I'm Backing Hillary Because I Hate Simple and Shallow Caricatures

[BlueMTexpat]

This is a long essay and worthwhile reading. Not all is complimentary to Hillary and I don't necessarily agree with all that the writer says. But that is perhaps what makes the conclusion stronger.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/03/28/1507316/-I-m-Backing-Hillary-Because-I-Hate-Simple-and-Shallow-Caricatures

I’m a proud member of the Obama generation. Swept up by his soaring rhetoric during my college days, I recall the early conversations about how the little-known senator from Illinois was going to be the next president. I bought his books before he was Obama the candidate. I worked on his campaign when he fought Hillary for the Democratic nomination in a race that turned the day then-candidate Obama spoke at Clemson, my historically racist university.

I don’t remember vilifying Hillary then. I just remember sitting in small classrooms listening to people like Kal Penn tell me why the president had inspired them to spend his afternoons visiting with small groups of college students in some South Carolina backwater. I was inspired in my very naive way by the way Obama’s campaign brought me in close contact with black students who I didn’t often have the chance to work with during my childhood in a still very segregated part of the world. Of course my expectations for the Obama presidency were outsized and childlike, believing that the election of a black president might excise the racism that I’d grown to hate through decades of exposure therapy. The last decade has been a revelation in growth — the learning to disagree with the President who inspired me so. Learning, as a person heavily invested in the public defense, to disagree with the president when he declared in his Merrick Garland nomination speech that the fourth amendment was a mere technicality. Learning to disagree with the president’s use of drones and mass surveillance. More than disagreement, it’s been learning to deal with the disappointments brought on by the president’s pragmatic, incremental approach to change.
...
Something nasty’s happened since Sanders rose from political obscurity to his current place in the mainstream. Along the way, he’s attracted and cultivated a following that’s engaged in the same sort of demagoguery endured by President Obama. The empty caricatures of the president — that he’s a socialist, that he’s the “worst president in the country’s history,” and that he’s a shill for the corporate middle — have long since failed to fully encapsulate the man or the politician. They’ve failed to describe easy-to-muster reasons why the president’s tenure has been a mild disappointment to some of his supporters. They’re devoid of nuance, of flavor, of the sort of political spice that lifts the conversation to a constructive place. And so, too, have the most recent critiques of Hillary Clinton.
...
It’s not Hillary’s imperfections that pressed me into her corner. Nor is it just her advocacy on an issue that strikes a real emotional place for me. It’s the deceitful caricatures that have plagued the last few months of this primary. I don’t like to be pissed on and told it’s raining. When you tell me that Hillary’s a liar, or evil, or a shill, or no better than Ted Cruz, I go further than not believing you. I go as far as not wanting to support you in your advocacy. It’s clownish, cartoonish even. To create a caricature of Bernie Sanders that would equal the one thrown at Hillary Clinton, you’d have to call him Stalin. He’s not, and neither is she the incarnation of evil.

That the Democratic Party has two candidates whose core values represent the movement forward should be exciting. But that’s not cool enough. Not edgy enough. In our rush to run from the simplistic, us v. them rhetoric of the Republican Party, we’ve created a similar (albeit more palatable version) on our side. The snide insults and simplistic portrayal of Clinton are reminders to all of us who’ve been paying attention of the way Republicans painted President Obama. It’s made me run into the corner of a candidate whose core has been maligned in a way that no longer squares. And truly, it’s the fault off the less constructive supporters of Senator Sanders. They can shoulder the blame for highlighting in Hillary what would otherwise be only mildly remarkable traits. Taking a Yale Law School education and using it to fight the evil of your day should be the expectation. It’s what I’d want my kids to do. But when you tell me Hillary possesses malignant insides, evidence of her goodness is magnified in the face of incessant and obnoxious misdirection.

[liberal N proud]

1. "I don’t remember vilifying Hillary then"

That was something only done from the Right Wing Republicans.

Now? there is no shame in the 2016 campaign, no shame.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. There were harsh things said in 2008,

but nothing I remember like those things in 2016 that are routinely said by those who call themselves "progressives."

[CalvinballPro]

3. I cannot vote for a "progressive" whose narrative comes off of Fox News.

When all your talking points against your Democratic primary opponent are the same arguments that Republicans have been making against that person for over 20 years, you're the problem.

Sanders will be back in the Senate heckling the people actually trying to get stuff done soon enough. Then his ineffectual career can continue on to its miserable conclusion.

[BlueMTexpat]

4. This has been my problem with so many

SBS supporters here on DU. I have consistently requested politely for them to stop with the GOPer (aka Fox News) TPs. For this, I was blocked from the Sanders Group some months ago (not a big loss, IMO) and have been called "patronizing," "cognitively dissonant," "intellectually dishonest" and much, much worse.

There are plenty of ways that they can support Bernie without trashing Hillary and many of his supporters do that. Hillary's decisions and policies are fair game. And yes, she is not perfect. But the OTT caricatures that rely on and consistently repeat GOPer TPs are NOT fair. They are smear tactics, no less. All things considered, Hillary is still the strongest Dem candidate and certainly the best qualified candidate for President by any objective measure.

I found this telling from the excerpt that I quoted:

To create a caricature of Bernie Sanders that would equal the one thrown at Hillary Clinton, you’d have to call him Stalin. He’s not, and neither is she the incarnation of evil.

[Basic LA]

5. Yet they're very touchy about "red baiting"

That's what they call any warning about what the R's will hit him with if he (chuckle) gets the nomination. They can savage Hillary day & night, but won't see his weakness as a candidate. I just served on a jury where someone had a fainting spell over the word "socialist" in connection with their beloved.

[BlueMTexpat]

6. If Bernie had to

deal with even a smidgen of what Hillary routinely receives, I truly doubt that he would be able to react with anywhere near the degree of class and poise that she has shown and will continue to show in all situations.

Trying to imagine Bernie bringing recalcitrant global leaders together, let alone recalcitrant GOPers in the US Congress, to resolve anything productively literally boggles the mind.

[JSup]

7. They dehumanize her...

...and it's disgusting. She was never a child with hopes and dreams, only ambition. She never made mistakes (like a real human), just calculated errors. Republicans have been doing this to her for decades, it's sad to see the 'left' start doing it.

Here's a nice article about it from a site that unfortunately doesn't look very active: http://www.hillarymen.com/latest/on-humanizing-hillary

[BlueMTexpat]

8. That was a nice read.

Of course, posts like that are immediately dismissed by some because the writers have personal connections to Hillary.

As if having a personal connection to someone deprives one of having an informed opinion about that person, LOL. To me, the fact that so many with personal connections to or working relationships with Hillary think so highly of her works in her favor. Who else's judgment should we trust? A person on the street whose only information comes from Fox News? After all, when one looks to hire a person for a position, which references does one trust? Those from people who know the person and her work or those from people who don't?

Granted that one usually requests references from persons who generally like and respect one's work rather than from detractors, the fact that ALL Dem Senators who have endorsed a candidate so far have endorsed Hillary and NONE have endorsed Bernie speaks volumes about their working relationships with both candidates. But that's JMO.