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].

Comments

[countrycat]

Best column I've seen in awhile, Tom. I'm the same way as your wife. I'm not a swearing person, but every time Hillary speaks (or one of her unctuous surrogates), a stream of expletives spews forth and I lunge for the remote. Fingers on the blackboard indeed. I was never overly fond of her, but since she's made herself over into a right-wing, multiple personality whack job that's now ready to nuke Iran, I question whether she's lost her sanity in her quest to destroy Obama and seat herself on the throne.

I'm a 59 year old white woman that will not send money to nor help elect her either if she should somehow seize the nomination.

Blech. Blech. Blech.

[Pikakae]

AMEN to Bleach and TOM!!!! (And Tom, you are so spot on on Kiki! Don't know WHY I dislike her so much, but she grates as much as Hillary!!!)

I too am an "old white woman" and it minimalizes me to have Hillary presuming that she speaks for me. She offers NOTHING...­...I have worked with women just like her who are the epitomie of everything horrible about the "women's movement". "All for one, and that ONE is MEEEEEE." I nearly choke when Hillary tells us how she will "fight for you" and "I've got your back".....­yeah, right lady.

If Hillary had an ounce of self esteem she would have dumped him and run on her own....but then she would have "retired" after Feb 5......who­, named "Hillary Rodham" could have come this far?

[michiganfan]

Me too. The mere presence of her or her surrogates on TV brings forth a deep-seated revulsion within me that previously had been reserved for members of the Bush administration.

[madhatter123]

She's not going to win in November and we will have 4 more years. Pathetic how the Democrats have thrown their party under the bus.

[EspritDeVoltaire]

It must be catching, my wife does the same thing as yours. She also hurled the papers down in a fit of rage this morning after reading the headline.

[oncethere]

All of which means she never processed (read denied) what she went through. personally and politically, with her husband in the 1990's. It would certainly seem that a half-way conscious person would get off the merry-go-round of politics after that experience.

The Clintons had their day in the sun; now it's time to give someone else a chance.

[bartleby042]

"Destroying the village in order to save it" wasn't a smart strategy in Vietnam, and it's not a smart strategy in politics. The Junior Senator from New York should know this. She should understand she's becoming such damaged goods that -- to borrow a phrase from former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards -- the only way she wins the general election is if McCain is found in bed with a "live boy or a dead girl."

Maybe there is something to the idea that she thinks that if she makes Obama unelectable, she can come back in 2012 and say, "See, I told you so." Then, she can ride to the Democratic Party's rescue as its nominee.

The one thing this insufferable, shrieking fraud can't seem to grasp is that those of us who support Obama -- and who otherwise would have been willing to support her, if she hadn't behaved like the worst caricature of a Lee-Atwate­r-inspired gutter punk -- aren't going to forget. Good luck, with that plan, Ms. Junior Senator. William Hung has a better chance of performing with the New York Symphony than you do of ever winning the presidency.

[Dwade313]

Thanks Tom!

Like your wife, and I can't stand to here this women talk!! Let alone her creepy laugh! Please for the love of everything Democratic, someone get rid of this women! I don't want Mr. Obama to go negative, but if thats what seems to work in this election, lets go. GID RID OF HILLARY NOW!

[Moka11]

Tom Hayden says..."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 could not have been said better.

[DRPike]

Hillary can't and won't win, that is no longer a real question. The only question left is can the damage done be un-done by November or we get w's third term.

God help us all.

[murrieta]

Hi Tom: Is my wife related to yours? I am very upset with the Clintons. But my wife - I channel-surfed to CSPAN the other day and HRC was giving a speech. I thought my wife was gonna either pass out, kick the TV screen in, or utter another long line of expletives (which she does any time Billary is even brought up in conversation). I disagree TOTALLY with John McCain's politics - if the DEMS nominate Billary - I am voting for McCain - if only to hopefully keep my wife from having a coronary..­.

[Lisette]

Tom, so what can we do to get rid of this pest.?
She is ruining the Democratic Party

[Puller58]

The Hillbots tickle me. They either ignore Hillary's foibles or respond that "everybody does it." As for Tom, dude, didn't Jane change? Why don't you tell your current wifey about how Janey changed? I know, you have to live with this one. (For now) Obama, Hillary, McCain, or none of the above. I'll take none of the above with an order of fries.

[POdVet]

The only bots around would be the ObamaBots who refuse to actually check into his vaunted record. He's never done anything for any one but himself. So what if he comes from a poor back ground. Lot's of people do, even Adolf Hitler started out poor. But most choose not to get involved with known crooks like Rezko. Instead Obama buys property adjoining with his on the same day. And lets add the little part all the Pro Obamaites keep trying to bury. The only access to Rezko's property was through Obama's property. So there can be no doubt why Rezko bought a piece of land Obama took care of and Rezko never used and couldn't even get to with out going through Baracks first. That will be one of the first things stressed in the General election, and his answer of "that was a boneheaded thing to do" will not cut it when the Republicans start tearing him limb from limb over it. But on the other hand, if he does get the nomination, it may actually give the third party a chance to win finally, since not many actually like McCain and Obama will be toast long before election day.

[disgustedbyitall]

Harping on Rezko or any other supposed skeleton in Obama's closet risks turning the spotlight on the basement the Clintons rent for their collective demons. But you both prove and miss the point of this article with your post.

Whatever I think of Clinton (see Hayden's eloquent column) or Obama (sounds good, but still not sure he meets my exacting standards), the acrimony and name-calling you promote here (and the post you answer) is exactly the problem.

If this was simply a difference of opinion, we'd be watching the Democrats demonstrate the ideal American democratic process. As it is, the Democrats have descended into the world of "Hillbots" and "ObamaBots" politics, a tragic reflection of the left-right polarization that serves no one.

I don't want to go overboard with any personal criticism. I'm certainly guilty of the same fits of disgust and I've said things that prove I don't always handle my anger as well as I should. I'd just ask that you really absorb Hayden's words. It is true that Clinton is more responsible for the negativity, but it really turned me off to see Obama cancel out what I thought was his greatest strength by joining her in the gutter.

Look, politics is a wretched profession and it ruins nearly every participant. If you have the good fortune to be a spectator, I think it's your duty--and mine--to try to raise the level of discourse, both for their sakes and for ours.

[Kahawa]

Great Column, Tom. I'm right there with your wife. I used to turn off the radio/TV only when Bush spoke. Now I do it when Hillary Clinton speaks. And I used to think I would be as happy to vote for her as for Obama. I have a bone to pick with you, though. You said "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. " And how exactly do you propose that we send that message? I never gave her money, so that's not going to help. I will have to vote for her if nominated because at least she's not John McCain. I don't happen to write a blog, though I do post replies. What would you have me do???

[billydog]

What makes me want to puke is that Hillary has forced me to think that Rush Limbaugh was right about her and her husband all along. All that rotten stuff Limbaugh spread about the Clintons is now looking correct. Right now I would have no problem thinking these two slimeball Clintons actually could have killed Vince Foster. I'd put nothing past these two the way I feel about them now. Even more frightening, what are Pennsylvania "heartland" people doing voting for this woman who has been so dishonest on the campaign trail. Is a black man so detested in PA that they would let this
obviously corrupt woman come before him? Enough of the god damned heartland pissing on the heart of America!

[whateverWorks]

Tom, you are preaching to the choir here and saying what we all say, over and over, in blogs. But the Democratic Party is exhibiting the same paralysis is has shown in failing to address the war, global warming and citizen privacy, even with a majority in Congress and an deeply unpopular president. I think what we are witnessing is the death throes of a party. I think that Ann Coulter got it right (and who ever, for any reason, wants to say this!?!) Democrats are no more relevant than Whigs. It's time to start organizing a real party, with a vision for America. Hillary, with her campaign running on toxic fumes, is winning by following the Rove playbook and promising more of the same in November, with the result that most of us may be too sick to our stomachs to crawl to the polls. Is this really what the Democratic party has become? I think we need to spend our energies and our money forming a new party, perhaps with the help of MoveOn.org. I didn't see a primary last night, I saw the death of the Democratic party. Some illnesses can't be healed, they are terminal. I called it last night--time of death 10:55 p.m.

[missjabez]

Like Tom, I once thought I could live with Hillary as the Democratic candidate because I believed she shared my Progressive values. Wrong! Once she displayed her dishonesty and scorched-earth tactics she lost my vote. And I agree with Tom that Hillary fans are toxic.