Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

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_EAllusion
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Re: Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

Post by _EAllusion »

One of the crazy things about the 2016 election is that one of the drivers of editorial decisions was the incorrect belief that Clinton was definitely going to win. This almost certainly drove harsher coverage of Clinton, a lot of it irresponsible, because it there was no harm in trying to be as tough as possible on her to prove how fair and balanced they are. The irony here, I guess, is that she was perceived as so strong, at least relative to Trump, that she could receive and deserve the exact kind of coverage that ultimately caused her to lose and this now retroactively is used to prove her inherent weakness. Some people in the media are just the worst.

This isn't a new or sexy observation. It's accepted wisdom among the data journalist class, for instance. I did see David Roberts expound on this recently in a way I think is correct, and didn't think about as much until then.

Apropos of nothing, here's something I've been thinking about. It's widely accepted now that lots of actors in the 2016 election acted the way they did because everybody -- *everybody* -- assumed Clinton would win. That is the lens through which the election makes sense.But the complementary point, which hasn't been aired as much, is that *everyone planned to use Clinton as their punching bag*.

GOP would use total opposition & endless BS investigations to please its base. Every liberal seeking to establish their lefty bona fides would use Clinton-bashing to show how anti-Establishment and brave they are. mainstream media would use Clinton-bashing to establish their independence & objectivity. right-wing media would bash her to keep the troops in a frenzy. It was all laid out, like a script. "You work your ass off to get elected so we can use you to send identity signals." She was to be everyone's patsy, everyone's Big Bad, everyone's convenient punching bag -- across the spectrum! Problem is, none of those groups could restrain themselves. They all laid into caricaturing and demonizing her too early, too relentlessly. They overshot ... and she lost! This prop that everyone was using to hold themselves up vanished.

And it's left behind this amusing vacuum, a Hillary-shaped hole that is baffling & vexing everyone. Who are righties supposed to hate on? Who's the Great Satan now? They don't have one! That's why they are still, no kidding, obsessing over Hillary investigations on Fox. Who is the Great Establishment Satan for the Bernie-ites now? Who are they to define themselves against? They don't really know! Who is the mainstream media supposed to beat up now to prove that they're not liberal? They don't really know! Hillary was to be the receptacle, carrying and embodying the anxieties of a whole range of groups and demographics involved in US politics. But everybody overdid it, and now she's gone, and there's a giant vacuum where all that anxiety used to be focused.

Obviously I wouldn't wish our current situation on anyone, but it's hard not to find some grim amusement in the confusion and stumbling about that has ensued after Hillary disappeared. Without the Great Satan, the shared punching bag, everyone's left to their own devices. It's even causing some people in some of those groups to look in the mirror, and what fun is that? It's hard not to think that America's collective id wants, needs, Hillary back. She gave everyone someone to blame.


Yeah, you can't really understand the behavior of whole segments of those who control the media wheel without noticing that they expected Clinton to win. Nothing new about that. But Clinton continues to receive routine negative coverage from all them - in a way you've never seen for other recent failed nominees for president - because she fills a void they haven't been able to replicate yet. This is most obvious on Fox, where near nightly they behave like Clinton is the scandal-plagued president of the United States, but it's also quite apparent in progressive activists who continue to spend inordinate amounts of time relitigating the 2016 primary and Clinton bashing as a means to try to drift the Democratic party leftward. It explains why there was a literal countdown clock on how long it took Clinton to respond to the Harvey Weinstein scandal on CNN, but active Republican leadership, including president of the United States, received no such pressured coverage regarding the actual finance chair of the RNC. Clinton continues to fill a role she had before even though she not in office or running for one.
_Kishkumen
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Re: Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

Post by _Kishkumen »

Understanding what happened isn't "Clinton apologia." Perhaps you just have a deep need to focus on what makes Clinton look as bad as possible and any facts that get in the way of this are inconvenient truths.


Perhaps I am tired of one side of the establishment’s endless whinging about why they lost. Really, I don’t know how much more transparent you can get in your hypersensitivity regarding Clinton. She lost. For that she deserves at least some of the blame, as does the Democratic Party. It can’t be about how wrong and bad everyone else is. How the people just didn’t get it, were too stupid, or were too racist, were manipulated by online Svengalis.

Sure, ignorance and racism factor in. Granted. The best choice with these options was by far and away to vote Clinton (which I did, and I didn’t have to overcome any animus to do it!), and people deffo screwed the pooch on that one. But I think all of this pointing of fingers at every other imaginable factor is, at the end of the day, weak. Clinton lost.

It’s not that I am not interested in all of these other factors. I am. It’s just fun to watch Clinton-pologists squirm as they wriggle to defend her as a strong candidate who was robbed of her rightful win. No, she is the much lesser of two evils whom I wished had won if only to save us from the shitstorm we find ourselves in now.

American politics are truly a clusterfuck. We are now at the whim of the donor class. It’s just that one part of it is much, much worse than the others. The DNC is part of the same overall plutocratic establishment. Obama was their darling too. My guess is that a lot of people are well sick of it. But I am sure that’s in my imagination. If they think they are sick of it, they’re probably secret racists, or really deep down inside hate Hillary. God forbid that they gave up on the farce of American democracy because then they might be taken seriously. And we can’t have that.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_moksha
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Re: Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

Post by _moksha »

I am miffed at the Democrats for offering such a flawed candidate and even more miffed at the Republicans for offering a narcissistic, bombastic, dishonest and tragically flawed candidate.
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_subgenius
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Re: Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

Post by _subgenius »

moksha wrote:I am miffed at the Democrats for offering such a flawed candidate and even more miffed at the Republicans for offering a narcissistic, bombastic, dishonest and tragically flawed candidate.

Ours is a representative system, by the way.
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_Kishkumen
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Re: Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

Post by _Kishkumen »

subgenius wrote:Ours is a representative system, by the way.


Yeah, representative of the top one-tenth of one percent.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_grindael
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Re: Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

Post by _grindael »

Clinton took her shot and she lost. Of course the Republicans cheat and they always have, but the Dems have no one to blame but themselves. Clinton just doesn't matter anymore, the Dems have moved on. Trump is finished, he will not get re-elected, the Dems are going to take back both the House and Senate. Remember Watergate and that Nixon resigned in the summer of the second year of his second term. Trump will be out by then, or soon after. Pence will be a lame duck and so the Republicans will then come up with more ways to cheat to try and win it back in 2020. And Pence's hands are not clean, he will come under investigation also. What Trump did was galvanize all those who just didn't care about voting. Russia is taking advantage of what they have on Trump and he's cornered now, and soon, they will lose patience and expose him. More and more, as Putin gets more bold, Trump will have to do things against Russia to not look like the blatant Manchurian Candidate that he is. Things are just beginning to heat up, and look for Trump to wag the dog soon in a desperate act to try and save himself. It's going to get ugly, very ugly.
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