance's abroad to be taken seriousely at her word! She put us right up their wirth Iran and his loose cannon words and behabiors! Thanks Hillary! We needed that!
"if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating"
I and hundreds if not thousands of people have signed a petition and sent it to the DNC two months ago with almost identical message to this. We saw this coming months ago (that the Clintons were willing to win at any cost-even if it means by destroying Barack now and running against McCain in 2012). I can't believe it took this long for people to talk about it in the open. I am not sending any money to the DNC until I see an honest and civil conclusion of this process.
Good article, Tom. Straight on point!
Great article! Hillary Clinton's motto should be: "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones"...
I have to agree with the statements above. One of the big reasons why Hillary is having so much trouble in this political season is her high credibility problem which is in large part due to her surrogates. The surrogates from the Clinton camp play the spin game more than any other camp and it comes off as disingenuous to alot of people. Its not that their tactics aren't useful but times have changed from 92', 96' heck even 04'. With the internet, I just think that voters are more sophisticated than alot of the surrogates give them credit for. Fact check sites, video clips and analysis are really driving this election. You just didn't see John King or Chuck Todd, giving a numbers breakdown graphically even 4 years ago. Or access to specific information on a whim.
Personally, I really would have liked to see Hillary as herself without much surrogate statements (especially Bill) and be as transparent as possible. It would have been a very different election. Some people change with the times but it definitely wasn't the Clinton campaign.
All this article proves is that the neo-fascist extreme radical left-wing of the Democratic Party will say or do anything to destroy Hillary Clinton. Under this regime, no one is permitted to say jackshit about Barack Obama without being branded a racist and/or a traitor to the Democratic Party. No one is allowed to question his qualifications. And if you come close to even questioning whether he's strong enough to handle the job, why, that's tantamount to insulting his Black manhood
With the party clearly divided, per force indicating widespread doubts about Obama's electability, I would like to know just who presumes to make these arbitrary rules and decisions about campaign decorum? Hopefully not Tom Hayden. I used to respect him, but the Chicago trial broke his spine, Jane Fonda broke his heart, and he's too old and decrepit to matter anymore.
Fascism is a right-wing ideology and Clinton represents the right-wing of the Democratic party so don't even try leveling the fascist lable at the left it don't stick.
Get it through your head. Right-wing is top down authoritarian power structures. Left-wing is bottom up distributed power structures.
The only part you got right is that the Left-wing of the Democratic party can't stand Clinton and that's why faces a much tougher fight in the general than would Obama.
Obama/Hayden'08
Kiki McLane engages in the most annoying debate technique of--while in split-scre
She knows that this kinetic visual distraction will interrupt the flow of the Obama supporter's narrative and, as is requisite for a Clinton surrogate/
Author Hayden points out a sad transformation of a once bright star indeed, one that now has become dangerous to its host body/party.
Astute remarks on Kiki's annoying habit.
That face is a mirror of Clinton's exact persona. Detestable and condescending.
Now ALL of you know who really is baiting who in this campaign. C'mon guys, we need to support Obama in Indiana and NC. Not Wright or Kiki's crabby distractions will derail the American People's quest to make great this nation again!
Wow, thank you Tom. You succinctly put into words all my thoughts and feelings about Hillary. If someone doesn't do something soon, I fear that this country will pay the ultimate price.
All this over Hillary "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base" Clinton...
Visit: Blacks4Bar
(A Multi-Racial Grassroots Org....Ded
Luv You Arianna !
Does this mean Hillary wasn't fully vetted before? Is she now???
I hope these sentiments are getting through to the superdelegates because I don't think Hillary is going away until the people come with the straight jackets - that is how I'm envisioning her departure - that's a shame when she has the voters looking at her in that manner -
If we at home see her as a crazy lady, think about how Nations around the world is viewing her attitude, and killing behaviors toward her own party!
She is either not vetted or the media is ignoring her past...for now.
Glad to know, someone else yells at the TV. Gotta show this to my wife.
Oh yeah, everything you wrote is on point, correct, and discouraging.
God Bless Tom Hayden!
Finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope the press runs with this.
PEOPLE OF INDIANA, VOTE FOR OBAMA AND PUT AN END TO THE MISERY. IT'S IN YOUR HANDS.
btw, you are all very funny with your stories about your pets and peeling paint. SO TRUE.
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