Hillary Clinton

Who Won the Dem Debate? Hillary Clinton!

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Democratic Party debate.
Democratic Party debate.

I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done. I know how to find common ground, but I know how to stand my ground.
— Hillary Clinton, October 13, 2015

The Democratic Party had its first presidential debate on Tuesday night. If you have to ask who won, you didn’t watch it. In my opinion, there was no contest. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won, hands down. She was poised under fire and smart in her answers. Obviously, the most prepared candidate– which comes with having more experience than anyone else on stage– Clinton took a bashing from CNN moderator Anderson Cooper and pot shots from a few others, but she came out on top.

Yesterday, the “who won?” buzz was all over social media. Senator Bernie Sanders raised a pile of money overnight after the debate, and a few focus groups and unscientific online polls said Sanders won the debate. In my opinion, Sanders stuck to his talking points (which I agree with), but the debate was a good chance to go bold. The only time he went bold, in my opinion, was when he said he would “vote for” legalization of marijuana if it were on the ballot. On legalization, Clinton said, let’s watch the states that have legalized marijuana, like Colorado, and learn from them. (I’m for legalization, but I’m OK with her statement. Thomas Jefferson said the states would be the incubators for democracy– trying out new ideas. I don’t want federal interference in state marijuana laws– as Governor Chris Christie has vowed to do if elected.) Clinton did go bold on gun control and said, it’s time we stood up to the NRA. Hallelujah! I have never heard such a strong gun control statement from any politician. (Unfortunately none of the mainstream media picked up on these other debate tidbits, since they are still focused on “your damn emails”.)

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Will the first Democratic debate be boring? No.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Tonight’s Democratic debate, held at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, has been pronounced in advance to be a snoozefest, as it will likely be heavy on policy and light (to nonexistent) on the exciting personal attacks and stupefyingly dumb and/or dishonest statements we’ve grown to expect from the GOP debates. And though Hillary Clinton is said to be going in with “high expectations” (heard that phrase a lot from the cable pundits this morning), they have already declared her the loser. She will perhaps commit a terrible, campaign-derailing gaffe or she will be flawless but boring by talking about policy too much. Or she’ll try to connect with the audience emotionally and that will be characterized as insincere. Or whatever. It’s been decided amongst the pundit class that Hillary Clinton cannot win.

It’s often jarring how policy-averse some of the most prominent people covering Presidential campaigns can be. I first really noticed it in 2000, when the MSM had grand, giggly lark focusing on Al Gore’s “stiffness” and supposed exaggerations, while contrasting that with George W. Bush’s alleged affability and ease around people (especially reporters). Policy discussions were treated as an annoying obstacle to the theater and costume criticism, as we can see in Evgenia Peretz’s 2007 Vanity Fair recollection of how Al and Tipper Gore were savaged by the media in the 2000 campaign.

Perhaps reporting in this vein was just too gratifying to the press for it to stop. As Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson admitted to Don Imus at the time, “You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get into the weeds and get out your calculator, or look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun to disprove Al Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us.”

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There’s nothing enthralling, or new, about Carly Fiorina’s funhouse mirror “feminism”

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Coulter Schlafly

Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the last GOP presidential debate was following it on Twitter and seeing feminists I respect declare Carly Fiorina the “winner” and express admiration of her fierceness and command of information (bad information but, whatever, I guess). While I do agree that Fiorina handled the question about Donald Trump’s buffoonish comment about her face deftly, I had to shake my head at tweets by feminist academics lavishing praise on her performance when these same feminist academics would fail a freshman student for dissembling as much as Fiorina did. Being a glib liar, and especially about things that tremendously affect vulnerable women (like Planned Parenthood) is not worthy of anything but contempt. And it’s not remarkable either but some feminists continue to be “enthralled” by Carly Fiorina even as they are (rightly) alarmed about how anti-women many of her stances are.

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Anatomy of the “both sides do it” strategy

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Birther Pie Chart

At long last, it appears that the Birther conspiracy is enough of an embarrassment to the GOP that they are not only dropping what seemed to be an official position of tacit tolerance, if not encouragement of it. Republicans are now actively distancing themselves from it and the way you can tell for certain they are is they have shifted into full “Democrats do it too!” mode. More specifically, they are accusing one Democrat – none other than Hillary Clinton herself! – of manufacturing the whole thing. I first noticed it on MSNBC’s UP with Steve Kornacki this past weekend, when GOP flack Amy Holmes was quick to raise the accusation when the conversation on the panel turned to the Birther topic. I thought her response was interesting, to say the least, and it turns out that Republicans, including none other than GOP primary front-runner Donald Trump(!), have been pushing this line hard lately, as Dave Weigel explains in the Washington Post.

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Male politicians may shy away from attacking “women” but many will attack the hell out of certain women (contains link to my radio interview)

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Carly Fiorina

I got asked to be on KJZZ, the Phoenix area’s public radio station, on Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming election season and how the two major parties would be targeting female voters. This is because the National Federation of Republican Women is in town for a conference this week.

I think I did okay and was glad for two things: That this wasn’t the typical situation where I’m on a panel with two Republican men (it was just me and Here and Now host Steve Goldstein chatting alone in the studio after he played a taped interview with a Republican strategist) and that I had anticipated that we would be discussing the contrast between Hillary Clinton and rising GOP primary candidate Carly Fiorina and prepared accordingly by reading up on both their campaigns.

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