| Topic List | Page List: 1 |
|---|---|
| Topic | Hillary Clinton doesn't get it, great Article by Sarah Jones. |
| Paper_Okami 09/13/17 1:34:16 PM #2: | She treats her party’s broader left wing similarly. Clinton dedicates an entire section of the book to “Idealism and Realism.” In it, she tries to set herself up as the wise, canny politician to Sanders’s street-preaching fool, a contrast she uses to indict progressives who have clashed with her. When Black Lives Matter activists interrupt a campaign event with criticisms of her husband’s infamous 1994 crime bill, she meets with them—and concludes they just don’t understand what they’re talking about. They “didn’t want to talk about developing a policy agenda,” she complains. “One was singularly focused on getting me to accept personal responsibility for having supported policies, especially the crime bill that my husband signed in 1994, which he claimed created a culture of mass incarceration.” That characterization, she insists, is “oversimplified beyond recognition.” She adds, “Unfortunately, the only way to pass the law was to also include measures that congressional Republicans demanded.” She makes similar excuses for her husband’s welfare reform bill, which deepened extreme poverty in the United States and perpetuated the Republican notion of an undeserving poor. “Finding the right balance between principle and pragmatism can be hard,” she explains. “Bill and I both believed that change was needed to help more people get the tools and support to transition from welfare to work, including assistance with health care and child care. But Republicans in Congress were determined to rip up the social safety net.” Don’t worry, though. The Clintons “lay awake at night, talking it over.” She goes on. “Bernie Sanders attacked me for raising money from people who worked in finance,” she later complains. She also accuses Sanders of violating a pledge to avoid personal attacks: “Bernie routinely portrayed me as a corrupt corporatist who couldn’t be trusted.” If attacks on the political establishment’s ties to Wall Street are out of bounds, then Clinton may need to change her definition of “progressive.” This was an election conducted in the midst of a populist swell, with the country still feeling the effects of a catastrophic recession that had been caused by the insane greed of financiers. Would it be unreasonable to ask that Clinton actually reckon with Sanders’s accusations? But Hillary Clinton must have her scapegoat. Bernie Sanders did this, Bernie Sanders did that. Above all, Bernie Sanders had the audacity to be mad about American inequality. All of this is exacerbated by the book’s proud one percent vibe. Long before she gets to the crime bill, she informs us that her campaign once partied in the Hamptons with Jimmy Buffet because “sometimes we just needed to have fun.” (Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney reportedly “danced under the stars.”) She describes her “glam squad” in detail, well before before she tries to explain how she allowed Trump to destroy the Democratic firewall in the Midwest. She doesn’t mention the unpaid prison labor that kept her and Bill “well fed and taken care of” during their time in the Arkansas governor’s mansion, but she does tell us that Anna Wintour recommended her make-up artist. --- "Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism"- Emma Goldman "Wimmy Wham Wham Wozzle!" -Slurms MacKenzie ... Copied to Clipboard! |
| Topic List | Page List: 1 |