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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Please tell me what "transformational politics" will come from a man who claims Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as examples of "good foreign policy". Is he naive or simply ill-informed. His statement that he would "unilaterally invade Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence of Al Queda" could have come from the mouth of Dubya.
I have asked this question over and over, and there has never been a response from star-eyed Obama supporters rather than further attacks on Hillary.
You are awfully arrogant. Obama never said that he would "unilaterally invade Pakistan if he had actionable intelligence of Al Queda". He said that we would take action and anybody not blinded with Clinton fervor understood that to mean a combination of missile strikes and or special forces.
I challenge you to come up with a link.
Furthermore, if Pakistan was a real country, they would do everything within their power to apprehend the most prolific mass murderers of the 21st century. The illegality of the Iraqi Oil Heist, which Clinton heartily voted in favor of, has no bearing on the fact that people who murdered 3000 innocent Americans ARE STILL AT LARGE. It is a shame. It is an abomination. And if a hypothetical; for that is the only way she can be president now, 'President Hillary Clinton' received actionable intelligence upon the whereabouts of Zwahiri or OBL, and Pakistan refused or could not act, and she proceeded to bomb the murderers off the face of the planet, no one would applaud louder than myself.
I'm waiting for that link.
Why Obama and His Bots Make Me Scream.
Yes, my family is tired of my screaming at the talking heads who swoon over Obama, at the blogs on the Huffington Post, at the hatred and vitriol coming from democrats about two of their own and, most of all, at the preening hypocrisy of Obama and his campaign. It amuses me that the "progressive" and I have that in quotes deliberately, are so in love with Obama who is less a progressive than Hillary. Check: his environmental policy - he embraces nuclear energy, HRC doesnt; Obama's healthcare police: not universal, HRC's is. His embrace of Oil companies; the fact that he has not voted against funding for the Iraq War but has voted in line with the moderates; Bill is right, the Obama camp cynically played the race card from day one and smeared true left wing heroes like Geraldine Ferraro outrageously. Don't even get me started on Axelrod. Yes, Obama and his crew make me scream.
"Check: his environmental policy - he embraces nuclear energy, " True. But nuclear power reactors are not nuclear weapons. Nuclear provides energy while concentrating waste. Our current systems (oil, coal, gas...) simply shove the waste into our environment. (Obama is also for better means: solar, wind, hydro- which are even better than nuclear).
"Obama's healthcare police: not universal, HRC's is." True. Hillary does this by making it illegal not to have health insurance. Obama does not want to fine or imprison people, who cannot afford to purchase it.
With regards to the war, he pushed for us not to go into Iraq in the first place. Once there, it was only a question of looking out for the welfare of our troops and trying to minimize the damage of this. Or would you have had him deny the resources to our troops?
Obama made an effort to keep race out of this. The catalyst was Bill Clinton's comments in SC. As far as Geraldine Ferraro, the problem most people had with it, i think, was that it was so biased to the effect of ------ 'He's winning, because he's black. She's losing, because she's a woman.' That's both racist and sexist.
Possibly because he never said that.
What he said was:
“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.
“I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
All he was saying was that Reagan was smart enough to tap into what the country was wanting at that time and Reagan tapped into what the country wanted. Kind of like what Obama is doing today.
Here's what he said about Pakistan":
"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."
Good try Hillarybot. You fit right in with Hillary's crowd.
She's like a bipolar Rice Crispies commercial: "Scream! Cackle Cackle!" instead of snap crackle pop. Anyone who saw her performance on Keith Olberman's show the other night when he asked how she could accept and not condone the endorsement of the man who coined the attack on her husband whom she deemed the chief architect of a "thevast right wing conspirac.
AHHHH..HIL
WRONG ABOUT "I'M A FIGHTER." JUST DEVIOUS WOMAN.
Hey, I yell at the TV, too, when my team loses. I blame the refs. I blame the other guys for playing dirty. Yelling is what losers do. Cheering is for winner. Such is the world.
You (and your wife) are clearly rooting for Obama. I'm sure you have your reasons. But for all your rationalizations, your rants at the TV every time Hillary appears is just that: a rant. And you know what? For all your professed concern for the outcome of the general election "whether or not she is the nominee" - it is the rants of people like you - or more accurately, the published rationales for such rants - about Hillary that could throw the election to McCain, not her hard-nosed campaigning.
Campaigns run their course, and when the dicision is made, the rhetoric fades away. But the hatred you encourage will live on. Thanks.
I am one of the voters who has never voted until a primary, and would eat roadkill before i voted for Hillary. Here's what people don't seem to "get". Hillary's base has been the Dem party loyalists. Obama's has been people like me, (independent, previously uninvolved in politics) .
In the end, Hillary's base of democrats will come around and vote for Obama if he's the nominee.
Most of Obama's supporters are not loyal to the dem party, and will STAY HOME.
I'm sure, this has a good measure of truth to your statement. The new and youth voters, too, are primarily Obama supporters and might feel disenfranchised were he not to get the nomination.
I'm an Independent, too. I won't vote for Hillary... I can't really say, that I want to vote for McCain, either... I might stay home in that case, as well.
It's comforting to know I'm not the only person losing it because Hillary & Bill Clinton so disgust me. Your column made me want to scream, too, because I identified with every gut-wrenching word of it. I quit watching MSM TV even before the run-up to the PA primary, because I realized I hadn't become more of a lefty, the talking heads had all become clueless or right-wingers or clueless right-wingers. Your column (& maybe today's NYT editorial) should be required reading for all those 'undecided' superdelegates. Thanks for making me scream.
Why is it that Republicans are smart enough to coalesce around their nominee? We all know that McCain was deeply unpopular among a large percentage of the GOP, but still, once he won the nomination - bang - a strong cohesive slime ball. As a Democrat, this is an embarrassment. Months, ago, had Hillary wrapped up the nomination, I would have suported her. Not now. This is far and away the most important election of my lifetime. I thought it was the '04 at the time, but alas, the state of the nation has only gotten worse - far worse. And instead of realizing this, Clinton instead says, "Either I'm your nominee or you can all rot in hell - Fuck you - this is my party and I'll do what I want even if I have to take the whole country down with me". How deplorable. Despicable. Selfish.
I am a moderate to liberal Republican registered in NY State.(Yes
In either case it might result in getting rid of her once and for all.
I would even vote for a pragmatic conservative Republican (Congressman King) against her.
Hey, I'm an Independent from NY. I'm totally with you in ousting her in the senate ( ! ) There are a lot of people from all parties and affiliations here, who will vote against her next time.
Anyone_But_Clinton_ For_Senate
I don't see the rationale on Hillary aiming for 2012. Democrats don't give candidates a second chance, especially flawed and detestable candidates like Hillary. If she really wants to destroy the odds that a Democrat takes the White House in 2008, does she realize that her lasting monument will be the spectacle of her bratty "sour grapes" tantrum she threw that brought on another four years of McSame?
If the remaining unpledged supers have any kind of a brain, they will not be duped into becoming the rats to Hillary's Pied Piper.
Tom Hayden has certainly provided us with much more insight into Hillary's years during the 60's than anyone before has. It really shows us what a hypocrite she really is. She is far more the radical than she has portrayed Obama to be.
Tom, your hypocrisy, reminds me of that bumper sticker in California back in the 60s and 70s.
It read, "Jane Wyman was right"
For yours, it would be "Jane Fonda was right".
Maybe if he knew how to make his wife scream, she wouldn't have to release her frustration on the television.
Well, THAT wasin poor taste eh?
McCain/Clinton '08.
you really are hopeless!
Listen, I scream at the TV too (actually, I usually turn it off when Hillary is on) -- but if my husband decided to write about why I did something, I'd clock him. Mr. Hayden, can't your wife speak for herself?
Unlike others I am not asking that the MSM look into Hill & Bill's scandal (tempting though that may be -- I mean, how can you hang Rezko on Obama with a straight face if you're the Clintons?! Honestly!!) What I would like the MSM to do is to actually look at the Clinton record that Hillary has co-opted and is running on. We think it was so good because GW Bush is sooooooo awful, but Bill sent us down the path of low wage jobs, job flight and obscene profits for CEOs and corps. Wall Street loved him for a reason.
Foreign policy was a disaster because he didn't know what he didn't know. Rwanda? Somalia? Bosnia before 1995? Clinton was AFRAID of the military because of his own bobbing and weaving about Vietnam (typical Clinton; rahter than taking stand either way pro or con which one might respect, he tried to hedge) ---- in retrospect Hill's embrace of the military and military solutions that problems that need not be military problems is her attempt to neutralize the brass (I don't think it's the Goldwater Girl coming out). So somebody look atthe shambles that was Clinton foreign policy (Northern Ireland a notable exception) and then tell what you
Do you think if you saw this same article written by Barbara Hayden you would have click to read it? No - because Barbara is an unknown to you. But you know who Tom Hayden is.
She makes me scream too, Tom, but the fact that you find this curious, while gazing at your framed autographed photo, sure sounds at first like you are building a case for her, or rationalizing your past support of her, but the irony is you might be providing fodder to attack her for who she is now as opposed to who she could've been then.
On the other hand, I do wish that Obama demonstrated a bit more backbone- I know that he has to tread a careful line, but he needs to demonstrate that he is IN CHARGE consistantly without getting ugly. He can do it, I have seen him shut her down, but he has to OWN IT , without feeling like he is compromising his new style of politics. He has to stand up against what is wrong and not expect everyone to engage in fluff--that sets up questions about his ability to interact as a powerful leader.
All this stuff about is he ready, is he up to the task, why can't he close the deal, is about shutting her down! He is up against the Clinton machine, the MSM and the Right, so show some muscle and wit, something tough and resilient instead of all that steady smoothness.
Dean learned the hard way--the kids come out to the events, but they don't vote. Push the vote. . His organization has to shift to focus on reinforcing the significance of voting--otherwise they lose.
I have had a fitful night thinking of why so many of our fellow citizens respond so well to the cowboy swagger, bluster and die-hard tough-talk (whether '"smoke 'em out o their holes", or "obliterate 'em".)
I wish we could learn to understand a different kind of tough. A backbone that is not attempting to out-Hillary Hillary with her obscene, pandering hawkishness and whisky-drinking, Rather a toughness of staying on message. The MSM of course adds to the drama, like kids around schoolyard rivals chanting "fight, fight, fight". I think we have add our voices to the crowd saying no, hell no!
Let's be done with the posturing that alienates us from each other and from the rest of the world. Otherwise we will end up with Bush as the beginning of a hideous trend, rather than another national nightmare we put behind us.
Tom, I agree with you on all counts.
But I don't believe that any communication from us to the Clinton camp is going to have any effect at all. I believe Senator Clinton has gone beyond the desire to damage Obama so badly that he cannot win the nomination. I believe she is trying to ensure that he cannot win in November either.
She knows she's not going to be the nominee (it's mathematically impossible from at least three angles: elected delegates, popular vote, money). Her only shot at the presidency is running against President McCain in 2012. I sincerely believe that is the scenario she and her campaign are attempting to engineer.
My opinion of Pennsylvanians just went down. Last spring I crossed that fine state from end to end but only looked. Now we know what festers underneath the pretty treetops.
BHO could have been warchest-ing all this money of ours. HRC is basically a corporate being. Now, she is broke and wants to wring the last drops from her public....
If BHO will change the way politics is paid for, then I can live with his spending habits for the present...
That's the big point.
HRC is going to, at best, limp into the nomination broke and having embittered 60-70% of the democrats in the nation and possibly stolen the nomination and break the party. Then she is going to want our donations to go up against a well funded McCorporate?
Will she go LieberStyle if Obama secures the Nom? If she steals the nom, should he go GreenParty? What happens, which is quite likely, if HRC loses nom and goes LieberSchlumming? It is obvious the Clintons are doing this all on One Premise...
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