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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Politicans / Woman in the Whitehouse 2016

Woman in the Whitehouse 2016

“Righteous” Monsters Russiagate Open Thread: No Violin Tiny Enough, Mr. Comey

by Anne Laurie|  June 16, 20188:12 pm| 124 Comments

This post is in: An Unexamined Scandal, Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russiagate, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, Assholes

I respect the DOJ IG office, which is why I urged them to do this review. The conclusions are reasonable, even though I disagree with some. People of good faith can see an unprecedented situation differently. I pray no Director faces it again. Thanks to IG’s people for hard work.

— James Comey (@Comey) June 14, 2018

I’m sure he really, honestly believes he was acting in good faith, there was nothing else he could do, just following orders, ma’am. Small consolation: His reputation seems to be “everything” to Mr. Comey — and history has never been kind to the “just following orders” defense.

You could've listened to your boss, but she was a woman.
You could've respected protocol, but you wanted to punish a woman.
You could've revealed Trump's campaign was under investigation, but he wasn't a woman.
You could've been held accountable, but then again you're not a woman https://t.co/l47MiTCLtL

— Selena Adera?? (@Selena_Adera) June 14, 2018

According to the testimony of the Attorney General in the IG report, nine days before the election she and the FBI Director discussed how a “deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton” by a cadre of senior NY FBI agents “has put us where we are today” w/r/t the Weiner laptop. pic.twitter.com/Owg69kuAlG

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) June 16, 2018

Loretta Lynch: Comey’s boss

Sally Yates: Comey’s other boss

Hillary Clinton: Comey’s likely boss

Someone had a problem working for women. https://t.co/gZJp4I6KEG

— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) June 15, 2018

Comey’s constant, unbending public refusal to acknowledge he made *any professional mistakes of any kind* — let alone learn from them — is both a sight to behold and one of the original causes of the mistakes, a total blind spot for his own personal righteousness. https://t.co/wSj1Y5j1tz

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) June 15, 2018

CNN spent more time covering James Comey's letter about having found some redundant and immaterial emails in October 2016 than the full-time Republican propaganda network. https://t.co/y4O54b12Gf

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) June 16, 2018

That the press headlines out of the IG report aren’t, “Boy howdy, Clinton got screwed” is a pretty good sign how whacked by Trump the current narrative is.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) June 16, 2018

“Righteous” Monsters Russiagate Open Thread: No Violin Tiny Enough, Mr. ComeyPost + Comments (124)

Misogyny, Take Two

by Tom Levenson|  January 5, 20185:16 pm| 117 Comments

This post is in: Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Assholes, Even the "Liberal" New Republic

A side-note on Betty’s post below.  I check in on New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer vertical from time to time, and every now and then old fiend of this blog, Andrew Sullivan, shows up to verbiate at length*.  I don’t usually bother, because past performance is, in this case, a pretty good indicator of future results.  But he promised to tell us why he thinks things are going to get better in 2018, and, I thought, heck, we all need some good cheer, so I opened up the post, and set myself to reading…

And then crashed to a halt, run aground on this ur-Andrewism:

We have a president…installed by his shamelessness, the unique awfulness of Hillary Clinton, and an Electoral College black swan.

That’s where I stopped reading. I just couldn’t go on, so bile-choked by the predictable Sullivan brew of Clinton derangement garnished w. barely obscured misogyny.

To dispose of that sentence’s minor sin first: it’s hard to call Trump’s Electoral College victory a black swan (does he even get the meaning of that term?) when George W. Bush rode the same phenomenon to his own disastrous win just one presidency ago.  This is just laziness, or perhaps rather that sloppiness of argument that has been Andrew’s stock in trade for yonks.

But then, there’s the (I’ll admit, absolutely predictable) major witlessness:  “the unique awfulness of Hillary Clinton.”

For f**ks sake.  I mean, just listen to yourself, meathead.  Hillary Clinton ran a flawed campaign.  So have lots of men.  It wasn’t a wretched one, and she may be, I think, forgiven for not recognizing the hard-to-fathom circumstances she found herself in, in which Trump’s utterly obvious disqualifications did not in fact disqualify him. And, of course, it has to be noted that for any failures in her management of the race, she almost certainly had done well enough to win in even those circumstances, but for Comey’s IED dropping in the last week of the campaign. To Sullivan, all the actual facts and forces of that terrible summer and autumn can be swept under the overarching explanation of Clinton’s awfulness.

I suppose, and perhaps it’s even more likely that the egregious Sullivan is suggesting that Clinton is uniquely awful as a human being.  I don’t know.  Stayed married to the same man for her adult life.  Pursued a career in circumstances where many wouldn’t, and was good at it.  Raised a child who has made it to adult hood w/out diving into trouble, behaving stupidly in front of extraordinary scrutiny, and seems to be basically OK. (Trust me. As the parent of a 17 y.o. about to launch into the world, that seems very, very impressive to this writer).  Acted on her beliefs in and just out of college. Has consistently acted and advocated on behalf of children, especially the most vulnerable.  Managed to retain pretty amazing equilibrium through eight years of her husband’s presidency and relentless attacks on every aspect of her personal and professional life.  Served with distinction and the respect of her colleagues — including Republicans — as a two term senator.  Looks better and better as Secretary of State as we see what happens when, as now, you have someone clearly not up to the job squatting on the 7th floor over at Foggy Bottom.  Offered the American people a detailed and genuinely problem-solving set of policies — and full disclosure on her finances — in the campaign.

Uniquely awful, amirite?

Is she a saint, a flawless avatar of all that is perfectable in humanity?  Not so much, just like all the rest of us staring at the grass from the top down.

We all know what’s going on.  Clinton conducted her run for the presidency last year in the face of all sorts of headwinds, any one of which, had it fallen still, might well have left her and us in the happy alternate time line where she’s running the show.  But of them all, the one that enrages me the most is the fact that overwhelmingly, the media coverage of everything she tried to say, advance, argue was filtered through men who have since been shown to be sexual harassers and abusers.

At the time there were plenty of people, including me and many here, who said, over and over again, that Hillary Clinton’s coverage was obviously, overhelmingly riddled through with simple sexism and its yet more malign sibling, overt misogyny.  That, I think, was perfectly clear — demonstrated — by any attentive reading of the coverage itself.  But now we have the smoking guns, the fact that men at a shockingly sweeping tally of the leading outlets were sexual predating assholes.  I’m going to miss some, because there are so many, but think on the names:  Oreskes at NPR, Thrush at the The New York Times, Lauer on the teevee, Charlie Rose at PBS, Halperin the inexcusable, too many Y chromosomes at Fox to count and so on and on across the entire spectrum of elite American political journalism.

Andrew Sullivan is, of course, on no one’s list of predators of women.  He has a reputation for disdain for any female politician not named Maggie Thatcher, though, and it’s clear that beyond his Clinton derangement, Hillary’s gender was a constant irritant to him.  He reminds again here that one doesn’t have to be an actual sex offender to be a misogynist, and an utterly unreliable narrator of events.

But this we knew.  Who was it I twitted about concision?

*And I mean…LENGTH.  I’d refer our Andrew to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dictum:  “Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated.”  Also, Chekov:  “Brevity is the sister of talent.”

Images:  Nicholas Poussin, Camille delivers the schoolmaster Flavius to his students, c. 1637

Paolo Veronese, Susanna and the Elders, c. 1580.

Misogyny, Take TwoPost + Comments (117)

Late Night Open Thread: What Might’ve Been…

by Anne Laurie|  October 26, 201710:25 pm| 108 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, I'm With Her, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Venality, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Daydream Believers, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

Today is @HillaryClinton's 70th Birthday! pic.twitter.com/WCw2lZ1MhA

— Famous Birthdays (@FamousBirthdays) October 26, 2017


.

I refuse to believe the mess the current Oval Office squatters are making is unrepairable, because Goddess knows we’ve survived worse — from Warren G. Harding to Andrew Johnson.

But if not for a relative handful of traitors in the Republican party, imagine what we could be doing right now…

Late Night Open Thread: What Might’ve Been…Post + Comments (108)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: There Will Be Another Woman to Break the Next Glass Ceiling

by Anne Laurie|  October 7, 20175:22 am| 151 Comments

This post is in: I'm With Her, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Daydream Believers

Watch as women writers for Jimmy Fallon, and guest Miley Cyrus, write thank you notes to Hillary Clinton: pic.twitter.com/3dTmVNNo9A

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 5, 2017

I kept it together until Miley started sniffling. Young women like her are why Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t going away — even though she’ll probably never run for office again.

… Fallon asked if Clinton would have felt differently about losing the election if her opponent had been someone other than Trump.

“I would have. Yeah, I’ve thought about that a lot,” she said. “If I had lost to another Republican — somebody who I disagreed with, but who I thought was temperamentally capable of being president, who would take the job, and the awesome responsibility seriously — of course I’d be disappointed, but I wouldn’t be so worried about my country and the world as I am now.”…

*****
“You may not lose a presidential election, but you may lose somebody close to you. You may lose a job you want,” she continued. “There’s all kinds of challenges in life, and so I want not only individuals — and so many of them as they’re coming to my events are telling me that it has helped them — but I want our country to understand how resilient we are. We are such an extraordinary collection of people, and energy and all sorts of great potential. And I don’t want people to get depressed, and worn out, and tired because they see things they disagree with that are contrary to who we are. There is something for everybody to do.”…

***********

Apart from keeping faith in the #Resistance, what’s on the agenda for the day?

When my father lost, we prayed, hiked, grilled a lot of red meat….and then he went back to work and completely moved on. https://t.co/TtnyVnCHl1

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) October 5, 2017

maybe if your father had "lost" by getting 3M more votes instead of losing by 9M votes the way he did, you would've had different reax https://t.co/qP92jtx9qb

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) October 5, 2017

She's not hiding, and women don't have to shame her for having a voice that inspired over 65 million Americans.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) October 5, 2017

Saturday Morning Open Thread: There Will Be Another Woman to Break the Next Glass CeilingPost + Comments (151)

Monday Morning Open Thread: ROAR

by Anne Laurie|  November 7, 20165:34 am| 193 Comments

This post is in: Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016

I know I’m an easy mark for these ads, but if you’re not tearing up by the :30 mark, you’re a stronger person than I am.

And furthermore, damn the haters, I’m with Chimamanda Adichie, at the Atlantic:

We do not see, often enough, the people who love Hillary Clinton, who support her because of her qualifications rather than because of her unqualified opponent, who empathize with her. Yet millions of Americans, women and men, love her intelligence, her industriousness, her grit; they feel loyal to her, they will vote with enthusiasm for her…

There are people who love how cleanly she slices through policy layers, how thoroughly she digests the small print. They remember that she won two terms to the United States Senate, where she was not only well-regarded but was known to get along with Republicans. They have confidence in her. There are people who rage at the media on her behalf, who see the coverage she too often receives as unfair. There are people who in a quiet, human way wish her well. There are people who, when Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to be president of the United States, will weep from joy.

Hillary Clinton was guilty immediately when she stepped into the view of the American public as the first lady of Arkansas. She was a lawyer full of dreams. She had made sacrifices for the man she loved, waived her plans, and moved to his state. But she also dared to think herself her husband’s equal, to assume herself competent enough to take on expanding access to healthcare and reforming the Arkansas public education system. She was guilty of not being a traditional first lady. She offended the old patriarchal order. The conservative media loathed her…

Because Hillary Clinton is a woman, she is judged too harshly for doing what most politicians do—hedging sometimes, waffling sometimes, evading sometimes. Politicians are ambitious; they have to be. Yet for Hillary Clinton, ambition is often an accusation. She is held responsible for her husband’s personal failings, in the gendered assumption that a wife is somehow an adult and a husband a child.

There are millions of Americans who do not have the self-indulgent expectation that a politician be perfect. They are frustrated that Hillary Clinton is allowed no complexity. And they love her.

***********
Apart from continuing to GOTV, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Monday Morning Open Thread: ROARPost + Comments (193)

Friday Evening Open Thread: I Endorse This Anecdote

by Anne Laurie|  November 4, 20167:48 pm| 266 Comments

This post is in: Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Daydream Believers

The blessing was actually written by John Adams, an excerpt of a letter he wrote to his wife Abigail in 1900.

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 4, 2016

…May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof."

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 4, 2016

We have a unique opportunity to not only elect one of the wisest & most qualified individuals to ever run for the highest office in America,

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 4, 2016

I look forward to living up to Adams's wish, FDR's belief, & the promise we make to our children to leave this place better than we found it

— John Dingell (@JohnDingell) November 4, 2016

Abigail and John Adams have been my favorite Founding Couple since I was tiny. It can be argued that there would not have been an American Revolution without John, and certainly the John Adams we know from history would never have existed without Abigail. Among the many things that make me happy when I think of Hillary Rodham Clinton becoming our first female President is the thought of how very happy Abigail Adams would have been to see it happen — finally!

Apart from happy thoughts, what’s on the agenda as we start the weekend?

Friday Evening Open Thread: I Endorse This AnecdotePost + Comments (266)

Friday Morning Open Thread: Onward & Upwards

by Anne Laurie|  November 4, 20165:26 am| 169 Comments

This post is in: Election 2016, Hillary Clinton 2016, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Woman in the Whitehouse 2016, Daydream Believers

BREAKING:
WOW.
The notoriously reticent Rosalynn Carter is going to be stumping for @HillaryClinton in Georgia.

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) November 3, 2016

Apart from GOTV, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up this busy week?

Clinton leads Trump by 6 points, same as before FBI announcement: Reuters/Ipsos https://t.co/BuVLHZ8lOC

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) November 2, 2016

Speaking of GOTV…

@AlGiordano Want to volunteer? Here's a site (per Sam Wang) that shows local competitive congressional districts https://t.co/tzICd2NPIl

— I'm With Nasty Woman (@HalloweenBlogs) November 3, 2016

some Obama fam built an amazing app to identify people in your contacts who could tip the scale if they vote. ? https://t.co/YEOgTiwJ3p pic.twitter.com/SZdOP7H7qd

— laura olin (@lauraolin) November 3, 2016

taking 30 min to call or text the 10 people it identifies for you is an extremely efficient way to make a difference. please check it out.

— laura olin (@lauraolin) November 3, 2016

Friday Morning Open Thread: Onward & UpwardsPost + Comments (169)

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