Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton: Surprise Upon Surprise

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Which presidential candidates are Americans most enthusiastic about? According to a Gallup poll, 65% of Trump’s supporters are either extremely or very enthusiastic about his candidacy. That’s not a surprise. His supporters are nothing if not enthusiastic. What’s unexpected is which Democrat has the most enthusiastic supporters. Gallup found that Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more enthusiastic about her than Bernie Sanders’s are about him. Fifty-four percent of Clinton supporters say they’re extremely or very enthusiastic about their favorite candidate vs. 44% of Sanders supporters. Given how much publicity Feeling the Bern has received, that’s quite a surprise. 

But considering how well Clinton has done in primary elections this year (as opposed to the small-scale caucuses that have favored Sanders), we should expect that she has lots of enthusiastic supporters. Counting both primaries and caucuses, she has received 8.9 million votes vs. 6.4 million for Sanders. Winning by that margin in a general election would qualify as a landslide victory.

One might ask, however, why so many Americans are enthusiastically supporting such a devious and dishonest person? It’s probably because they don’t think she’s as devious and dishonest as the Republicans, many in the press and some Sanders supporters claim. Jill Abramson, a former editor of the New York Times, published an article yesterday with the title: “This May Shock You. Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest”. The article is worth reading in full, but here’s a little bit of it:

As an editor I’ve launched investigations into her business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage. As a reporter my stories stretch back to Whitewater. I’m not a favorite in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy….

… Politifact, a Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking organization, gives Clinton the best truth-telling record of any of the 2016 presidential candidates. She beats Sanders and Kasich and crushes Cruz and Trump…

Abramson says Clinton distrusts the press more than any other politician she’s ever covered and that she needs to resist her strong desire to protect her privacy.  If Clinton were less secretive, Abramson argues, fewer people would think she’s hiding something. But Abramson also worries that too many people expect “purity” from female politicians. No successful politicians are pure, not even female ones, but Hillary Clinton may be purer than most. What a surprise!

This Week’s Selective Political Roundup

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Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine presents two brief accounts of Republican hypocrisy (there’s a little-known but important fact: Republican politicians are required to solemnly recite a Hypocritical Oath before receiving any financial support from the party).

First, Congressman Paul Ryan has said that he wants to simplify the tax code and isn’t especially interested in cutting taxes for the wealthy.  When asked why he didn’t support a proposal made by a Republican congressman a few years ago that would have done exactly that, namely, eliminate loopholes and deductions without favoring one group of taxpayers over another, he’s unable to come up with an answer. All he can say is that it’s “ridiculous” to worry about which taxpayers would benefit the most from tax reform. It must, therefore, be mere coincidence that the reforms he favors would disproportionately benefit the wealthy (“No Tax Reforms Unless Rich People Get Paid“).

Second, Republican Senators who previously claimed it’s against the rules or common practice to confirm a Supreme Court nominee in the last year of a President’s term are now saying this last-year restriction only applies if Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders) wins in November. If one of the Democrats is elected President, it will be perfectly fine to approve Obama’s nominee this year. Their fear, of course, is that President Clinton or Sanders would nominate someone more liberal than Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee. Thus, “the people” should have a role in deciding who gets on the Supreme Court, but the people who vote in November should only have a role if they elect a Republican President. Otherwise, the people who elected Obama in 2012 should have their say after all. Yes, they do indeed swear a Hypocritical Oath (“[Republicans] Demand Supreme Court Vacancy Be Filled by Next President, Unless That President Is Hillary Clinton“).

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias of Vox says “There’s a Big Problem with Sanders’s Free College Plan“. “Free college” has been one of Senator Sanders’s most popular positions. According to the campaign’s site:

The Sanders plan would make tuition free at public colleges and universities throughout the country…The cost of this … plan is fully paid for by imposing a tax of a fraction of a percent on Wall Street speculators [i.e. on transactions in the stock and bond markets].

Yglesias, however, provides a link to a more detailed “Summary of Sen. Sanders’ College for All Act” on his Senate webpage: 

This legislation would provide $47 billion per year to states to eliminate undergraduate tuition and fees at public colleges and universities.

Today, total tuition at public colleges and universities amounts to about $70 billion per year. Under the College for All Act, the federal government would cover 67% of this cost, while the states would be responsible for the remaining 33% of the cost.

To qualify for federal funding, states must meet a number of requirements designed to protect students, ensure quality, and reduce ballooning costs. States will need to maintain spending on their higher education systems, on academic instruction, and on need-based financial aid. In addition, colleges and universities must reduce their reliance on low-paid adjunct faculty.

As Yglesias points out, Sanders is relying on the states, including those that refused to accept Federal money in order to expand Medicaid coverage for the poor, to spend more money on education, even though the same states, usually run by Republican governors and legislators, have been cutting their education budgets. In addition, the public colleges and universities in those states would have to institute other reforms in order for their states to qualify for Federal matching grants.

Free college sounds great, and Senator Sanders has a reputation for brutal honesty, but he isn’t telling his supporters the truth about how difficult it would be to abolish college tuition. In Yglesias’s words: “what Sanders has is a plan for tuition-free college in Vermont and, if he’s lucky, California, but not for the United States of America”.

Lastly, two political science professors have an interesting article in the New York Times called “Clinton’s Bold Vision, Hidden in Plain Sight?“. They argue that Hillary Clinton is a throwback to the days when pragmatic Democrats and Republicans worked together to achieve great things: 

Mrs. Clinton has put forth an ambitious and broadly popular policy agenda: family and medical leave, continued financial reform, improvements in the Affordable Care Act, investments in infrastructure and scientific research, measures to tackle global warming and improve air and water quality, and so on….

A few decades ago, Mrs. Clinton would have been seen as a common political type: an evidence-oriented pragmatist committed to using public authority to solve big problems…. In the middle decades of the 20th century, this pragmatic problem-solving mentality had a prominent place in both parties. Some issues were deeply divisive: labor rights and national health insurance, for example, and civil rights. Nonetheless, a bipartisan governing coalition that included leaders from both business and labor proved remarkably willing to endorse and improve the mixed economy to promote prosperity.

More important, the major policies that this coalition devised deserve credit for some of the greatest achievements of American society, including the nation’s once decisive lead in science and education, its creation of a continent-spanning market linked by transportation and communications, and its pioneering creation of product and environmental regulations that added immensely to Americans’ health and quality of life…. Americans’ income per capita doubled and then more than doubled again, with the gains broadly distributed for most of the era….

Mrs. Clinton is heir to an enormously successful bipartisan governing tradition. Yet this tradition has been disowned by the Republican Party and has lost allure within a significant segment of the Democratic Party; it also runs sharply against the grain of current public sentiments about government and politicians….

In the context of widespread amnesia about what has made America prosper, pragmatism has come to be seen as lacking a clear compass rather than (in the original meaning of the word) focusing on what has actually proved to work in the real world.

Trusting Hillary

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Last week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, while admitting that his own political party has gone “batshit crazy”, referred to Hillary Clinton as “the most dishonest woman in America”. He was joking – kind of (video here). 

This week, former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while attacking one of this year’s candidates, said “a person as dishonest and untrustworthy as Hillary Clinton must not become President” (transcript here).

Obviously, characterizing Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy is standard song and dance for Republican politicians. What’s been surprising lately is how many Democrats are making similar statements. The Democrats in question are generally the ones who support Clinton’s opponent for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders. 

I bring this up because “73angelD” posted this comment on New York Magazine‘s site yesterday:

73angelD: “There are many middle-aged female Sanders supporters like myself who do not trust Clinton.”

That type of thing from a liberal or progressive voter who should and almost certainly will vote for Clinton in November raises an interesting question. So I asked it:

PersonaObscura [that’s me!]: “I’m honestly confused. What is it that you don’t trust Clinton to do? Do you think she’ll be remarkably less liberal in office than she says she’ll be? Or her voting record in the Senate indicates? She’s always seemed to be more liberal than her husband, but less slippery.”

Which someone else tried to answer: 

Madapalooza: “We don’t trust her irresponsiblity due to the email scandal, her being a Goldwater Girl, her taking hundreds of thousands from the institutions she “claims” she’s going to regulate, withholding the wall street transcripts, the fact that she not once but twice dismissed black protesters who simply asked her to explain her racial remarks on television, her husband sabotaging the voting polls in Massachusetts on super Tuesday, ect, ect…”

Resisting the urge to comment on those particular “offenses” (and the more powerful urge to correct the “ect, ect”), I replied:

PersonaObscura: “You listed things you don’t like about her or her husband, but trust has to do with what you expect her to do as President. Based on everything she’s said and done in her life, and what we’ve gone through as a nation in recent years, it’s reasonable to expect her policies will be to the left of Bill Clinton’s and to the right of what Bernie’s would have been. This will be our choice in November: a relatively liberal Democrat vs. some right-wing goon.”

The discussion probably went on from there (my policy in these matters is to say one or two things and then exit, often pursued by an angry elephant or donkey).

As we traverse the next eight months, we should all keep in mind that casting a ballot in a Presidential election amounts to making a prediction. Who do we predict will have the most success carrying out policies we endorse? We can’t be certain, so we need to make an educated guess.

In Hillary Clinton’s case, it should be obvious to everyone that she will tend to do her job like President Obama has done his. She won’t govern like a democratic socialist or a reactionary Republican. There is no reason to think she has been hiding her real intentions for the past 50 years. Therefore, we can trust her to govern like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, not like Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush or his feckless son.

She will try to reduce income inequality, create middle class jobs, move us closer to universal healthcare, reform our immigration policies and protect the environment. She will pay attention to science. She will take a particular interest in issues facing women and children. She will be pro-market but not necessarily pro-big business. She will nominate reasonable people to be judges.

Likewise, she will allow the CIA and NSA to stay in business, authorize drone strikes and allow Israel to get away with very bad behavior toward the Palestinians. We can trust her to do these kinds of things, the good and the bad. That’s the kind of trust that’s relevant.

Saying you don’t trust Hillary Clinton is an easy way to criticize her without bothering to explain what you don’t trust her to do. As President, she will often disappoint us, but who knows? She could turn out to be almost as progressive as the Republicans fear. It’s about time they got something right.

The article referred to above is here. The author’s thesis is that some conservatives are voting for Sanders because they don’t like uppity women. I don’t recommend the comments!

PS:  A few words about Hillary Rodham back when she would have been Feeling the Bern:

In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy. In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969. Following the assassination of MartinLuther King, Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley’s black students to recruit more black students and faculty. In her student government role, she played a role in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges. A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first female President of the United States….

That summer, [after graduation] she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthful conditions). [Wikipedia]

Bernie, Hillary, Emails, Decisions, Decisions

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New Jersey will hold its Presidential primary election nine months and fifteen days from now. By that time, we will almost certainly know who the Democratic nominee and the next President of the United States will be (she used to be Secretary of State). June of 2016 might sound like a long way off, but we in New Jersey, along with our friends in California and a few other states, always wait for everyone else to hold their primary elections first.

Aside from the fact that we’re naturally considerate (“Please, I insist.” “No, no, after you.”), this means we don’t have to spend much time deciding which Democrat or Republican should be President. Unlike Iowa, Vermont and South Carolina, we have more important things to do.

Anyway, if I had the opportunity to vote sooner than next June, like maybe tomorrow, I’m not sure who I’d choose. From a policy perspective, I’d go with Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist Senator from Vermont. Voting for Sanders would make me feel good. I even think he could beat a Republican in the general election, because most Americans, whether they realize it or not, agree with his positions. (See “How Mainstream Is Bernie Sanders?” and “Why Surprising Numbers of Republicans Have Been Voting for Sanders in Vermont”).

Despite the popular appeal of Sanders’s positions, however, Clinton might do better in a general election. It would be harder for the Republicans to falsely portray her as a wild-eyed radical. And despite some of her hawkish views on foreign policy and military spending, Hillary Clinton might end up being a very progressive President. She seems more aware of our country’s increasing inequality and more likely to do something about it than she used to be. Further, she might be able to get more done than Sanders, since the politicians, bureaucrats and plutocrats she’d have to work with would be more likely to consider her “one of them”. 

(Every time I imagine President Sanders taking office, I’m reminded of A Very British Coup, in which the election of a proud Labor Party socialist as Prime Minister leads to army helicopters descending on Downing Street and Parliament. See also Seven Days in May. All fiction, of course.) 

But since I’m a proud resident of New Jersey, I don’t have to make a decision about this any time soon. Meanwhile, our national nightmare (i.e. our Presidential campaign) will continue.

That brings me to a perceptive article by Heather Digby Parton called “Anatomy of a Hillary Clinton Pseudo-Scandal”. She writes:

… the press can pass judgement about anything once it’s “out there” regardless of whether or not what’s “out there” is true. This allows them to skip doing boring rebuttals of the facts at hand and instead hold forth at length about how it bears on the subject’s “judgement” and the “appearance” of wrongdoing without ever proving that what they did was wrong.

You see, if the person being discussed were “competent,” it wouldn’t be “out there” in the first place, so even if it is based upon entirely specious speculation, it’s his or her own fault for inspiring people to speculate so speciously. It all goes back to their “character”… 

And even if the charges are patently false, they are always far too complicated to rebut in detail; and, anyway, the other side says something different, so who’s really to say what’s true and what isn’t?  [Note: that’s what Paul Krugman calls “Shape of Earth: Views Differ” journalism.]

It’s still the responsibility of the target of those charges because he or she shouldn’t have allowed him or herself to be in a position where someone could make false charges in the first place.

From this perspective, it’s irrelevant whether any of those famous emails were classified at the time (apparently they weren’t, besides which lots of stuff the government classifies shouldn’t be). It’s also irrelevant whether it was forbidden to use a private computer then (apparently it wasn’t). 

I agree about the irrelevance in one sense. It’s irrelevant as to whether Clinton or Sanders or some other Democrat should be our next President.

Analyzing Barack Obama

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With less than three years remaining in his second term, President Obama has had three major accomplishments: he moved America closer to universal healthcare; he guided the country through the final months of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, keeping the American automobile industry functioning in the process; and he kept the White House out of Republican hands. He also cut the federal deficit by more than 50% — from 9.8% of Gross Domestic Product at the end of 2009 to 4.1% at the end of 2013 — but since it’s a bad idea to reduce the federal deficit when the economy is weak, that doesn’t really qualify as an accomplishment.

Clearly, the rabid Republican opposition in Congress has made it difficult for Obama to accomplish more, but it’s reasonable to ask whether a more gifted politician could have done better. In an article from TomDispatch reprinted at Salon, David Bromwich argues that Obama has accomplished too little because he views himself as “something like a benevolent monarch — a king in a mixed constitutional system, where the duties of the crown are largely ceremonial”.

According to Bromwich, Obama thinks that merely stating his preferences, calmly and eloquently, should be enough to lead the country away from polarization toward rational compromise, without his having to get his hands dirty making deals and confronting the opposition. It should work in the White House because it’s always worked before:

Extreme caution marked all of Obama’s early actions in public life….The law journal editor without a published article, the lawyer without a well-known case to his credit, the law professor whose learning was agreeably presented without a distinctive sense of his position on the large issues, the state senator with a minimal record of yes or no votes, and the U.S. senator who between 2005 and 2008 refrained from committing himself as the author of a single piece of significant legislation: this was the candidate who became president in January 2009.

It’s a good analysis, although it might be difficult to read if you’ve ever been one of the President’s big fans. I didn’t have that problem, because back in 2008, I voted for Hillary.

(Whether she lives up to her promise, we’ll probably find out starting in 2017.)