08-14-2016, 01:21 PM
(08-12-2016, 08:30 AM)David Horn Wrote:(08-11-2016, 05:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Maybe. Count me optimistic. Hillary has great talents and has pledged to work to get things done. I hope she promotes Democrats though. I have predicted she won't run again, but I wouldn't put a bet down on that one.
Hillary today talked about her infrastructure bank and alternative energy proposals. But knocking Trump is absolutely necessary; the more often the better. Imagine that, in spite of his obvious unfitness to be president in every way, he is still only 5 or 6 points behind in many national polls. I am ashamed to be an older white male in America, given the level of support from our group for such a pig as Trump.
Hillary is very talented but also highly flawed. She always sees herself under siege, and operates on that basis: secretive and suspicious. Her operational core team consists of the same tired names we've seen for decades.
Losing this year should have been OK, with the 2020 election being the one that was a must-win. Now we have a reprobate running in the GOP slot this election, and we're stuck. I wouldn't vote for Hillary if she was running against a sane alternative. She's not.
In the 2008 Dem nomination process, I was a Clinton supporter but moved quickly to supporting Obama once it became clear that he would be our nominee. For most of his first term, I spent much of my time as an Obama apologist trying to explain political reality to all the disappointed Obamabots that ditched him when he didn't deliver all the magic ponies (e.g., single payer) they were sure would come; the ones I couldn't get through to became the lazy morons that stayed home in the 2010 election that resulted in the t-baggers coming to power.
A President Clinton has two big things going for her - (1) she will not repeat Obama's mistake of believing the GOP would put country ahead of destroying her Presidency and (2) expectations will be so low that actual achievements may be more possible.
That is my primary hope - not having to become Clinton's apologist for not meeting high expectations - compared to 2008 Obama, she isn't burden with them.
The other hope is the counter to what most people believe will make her Presidency difficult - that the constant character attacks will become even more hyperbolic. Instead, my hope is that the tactic of the "Gish Gallop" will become widely recognized, discredited and ultimately abandoned.
Named after the creationist Duane Gish, the Gallop is a tactic wherein a debater spews so many lies and half-truths that rebutting each one is impossible. You can see it applied on any Sunday talk show where the meme of Clinton being a liar comes up and the Rightee talking head starts spewing falsehoods and half truths to back the meme. These have been done so often, and usually as a means to misdirect from the Trump idiocy du jour , that the moderator/interviewer doesn't challenge all the "gish" but instead just tries to get back on topic of the latest Trump idiocy.
Look at the two primary sources of the meme "Clinton lies" - (1) she stated it was a video that caused Benghazi and (2) she lied about sending classified information by email on her private server.
Regarding the first, Benghazi happened the same night that riots were breaking out across the Islam world over the video; no one knew if there was something more going on in Libya particularly in the first 24 hours - particularly clueless were all the Congressional critters and t-baggin supporters who don't know crap about what is going on overseas. As Obama's "please proceed, Governor" and Clinton's "what difference does it make" made clear, the whole cause-and-effect debate is meaningless dribble and only pursued by ideologues who really don't give a shit about the risks our foreign service personnel face each and every day - if you think otherwise, ask one of them how many embassies/consulates were attacked under Bush 2, how many Americans were killed in those attacks, and how many Congressional investigations of those attacks have taken place - their answer: they don't know and they don't care.
Regarding the emails, only 3 out of over 30,000 were marked classified and all three of those were not marked appropriately; the FBI Director stated that it would be reasonable for someone to have missed those markings. Furthermore, as she stated, she did not SEND any of those emails. One could go on about how she should have known that other emails had information that would someday be retroactively classified (and claim they know this because they saw something in the movies about it), but even if one accepts that very weak argument, it is not germane to the meme that "she lies" - she said she didn't send any classified information and did not receive any information that was marked classified.
Again, when the Rightess bring these up in their Gist Gallop, there is no time to go back over all of them and correct them with the facts and context. My hope is that as this Gish Gallop ShXt goes on and on into the Hillary Presidency, people will finally catch on and discard the tactic - just like we are discarding much of the other rearguard actions (gerrymandering, voter suppression, Faux News, Rush Limbaugh, corporate campaign financing, etc) of a dying political force at least at the national level.