Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Don’t Take My Vote for Granted Next Time

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“(Elizabeth Warren) said that when Perez won the party post early this year, ‘the very first conversation I had with him [was] to say, you have got to put together a Democratic Party in which everybody can have confidence that the party is working for Democrats, rather than Democrats are working for the party.’” – quoted by Nick Visser, HuffPost

Well, we have a mess here and that’s for sure. The question is: How do we fix it?

Look, I voted for Hillary Clinton because I felt I had no choice last November. Our only other option was Trump. And. Yeah. Don’t even get me started on THAT one. There was a lot of pressure put on progressives by the Democratic party to vote for Clinton. We were guilted. Those, like myself, who had been Bernie supporters were especially guilted. In fact, some people STILL blame Bernie’s supporters for this mess – which is kind of like blaming the victim of a purse snatching for having a purse.

It’s been bandied around a lot that Clinton lost because she was a woman. But no, I wasn’t reluctant to vote for her because she’s a woman. I would have eagerly voted for Elizabeth Warren, for instance.  I was reluctant to vote for her because I didn’t think the Democratic candidate, or those who counseled her, recognized the need to get out and talk to the disenfranchised, homeless, poor, and unemployed. There was the same old emphasis on getting campaign money from the rich and powerful and sort of ignoring everyone else. This is not to say that I thought the Democratic candidate didn’t care about the poor, but that she seemed sort of oblivious to them, you know?

People have suggested that Bernie Sanders shouldn’t have tried to run as a Democrat because he’d never really been a part of the party machine – he hadn’t “paid his dues” to the party like Clinton had, I guess – and it’s been suggested that he should have run as a third party candidate. But if Sanders had run as a third party candidate he would have split the progressive vote – and how would that have helped our country? So 1) Sanders couldn’t run as a Democrat and expect to get the party’s nomination and 2) he couldn’t run as a third party candidate without splitting the progressive vote. How do we fix this cockamamie system?

Progressives need a presidential candidate in 2020 who can be a voice for the middle and lower classes – someone, like Bernie Sanders, who reaches out to the “common folk” and walks their walk with them.

As I see it, we have to either do an over-haul on the Democratic party which is supposed to be representing us, or we throw it out altogether and create something entirely new. But I’ll tell you this:  In the next election, if the Democratic party refuses to transform itself, it should not take my vote for granted. Guilting me isn’t going to work again.

(Here’s an interesting article from the Huffington Post: Elizabeth Warren Says 2016 Democratic Nomination Rigged for Hillary Clinton. )

A Political Vent (you might want to skip this one)

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I voted for Hillary Clinton in November 2016. Because Trump.

But I wanted Bernie.

Hillary Clinton is telling us now that the lack of respect from Bernie and his supporters “hurt.” But the manner in which the Democratic party (under the leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz) ignored Bernie Sanders, ignored the huge rallies and the enthusiasm of his supporters, “hurts.” Clinton’s narrow-visioned, egocentric take on the presidential election is proof to me that she should never have won the Democratic nomination for President. I wished then, and I wish now, that Clinton would have stepped aside when she saw the wave of enthusiasm that Bernie had behind him. He would have won the presidency and we wouldn’t be dealing with what we’re dealing with now.

I remember thinking “big deal” when Clinton won all those states in the south in her race to win the Democratic nomination. I knew those southern states weren’t going to vote for Clinton in the general election. Winning those southern states meant nothing. I could see that it was the northern states, the Pacific states, the states in the northeast – the blue states – that mattered in the race for the Democratic nomination. The southern states were going to vote Republican in the end. They were not going to vote for Clinton in November.

If Clinton had really had the best interests of the country at heart, rather than her own single-minded, blind, dogged determination to be the first woman President, she would have seen that, too. But she didn’t. The fact that she STILL doesn’t see it is testament to me that she should never have been the nominee for President.

Clinton did a terrible disservice to our nation by not stepping aside and letting Bernie Sanders lead the charge. To feel “hurt” because he didn’t drop out of the race right away has me shaking my head. The presidency of the United States is not some prize to be won by the biggest ego. Neither is it supposed to be a job promotion to whoever gives the most money and time to her (his) political party. The President of the United States is supposed to represent ALL Americans – not just Democrats, not just Republicans, and not just the wealthy and powerful.

And for those of you who are posting a defense of Clinton and telling your readers they aren’t allowed to respond to your post in a negative way: tough bananas. This is still America and I am still allowed to openly disagree with you.

Please can we have a viable candidate in 2020?

 

Today’s Assignment

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Class,

Here’s today’s assignment: Tell me what you most respect about your choice of presidential candidate, what you think are your candidate’s greatest accomplishments (please include specific examples), what you consider your candidate’s greatest strengths and biggest weaknesses, and why you think your candidate would make a good President. Avoid any reference to an opposing candidate (you will lose points if you do this) and personal attacks.

Have fun!

Mrs. Terrell

***

I will be voting for Hillary Clinton this election. Although I went to the Democratic caucus as a Bernie Sanders supporter, and would like to have seen him win the Democratic nomination, I have to admit that Hillary Clinton has won me over in the last month. The morning after the second debate I woke up realizing that I really WANTED to vote for Hillary Clinton. There was something about the way she handled herself during the debate that really impressed me. She was criticized by some for being too unemotional – but it occurred to me that if she’d shown emotion, she would have been criticized for being an “emotional female.” I liked, too, the way she talked to individuals in the audience face-to-face – I liked how she talked to the Muslim woman and addressed her concerns about discrimination.

What I most respect about Hillary Clinton is her commitment to doing what she thinks is the right thing to do – her “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” attitude about the issues that matter to her. She’s been demonized, threatened with bodily harm, lied about, and ridiculed – but none of it seems to phase her. She keeps her eye on the goal and keeps moving forward.

Her greatest accomplishments? As First Lady, her work in helping to bring health care to impoverished children through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program; as a senator from New York , her work to bring aid to the first responders who got sick after 9-11, and to bring $21 billion in federal aid to New York to help it re-build after the attack; and, as Secretary of State, her work in keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran, and in creating avenues for women, globally, to become empowered. Hillary Clinton has admitted she’s better at the “servant” part than the “public” part. She’s more a Clydesdale than a prancing Lipizzaner. She’s one of those people who has worked for years behind the scenes – forging progressive policies, working for children, the poor, and the disenfranchised.

This brings me to what I feel are her greatest strengths and her biggest weaknesses: She’s great at policy-forging, and at behind-the-scenes negotiations. She’s tenacious. When she sees there’s a need, she finds a way to meet it. But this also might tend to make her focus narrowed – I don’t know that she always sees what’s going on in the periphery – I think she was blind-sided, for instance, by the strong support Bernie Sanders amassed during his campaign. I wish she were as much “public” as “servant” – I wish she held rallies in football stadiums à la Bernie, and had the ability to rouse the troops. But if I have to choose between “public” and “servant” – the “servant” part of a politician is more important to me than the “public” part.

I think Hillary Clinton will be a good President. Maybe even a great one. I believe she genuinely cares about people, and wants to help. I believe she wants to leave the world a better place than she found it. I believe she has the intelligence and savvy and heart to do this.

todays-assignment

 

Lincoln and Bush in the Same Lump?!

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The weapons of bigotry, ignorance, envy, fall before an honest heart.
– Mary Baker Eddy

This will maybe tell you something about me. When President Obama got elected the first time and my friends and I were all excited and celebrating, someone – or probably a bunch of someones – said how awesome it was that we had finally elected an African-American to be our president. And – honest to goodness – up until that moment this hadn’t even occurred to me. When I voted for Barack Obama I was just voting for the person I thought was going to make the best POTUS. His race had never entered into any of my political conversations or been any kind of factor for me in deciding that I would like him sitting in the Oval Office.

Just as I don’t believe people should be denied equal rights because of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, non-religion, or sexual orientation – I don’t believe we should vote someone into the presidency just BECAUSE of her or his race, ethnicity, gender, religion, non-religion, or sexual orientation. There is too much at stake to focus on a person’s color or gender as a deciding factor in a presidential election.

So when I came across this while internet surfing, I was… well, “dismayed” might be the right word…

old bald white guys

emoji art by Laura Olin

To lump all “white guys” into one big monolithic group doesn’t feel right to me. To put Abraham Lincoln in the same lump as, say, George W. Bush, is… well, it’s a little appalling, isn’t it? To paint FDR with the same brush as Herbert Hoover just because they both happened to be males is, I believe, a kind of bigotry.

If we’re going to vote for a woman for President, it would be awfully nice if we did it for the right reasons rather than just because she happens to have two x chromosomes. To vote for a woman just because she happens to be a female seems… well, in a roundabout way it’s disrespectful to the female candidate.

Okay. That’s all I have to say about this, I guess.

Carry on then…