The last scare, same as the next scare… March 30, 2018
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Republicans have struggled mightily at the ballot box since Donald Trump took office. They lost a U.S. Senate seat in dark-red Alabama last December and a House seat in heavily conservative western Pennsylvania earlier this month. In those races, the usual rhetoric about abortion and immigration did little to buoy Republican candidates, and even a recent tax cut failed to rally GOP voters. So, to reverse that trend, Republicans are turning back the clock to 2016.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee on Monday unveiled a new ad campaign that focuses on—who else?—Hillary Clinton. The ads hope to use the former presidential candidate as a weapon against 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in states that went for Trump two years ago. The ads, which the NRSC says will run on Facebook for two weeks, highlight a pair of remarks Clinton made about Trump voters that she felt compelled to later walk back: her “basket of deplorables” comments last year and similar ones she made this month about Trump appealing to voters by “looking backwards.”
But the funny thing I’d noticed in comments in various places this last few months was the way her name had suddenly popped up again – and something along the lines of comments BTL on the Slate piece, that she was the Democrats ‘standard-bearer’ or leader. That this is a nonsense hasn’t stopped people reiterating it. She has no role in the Democratic Party, is not running for office, etc, etc. I found that, at the time inexplicable. But now it all comes a little clearer if the intention is to tie her to Democratic candidates.
Now, whatever about Clinton one has to wonder at a strategy that uses the last candidate bested by a Republican as a central focus of a campaign.
I wonder too how effective as a strategy it will be, given that Democrats will be broadly speaking running against Trump.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
I noticed the Clinton thing myself on a few small “c” conservative websites and blogs in the US. I think she’s been mentioned in the White House too. I dunno what to make of it. I know that she is still a bit of a hate figure on the hard right but surely that is yesterday’s news? I don’t understand how stoking up that animosity could convince Republican voters or Trump populist voters to go out to the polls?
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Have we not discussed how the Dems have no move on firmly enough from the mistakes they made in the 2016 campaign.
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I lived in the US during the Clinton Presidency. Listening into the right wing talk shows at that time the hatred for Hilary really was breath-taking. Even then she seemed to be more of a focus for conservative rage than Bill. It obviously came from some combination of anger, misogyny and hatred, but looking on from this side of the Atlantic, I think its easy to underestimate how visceral the whole thing was.
In a way, I think Trump and Clinton both found themselves up last year against the only candidates either could possibly beat. I’d love to see an analysis of how many Trump voters were motivated more by a hatred of Hilary than anything else, and vice versa.
I think this hatred runs deep with the extreme right wing. It is not just a cynical election ploy. They are going to cling to this hatred to their dying day.
But my guess (or hope) is that it will resonate with a smaller and smaller section of the voting public.
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Isn’t some critique to made of her being appointed to the Healthcare Task Force, I know she had much legal qualifications and experience, but Im sure many others did too.
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You know, that bit never bothered me. Its in the nature of politics to appoint allies to positions of influence. Hilary was clearly a politically active member of the Clintpn campaign and it was stayed clearly in the campaign that she would continue to be so after the election. It was never in the category of appointing family members to sinecures to soak up state funds.
I wonder how much of the resulting vitriol towards her came from that appointment, and the associated taint of socialised healthcare. The campaign against that was something to behold…..
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Working class ‘blue collar’ people in the unemployment-ridden rustbelt states also had a disdain for the image portrayed by Hillary Clinton. Such voters, who in previous generations saw the Democrat Party as their champion, rightly or wrongly viewed her as a symbol of the liberal-hip upwardly mobile middle class big city intellectual establishment. That’s why they voted in the calamitous Trump administration.
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“In a way, I think Trump and Clinton both found themselves up last year against the only candidates either could possibly beat. I’d love to see an analysis of how many Trump voters were motivated more by a hatred of Hilary than anything else, and vice versa.”
I sometimes wonder if (for example) Elizabeth Warren could have beaten Trump in 2016.
You are right about people hating Hilary. I recall talking to an
American woman in 2007 who said she hoped the Democrats
didn’t nominate HC “because lots and lots of people across the
political spectrum hate her”.
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I wanted to +1 this paragraph too…
“In a way, I think Trump and Clinton both found themselves up last year against the only candidates either could possibly beat. I’d love to see an analysis of how many Trump voters were motivated more by a hatred of Hilary than anything else, and vice versa.”
Just thinking about it though here’s the oddity – Clinton(s) in a way, particularly Bill but her too, represented a certain American dream, coming from working or middle class backgrounds and making big. So big in fact they were raking in money in (crazily stupid and counter-productive) lecture tours to big business etc. Indeed they were much more that than Trump. Yet a tranche of people disdained that. A lot of reasons in there no doubt, perhaps even concepts of ‘people getting ahead of themselves’, but I always found it bizarre how unaware HC in particular seemed to be to how this played. And reading up on it it appears that she was wanted by many people that this looked – whatever the substance – terrible.
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I think this hatred runs deep with the extreme right wing. It is not just a cynical election ploy. They are going to cling to this hatred to their dying day.
There’s clearly a strong element of misogyny against women not willing to merely be their male partner’s shadow. However, Hillary is also a genuinely deeply unpleasant person, who (women’s issues aside) would clearly be just as home in the Republican Party.
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Let’s just hope that Hillary Clinton doesn’t appear too much for the Democrats leading up to the November elections.
“Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said Clinton’s comments about Trump voters were incorrect.
“My friend Hillary Clinton is wrong. Thirty percent of the people that voted for Donald Trump had voted for President Obama,” Durbin told Fox News Sunday.”
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/19/594947772/hillary-clinton-drawn-into-2018-campaign-with-comments-about-trump-voters
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Agreed!
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“Hillary Clinton suggested Thursday that the criticism she should “go away” following her election loss to President Donald Trump is based in sexism, arguing that her critics never asked that of losing candidates who are male….
Clinton added that she’s “really committed to speaking out and doing what I can to have a voice in the debate about where our country is going.”
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, a state which Trump won with 63% of the vote, said earlier this month Clinton cannot go away “soon enough” in response to Clinton’s remarks about Trump voters at a conference in India.”
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/politics/hillary-clinton-election-loss/index.html
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I don’t think she’s 100% right re other candidates who lost but be that as it may doesn’t she have a responsibility to assess the situation and if her contributions arenot helping perhaps keep quiet. Given the divisiveness of the contest …
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Other Democrats criticizing Clinton’s comments:
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio told Huffington Post: “I don’t really care what she said. I just think that that’s not helpful.”
Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri told reporters on Capitol Hill “Oh, come on. You’re killing me here,” according to WashPost.
Patty Solis Doyle, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager, per CNN: “Look, this was bad. I can’t sugarcoat it. She was wrong and clearly it’s not helpful to Democrats going into the midterms and certainly not going into 2020.”
https://www.axios.com/clinton-india-speech-senate-democrats-2018-midterms-aaa6b0da-2cab-47b9-aa89-86b8ab3f9609.html
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