The most common comment of those who finished watching An Inconvenient Truth for the first time is; “Why didn’t that Al Gore run for President?”
I know this video clip was posted in the open thread for the debate but I feel it deserves its own moment.
The Moment you were most Tested
I did not see the debate (I was at the open mike at our local pub) or watch any coverage of it other that reading the BMG thread this clip was imbedded in this morning, so it stood for me on its own merits away from any other “Sound bites of Hope” or calculated one liners that I would infer from the other comments peppered the rest of the hour from both contestants.
What strikes me is how the real person gets canned, combed, advised, pushed, prodded, filled with calculated one liners or given the latest ” words” that have been field tested for there impact and then whatever is left of that person is spilled out, the product of the group mind of their respective handlers, advisers, pollsters, so whoever the real person might have been gets lost in the glare of our rock star view of the world or passed through our critical eye of the needle from which no living being can survive. . My support for Hillary surprised me as a year ago my own dislike for “Slick Willy” clouded my view of her. But as the double standard that has come out that has broken through racial barriers (and there is still work to done) but has left that glass ceiling intact for women those rare moments in the campaign come through, when that power that only a woman can express shines.
At this point I doubt she can carry the nomination but I believe strongly and truly that the real Hillary Clinton would have been an outstanding President (and not just because any one is going to be better than Bush) but because at the end of the day when she finally got to sit behind the desk at the business end of the Oval Office, the heart that tempers all that toughness and adversity that she ( and others of her gender continue to bump up against) would still be there and the world would be a better place for it.
If there is one thing we should do for campaign reform is to ban all handlers, fire the pollsters, make it a crime to advise anyone on what the real mind of the voter is, stuff socks in the mouth of every pundit of every persuasion and treat Swift boaters from both sides of the isle with the same distain and distrust we reserve for level three sex offenders.
For what will be unknown is how often history and humanity is cheated from experiencing greatness in a society that experience life (as one punk rock group so eloquently defined ) with a 20 second attention span and all the fixed impressions and misjudgments that leaves us with.
Hillary what ever is your fate it is an honor to have voted for you.
You captured my sentiments as well. I’m mostly sad for the country that they will be writing off and cutting short the public influence and impact of an extremely capable and passionate public leader. If she does not win the nomination (which looks likely), I hope that we are still able and interested in tapping on all the talents of the Democratic party to fix the damage that Bush has inflicted for two terms.
has been so eye-opening for women who had mistakenly thought that they had come along way, baby…when push came to shove, when the moment of truth arrived, it was clear that gender always was and still remains a powerful barrier.
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p>The women of NH and MA pushed back and I hope the women of TX, OH, and RI do the same on March 4th…but it is an uphill climb for sure when the pundits and prognosticators are putting on a full-court press to do her in so they can get on to the next story line…it has been amazing and discouraging to see the orchestration of it all.
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p>Freshayer: It was the best moment I ever had in a polling booth. Hats off to Hillary Clinton.
“…it was clear that gender always was and still remains a powerful barrier.”
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p>Is that really the barrier? It’s not clear to me that Clinton is “losing” because of her gender any more than if Obama were “losing” right now it would be because of his race. It seems to me Clinton has lost 11 straight because of her top-down finance structure, her inability to inspire as many people as Obama has (though I think she’s inspirational to many), some negativity coming out of her campaign being used against her, her image as an establishment candidate (propped up by the insiderish consultants she hires), and the fact that she voted to authorize the war in Iraq. I imagine that if you put those properties into a comparable male candidate, that person might also very well be poised to lose to Obama.
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p>Not that Obama has won yet or that Clinton has lost yet (hence the quotation marks around losing).
If you have not noticed the double standard of media coverage in this election, I cannot begin to catalogue months and months of it for you here.
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p>Consider this. If a smooth talking female had thrown her hat in the ring with the same resume as Obama brings, would she have been taken seriously? If a female good at giving raise-the-church speeches had ties to Resko in Chicago, would it have been essentially ignored? If a female had lifted not just words, but whole sections of more than one speech from a pal, would that have been brushed off as silly?
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p>I believe Obama’s race has actually helped him skirt the intense scrutiny and vetting that a presidential candidate usually could expect from the media (and from many Democratic politicos, as well)…any criticism, even valid questionning, was met with the “you are being racist” response…it backed people off from anything approaching needed scrutiny of a would-be president.
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p>I am not defending the poor decisionmaking of the Clinton campaign gurus…Penn and company should have been fired in Iowa…and Bill should have helped from the wings, not the stage…Hillary paid the price for those decisions. But, even with all that considered, there is no doubt by anyone paying attention that Hillary’s road was far steeper because of her gender, the media’s blatantly biased coverage and the public’s acceptance of it.
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p>Even Sanjay got young people in the audience to cry and faint…he was a phenomenon for 8 weeks.
or a male Hillary….ultimately it is the collection of traits and circumstances, along with how the campaign is run, that determines who wins and loses. Obama did manage to capitalize on his race at a key point in the campaign, but there was a lot more involved than just “being black”…he probably couldn’t have done it without Oprah. Without the support of a powerful black person he could have gone down as the upper-middle-class-white-kid’s candidate.
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p>As for Hillary, her greatest advantage was also a great disadvantage–the fact that she is married to a former president. If she had just been Hillary Rodham, all her smarts and skills would never have made her the front-runner; but as Hillary Clinton, she had to deal with the danger of being overshadowed by Bill (which, disasterously, did happen).
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p>I think there were times in the campaign, early on, where being a woman was a bit of an advantage–in a field of seven men, she stood out like a beacon on a dark night. Of course she also had to deal with crap the guys didn’t have to…but ultimately, most of the guys’ campaigns died for lack of oxygen (money/attention), which she and Obama were equally well supplied with.