- Hillary Clinton is a misogynist.
- Her achievements as a legislator are vanishingly small.
- Her stint as Secretary of State was unproductive.
- She either believes herself to be above the law or she is incompetent when it comes to obeying the law.
- Her financial history reeks of corruption.
Here is another "short version". Those that supported her bid for the Presidency are good and decent people. They are not "otherwise good and decent people"; just good and decent people with whom I disagree. We have a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes good and legitimate government within the US.
Progressives are not stupid and evil. Conservatives are not racists and misogynists.
The sooner we stop using disagreement as an excuse for maltreatment of others, the sooner we might find some common ground upon which we can all move forward. Treat one another well.
If you must.....the longer version follows.
In what way is Hillary Clinton qualified to be President of the United States? Which of her actions contribute to her qualifications?
During her husband's time as Governor of Arkansas, there were regular stories of his activities with other women. Those actions were nominally something that is acknowledged to be harassment. Some of those activities could be accurately described as "alleged rape".
Did Hillary Clinton believe her husband's accusers? Or did she act to "solve" the problems caused by her husband's accusers?
She participated in shaming those accusers. How is that being a supportive feminist? In what way is that being supportive of justice for women?
The same observation could be made about her behavior in response to her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. She exhibited little support for Ms. Lewinsky. Hardly the sort of behavior that one would expect from a feminist.
What do we call a person that marginalized women that are victims of sexual harassment and allegedly rape? A misogynist!
Was her resume burnished by winning an election to be a US Senator? Keep in mind that she had her husband's political team behind her Senatorial campaign. He was and regrettably remains a pretty popular public figure. She undoubtedly benefited from his popularity. And she opted to run for a Senate seat in a state that hasn't elected a Republican to the US Senate since 1958.
At what point did the preferred feminist approach to success become:
1) Support your husband's career at all costs
2) Pick an easy objective
3) Leverage husband's success to finally achieve something
Once elected, Mrs. Clinton established a legislative record so vanishingly thin that it borders on transparency. While she was one of many co-sponsors on many pieces of legislation, she wrote nothing of major importance. Is simply showing up in the Senate enough to make a person qualified to be President of the United States?
Mrs. Clinton accepted the position of Secretary of State from our President, Barack Obama. Did her performance in that position help increase her qualifications for to be President herself one day?
As Secretary of State, one of her primary functions was to negotiate treaties with other nations. It was during her time as Secretary of State that the State Department failed to successfully negotiate a Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq. Rather than persisting in negotiations, she and her department gave up after a brief effort. Every Middle East expert said at the time that negotiating a SOFA was possible if we just remained at the negotiating table. Iraqi negotiators needed to appear tough to retain the support of the Iraqi people. A shrewd diplomat finds ways to accommodate the legitimate interests of others while also achieving the objectives for their own country.
An incompetent diplomat....does not. They leave the negotiating table under the slightest pretenses.
Our premature withdrawal from Iraq opened the door for Al-Qaida and ISIS to step in. The years of murder and abuse that followed were the direct result of a withdrawal that would not have occurred if our Secretary of State were a remotely competent negotiator.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton permitted the wholesale surrender of North Africa to ISIS/Al Qaida/Muslim Brotherhood/etc. She was part of the team that tossed Egyptian Hosni Mubarak under the rhetorical bus. Once he was out of office, the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and began raining their own brand of partisan/religious abuse on the citizens of Egypt. It took the re-imposition of a dictatorship by the Egyptian military to restore some version of sanity on the country.
Later on, Mrs. Clinton played a pivotal role in the decision to support the jihadist-fueled effort to toss Muammar Gaddafi out of power in Libya. The result of her actions not only cost the United States an Ambassador and some security agents, it turned Libya into a failed state where terrorists wander freely and slavery has come back into vogue. Her ignorance of military policy helped to break Libya without a plan to the victory. You cannot win a conflict with an air force alone.
We should also note that her support for air strikes contravened prior US policy that would have left Gaddafi unmolested by the US in exchange for the surrender of Libya's previously unknown WMD program. With her actions, Mrs. Clinton has made it more difficult for future US diplomats to negotiate with adversaries.
Most of Mrs. Clinton's adult political life has involved activities that give off more than a modest whiff of corruption. One early example would be the cattle futures trading episode where she gave money to an investor to invest on her behalf and then wound up with a return that far outpaced anything accomplished by any other investor. Were there an "R" behind her name, those most studiously looking to excuse this episode would be outraged.
We might also keep in mind that she had a hand in firing the entire White House travel office staff so that her political cronies could take over and make a few bucks arranging travel for President Clinton.
As a final example of fiscally questionable behavior, we should consider the billions of dollars poured into the Clinton Global Initiative during her time as Secretary of State. The nations contributing the most money also happened to be the ones that were approaching our State Department for favorable policy decisions. As the media has never shown much interest in digging into the Clintons financial wheeling and dealing, I doubt that we will ever receive a detailed accounting that balances those donations against State Department policies. But again, if she had an "R" after her name, people would be suggesting collusion and other unsavory activities.
By comparison, a lesser issue would be her use of a private email server to communicate classified information. In her position as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton was not only trained in the proper identification and handling of classified information, she had the authority to designate and originate classified documents.
Were your average non-commissioned officer to commit a similar act, they would already be in a federal prison. In fact, there are military servicemembers currently sitting in prison for doing far less to compromise classified information.
Mrs. Clinton's actions demonstrate that she was either incapable of understanding and following regulations regarding the handling of classified information, or she felt that she was above those regulations. Which is a qualifying attribute to the President of the United States; incompetence or arrogance?
A postscript of sorts:
Not satisfied with undermining her own campaign by describing large portions of the United States as "deplorable", Mrs. Clinton recently returned to that theme in a speech in India.
"If you look at the map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle, places where Trump won," she said. "What that map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that own two thirds of America’s Gross Domestic product. I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards. You don’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are, whatever that problem is, I am going to solve it."She also made some comments about her loss being due to men telling women how to vote and women docilely submitting to that male authority. (My brief search failed to identify a complete transcript of her speech.)
Let's dissect a couple of those morsels.
"What that map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that own two thirds of America’s Gross Domestic product."So Mrs. Clinton believes that Americans should vote the way the top 1% want them to vote? Given her pronouncements about the rich paying their "fair share", one would think that she would give less weight to their voting patterns.
You don’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are,There is so much here that it is hard to know where to start. Unemployment among blacks in America has fallen to the lowest point for as long as those records were being recorded. Most conservatives have been trumpeting that fact.
Mrs. Clinton's galling use of the race card elides the fact that GOP supporters proudly point to people like Utah's Mia Love and South Carolina's Tim Scott as up-and-coming members of the party. It also ignores the fact that there were many folks (like me) supporting a "draft Condi Rice" movement early in the 2016 GOP nominating process. Sadly, Ms. Rice wasn't interested in pursuing the Presidency.
Mrs. Clinton is also apparently ignorant of the support that many conservatives have expressed for our ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. Mrs. Haley is the former governor of the state of South Carolina. Part of her family background includes immigrants from India. The citizens of South Carolina elected her to that office on two occasions because of her policies; not because of her race and/or gender.
America is not the country that Mrs. Clinton appears to imagine. We are better. Perhaps not better enough, but better.
As we continue to try and be a better country, we need to resist the temptation to demonize people with whom we disagree. Again:
Progressives are not stupid and evil. Conservatives are not racists and misogynists.Act accordingly.
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