Sen. Clinton dodges question on gays, immorality

She's such a putz. I'm really lost as to why she is the favorite for the democratic nomination.

Answering the question in such an obviously-dodgy manner isn't going to help her with either side.

She's such a disappointment.

I expect that answer from a Republican like Rudy who is socially liberal but wants to try and dodge the religous right. What is she thinking?

I have to think it will be Obama and Edwards fighting it out because Clinton seems to be playing for the general election with these answers. She knows no Dem will vote for the Republican winner but wants to play to the conservative Repubs.

I'm sure there will be a response clarifying her statement shortly.

I don't know why I keep expecting better from her.

Obama wouldn't say it either, although he didn't make such an obvious dodge as Hillary.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/14/23550/0327

All she had to say was something like "It's immoral to hate." I know there's no way any presidential candidate will be able to answer this directly. But it's still bullshit.

We're still a long way from a presidential candidate saying, "No, it's not immoral. What, you want my permission? Go balls deep."

Christ, I hope she doesn't get the nomination. Stupid fucking soccer moms

A year from now, when people are looking back and asking how she slid from front-runner status to also-ran to whomever has at that point secured the D's nomination, we can point to this as the moment when she started to fall.

How fucking lame was that answer? Jesus.

Hillary epitomizes the problem I have with 95% of politicians. Everything she says comes across as yet another transparent attempt to woo voters. This refusal to take a firm stance on an issue (aside from those with which the public sentiment has already been gauged) is one key reason Kerry lost.

Some voters just aren't worth courting, especially if it means compromising basic principals. No matter how Hillary attempts to present herself, I can't imagine her ever winning the fundamentalist vote. And the more she tries catering to such groups, the less appealing she is to her base. Disappointing is right.

Again she does this tightrope act and again she does it without any kind of grace or form; that quote makes John Kerry look like Marvin Gaye.

I don't get the outrage. Her husband did politics the same way. He just happened to veil his wishy-washy comments with southern charm. She needs a lesson in tact.

That was the 90s. Now, I think people want more direct answers, and can smell when they're being bullshitted. Especially after Iraq, Katrina, Walter Reed, etc. Or I may be too optimistic.

Southern charm goes a long way. For the record, I don't hate Hillary. I hate the way she downplays or represses the very values that would make her a compelling candidate in order to curry favor with a group of people that will never endorse her.

It's not a politician's job to mandate morality, so it's a stupid question to begin with. It's as relevant as asking her if she likes ketchup.

If Hillary hadn't already lost my vote from murdering Vince Foster, she definitely would have lost it now.

True enough but, right or wrong, policy is influenced by questions shaded in morality. For example, the "issue" of gay marriage versus civil unions versus no recognition versus outright persecution. If you believe that gay couples should be afforded the same legal rights as straight couples, you would do well to know if your candidate is going to pursue homophobic policies.

Hillary Clinton is... POLITIBOT 5000!

Update:

From Senator Clinton

The only people who actually seem to want Hillary to run for president all seem to live in my TV - which makes me very, very skeptical. In the real world, most liberals rightfully don't trust her in the slightest (never mind what you see or hear on TV), and conservatives have been conditioned to despise her since the '90s, never mind that she's among the more conservative Democratic candidates. Media companies know she'll be their willing puppet, and there will be no ownership restrictions on her watch. Fuck the Clintons. Fuck the Bushes. Two party rule sucks. Two FAMILY rule sucks a whole lot more. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton? Fuck ten truckloads of that. Include Pappy Bush's influential years as Reagan's VP and you get almost THIRTY YEARS of either a Bush or Clinton in either the highest or second-highest office in America - and that's not even counting if, God forbid, Hillary actually runs and becomes President, in which case it becomes MORE than thirty years. It's disgusting and disgraceful, and the Founding Fathers would mourn the ignoble end of their little experiment if they could see us now.

Let's translate..."The polls appear to say that my base is unhappy with my evading of the question, so rather than making a statement on national TV that can get repeated in commercials against me, I'm just going to make a statement in the press which will be ignored by 80% of Americans."

But they shouldn't be. One can personally believe that some issue is immoral, but in terms of policy, a public servant should endorse legislation that is in the best interest for everyone. At the very least, s/he can abstain from voting on legislation that s/he doesn't personally endorse. But to aggressively pursue legislation that targets a sub-group(s) of the population they were elected to protect based on personal beliefs is just wrong. Of course, this isn't what most politicians do, so our "democracy" is for shit.

Yeah, I read this as, "BEEP BOP BOOP BEEP, FORMULATING RESPONSE, BEEP BOP BOOP BEEP."

Oh man, I don't want to excuse it and to even defend Hillary ... but c'mon, to win the general election she has to be careful on issues like this. Anybody who doesn't recognize that doesn't understand the political situation in the US at all.

That's bullshit. Conservatives came to power in the last decade by making such statements. By saying shit like 'I think homosexuality is immoral' they connected with people. The game you play by trying to placate everyone only serves to separate you from your base and provide a talking point to your opponents to focus on that you waver in your beliefs.

Especially in this coming election, being forthright is going to gain politicians favor among people who actually vote. Dancing around issues is exactly why the Dems have failed in recent times. They were only able to gain power in Congress this year by not talking around the war, but coming out and being strong about it. People follow leaders with convictions.

I disagree with you on a couple of points in here... just a couple. I don't know of anyone even in my TV that wants her to be elected. If you parse the news, you will see that the majority of stories on television are about how she is slipping in the polls, is that a good strategy she's using, is she throwing her weight around too much, etc. When 40 something percent of Democrats say they support her in the primary, I think that might just be the percentage of Democrats that are actually working on her campaign staff. Seriously? Her campaign is huge.

And H Dub was no more influential as a VP than any other up to Cheney.

She's definitely not running as smart a campaign as I thought she would.

The reality is that there is less risk if she doesn't have to face this issue and is even vague about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societa..._United_States

Majority in the US still thinks it's immoral behavior, more importantly older people are the bulk of it ... and they are the ones that vote.

Now she could have probably handled it better of course, I'm just pointing out the obvious, it's a tricky spot for them because of the general election.

It doesn't matter. Fact is, people's views will change when prominent people take a stand on the matter. When a leader of name comes out and says "of course it's not immoral. It's not even a question", people will begin to rethink. Currently, when their leaders say anything, it's an endorsement of homophobia, and so it's easy for the public to follow.

People's views will change, and leaders do influence that (to what extent that is debatable in this case).

She's not trying to change anybody's views though, just gain enough votes to be president.

Now the cold calculation here is, in this issue can she gain or lose votes. And for her, she can only lose votes. She won't gain any for the general election (maybe not even for the primaries) by coming out strongly for gay rights.

For Republicans, they seem to gain when they come out against it. In both their primaries and in general elections.

So it's a simple equation, and not hard to see why she stumbled on this. And why she then clarifies via a weaker less public statement. It's not the ideal thing, but it's not as stupid as some of you are making it sound to be.

You're making that calculation up. There are people who are on the fence who would slide toward her side if she actually took a strong stand on something like this. Believe it or not, there are voters out there waiting for someone who 1) isn't afraid to be honest and 2) is willing to put their necks out for minority groups.

You're telling Dems to keep playing the game the same way they have been playing (and losing terribly) for the last decade.

I hope you are right, but it doesn't seem like it to me. It also seems like she's made up that calculation up herself too, including Obama.

I would think this is "maybe" true for the Democratic primary, for the general election, I don't think it's been shown statistically that you can gain more votes with this stance. Again, I'd love to be proved wrong to be quite honest.

I'm not telling Dems to do anything, I actually don't have any interest in Hillary winning ... specially not in the Democratic primaries. I just think there's a discussion to be had about what the "politically smart" move is here, not necessarily the right one (or moral one).

I know it was some time ago, but it should be noted what the last successful Dem president's stance on this issue was while in office.

In the past, no one has taken a stance. That's the point. Someone NEEDS to have the balls and conviction to make one.

And of course Hillary and Obama have also decided this is the best thing to do, but let's not pretend that the Dems have the smartest guys in the room when it comes to winning national elections. The fact that they're doing it means only that they're not learning from past mistakes.

There was a good deal of negative press rising from this. If they had been strong against it, they could have rode it to a strong position. They're pissing away a great opportunity.

Actually Bill Clinton took a stance on this issue, one that was based on political calculations whether one likes it or not (Don't ask don't tell). Do you really think that's what he really believed in?

Agreed on the "smartest guys" comment. I made that point because you said I was making it up, I'm not really making this up. I'm ready to accept that maybe I'm being too cynical or underestimating the general voting public, but that's the impression I have and seem to share with some of these politicians.

That's not a stand, it's just more hedging. If he had been strong one way or the other he would have been a lot better off.

He won the election, he promised to allow citizens of any sexual orientation to serve during the campaign. When he became president, he had to compromise and came up with that policy. He won the election, so I'm sure his definition of "better off" in that context is different than yours.

Having said that, does anybody know if his original promise was done during the primaries or during the general election campaign?

All votes are created equal. In a liberal democracy, political parties will always move towards in the middle in an attempt to secure more votes. In a two party system, this behaviour is pronounced.

That said, Obama's history seems to indicate a strong core of beliefs that he has consistently returned to, regardless of what he says come election time. Obama really seems to care about health care and social services for low-income individuals and families. Hillary has been playing the political game for so long she's forgotten its a means and not an end.

So campaigning in support of gay rights can be a positive thing. That proves my original point.

It's the same damn thing the Republicans do to their base... "Shh... we won't talk about God and stuff, but know we got your back and we'll make the gays pay." Instead, it's "Shh... we love the gay! Just let us win this and we'll prove it!"

Except lately, the Republicans are more overt, and good for them, honestly. It's high time the Dems make the line clearer.

Obama seems to be learning

[QUOTE=Graynadian]All votes are created equal. In a liberal democracy, political parties will always move towards in the middle in an attempt to secure more votes. In a two party system, this behaviour is pronounced.
QUOTE]

You're absolutely right that no potential vote should go undervalued. I was just trying to note that candidates will often alienate members of their own base by stretching too far from their core beliefs. In a worse case scenario, the historic base erodes while the candidate still fails to pick-up new support.

[quote=Richason] I question if this is of much significance in the general election.

For the primaries, sure. But for the general election, specially how things are in the country politically, "the base" is just not going to vote Republican, they'll vote party line. Maybe the argument is that people could be discouraged from voting? Not on this issue I suspect.

No, they won't. Aren't you the one trying to tell everyone how centrist most of the country is? It doesn't take much, and most voters are looking for someone to follow. Being a waffler pushes people away (or did you miss the 2004 campaign?).

The "base" ... they would vote Republican because their candidate is not strong on gay issues? That is the point I was making ...

I never everybody in the US is a centrist, not sure what you are trying to say there.

Yes, you have tried to say that the majority of the country is centrist (everybody? Did I say that?). No, I'm not going to look it up.

If you're only speaking of the base, yeah many of them will just not vote if they don't care about any of the candidates. If they don't believe in anybody, what's the point? Or they'll vote third party.

Being a conspicuous waffler pushes people away, provided that the media plays along. Conflicts of interest and convenient beliefs are abundant in Washington, some are just better at keeping their dirty deeds private than others, or at least they're better at promoting public indifference about them.

In a country of 300 million, the President should try to be everything to everyone, or at least most good things to most people. Bush is what happens when a politician truly sticks to his beliefs regardless of the need for compromise or new paradigms.

I don't think I've said the majority are centrists, but that there is a large number of non party fanatics in the country that often get ignored.

I doubt very much that in the current political climate, if Clinton wins the nomination, she will lose a lot of the "base" votes in the election versus a Republican president. Specially if it's "Clinton vs McCain" which might turn out to be a pro-war vs anti-war election, her statements and opinions on this topic are minuscule compared to the importance and urgency of other issues (like the war).

Take an issue like gay marriage, why do you think most presidential candidates only go as far as "civil unions"? It's obvious because of the polls, and again, this is one of these issues that if they are on the "pro gay" side they are not going to significantly gain more votes (in fact they might lose some). Hey you might not agree, but I think that's what they think. Republicans used the anti gay marriage tactic to gain votes before, I haven't seen the opposite work ... yet.

It hasn't worked. You keep pointing to what people have done in the past as if that's bred success. Don't you think that after 10 years of getting pummelled in the polls, MAYBE it's time to do things differently? I'm not talking about the moral decision, I'm talking about making the politically sound decision.

People follow leaders. Continually pointing out that no one has actually come out in favor of gays (except Clinton...who won. And yes, I did notice the pun) doesn't say anything about it being a good or bad strategy.

Homosexuality as a major divisive political issue is too new for sweeping statements about its electoral value. There haven't been enough America elections where gay issues realistically swayed the result for anyone to say it is good or bad for a politician to be pro-gay. It depends on the region, the politician, and the ever-changing cultural climate.

One thing that I think can be said with some certaintly is that successive American generations are becoming more liberal (ie. supportive of individual rights). There will always be that rat-tailed kid from Jesus Camp, but for the most part American parents have desensitized their children to innocuous cultural and personal differences. Whether or not it makes sense for a politician to be pro-gay now, it will eventually become more sensible. That's the snowball effect of an educated liberal democracy.