I can’t wait for tonight’s debate. Hillary is so great in debates, clear, concise–versus Obama’s hemming and hawing, quite different from his speechifying persona.
However, I’ll admit I’m a bit concerned that Hillary is walking into the lion’s den. For someone who helped get Bill elected in 1992, debate co-host George Stephanopoulos has been excessively cold to the Clintons ever since he left the administration during the first term. Like Bill Richardson, despite Richardson’s denials, Bill Clinton made Stephanopoulos the wunderkid a household name. On today’s Good Morning America, George brought us the new negative numbers for Hillary from the ABC/Washington Post Poll showing her lagging and commenting about all she has to do is lose the next three and it’s over.
How can it be that a candidate like Hillary, who repeatedly provides a platform of programs that show deep understanding of people and our country’s situation on all levels, is seen as less attractive than a candidate who belittles others, refuses to admit he’s wrong, attacks others for his own missteps, and flip flops (oh yes, I did) on issues from trade deals with Canada and women’s choice to name a few? How can a candidate who talks to multi-millionaires, and raises $2.9 million in one day, while gossiping about the (common) people not invited to the party be seen as honest and having a “new way” of doing politics?
When I worked in corporate America at Turner Broadcasting, one of my first jobs straight off the commune, I (finally) learned how companies work, (read: most anything in the world): Everything starts at the top. Whoever the top guy is, however he sees and interacts with the world, is how he’ll perceive it, and therefore will hire the person under him, and so on down the chain based on that vision.
Perhaps that explains why, when I e-announced my concerns about media bias against Hillary to my list of long-time women friends, a few flamed me. I received several all caps emails with slurs about Hillary, saying she’s a liar, showing a list of her “accomplishments” that looked like she’d attended only teas and never sponsored or passed any substantial legislation. When I read them, my impression was that she could have done them while she was getting her hair done. They were insulting and meant to be so. The hate mail came from women who make their living in the body-mind-spirit domains, which made their spewing all the more shocking to me. Okay, they’re not really my best friends, but I’ve known one for 35, the other for 15 years. This was about 1.5 months ago when I first began blogging. Although we’d agreed to disagree, they continued to push at me, sending me Hillary hate mail, until I said, “Okay, I get it, you’re trying to convert me. Please stop sending me this stuff.” They got it.
According to how Obama consistently reacts, my act of pointing out this hate would be seen as an offense and worthy of counter-attack. To me, it’s the same kind of backhanded dig he made when he said, “Uh, she’s alright,” about Hillary. I know high school snubs when I see them. I guess these are Ivy League ones that the big boyz play.
So I’d really like to get back to the issues, and hope the candidates do so in a lively debate this evening on ABC. Riverdaughter’s doing just that, in her tax day post in which she refers to Hillary’s new proposals for keeping manufacturing in the US.
But I can’t end without telling about an exchange that happened recently that caught me off guard . . . again. A young friend in his twenties whom I’ve known since he was a child, visited me recently, and couldn’t believe that I was supporting Hillary. He repeatedly blamed her and Bill for the poor current economy, and said what a liar and how disgusting Hillary is. We went around for several rounds, until I finally said he wasn’t going to convince me of anything and vice versa, pointing out that he was blind to his automatic sexist brain-washing. He protested, “but you know me, I’m a good guy.”
What shook me up actually was several times during our debate, he said, “I wouldn’t be caught associating with Hillary if I were you. I really wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be supporting her, you know, when the *@#! goes down.”
Now what was that? What’s going down? What’s going on here?
Lady Boomer NYC 