Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Hillary Clinton Conversion

I used to like Hillary Clinton. In fact, there was a time that I was so enamored and supportive of Hillary that I wagered $100 five years ago (with my wife's pastor, of all people!) that Hillary would be elected President in 2008.

No longer.

Now I can't help but think of Hillary Clinton and her desperate shenanigans with jaw-dropping disbelief and disgust. I can find nothing, absolutely nothing, admirable in her current behavior. It defies any sense of integrity, fairness, honesty, and respect.

I can't wait to lose my bet.

3 comments:

bayoustjohndavid said...

No disrespect intended, but why blog if you repeat the media spin? From the timing of this, I'd gues it was posted after the manufactured outrage over the RFK statement. Outrage that was started by the New York Post then immediately emailed to every important reporter in the country by the Obama campaign. The thing that has really disappointed me about this campaign has been the willingness of so many liberals to spread the same out-of-context quotes that conservatives like Drudge and Andrew Sullivan and Arianna Huffington used to sabotage the Clinton Administration and the Gore campaign.

It's particularly funny in the case of Huffington. As a "progressive" she made the same attacks on one Clinton in 2007/08 that she made on the other Clinton throughout the nineties, when she was making them as a conservative. I don't believe in ad hominem counterattacks, but I'm amazed that the spin of the people who gave us "invented the internet" in 2000. For example, Sullivan's claim that the Clinton campaign brought up the drug use mentioned in Obama's own book in a blatant attempt to scare white women. What kind of white women does he know?

From the time that I first noticed it in January until April or May, I blamed the Clinton-hating media. But it became impossible to deny that the Obama campaign was encouraging it.

bayoustjohndavid said...

Make that:

I don't believe in ad hominem counterattacks, but I'm amazed that the spin of the people who gave us "invented the internet" in 2000 is so readily accepted in 2008.

I could have been more tactful in my comment, but look at the tone of the post.

Huck said...

bayoustjohndavid - I blog my own thoughts. I don't really care what any kind of media spin is about any particular candidate.

In point of fact, my reaction to Hillary is an accumulation of observations in my own independent mind in terms of how she conducted her campaign and how I interpreted the way she treated the Obama campaign. This particular posting didn't come as a consequence of the RFK thing. I didn't get exorcised about this as much as some others did. Actually, if any one particular thing can be pinpointed as the tipping point that led to this posting, it would be the way she tried to work the whole Florida and Michigan thing. When I wrote this posting, it was just a few days before the meeting of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee; and it had become apparent what her arguments were going to be to try to steal the nomination from Obama in her last gasp gambit to flout the rules of the game at the last minute and then to use the same language that the Republicans used in 2000 to steal the election regarding making sure that "every vote counts." Clinton supporters were promising to gather in DC to protest and harangue the Committee. I found this very distasteful. Hillary did nothing to discourage this. It was the most cynical tactic I have ever witnessed in a primary campaign; and I never thought that a Democrat would use this argument against another Democrat no less, and in full contravention of the agreed-upon rules of the game. I don't see how anyone with eyes wide open can interpret Hillary's end gambit in any other way. Perhaps you can find fault with Obama's strategy for playing the game, but I don't think it was ever as cynical as what Hillary tried to do with regard to Florida and Michigan. That's what did it for me, what sealed my conversion; not the spin of Huffington or Sullivan or any other blogger.

I don't take offense at your comment. It's a perfectly reasonable question for me. And my posting wasn't as clear in terms of the details of my "conversion" as it could have been. I would, though, just like to make sure that you know that I blog as a means to express my own thoughts and feelings, regardless of whether they align with any particular narrative out there. I don't think blogging needs to be always and everywhere contrarian to expressed opinions, whether by the mainstream media or other bloggers. Just wanted to make that point clear.

I sincerely appreciate your comments, bayoustjohndavid.