Why do people hate Hillary? - Page 2

You've obviously never lived in the South or Midwest.

FC, with all due respect since you know way more about this than I do, but in the end, Clinton has a record a mile long, with be attacked for the same old &%$* every step of the way and is not "likeable" enough nor charismatic enough for those attacks to bounce off of her the way they will need to. The electorate is a lot like the &^%$ Academy in that they often vote for people they "rilly rilly like" rather than the person who is best for the job. Sexist though it may be, Clinton defending herself would be perceived in a negative light because our society doesn't seem to like its women smart and scrappy. She can do much more good for this country in the senate, sez I (with no real learnedness nor credential for same).

Obama on the other hand does not dignify attacks and has the charisma to make people around him stick up for him. He appears to have already divulged any kind of dirt they could dig up on him and he does not have a long record that can be picked apart. He is the kind of candidate that could inspire people who have never voted before to get out and register, and that could neutralize the segment of the population that would prejudge him based on his age or heritage.

Most of this will be moot, of course, if they don't get the voting machines under control.

Double post (Overeagers Anonymous)

Yeah, what Slater said.

If you have a Clinton/Obama ticket, who's going to bring in the red states?

Well, that guy who was on Colbert the other day argued that the Dems don't need the South anymore.

The South needs the Dems, though. Desperately.

Maybe an election can be won without the red states, but not even giving yourself a chance at the South or Midwest is just not a winning strategy.

Pretending to be a republican is not a winning strategy either. It just seems like one. But it isn't. As soon as they drag out the old standbys -- gay marriage, abortion -- nothing else matters. I see the red states as a place where those motivated enough to vote vote red but that doesn't mean that everyone who lives there is red. I believe Obama can win because he's not the same old face that non-voters are used to seeing and dismissing. How can you be motivated to vote if they're all the same basic person? (answer to those who vote regularly: the lesser of two evils).

The thing is Americans are just as racist as they've always been, (At least in my part of the country) only now it's gone below the surface, thus is why Obama won't get elected to anything because most people are afraid and will stick by their mantra of "I won't vote for no nigger."

Hillary is a weird case. The hatred of her is irrational, yet I find her creepy too. Although she's been pissing the right people off so I may vote for her on that alone.

Look, I'm just another guy with an opinion, but I don't buy it. I think America wants a female president, just as it wants a black president. As Margaret Thatcher said, "America will elect a woman president when a suitable candidate runs for the office."

Gender and race are plusses for two reasons that'll help garner Republican votes: Clinton can sell her gender as a way for cultural conservatives to stick their thumbs in the eye of the Muslim world, and Obama can sell his race as a way for free-market conservatives to reinforce their belief in the American meritocracy.

I'm not saying that a Clinton/Obama ticket will sweep the country, but I think that it'd have enough juice to win. The real question is, who can the Republicans run who might beat them?

I think the problem is that, when it comes to women's issues, cultural conservatives are the closest thing we have in this country to Muslim fundamentalists (I realize the actual levels of oppression practiced are quite different, but the sentiment is still essentially "women are babymaking machines who should be in the home"). People tend to be myopic on social issues - they don't care what France thinks about our welfare policy or what Pakistan thinks about our abortion issues. I doubt that most social conservatives would view Hillary's gender as a poke at Muslim beliefs, but rather as a danger to the American and Christian status quo.

I agree that Obama might have some sort of appeal to idealistic free-market conservatives, as you mentioned, but, in my experience, the free-market conservative kneejerk reaction to any Democrat almost always manifests in a paralyzing fear of taxation. I think that (and subconcsious racism) might override any goodwill they might otherwise feel towards Obama on principle.

McCain. Conservatives like him, and there are still plenty of Democrats who (wrongly) continue to view him as a moderate who doesn't toe the party line and is willing to collaborate with the left. And he represents the status quo, something you can't underestimate when it comes to American politics. We say we want change, but the overly cautious middle always keeps that change from being too dramatic.

The problem with both Clinton and McCain (apart from my own personal feelings on both their political views) is that it'd be very easy for either of them to get slaughtered in a debate. Both have dubious and reputation damaging backgrounds--Clinton with her shrewd tactic of saying whatever's popular at a the moment regardless of what it is, McCain with his irreconcilable vote to legalize torture becuse his party said he better--that it wouldn't take much to devolve the election into yet another slugfest, and I think that'd just frustrate and divide the country even more. After eight years of drawing a chalk line and telling the other half not to come into their half of the room, this country needs someone who can appeal to everyone and unify the nation again. And in all honesty Obama's shaping up to be the one to do it. My problem isn't because she's a woman, it's because I trust her about as far as I could throw her. Everything she says sounds like the exact same way Bush says things--she doesn't say anything that hasn't been written, re-written, approved and focus studied to get maximum appeal, but she's only going to keep the act up as long as she's trying to get votes. She feels fake.

I have no illusions we're all going to suddenly join hands and sing Kum-by-ya--Coulter's still going to get air time shilling her next piece of hateful trash, O'Rielly's still going to be a pompous, ignorant scumbag and if drugs won't kill Rush Limbaugh no one will. But it'd be nice, for once, to see a campaign where the person running is more interested in speaking to the people than the people's votes.

You make good points here, Dave. Neither Clinton nor Obama, however, need to win all of these people to carry the general election. They just need to peel off enough to capture the middle and squeak to victory.

To some degree, this is a function of the sentiment we've seen in the last election. The cultural conservatives finally have to trim their sails, and we're starting to see some of the less-committed members of that camp look around and wonder if they've been hoodwinked. The free market conservatives may fear taxation, but love the Horatio Alger story even more - and Obama appears to personify that story.

Sure, there are sexist and racist elements to this ticket and to this argument, but I still think that those elements will work to the tickets' benefit. Regardless of what people really believe, they want to believe in the idea of an America in which anyone can make it (reasons why, btw, Republicans love Rice and Powell) - a Clinton/Obama ticket could serve as an example of that.

McCain's still my guy, as I'm willing to forgive him for realizing that if he wants to dance on the main stage, he has to learn the steps. I think his moment has passed, however, and I think he'd be steamrollered by a C/O combo.

I liked McCain until the whole torture thing. If he can't stand his ground on that particular issue, when it's had such a personal effect on him, then I can't trust the guy to not sell out. the whole reaon i liked McCain was here was a guy who really truly believed in what he was doing, that he was about more than tossing chips on the table. The torture debate closed that door for me.

I'm voting for John Edwards in the primary, provided he makes it that far. But if the Democratic Party ends up doing a Clinton/Obama, I'll support it.

That may be true, but surely the people who think like that would be outnumbered by those who would vote for a black person, because he is black. Street-blocking tactics aside, of course.

I think you underestimate the amount of Southern and Midwestern states out there. Theres like 40 of them.

McCain always comes off like a stuttering weenie in person, despite his hardcore military background. Possibly because he has a conscience telling him how badly he's sold out.

For that reason I think Obama or even Hillary would flatten him in a debate.

I'm hoping you're overestimating the amount of racists there are out there.

The Republicans have won the last two presidential elections without California, New York, and Illinois. Those 107 electoral votes are a lot to concede right off the bat. Not counting Virginia and Florida, where the Dems are always competitive, the Dems concede 113 electoral votes in the South (that includes Texas and its 34 votes). So, it's roughly even. The Dems don't need the South if they can pick up a couple of states in the Midwest and West. Hell, Clinton-Gore won twice without picking up either of their Southern home states. Honestly, 2008 could very well come down to Florida and Ohio again. A few thousand votes going the other way in Ohio in 2004 and the Democrats would have won without a single electoral vote from the South.

I hope so too. But another thing you have to understand about racism is that it's not just the people who will flat out say "I won't vote for no nigger," there are 5 more who won't say it, but won't ever give their vote to a black candidate either.

Also, sure Obama will get some votes just because he's black, but how many of those votes weren't going to go to the Democratic candidate in any case?

Well, you would hope that Obama's candidacy would get new black or minority voters out to the polls. Maybe even enough to overcome those on the left or in the middle who would never vote for a black candidate (with those on the right more likely to vote Republican).

Obama/Edwards would be a ticket much more to my liking, and I think would draw better across party lines.

Is it a bad sign for Hillary that a thread about her candidacy on a message board with mostly left-leaning posters quickly changed to a discussion of Gore and Obama?

They'd probably just get gangbanged as "inexperienced newbies" by the Republican media machine and despite the party being knee deep right now, they're still pretty good at that sort of thing - the best, actually.

By the way, to what degree do "People who are sufficiently racist not to vote for Obama just because he's black" and "people who bother to vote" overlap? Possibly not that much.

Well, didn't the race card play a role in Harold Ford's defeat in the Tennessee Senate race last fall?

Again, more than those who have not spent much time in the South or Midwest generally think. People (not many, anyway) aren't going to come out to against Obama, but this isn't about card-carrying Klan members. It's about people finding whatever flimsy excuse they can to vote for the safe and familiar. And that's a more powerful impulse than many here realize, imo.

To counteract this, Obama needs to attract some first-time voters, most likely from the younger and browner segments of the population. But I think in those red states he's going to be that motherfucker trying to ice skate uphill.

One element that isn't being discussed much here is the degree to which the country simply wants to vote against the Republicans, as they did in the mid-terms. It's possible that that sentiment will have passed by the presidentials, but the way Bush is going, it could still be alive and well by 2008.

The thing is, if there is still a strong feeling from the public that they simply want to continue punishing the Republican party, this might be the perfect time to run a female/black ticket. After all, the Democrats won the mid-terms with no real expressed vision or unified strategy, simply by virtue of not having been the party that fucked up the country. If residual anger at the Bush administration is stronger than institutional racism/misogyny, then there'll never be a better time.

Also the fact that the guy was Republican-lite so people didn't see too much of a reason to switch from the real thing.

Hmm... although that was also the case in states like Montana and Virginia that we won.

Isn't Florida a southern state?

The country is so sick of Bush and his stubborn attitude towards Iraq and his fucking up of everything else, Oj Simpson and that creep who claimed to have killed Jon Bennet Ramsey could run as a ticket and win just fine.

The more I think about it, the more I'm ok with Hillary winning. Imagine the Rush Limbags, O'Reilly's and the Coulters. They will first weep, then masturbate, then salivate at the thought of ripping on another Clinton for the next four years. And the country will be better for it because they all will be officially declared insane douchebags.

Yes, but it's one where the Democrats have been historically competitive. When people are talking about the Democrats conceding the South, I think Florida is an exception.

Yeah, but that's what I thought in 2004.

Bush's approval rating in 2004 wasn't stellar, but it was still strong and he was still keeping all the plates spinning so people didn't know which side was up when it came to the truth about the Iraq war--which, at the time, was only year old. Also, the body count hadn't broken 1,000 dead. Add in the conviently timed capture of Saddam and you've got a majority of America who still thought we were fighting Al Qadea in Iraq, and we thwarted some master plan to plague us with WMDs.

Now more Americans have died in Iraq than on 9/11. The average joe has woken up to the fact that the administration has screwed up their forgien policy, and over 70% of the nation is aginst sending more troops. The pendelumn of public opinion has swayed to the other side of the pit, now the Dems just need the perfect candidate to close the deal.

Are you kidding? Look how many conservative and swing voters were driven to the polls in the last election by something as trivial as gay marriage. Never underestimate the power of bigotry.

Well, it was only by supreme incompetence that the Democrats managed to lose in 2004, so I wouldn't put it past them to fumble on the one yard line again. There's no telling whether the current momentum will hold up until November '08. As you said, they need the perfect candidate to win. Hillary isn't it.

... aided by the GOP's friends at Diebold.



"someone has made a copy of the key which opens ALL Diebold e-voting machines from a picture on the company's own website. The working keys were confirmed by Princeton scientists, the same people who discovered that a simple virus hack on the Diebold machines could steal an election."

Link: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/25...ing_machi.html

Homophobia is still sanctioned in some places, though. Particularly by the church. Racism isn't. People don't stand up and proudly vote against black people the way they do against gay marriage.

I'm sure Obama's race is a factor, don't get me wrong. But surely the people for whom the election's going to boil down to "white guy vs. black guy" aren't big on voting.

Again, I hate to be relentlessly negative here but what it boils down to a majority of the time is that the people who proudly vote against gay marriage will be quietly voting against the black guy.

If we're talking about Ohio here it shouldn't even have come down to that.

I think you're really underestimating the degree of lingering racism that exists even today. Thank god Crash showed us the error of our ways.

The midwest holds all of the country's dirty little secrets. The biggest two are, it hates strong, powerful women and black people. The thought of either one being elected President is scary to some.

Actually, did you watch the actually CNN report?

I watched it last night, and it reeked of satire. I don't think any of those statements were meant seriously. I think he was taking a jab at Fox News for harping on Obama's names.

Watch it on Youtube and see if it changes your mind.

I'm starting to feel bad for Hillary, this photo just says it all:



Yesterday there was a news item about Obama proposing Universal Healthcare, that was the headline, and the last 3rd of the article pretty much said "oh btw hillary proposes one too". Her campaign just seems to react to Obama so far, and on this issue, you'd think she'd "own" it.

The picture is fifty kinds of awesome.

There may be some crossover, but I don't think this is quite true.

Consider this: Initially, a lot of folks projected that Wisconsin might not pass the anti-gay marriage bill on the strength of Dane County (a liberal and pro-gay rights stronghold due to UW-Madison) and Milwaukee County (the most densely populated county that generally skews liberal). As it turns out, the amendment won the vote in Milwaukee County, though, and, if you look at the percentages, black voters played a pretty decisive role in that.

There's a fair share of anti-gay sentiment in certain sectors of minority communities, due to religion and other factors. I don't know if the anti-gay sentiment is necessarily any worse than it is in the white community, overall, but it's certainly evidence against a universal direct corralation between being anti-gay and anti-black. And, for the record, even among whites, I think there are a lot more homophobes than the type* of racist who would deliberately vote against Obama based on race.

* The distinction is that, while certain white people may have an irrational racial distrust of that black guy who got on at the last bus stop, these same people would trust Oprah (or, perhaps, Obama) with their life.

Well, if BoingBoing reader Sejin says it...

As for the Hillary-Obama contest, the media is absolutely in love with Obama right now. But a recent Time Magazine Poll gave Hillary a 19 point lead over Obama among registered Democrats.

See, my whole point has been that it's not just those who will deliberately vote against Obama based on race. There's a whole other swath of the (white) population that won't admit, either to others or themselves, that their vote is influenced by race, but will find some excuse to stay within their comfort zone.

Well, it is like 20 months before the elections, and Obama's not even officially running yet. So the fact that he's only got 19 points to close speaks pretty well of his chances.