I HATE politics.
The worst feeling I have is that I’m supposed to complain about this, like she’s annoying the left so she’s a centrist.
She doesn’t remotely need Kissinger’s support. As Atrios observed, what voter is impressed by this?
“It amuses me how Democrats who once found these people appalling are now cheering them as useful weapons in their glorious battle against Trump,” said Doug Henwood, a journalist who has written extensively about why progressives should not trust Clinton. “I’ve never been a big fan of Obama’s, but I’m already getting nostalgic for him. Hillary’s into all the stupid s— he’s somewhat tried to avoid.”
Please share widely!
johnk says
it’s a report in Politico, that referenced that someone “close to Clinton” said.
This is the article that is being reference and the headline is even defined as a question:
So at this point, it’s nothing factual just speculation. AKA Nothing.
JimC says
It’s Dave Weigel writing in the Post (linked in the diary).
johnk says
that’s all the evidence.
JimC says
I’ll await the denial.
johnk says
posts and articles were started by the article I noted. It could have happened. But at this point, there is not actual evidence supporting it, The article is framed as a question, if you have the facts, you wouldn’t make the article a question.
So at this point, there is nothing other than Politico speculating. If you want to run with that fine. I just noted the original article and it really doesn’t look like anything. If there is something actually substantial and factual then I’m with you.
JimC says
There’s been no denial.
There remains the possibility that it’s a trial balloon, or a strategic leak to make her look bipartisan. I don’t think Politico made it up.
johnk says
The article is roaming thoughts. I’m only noting to wait for something more factual.
jconway says
1) This isn’t a left/right campaign anymore. It’s about fit to lead and unfit to lead.
There is one candidate fit to govern and one that isn’t. I’d feel this way if you had Alan Grayson running against Bob Gates. One person is clearly
unhinged and vindictive and the other is a well respected security leader with bipartisan credibility. It’s the same dynamic here. Bernies campaign forced Clinton to adopt his domestic program and now she gets to run as the candidate of sanity versus the Kremlin’s hand picked wild card.
2) Helps drive moderates and conservatives into her camp
I disagree with Michael Hayden on surveillance and Michael Morell on torture, but they are non-partisan figures who can lend credibility to be few voters torn between Trump and Clinton. Kissinger like him or not is in a similar category. It’s about getting older veterans in Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Florida. Millennials are largely ignorant of who he is and aside from Charlie Pierce and other boomers in blue states*, she doesn’t lose any votes over it. It also helps the MSM narrative that Trump is unqualified to be President and helps her run the LBJ playbook against Trump.
2) He’s a foreign policy realist
Kissinger largely opposed rollback and regime change in the Middle East, supports detente with Iran and other rivals, and he is skeptical of our relationship with Israel, and otherwise opposed the neoconservatives in the Reagan and Bush cabinets. He goes farther than Obama in favoring full nuclear disarmament. James Baker falls into the same category. If you want her to unlearn the mistakes of Iraq and Libya these are the advisors you want to have her ear. His school of foreign policy is diametrically opposed to the very kind of interventions progressives are worried Clinton would support.
*Vietnam and Wategate happened over 40 years ago. Hillary Clinton was on the right side of history in both of those fights and played key roles on the committee that impeached Nixon and the two presidential campaigns to get us out of Vietnam. It’s doubtful she agrees with Kissinger’s actions and I’m sure she has learned from his mistakes as well as her own.
JimC says
He manages to linger because people enable him.
Vietnam was 40 years ago? Seriously, that’s your defense?
World War II was 71 years ago, maybe Himmler has some ideas.
doubleman says
Just this week.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/henry-kissinger-mass-killings-argentina-declassified-files
If she seeks out and celebrates the endorsement of a war criminal like this, she will be losing my safe blue state vote. I want her to beat Trump badly, but I can’t fill in that bubble on my ballot if she’s going to do this type of stuff. It also strikes me as colossally stupid politics and a good way for Johnson and Stein to pick off more marginal voters with no real upside.
JimC says
Link
jconway says
He was harsh on Bernie throughout the primary, especially on gun control, and openly contemptuous of third parties and now he is embracing one that opposes all gun controls just because Hillary is making a symbolic overture he opposes? Talk about old white boomer privilege.
Teddy Roosevelt’s Morro War killed far more of my wife’s people than we killed in Vietnam, and far more Cantabs than the better known Spanish American War and nobody bothers talking about it in history class, and you don’t see anyone calling for TR to come off Mt Rushmore over it. Warren and Obama still quote the trust buster while absolving the imperialist. “Shoot every boy over ten” is far worse than anything Kissinger every ordered, and I am aware he took our policy to fairly dark places.
I am not defending the man or this move, just marveling at the overstated outrage over this when lefties like Pierce and plenty here have been giving free passes to Hillary all over the place while calling Bernies loyalty to the progressive cause into question at every turn or saying he’s too liberal to get elected.
None of this applies to you JimC, I respect where you are coming from here and you’ve been awfully consistent in calling her out. But any Hillary supporter outraged or surprised at this doesn’t know their candidate and reaching out to the GOP foreign policy establishment is the kind of smart electoral politics and cold pragmatic move you all admire her for making elsewhere.
JimC says
Sorry, but your first comment is the most spirited defense of Kissinger I’ve read in quite some time.
jconway says
I’m with CMD on this one. It’s smart politics, since you’re outraged but not enough touchable your vote. It will help change the votes of security minded Republicans and independents in swing states. The Powell endorsement was a huge October surprise to boost Obama, having the entire foreign policy establishment of one party endorse the nominee of another is unprecedented. Dr. Killinger even held his nose for Goldwater so it’s pretty huge if he endorses Clinton from a media and optics standpoint.
And its intellectually inconsistent for anyone who views this as the Rubicon crossing or bridge too far at this stage when they would’ve already looked the other way at all two wars directly on her hands in Iraq and Libya. So Pierce has no leg to stand on. He made his bed and he can lie with it, and backing Johnson at this stage undermines every bad thing he said about Bernie on guns, pragmatism and foreign policy during the primary. This was one of the dumbest pieces he ever wrote, and I generally respect his writing.
Christopher says
First to second line above: “…but not enough TOUCHABLE your vote.” Should that be, “not enough TO CHANGE your vote,” by any chance?
jconway says
I win the award for BMG’s worst offender. Mostly since I post on the road. Dr. Killinger below is a Venture Brothers reference
centralmassdad says
Despite the copious Cold War blood on his hands, he is generally well-regarded among “mainstream” conservatives. As is Baker–especially Baker.
If you are going to make a play to cleave the Republican Party in two, you make the play, and let the jimcs go vote against vaccines and wifi if they must. If you succeed, then you really have a food fight in the GOP for the next few years, and maybe that helps in the House in 2018.
Alternatively, you run left, make the left feel morally correct, and win by a smaller margin and your opposition is no different from Obama’s.
One thing I like about the Clintons is that they fight Republicans and they fight dirty. Which means you have to look away once in awhile, and that there will be some stupid scandal or another along the way. They have always been successful in co-opting and dividing Republicans.
I had a Platonic ideal president in 2008 and 2012, and I’m a little disappointed in the results. I am ready for a change in tactics against the 2016 GOP.
I absolutely think that this was a trial balloon, and that they are going to try to win 1964 big.
JimC says
What?
centralmassdad says
Jill Stein.
I see you listed Johnson as well, so I guess you could opt for the NRA instead.
JimC says
Never have.
I’m voting for Clinton, but I’m not going to stay silent if she embraces Kissinger.
centralmassdad says
Guy should be in Spandau prison.
jconway says
And it’s not Hillary Clinton.
scott12mass says
Like him or hate him I think we miss an opportunity in this country by not listening to people who have been in top positions after they leave. I would like to see all former Sec’s of State sit in a conference (once a year?) and relate their experiences. No aides, no press conferences, and the talks are recorded for posterity. The tapes to be released 25 yrs after the last living participant dies. We might prevent mistakes.
I’m hoping Pres Johnson invites Carter, the Bushes, Obama, Bill Clinton back for the same arrangement, maybe they could do it around Washington’s birthday.
Mark L. Bail says
Kissinger’s support for Clinton to win.
Others have said why, but I say this as Clinton supporter. I still support Clinton, but this is the kind of thing that she needs public pressure on.
jconway says
If you’re holding your nose for her despite her vote for our generations worst foreign policy decision, and even worse, making excuses for why that vote wasn’t as bad as Bush’s decision to go in or to John McCains identical vote then you have no moral leg to stand on to critique her for having Henry stump
for her. The Iraq War killed nearly as many civilians, and if you want to factor in creating ISIL, made is far less safe and was a far worse blunder than Vietnam. I’m voting for her because she will be a better President than Donald Trump, and if Henry Kissinger agrees with us so be it.
doubleman says
I’ve hammered her for Iraq and think she is much too hawkish. That said, there is still a difference between big policy mistakes and embracing the a horrible war criminal and direct architect of so much destruction. Your insistence that one (or Charlie Pierce) has no moral leg to stand on is hogwash.
And I completely disagree with you about this being smart politics. I think seeking out Kissinger’s endorsement and embracing him is incredibly dumb (if she is actually doing that). Almost all the coverage of it is negative from the left. She has plenty of respected national security Republicans coming to her aid and she doesn’t need such a toxic one.
She should be getting John McCain and the like to say nice things about her if she wants to appeal to moderate Republicans, not embracing a notorious war criminal.
Mark L. Bail says
Seeking Kissinger’s endorsement is unnecessary, and it’s the tone deaf kind of thing that drives her non-fans up a wall. It’s time to start worrying about public perception for her presidency. This move wouldn’t help. Read this from The Intercept:
jconway says
Just asking. I’m with CMD. Kissinger’s not a good person, but it’s part of a broader electoral strategy that could insulate her when she tries to govern. And my broader point is anyone who complained about Bernie on guns, or purity, or being endorsed by Cornel West is in no position to complain about this. This is why Pierce is widely hypocritical and self contradictory in his piece on this, one of the dumbest he’s written in a cannon of gems.
JimC and Doubleman have been consistent and we can respectfully disagree about tactics. I get your point too, your arguing on tactics. I’m just saying anyone who says Kissinger is a step too far wasn’t paying attention when she voted for the war. She’s never pretended to be a dove. I happen to appreciate the hawkishness on Russia, China, Assad and ISIS, but if you think his endorsement is disqualifying than those things most certainly are.
Trickle up says
he’s a vulture. A virus. So enough with this normalizing of genocide crap.
On the other hand I am mystified by the conclusion that Clinton is actively seeking Kissinger’s endorsement.
We already knew (didn’t we? See DNC emails) that campaign apparatchiks can be both stupid and immoral. Especially when under the spell of a campaign.
It’s part of the tension that crops up between actual progressives and those to whom progressives are just another interest group to court, placate, or attack.
Oh, and “stupid” because, as Mark says, the endorsement would be worthless and potentially damaging were Clinton to be seen as seeking it. What swing state will go for Clinton because of a Kissinger endorsement? How does it help President Clinton to govern?
jconway says
She’s got a big electoral college lead now including Arizona, Georgia and maybe Utah. But those states along with NC, FL, OH and PA are within the MOE. So if every retired Republican Secretary of State says Trump is unfit to lead our foreign policy, that’s a big story. Big enough to snare more Meg Whitman’s, big enough to put swing state Republican senators up for re-election in an even tougher bind, and big enough to move conservative veterans and military families into her column.
Putin, Khan and folks with high approval ratings percieved as experts telling low info voters she’s qualified and he isn’t is a big deal. Seeing as no one on this thread who hates Henry is going to vote for Stein over this, I say it’s smart politics. Immoral sure, but so was voting for the war, bankruptcy reform and all the other compromises she’s made in her career. You either appreciate that she’s the lesser evil and accept it or vote your principles on a town meeting member and physician who doesn’t believe in vaccinations. Your choice.
Mark L. Bail says
any more?
joeltpatterson says
All her public promises in that economics speech were solid progressive proposals: paid family leave, rebuilding buildings and water systems, etc.
She and her team are going for the big 1964 win, and I think they understand the narrow window they will have pass progressive legislation.
HR's Kevin says
Why the histrionics over something that has not happened? Where is this imaginary Kissinger endorsement? The Clinton campaign knows perfectly well how Kissinger is viewed by many on the left. Do you *really* think it is likely they are actively trying to get his endorsement? I don’t.
JimC says
I gather that your point is that I should move on. Well, I will, if the endorsement doesn’t happen.
Meanwhile a bit of googling shows their connection is more social, which is … I don’t know … maybe better?
PS. This isn’t histrionics. I can do histrionics.
JimC says
And he was pretty good-natured about his eventual nickname.
JimC says
Misplaced. I didn’t mean to reply to myself.