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Andrew Sullivan has a few choice words about Hillary
Clinton. By his lights her Hillaryness gave the election to Donald Trump. The
point is worth consideration. One wonders whether Sullivan would agree that the
splendid ineptitude of John McCain gave the presidency to one Barack Hussein
Obama.
About Hillary, Sullivan has this to say:
“But …
but … but …” her deluded fans insist, “she won the popular vote!” But that’s
precisely my point. Any candidate who can win the popular vote by nearly 3
million votes and still manage to lose the Electoral College by 304 to 227 is
so profoundly incompetent, so miserably useless as a politician, she should be
drummed out of the party under a welter of derision. … She couldn’t even find a
halfway-decent speechwriter for her convention speech. The week before the
election, she was campaigning in Arizona, for Pete’s sake. And she took off
chunks of the summer, fundraising (at one point, in the swing states of Fire
Island and Provincetown). Whenever she gave a speech, you could hear the air
sucking out of the room minutes after she started. In the middle of an election
campaign, she dismissed half of the Republican voters as “deplorable.” She lost
Wisconsin, which she didn’t visit once. I could go on.
8 comments:
I'd say he got Hillary right. Sarah Palin, not even close.
The hubris of Hillary...and the Clintons...and Democrats. And when she did show up she sucked the air out of the room.
Her popular vote is disregarded, those votes came from high population, highly Liberal area's. Every vote should count, but I think many of us disregard those votes. They don't vote by thoughtful conviction, they vote by feelings and lofty ideals. Their votes cannot be expected to be after critical thought or any differently, there's no contest there. Would anything have made any difference? The problem is, and was, her..and them.
It does seem like some people are meant to be politicians, and other are not. For her it might be introversion is the central weakness.
Surely Hillary would have run for office herself in her 30s, but she knew she didn't have the sort of charm that natural candidates have, so she redirected her ambitions to her husband for 20 years, and learned all she could.
It wasn't a bad bet, and it could have turned out differently, and maybe worse if she won just in time to be blamed for the 2018 global depression.
It is hard for me to imagine why anyone would aspire to the top and have the confidence to say things like "only I can fix it." It baffles me.
I can imagine being mayor of a small town and fixing potholes. I can imagine why that might be appealing, where you have some chance actually solving problems within your grasp. A small pond, a big fish, makes good sense to me.
I really think our next constitution (after the second civil war) should say our leader is elected by lot, from a pool of the top 10-20 statemen or women we can find, and the winner will say "Yuck, but it's only 4 years." Or we can have an approval election to allow a second 4 year term if the president is successful in working with congress.
If Clinton had a 69% approval as secretary of State, perhaps she really could have a good presidency, winning from a top 20 stateperson list.
And surely after drama queen President Trump, a calm and collected postmenopausal woman president is going to look very presidential indeed.
People used to call Andrew Sullivan a conservative writer. This never made sense. It stil doesn't. Sullivan is a homosexual activist. He wanted Hillary to win. Fire Island and Provincetown are gay summer hamlets, and Sullivan insinuates campaigning and fundraising with gays is a waste of time as an electoral strategy because the homosexual demographic is a lock for Democrats. Yet he misses the point: Hillary was always in it for the money, and fundraising fueled her machine of inevitability. The media, the pundits, academia, the nonprofits, the war chest... it was all built around this phony, hollow candidate. Yes, gays are a huge donor class for Dems. Gay marriage fired up Dems for a few electoral cycles. Now the issue has faded. They won. Celebrate? Ha! It's onto the next thing. Enter the transgender identity/pity group as the chic aggrieved social class to follow. Activists care about only one thing: the cause. Single-issue identity politics focuses class rage. The Democrats are a big tent of pissed off groups. That spirit, that rage, that focus is who Andrew Sullivan is. He's another intellectual who hates Trump. Trump us the other stuff he writes about. Big deal. It seems all established political writers hate Trump. It's getting old.
John McCain fancies himself a true conservative, in the Teddy Roosevelt tradition. Well, TR was a Progressive. So is McCain in practice, preaching his self-proclaimed sensibility and honor into any microphone he can find. Yet TR would have thought Obama weak, and taken him to task directly. McCain said Rev. Wright's positions were off the table as a campaign issue, erasing a delicious ideological differentiator -- perhaps THE differentiator to shape the perception of the largely-unknown junior Illinois Senator who hadn't even completed a single term. A meteoric candidate with soaring rhetoric and almost no background is a relatively easy one to define. McCain said Obama's mentor was off-limits. This neglect spelled certain doom for his campaign. McCain let Obame win big, which set up ObamaCare. McCain was just as lousy a candidate as Hillary. "Splendid ineptitude" is an excellent characterization. But it was his turn. This time, it was hers. Despite how vulnerable she was. She could've been beat by a looney socialist Senator from Vermont. Sanders made a mistake similar to McCain's: Sanders didn't go at his opponent hard enough early in the campaign. He wanted to be an honorable, sensible team player for the Democrat cause. It cost him a clear path to the nomination. And then his supporters shunned her.
Hillary talks about "deplorables." McCain calls these same citizens "crazies." Yet the "deplorables" aren't part of Hillary's base. They are a part of McCain's Republican base. McCain doesn't care about Republican fortunes. Despite all his rhetoric, McCain isn't a loyal, steadfast party man like the Democrats have and enforce within their own ranks. John McCain loves John McCain. Making fun of your base voters is stupid politics, unless you really aren't a Reublican except in name only. The media loves every bit of it. That's why McCain is their darling, until he runs for president as (Oh no!) a Republican. He's a tool, and their flattery is an efficient ransom.
Hillary and McCain embody the UniParty Establishment. The whole thing. We dodged a bullet.
Ares Olympus failed to learn critical reading and research skills during his time in school.
Ares Olympus believes his own BS while criticizing others for believing theirs.
The Ares Olympus way of compromise is others agreeing with his brilliance. Makes him the same as every other liberal.
Anonymous said... The Ares Olympus way of compromise is others agreeing with his brilliance.
I'm quite sure I never asked anyone to agree with me. Outside of direct experience, it's provisional BS all the way down.
Ares Olympus pontificates about lots of topics outside his direct experience.
Gee, I have no idea what Sullivan is talking about: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/09/23/why-aren-t-50-points-ahead-two-odd-videos-featuring-hillary-have-tongues-wagging-ahead-debate.html
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