While I’m no superfan, one thing that always bugs me is saying that Hillary is part of a dynasty. Unlike a Bush or a Romney, she is not the child of a politician. She and her husband came from humble beginnings and were not raised with a silver spoon in their mouths.
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My answer Is that Hillary could be transgender and she still has my vote. I think the US would be secure and safe under Hillary. I could go to bed at night with her as POTUS and sleep good. Would I vote for any GOP candidate if they were a woman? The answer is HELL NO.
This piece is not only silly, but it presupposes that there is actually a choice. What group of people is going to vote for the Republican Party?
I will tell you.
It will be a group of people for whom rational thought is trumped by whatever venal, callous, racist, xenophobic, snide, cruel, misinformed, sexist, bigoted, selfish, false-conscious collection of emotional impulses in their brains.
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A 35-year old United States marmoset.
And a special shout out to all the folks who voted for Nader to protest Gore (Floridians in particular). Thanks for eight years of George W Bush.
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Of all the pedantic, self important, smug articles about Clinton, gender and politics, Mr. Williams takes the cake. Outside of his statement of his perception of Hillary Clinton “hawkish approach at foreign policy”, his conclusion that voting for a “flawed Clinton campaign” feels wrong lacks the specificity of a reasoned argument. You can be for or against Mrs. Clinton, but if you go take the step to write and publish on the subject then you are required more that conventional wisdom as your main argument. To quote or cite Zack Beauchamp as an authoritative source on Hillary’e hawkiness is also disingenuous, the equivalent of citing, well Conor Williams as a credible resource on an argument into quantum mechanics. Mrs. Clinton foreign policy approach is sure to be more muscular than president Obama but that is hardly difficult to accomplish. On the main issues that animates the Democratic party foreign policy Hillary is in the mainstream, the media of Democratic thought. I hardly see Mrs. Clinton as somebody that will launch an unprovoked war in Iran, nor will scuttle the international agreement the Obama administration is negotiating with Iran on her first day in office. Mr. Williams might be guilty of the sin of looking at the world without nuisance, and framed by absolutes, that is reinforce by a lacy media that thinks readers are incapable of honest and rational discussion so everything is reduced to ad hominem, spinning, conventional wisdom and myths. Which is why we have electoral campaigning Mr. Williams. So those issues are discussed and weighted in. I know is fashionable for the more liberal element of the political spectrum to criticize Mrs. Clinton. Seems like a rite of passage. I can see how that is also necessary as part of the prolonged process of selecting a president. Make your criticism vigorous if you must, but about real policy issues, based on verifiable information. To address your questions, on whether you would vote for Hillary if she was a man, I would if she was the best man in the field, which is the only measurable stick that should be used. By all measurable standards Hillary is one of the best qualified candidates ever to run for office. I suspect you voted for Barack Obama for president, perhaps twice I may venture. Then in 2008 he was perhaps, oddly enough, along with Abraham Lincoln, one of the least prepared candidate to office. Ever. A state legislator in 2006, president in 2009. Had he been a woman Mr. Williams, would you had voted for her? Now answer that and in a reasoned substantive manner, if you can.
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Yesterday was Jackie Robinson Day in MLB. Robinson’s uniform number was 42. Every MLB player played yesterday in a uniform with # 42 on it. I figure, if Connor can go into Gedankenexperiment …
Raymond Lee, as a former big leaguer, your thoughts about what’s going on in Brooklyn …
Wellsir, I question it, I do. For starters, they’s replacing one injustice for another. This new player ain’t no true prospect, for Pete’s Sake he’s 28, which fer a prospect is over the hill A whole lot of good ol’ boy terrific players are burnt out and retired by that age.
Then on top of that, they’s serious perfessors of the science of the game who’ve studied this fer years, and they all say a player’s best route into the Big Leagues is to come when he’s ready, sure, but also at an age he’s still young and can adapt and grow.
This new player’s best seasons maybe already have passed him by. And yet somehow they’re expecting this person, who’s really only ever experienced big success in collitch football and amacheer track n field, which even then was years ago, to master the Big Leagues right away.
To me, and I spect I ain’ alone in this, seems like all thats’ just dooming this experiment to failure.
Even then, that kind of assumes there’s a big cryin’ need for this experiment. Irv, the Brooklyns are a respectable and honorable organization, and a terrific team for the community. On top of all that, these pertickler Dodgers have serious hopes for winning a pennant. They got a deep and talented organization, loaded at every position.
So understand, In order to make a place on the roster for this questionable prospect and this dubious social experiment, the Dodgers are going to be faced with having to sit down, maybe risk destroying, some hot young prospect, or some known dependable established big leaguer.
The Dodgers have plenty of both kinds, talented young eager prospects and proven veteran reliability, and the Dodgers know there’s a high probability of none of them ever causing any waves with other players, or upsetting the fan base.
The team has other options who it knows from decades of hard learned experience that it knows it can trust to get on wih the job at hand without a lot of distractions.
Now, a true Big Leaguer also has to get along with everyone, management, teammates, players on other teams, fans at home but also in St. Louis for example, and media of course.
To ignore all those priorities and hard-won lessons in favor of experimenting with some person no one in the organization really knows all that well, what he’s like, what he’s thinking is, what he’s capable of; whose every public appearance in some big league venues especially south of here, maybe all of them, is bound to be greeted with loud boos and catcalls and terrible things being said, and perjectiles throwed on the field.
All of that’s risks giving everyone in Big League baseball, the whole business model, a huge black eye.
And those things throwed on the field are gonna constitute a serious workplace hazard, one which is totally avoidable, for all players on both sides, including, we need to appreciate, all them players on the side that didn’t choose to take any part in this symbolic experiment.
Irv, just ask yourself what would happen if this player were a regular white American. Would the Dodgers even be doing this, going to all this trouble, for an aging ex-prospect, a potentially washed up possible trouble maker?
All I’m suggesting, Irv, is there’s obviously an agenda here that going to impose the ugliness of politics onto the great game of baseball, and do we really need that?
This should have nothing to do with gender if you are sentient. If you would vote for any GOP candidate currently being mentioned regardless of gender, you are complete fool (and very possibly you could say that about any Republican politician alive today). You want Carly Fiorina? I thought not. Given that, I would prefer that the candidate from the Democratic party is not someone like Michael Dukakis, or a modern version of George McGovern, even if I might prefer their stands on this or that compared to where Hillary would be.
The administration hers is most likely to resemble was that of her husband who was not perfect either and yet arguably the best president of my lifetime (I was born in 1957).
Plus, she’s not “descended from a political dynasty” and I wish people would stop asserting that she is. She’s a former First Lady – which is an unconventional background but shouldn’t be a disqualifying one. Maybe we would have heard from Hillary if she had never married Bill, or maybe not, but let’s please not dismiss the fact that she was already embarked on a career in public service – serving on the Nixon impeachment committee, working on children’s rights issues, BEFORE she married Bill Clinton. There is also the little but important fact that most women who have broken any important barrier in terms of national political office, and usually on the state level too, have had some association with a powerful man – husband, father, etc. If nothing else, such an association lends name recognition, and an element of trust, that can be especially helpful for a groudbreaker.
You have read far more into this piece than is there. The question is quite simple. Given her positions on many things dear to liberals and progressives would you and others be so enamored of her as a candidate if she were not Hillary Clinton and yes a woman. I find her hawkishness, close ties to The Street and big money somewhat contrary to progressive values hence I am not supporting her in the Primaries. Should she end up the candidate I will vote for her, but certainly not because I think she is a liberal or a progressive, but rather because she isn’t a Republican.
And don’t even get me started on things like whether others will take orders from this new player, whether they’ll rally behind this person when they’re headed into battle, and SPECIAL ACCOMODATIONS FOR BATHROOMS, and MAYBE SEPARATE SHOWER FACILITIES!
This is opening up a big ol’ can of worms, Irv, for no good reason I can see.
Go back to 2008 when the Hillary-Obama contest was raging withing the Dem party: Hillary was the LIBERAL in that fight. Obama was getting the benefits of doubt, but everything he said, his policy teams, his implied shadow cabinet, how selective and wary he was on the campaign trial, HOW HIS CAMPAIGN ACTED AND SPOKE ABOUT HILLARY, his few and frankly quite disappointing stands in the Senate, ALL of that put him as the decidedly more moderate, centrist, CORPORATE-FRIENDLY choice.
Go back into the archives at The Left Coaster; there’s a HUGE record of that fight. We all were forced to sides. I HATED that, and wasn’t in the least comfortable with being constantly batteredd between them. I’d make a choice, next day doubt, change it, doubt again, reexamine again; that took weeks for me, MONTHS for others.
My point is, if you propose we not forget or overlook Hillary’s corporate and centrist stances and ties in 2008, then equally don’t forget that EXCEPT for that Iraq War vote, Obama ran to Hillary’s RIGHT.
Now, you may choose to argue that he had to do that, because he was in the Jackie Robinson role. But they were BOTH in that role, and SHE’S STILL IN IT TODAY; yet, you somehow think we can ‘allow’ for this with Obama but ‘dis’ Hillary for the same strategy.
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I agree she’s not part of a dynasty either. If that were the case, then plenty in the Senate who have had family who have represented districts in their states or their overall states in general, in one capacity or another on a political level, would also be in that league. Yet we never call out those people on both the right or the left as part of a dynasty, with the exception of a few like the Kennedys perhaps. Being First Lady is hardly part of being dynastic. In fact, having to separate herself on various issues from her husband, who as his wife, she had no particular control over (literally) in order to offer support for him in public as his wife, and presumably perform her perfunctory ‘duty’ as First Lady. That is not the same as being in a position to advance her own political agenda…with the exception of Hillarycare perhaps. And that was a ballsy thing to do at the time, even if it did fail miserably and take on a lot of rightwing criticism at the time, which made it unpalatable for the country. Everything else she’s done has come under the weight of her own achievement in her various capacities.
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One thing that depends on what state you live in is whether you characterize Hillary Clinton as a “blue dog.” If you live in a state that has elected several members of the Blue Dog Caucus, you would never use the term to refer to Secretary Clinton. If you live in a state that hasn’t, I guess you can be forgiven for calling her that.
Anyway, I’m nitpicking. Because that was probably the least fatuous characterization of Clinton and our country’s politics in this article. The bottom line for me is that voting is not, or not primarily, a “symbolic” act. The impact of a single vote is limited by others’ actions, and a voter’s range of action—the number and quality of candidates she can choose among—will be restricted by forces beyond her control. But that is true of every action we take in life.
Given this, it’s not clear to me why anyone should feel obliged to work out “how voting a particular way squares with who you understand yourself to be.” In fact, I would argue the opposite. For us to preserve our ideals, it seems to me essential to keep in mind how little our choice among undesirable alternatives defines us. When we vote, our ideals stand as goals we should move toward, and every vote offers us an opportunity to move closer to that ideal or farther away. Even when we vote for the lesser of two evils, we have done everything in our power—for the limited time we occupied the voting booth—to remake the world as we think it should be. The choices we have are, in that moment, irrelevant as long as we make the choice guided by our best selves.
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I agree in that I don’t see her as a Blue Dog, but if others do, and that means we can win back states that Bill Clinton won in order to win the Presidency for a Democratic candidate…I’m all for it. Too much is at stake in the next election.
https://www.procon.org/files/1-clinton-images/electoral-map-1992-clinton-vs-bush-picture.jpg
http://clinton.procon.org/files/1-clinton-images/electoral-map-1996-clinton-vs-dole-picture.jpg
Check out Appalachia, my friends.
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Well, if your first question concerns which candidate takes global warming most seriously, you might consider a third-party candidate. Also, lots of them have been women–nothing all that unusual about that.
This is like the “NOW how big was that missed field goal?!” question in a football game. When you ask What If? you try to anticipate an alternate reality. You’re asking an unanswerable question, and you should stop before you blow everybody’s minds.
Agree completely. In the Democratic primary, vote for the most viable candidate that most closely represents your positions. Who cares if they have a penis or a vagina?
In the general, vote for the Democrat, unless you support the crazy that is the Republican party.
This piece was inane and a waste of bits.
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Third parties are an absolute waste of time. If you want Bush III, write in Ralph Nader Greens. Part of voting is realism … if you believe that people are listening to your “protest vote”, fine. But I would ask, where is the evidence that anyone has listened to protest votes from the past.
Better to get organized and get working for causes that concern you greatly. Short of that, vote for the candidate that most closely represents your position and that has a viable chance of winning. That means take the Democratic primary seriously and vote for a Democrat or Republican in the general.
Anything else and you are wasting your time and shooting yourself in the foot. Remember, this is how we got Bush II.
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Seconded. Strongly.
Conor wrote:
There’s something wrong with a straight white male voter who tells himself that he should vote for the female candidate simply because she has a strong chance of becoming the first female president.
There is something seriously wrong with thinking that gender is the only reason to prefer Hillary over the other likely candidates. And that is true even if you aren’t a straight, white male voter.
Put Hillary Clinton’s positions in a typically WASP-y male candidate’s body and I wouldn’t vote for him.
But you also make it clear that if one put the GOP’s positions in a typically WASP-y female candidate’s body, you wouldn’t vote for her. Your piece is a mess, because you make a big deal about the gender issue when it really isn’t about gender.
And, so, we get to what I think you intend to be the intellectual justification for this mess:
Perhaps it’s just to offer further proof that the act of voting in a two-party presidential system is better understood as a matter of personal symbolism than as the staking of a substantive position. …Once you’ve conclusively ruled out one of the two major parties, you’re more or less stuck trying to find a way to see yourself and your ideals in the remaining party’s candidates.
If this is the intellectual justification for the piece, it is a fail. What you attribute to the two-party system is more a universal reality of democracy: you get just one little vote out of many. It takes a large collection of votes to determine what positions will influence policy. Even if you start off with a lot of tiny splinter parties and proportional representation, so that you can vote in a representative that is pretty closely aligned with your values and interests, that representative can’t influence policy without allying with and compromising with enough other splinter parties to form a majority. A two-party, winner-take-all system is basically presenting you with the alliance before you vote, instead of assembling it afterward.
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I’ve never cast a “protest vote” in my life. As a matter of fact, I think many people voting Democrat are voting more to protest what they fear the Republicans may bring about than they are promoting what the Democrats have to offer. They’re prepared to cast their votes for someone who voted to begin (or continue, depending on one’s point of view) the godawful mess we’ve gotten ourselves (and everyone else) into in the middle east. It takes a lot of rationalization to be truly positive about that type of Democrat, in my book.
This may change, but for now, the choice between voting Republican and voting Democrat is the choice between drowning in water and drowning in quicksand.