Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
ABC News: "What's in a Name? Hillary Clinton Knows More Than Most"
link; excerpt:As a young girl growing up in suburban Chicago, Hillary Rodham decided she'd never change her last name. Three decades later, an entire state debated her childhood choice. ... "I'll be Mrs. Bill Clinton," she told reporters in February 1982, on the day her husband announced his intention to run again for the office he'd lost. "I suspect people will be getting tired of hearing from Mrs. Bill Clinton."
Today, they hear from Hillary Clinton. That's the name aides to the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination say she now prefers. You might not know that from looking at her campaign website, on which she's simply referred to as Hillary.
She was Hillary Rodham Clinton throughout her time as first lady and secretary of state. That was also the name she used as an author of two best-selling memoirs and how she signed legal documents — "H R Clinton" — as recently as this past summer.
Citing Clinton's preference, The Associated Press this past week changed its style and refers to her as Hillary Clinton. Several other news organizations have done the same.
The shifting monikers fit into an attack line Republicans have pushed for years — that Clinton is an unprincipled creature of Washington whose positions move with the political winds.
Longtime Clinton observers have a slightly different take. They say the changes reflect necessary political calculations in a country that remains conservative about family names, even as family structures have become less traditional.
"Given the pattern that evolved, she clearly had strong feelings about her name," said Max Brantley, an editor at the Arkansas Times who has known the Clintons since 1974. "She kept trying in various ways to hang on to it." ... "When Clinton drops her first surname, she's just following the norms in society," Scheuble said. "She wants to be president and middle America doesn't want her to be Rodham. It's a good political position to take." ... Nearly a decade later, when she arrived in Washington after Bill Clinton's election as president and took on a role at the White House focused on health care policy, the then-first lady began using the name Hillary Rodham Clinton. Polling at the time showed that 9 percent of Americans thought the change was a good idea, 21 percent a bad idea — and 69 percent said it didn't much matter. ... She ran for the Senate in New York as "Hillary," then went back to Hillary Clinton for her 2008 presidential campaign. She returned to using Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, and did so until the launch of her second White House bid this year.
13 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
she is apparently willing to compromise her own principled stance on how she wanted her names to be when married.
This is triangulation. She sees this as something conservative will admire while compromising any feminist liberal stances for maintaining her own identity separate from Bill Clinton.
We are admonished to no end when we rightfully criticize the positions and cheerleading of his policies, and now she does this.
How so many reconcile such blatant pandering and blowing with the wind situational principles, stances, and ethics is beyond me. 
