Clinton’s statement today about Ronald Reagan’s and especially Nancy Reagan’s HIV advocacy is almost incomprehensible.
Here’s a link to the video of the interview. Clinton said:
Because of both President and Mrs. Reagan, in particular Mrs. Reagan, we started a national conversation where before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it.
That too is something I really appreciate with her very effective, low-key advocacy. It penetrated the public conscience. People began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’
I know that Clinton wanted to say nice things about Nancy Reagan today, but there really aren’t many nice things to say about the Reagans when it comes to their response to HIV/AIDS.
I can’t even think of much else to say. Too busy shaking my head.
…and has since corrected herself, at least in her campaign FB feeds. It’s Alzheimer’s and stem cell research where Reagan gets props.
I saw that explanation as well.
The problem is that she did not misspeak. She was very clearly addressing their record on HIV/AIDS. She didn’t get her words wrong. She got her history wrong. Dead wrong.
Saying she misspoke is a very obvious excuse, and it’s also a very clear lie.
for “I was wrong.” I wouldn’t get too upset about the wording. The main thing is that she acknowledged that she screwed up. She should never have said what she said, but at least she has recognized her error.
It’s the typical bullshit response. “I said something dumb, please don’t hold it against me.” “Misspoke” is what it is – total bullshit.
I’m worried she might actually believe that crap and/or just be so willing to try and say the thing she thinks she supposed to say at any given time.
…to convince you that she is human and as such simply made a mistake? I’ve had to acknowledge errors in my speaking from time to time – haven’t you, or are you perfect?
Her confusing Aids with Alzheimer’s, if that is what happened, has outraged a lot of gay people who lost friends while the Reagans ignored Aids.
How many times have you (Fred, too) asked that same question regarding Clinton in these threads? A dozen or more times?
She apologized. She had to. That’s good. But the fact of the matter is that she did not actually misspeak. That’s her excuse. I get it. I hope she is embarrassed for what she said, however, because she should be.
I chalk up her statement to either typical shameless politicking (probably), a warped view of history (hopefully not), or an affinity for an insider bubble approach to social change (maybe).
And yeah, I’ll hold this against her. It’s just one more of the many things weighing down the scale for why I do not support (or trust) her. It’s really not that big of a deal, though.
…that she DELIBERATELY made an inaccurate statement? What in the world would be her motive? How does she benefit from making such a statement? I now officially diagnose you with Hillary Derangement Syndrome!
She meant to say what she said. She said she misspoke after she realized it made people mad. It’s pretty simple.
Why she thought it might be a good thing to say is what’s unclear. A slip of the tongue this was not.
…after she realized it made people mad; she said she misspoke after she realized she misspoke. Can you read her mind? How do you know it was not a mistake? Why would she mean to say something clearly inaccurate and I’m sure she knew? If for some reason she didn’t know, she’s allowed that mistake too.
Why would she mean to say something inaccurate?
There’s a word for intentionally saying something inaccurate. It’s called lying. You’re unfamiliar with this concept? People lie for all sorts of reasons.
…that I see any motive or benefit for in this context, and so far nobody has been able to provide it.
I don’t actually think she lied — I just think she was grossly misinformed, like she is on many, many issues — but it’s clear why she said what she said. She’s going after “Reagan Democrats,” and trying to appeal to conservative independent voters. We’ll see lots more of this BS if she actually wins the general election, with even clearer pivots toward the right.
I don’t want someone to run for President who largely agrees with (or wants to attract people with) the world view of the Reagans, like the Clintons do both economically and on foreign policy…. and, until a couple days ago, HIV/AIDs.
She said it because she believed it — which is worse!
Someone no doubt told her this — maybe Henry Kissinger during one of their yearly vacations during the holidays in the Carribeans — and she clearly believed it. This and many other Reagan revisionist items have circulated over the years, especially among this country’s rarified elite. Chris Hayes wrote a whole book that touched on this sort of problem — the Twilight of the Elites. Elites think they’re smarter than they actually are, and almost always think they’re right… so when this kind of dumbassery spreads amongst their ranks, it doesn’t get corrected.
Hillary has a brain full of dangerous assumptions and incorrect facts that would be bad for America. I’m sure she believes almost all of them are true, which makes her all the more dangerous.
“I am an evil person and my husband is the worst President of modern times because neoliberalism. I therefore withdraw from the election and urge everyone to vote Socialist in 2016”
As I have said many times on this site.
would be an appropriate response to this bigot’s death. Start with that.
This was no ordinary error. This was an abhorrent thing to say, completely revealing her ignorance and lack of regard for gay people for the vast majority of her life. She was too busy fighting against LGBT people for decades to actually understand any of the community’s history, and that’s how she could be nearly 70 and think Nancy Reagan was some great hero when she and her husband enacted White House policy that was tantamount to genocide. The Reagans were as much ‘subtle advocates’ of gay people as Gul Dukat was of Bajorans on DS9. Only people cloistered among the nation’s most rarified elite .1% and an army of yes-men underlings could believe something that would seem so utterly delusional to anyone else.
Here it is:
…which didn’t get any TV play last night, but that may be because they were too busy covering the fallout of the Trump rally. This seems to be mostly a story of the social media outrage machine and certainly doesn’t reverse her presidential abilities. She apologized, nothing to see here, move on.
This is costing her votes. Because it’s not featured in the media you read does not mean it isn’t a big deal to some people with a stake in that history.
It made the international news, in the Guardian both Thursday and Friday for example.
n/t
Her vote for DOMA, her support of NAFTA and TPP….she misspoke.
Give her a break. She deserves the office of the presidency because …..she does.
I can guarantee you she did not vote for DOMA. That was 1996 when she held no elective office. She has come out ultimately against TPP. She is NOT responsible for how Iraq was executed or businesses moving out of the country. The respective decision-makers are (President, management respectively) solely. I just diagnosed doubleman with Hillary Derangement Syndrome; you want to be next?
the idea that facts makes a difference in this current world of “Science Denial” is just a step too far. Obviously, Hillary Clinton opposed the United States during the Civil War because Arkansas became part of the Confederacy. Since she was one a senator, she must always have been a senator. Bazinga!
…if she can’t be blamed for something that happened when she didn’t hold office, then she can’t take credit eirher. Those commercials about how she got national health care need to come down now
…that she WAS tasked with the health care issue during her husband’s presidency? I believe she was instrumental in getting CHIPs passed as a Senator.
Are you sure that’s not what we diagnose people with who will believe literally anything she says?
…who seem incapable of believing that the person in question is incapable of doing anything right, especially if that person reverses from the original position or act objected to. Bush Derangement Syndrome and Obama Derangement Syndrome have also been used over the years.
n/t
You don’t think Clinton is using speechwriters now?
n/t
My impression is that she was replying to a question about Nancy Reagan, so she was not able to have each word of the statement tested by a focus group, I believe she was just desperately trying to say something nice.
I can honestly state that this entire episode will have absolutely no impact on my plans to vote in November, despite the fact that I am 1) openly gay and 2) lost many friends to AIDS, and 3) as a former member of the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus, have sung at far to many services and 4) have mentioned the silence of her husband, as the primary reason why I consider her husband to be the worst President in modern times (but I am now repeating myself within this same diary).
I meant to say “sung at far too many services”. To quote Homer, “Why do I need English, I’m never going to England, am I?”
Some activists don’t think the “misspoke” explanation is enough.
Carl Sciortino, Executive Director of AIDS Action.
Dan Savage:
Larry Kramer:
…is I refer my honourable friend to the comments I’ve made previously on this thread. I would say the same things to them that I have to you. Your refusal to acknowledge that she acknowledged a mistake would make our friend TheBestDefense proud!:(
Lots of people realize the “misspoke” excuse is bullshit.
Of course she apologized. If she didn’t do so quickly and instead stuck to her guns on what she said, she might as well drop out of the race right now.
..about what you would accept from her to make up for this. If nothing, then it just confirms my above “diagnosis” and you have no credibility on this.
I’m more interested in what would satisfy these activists. I expect a typical politician’s response to this – another apology, criticism of the Reagan’s, and then a doubling down on what she’ll do on HIV in her administration.
If she gave a real honest answer (misspeaking ain’t it) on why she said what she said, I’d give her money. I’m not holding my breath. And, yes, it’s true, I don’t accept everything she says as open honesty, which I know is hard for you to imagine anyone thinking (even though it basically applies to most Americans).
I’ve never seen or heard actual evidence that she isn’t honest so I do have a hard time imagining why anyone does except as they have been conditioned to by her enemies. What do you think is an honest answer? Usually when one suspects dishonesty they also suspect they know what the honest answer is. Just because “most Americans” have this “feeling” she isn’t honest doesn’t make that a reality-based feeling.
TBD has not commented in this thread, and it’s rude to call him out like that. It amounts to talking behind his back.
…than the references made to JohnD or DanFromWaltham after they stopped being active.
Unless I missed something, TBD is still active here. Even if he weren’t, he’s not a troll. He states honest beliefs that you usually disagree with. Now I’m wondering if you talk about me in threads I don’t read. Rude.
…but I was using him as an example rather than calling him out and the common thread is disagreements becoming personal. I guess it’s fair to say I’m not at my best and have no patience left when it comes to unfounded attacks on someone I see as a party hero. HRC deserves respect from all corners of the party even if not agreement or support as one’s first choice when there are other options. You should know I don’t say things just to be rude.
Because you run out of patience with people who disagree with your high opinion of HRC does not give you a pass to be so rude. And I do not think she is any kind of a hero or automatically deserving of respect.
..so much as trying to explain it, as much to myself as anyone else.
EOM
…is several months back when jconway made the comment “All Americans are cafeteria Catholics.” and you took offense because you are not Catholic. Even after several exchanges, clarifications, and an admission from him that he was sloppy and should have said, “All American CATHOLICS are cafeteria Catholics,” you continued to take offense called him and those of us who defended him bigots. There have been other times when you haven’t let it go even when there is not much disagreement left.
(BTW, kirth, is it OK that I invoked jconway’s name in this comment? It appears he hasn’t participated in this thread either!)
That is a truly pathetic explanation Christopher.
Since you aren’t using jconway as an example of bad behavior, why would anyone object? Your dragging out an episode from long ago, that has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread, just so you can try to disparage TBD, is not OK. I could bring up examples of you not letting things go, too, but I am just going to ask, suppose you stop doing these things?
This wasn’t a whoopsie. This was a Holy Fuck.
A brief statement isn’t good enough. She needs to get out there, on stage, and have a real speech about how she was deadly wrong on this issue, very misinformed, and express just how many people died because the Reagans were unwilling to speak or do anything about this issue.
This “mistake” requires a real, sincere, from-the-bottom-of-my-heart apology, and huge effort to clarify the issue at hand, if she wants to gain back any kind of trust.
It’s not really okay that she could have been so woefully misinformed about this issue in 2016, but she could get past it if she admitted that and tried to take some real action to help increase awareness — and speak about her plans on how she’ll tackle the rising HIV rates in many communities across America today.
But she has a history of being terrible on apologies — she’s either unwilling to make them, or slow to make them, or makes really piss poor ones — so I won’t hold my breath.
But as a gay man, unless she makes a real, sincere apology and tries to at least turn this kind of devastating mistake into a learning opportunity for the country, if she wins the primary, I’ll have to seriously consider blanking the ballot. This was that unconscionable, and her response to it is worse than what she said to begin with.
…and she has among her supporters many LGBT/AIDS activists who were quick to back her up in Facebook comments.
puh leeze.
You have zero understanding of this issue. I suggest reading this to understand the visceral reaction that people who suffered unimaginable loss think of Hillary Clinton’s attempted historical revisionism.
This is a baffling statement that could have done a lot of damage to Clinton’s campaign. I cannot imagine how those words actually came to come from her lips. I do not believe her explanation.
It’s damaging because it corroborates, or seems to, some of the worst libels against her: that she will say anything, that she is crafty but without being artful about it.
The truth is a sharp sword and it has two edges, but it is one of the few things we have that the bad guys do not. I think we have to condemn anyone who casually rewrites history for any reason. There were other ways to avoid speaking ill of the dead..
And it was a darned stupid thing to say.
…it would not have an effect on the campaign because it in no way speaks to her qualifications and experience to be President. If you don’t believe her explanation or think she will say anything I will now ask you what you think her motive or true explanation would be. So far nobody has provided that.
Up above.
The last one is kind of compelling after her campaign’s statement on the Trump rally. Maybe she forgot about the incredibly brave activist, Bree Newsome, who climbed up and took down the damn flag (in addition to many many other strong protests).
It’s unlikely she was motivated to say something dumb. She said something she intended to say and then came up with an excuse after people got mad about it. It’s really not that complicated.
If it’s shameless politicking then what is (or did she think would be) the political benefit to say something like that? I have yet to see any good come to her from this statement. The other two are a bit too abstract for me to wrap my head around. I am looking for a concrete political upside for deliberately saying something like this.
Saying something nice might make her look good to people that liked the Reagans?
…but there’s that pesky reality that she wasn’t likely to get their votes in the general and I can’t imagine many of them voting in a Dem primary.
Given that I began with “I cannot imagine how those words actually came to come from her lips,” this challenge is both dismissive and provocative.
i should think you would be tired of copping that attitude after all the tedious nonsense in these diaries. But go ahead. You win. Or at least, I’m not playing.
…then don’t go on to say you don’t believe her or accuse her of saying anything. I’m not trying to cop an attitude here, really, but I have consistently on BMG felt very strongly that if you accuse someone of something (and saying I don’t believe her is essentially accusing her of dishonesty) you have to be able to back it up. In other words WHY don’t you believe her? What evidence can you produce that impeaches her claim? I don’t know, or “I can’t imagine…” just doesn’t cut it with me.
Here’s my reaction to all this.
I found Nancy Reagan to be an enabler and colluder in the rise of America’s worst president to date. The elevation of Ronald Reagan to sainthood by a party that loudly embraced “morality”, “traditional values” and similar sentimental rubbish exemplifies the dishonesty and hypocrisy that is ripping us apart today. The late Nancy Reagan, in my view, played a leading role in that elevation, hypocrisy, and destruction.
Anne Frances Robbins was, in fact, a divorced actor of at best modest talent who went to Hollywood to get “a man”, by her own description. She arranged her first meeting with the much older and recently divorced Ronald Reagan. The couple’s first child was born the October after a March wedding.
None of this is, in itself, objectionable — I am happily married to my third wife. I am not, however, a candidate for high office and I do not cite “traditional values” as a core premise of my campaign. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, in fact, epitomize the need for the CHANGES in societal standards about marriage, divorce, and parenthood that Democrats fought for and won against GOP obstruction. I further note that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat early in his adult life.
All of this is to say that I have some empathy for Ms. Clinton who I’m sure was struggling to find something positive to say about a woman who arguably enabled and even privately provoked (if we are to believe the various biographers) the excesses of one of our most destructive Presidents. I am not surprised that Ms. Clinton got it wrong — it is hard to find something good to say about Ms. Reagan without stepping in one or more of the many piles of wet and steaming doo-doo that Ronald and Nancy Reagan left behind as their legacy.
In an earlier time, any comments about such matters would have been through written statements vetted by staff and distributed through daily newspapers. An error like this would have been caught and corrected before seeing the light of day in that earlier time. We live in a more spontaneous age, and such errors are in my view a consequence of that. Perhaps a more disciplined candidate would have said “I mourn the death of much-admired woman” and left it at that.
I don’t think this has ANY “meaning” in the current campaign, and I hope we all move on.
This is not a slip of the tongue. Her decision to go there in the first place shows her true colors.
At death is appropriate to honor someone of such stature, even if we disagreed with their politics in life. Pretty sure Michelle Obama was there as well.
You don’t have to show up at the funeral of a villain because she once had the same position as you did.
She was a monster.
Her decision, as a First Lady, to attend the funeral of another First Lady is simple protocol. I suppose I agree with you about showing her “true color” — she understands and respects matters of courtesy, decorum, and expected behavior.
In my view, the current political climate needs rather more of those “true colors”.
First Ladies typically attend the funerals of former First Ladies, while seated Presidents rarely do, two exceptions being JFK attending Mamie Eisehnhower’s funeral and Bill Clinton attending Jacqui O’s funeral.
HRC was at Reagan’s funeral as was much of the DC elite. NYTimes media critic Marc Leibovich said of Tim Russet’s funeral ““And I remember sitting there, and I was struck by how this memorial service for a beloved newsman could so quickly degenerate into a networking opportunity. People were throwing business cards around, people were trying to get booked on various shows.”
This is Hillary Clinton, who has been on a constant high-profile campaign for nearly 30 years and has run for President twice – all while never being an easy-going off the cuff campaigner. She could have easily praised her on the areas where she was good – like Alzheimer’s. Instead she made a very clear and not that short statement about an area where Reagan was terrible.
Also, she was going on TV specifically to make a statement about Nancy Reagan, it wasn’t a spontaneous question.
If it was a moment of failed spontaneity, it was a really bad one, and one that makes me even more concerned about how she will do against Trump.
I think she was attending an event where her presence was required. I think she was attempting to be warm. I think she was trying to find something nice to say about a woman I suspect she privately abhors.
The entire scene is fraught with tension, if not outright deception. I have sometimes had to attend the funerals of family members I knew to be vicious and cruel abusers whose children and/or spouses turned handsprings to avoid recognizing. These funerals were difficult events for all involved, without the presence of media in a hot-fought presidential campaign.
I agree with you that it was a blunder, I think her immediate retraction shows that she feels the same.
I don’t get your last sentence. Donald Trump strikes me as the kind of boor who would pitch his not-available-in-stores line of coffins at the somber funeral.
The last sentence was just about spontaneity. Trump can do it. If this was one of her attempts at such, she can’t do it nearly as well. He’ll also have attacks she won’t have expected and planned for.
Hillary Clinton attempted to follow decorum and respect the feelings of those who do admire Nancy Reagan. I can’t imagine Donald Trump making any such effort.
If “spontaneous” means spouting off whatever offensive insults come to mind, with absolutely no sensitivity to the occasion or the audience, then I agree that Donald Trump is far more “spontaneous” than any other candidate.
I sincerely hope that America is looking for something different from that in our next president.
We will assimilate you. Resistance is futile.
That’s a big problem with America’s elites. This spend all this time respecting decorum, and absolutely no time caring about, say, tens of thousands of people dying horrible deaths at the hands of a terrible disease.
Lots of time was spent worrying about the big banks and its executives and shareholders during the Great Recession. Almost no time was spent on the millions of people who lost their homes, or saw their savings instantly evaporate.
Lots of time is spent worrying about if we’ll hurt the feelings of some CEO. No time is spent worrying about how that CEO is destroying the planet or fighting giving their employees anything higher than starvation wages.
Fuck Nancy Reagan. Fuck the banks. Fuck the CEOs. They are the people who are destroying our country, not the ones being destroyed by it, or the ones who are trying to fight that destruction — both of the latter given precious little time by the proper decorum of the elites in NYC and DC, while the former gets all of it.
This comment sounds more like something Donald Trump would say.
“Not deserving of decorum”? “F— Nancy Reagan”? “F— the banks”? “F— the CEOs”?
These statements are Trumpist. In an election year, every First Lady is “deserving of decorum”, no matter how much we disagree with the policies of their spouse. Simple word substitution of the epithets offered here makes their inappropriateness apparent. Try substituting “immigrants” for “banks”, “Muslims” for “CEOs”, and “Hillary Clinton” for “Nancy Reagan”.
I’m sorry, but I’ve had enough of this kind of mindless anarchism this campaign. I don’t like it from the Tea Party, I don’t like it from Mr. Trump, and I don’t like it here.
This is a primary campaign between two candidates who are each head and shoulders above everybody else. Your comments on this thread (including this one) are a gross over-reaction to an episode that NOBODY will remember in six months.
Democrats should be better than this, especially when talking about other Democrats.
They did it intentionally, with malice. Nancy wouldn’t even help a (former) close, personal friend, who was dying of the disease.
It is ridiculous and outrageous to suggest my criticism of hers is ‘like Trump.’
I’m sorry, as a gay person, I just can’t have nice things to say about Nancy Reagan.
Come on, Rye. We’ve been part of this community for the better part of a decade and I know you can do better than this.
Of course she deserves harsh criticism. You don’t have to be gay to have very little nice to say about Ms. Reagan.
Nevertheless, you of all people are articulate enough to offer that harsh criticism in words more eloquent than “F— Nancy Reagan”.
You and I might feel, and agree, that Ms. Reagan was “not deserving of decorum”. Neither of us are a former first-spouse and neither of us are in a passionate election campaign. You know as well as I that had Ms. Clinton refused to attend, THAT would have been the news item of the day and it would NOT have been beneficial for ANY Democrat.
There is a huge range of commentary between “nice things to say about Nancy Reagan” and your comment that I characterized as “Trumpist”.
I encourage you, again, to rediscover some of that middle ground of commentary. Your vitriol against Ms. Clinton reflects far more negatively on you than you her.
I would be a lot more enthusiastic about quite likely voting for her in the general election than I am now, and she wouldn’t have revealed just how out of touch she was about the Reagans and HIV.
And, again, I’m not sorry for having harsh words for someone who’s death count is in the tens of thousands.
I join you in wishing we lived in a world where Ms. Clinton could have skipped that funeral. I thought the non-stop CNN coverage was, well, stupid.
You and I are not representative of America. Like it or not, an ENORMOUS number of Americans admired and respected her. Had Ms. Clinton skipped the funeral, she might well have made you and I more enthusiastic. The thing is, you and I are almost surely going to vote for her anyway, any neither of us is going to vote for any GOP nominee.
Meanwhile, I suspect for each voter like you or me there are dozens of swing voters, maybe hundreds, who would immediately write her off for that same action. It just doesn’t make sense to alienate huge numbers of people in order to appeal to a small minority that will already vote for her (or at least will never vote for the other guys).
When the likely GOP nominee is Donald Trump, and his rudeness, callousness, and boorish insults are a HUGE part of his rejection by most voters (after all, he is supported by only about a third of GOP voters), then it seems to me that our candidates should NOT be rude, callous, or boorish.
Attending that funeral was, in my view, a political necessity.
If Hillary wants to earn my vote in a general after her Nancy Reagan comments, I want a major policy speech on HIV, with a very real apology.
I won’t vote for a Republican or outside of the Democratic Party, but I feel comfortable living in Massachusetts blanking that ballot choice after such a deeply offensive piece of historical revisionism.
Tens of thousands of people died, Tom, and she tried to a villain in those deaths look like a hero. This, after she tried to revitalize the image of the war criminal Henry Kissinger.
So, no, my vote has to be earned by Hillary, even in the general.
The truth is that the Democratic nominee will surely win Massachusetts, whatever he or she does or says between and November.
I wrote in “Bill Clinton” in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. None of those votes meant anything AT ALL.
I guess it’s a down side of living in Massachusetts.
It is about freaking time and HRC has finally come around to acknowledge that she did not just “misspeak,” her campaign’s first horrible response to stepping into a pile of right-wing lies about the Reagans and HIV. She wrote on Saturday night “I made a mistake, plain and simple.” What follows in her article is really, really good.
But since her campaign does such a good job of explaining what Team Clinton did in their early days on the public debate on HIV, it again begs the question of what she hoped to accomplish by sucking up to the Reagan crowd in 2016. On my side of the fence, the people who have been fighting HIV for almost 30 years would never vote for the lunatic GOPers but many were closing their checkbooks to HRC this week. Most will come around before November but to restate my question more sharply, what kind of manipulation did/does she think she can get away with, including when she is President?
I am truly glad to welcome her election year conversion to the correct side of the debates around the TPP, Keystone, maybe even rejecting her past advocacy on behalf of Wall Street and militarism across the Middle East, but do I believe it reflects a fundamental re-ordering of her ideology? No. She will need constant pressure in 2017 and forward to keep her a little left of center rather than run her and Bill’s natural tendency to do what their funders want. We should all thank Sanders for keeping her a little more honest during the election cycle, but post-election this country will need the same hard pressure on her or, god forbid, one of the Republicans.
https://medium.com/@HillaryClinton/on-the-fight-against-hiv-and-aids-and-on-the-people-who-really-started-the-conversation-7b9fc00e6ed8#.iepylnslu
I agree with this.
Building on this, Bernie Sanders frequently said during the debates that he is creating a “grassroots revolution” and that it is this overwhelming number of passionate supporters that will make him effective as president and carry his agenda forward.
In my view, this grassroots revolution is required whether or not he is the nominee and whether or not he is elected. That grassroots revolution is the power needed to maintain the constant pressure on Ms. Clinton to keep her moving left of center. WITH that revolution, Ms. Clinton can be an effective and powerful president. Without that revolution, neither Ms. Clinton nor Mr. Sanders can accomplish anything.
I hope that as the nomination of Ms. Clinton becomes increasingly certain, Mr. Sanders pivots to focus on the revolution he leads, and begins to exhort his supporters to pursue his populist agenda WHOMEVER is nominated or elected. I hope that as he executes that pivot, Elizabeth Warren begins to take a more visible role in articulating the economic, legal, and political aspects of required revolution.
Most of us agree that Ms. Clinton is an imperfect leader. I, at least, agree that she DOES require constant pressure from an energized electorate to keep her focused on the progressive agenda.
I think right now is an excellent time to begin executing this redoubled focus on doing what we need to do to make all this real.
It sounds like you are praising, “I made a mistake, plain and simple,” yet object to her saying she misspoke. Is that correct? If so, if you make a mistake in something that you said, have you not by definition “misspoken”? Seems a distinction without a difference, but maybe that’s the crux of the blowback I got having interpreted that word differently. I feel like I need to apologize for the trajectory of this thread. Mine is the first comment following the diary itself. I made that comment not to pick a fight or because I thought the diary was completely out of line. My intent was to provide what I thought was a helpful update and was completely unprepared for the sustained objections it got.
It’s clear enough to me. It seems that some here wanted, and finally got, a more groveling apology than Ms. Clinton initially offered.
Your commentary seems to have been viewed by your downraters as insufficiently obsequious to the “Bernie Sanders is good, Hillary Clinton is bad” narrative that some here demand.
I meant to uprate your comment.
I’m stanat. That’s Italian for stupid !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Let’s try a dictionary Christopher. Here is how Merriam-Webster defines “misspeak”
and here is Dictionary.com:
HRC, by her own admission on Saturday, did none of those things in giving the Reagans credit for the discussion on AIDS/HIV. She fabricated an entirely new narrative that was offensive. When she called it “misspeaking” she was doing everything a politician should not do, which was offering a pathetic excuse for her mistaken paean to Nancy Reagan. Again, I do not know why she did it, but it was horrible.
Her staff later wrote a detailed, accurate and powerful explanation of what really happened in the fight against AIDS/HIV including this graph:
The rest of her statement is equally clear and powerful. Everyone who is concerned about the subject would profit by reading it in its entirety. Alas, HRC is plagued by acolytes who fail to acknowledge her mistakes and failures, as evidence by STom’s nasty follow up here:
Most Sanders supporters, and I am not one, are going to vote for her if they vote at all if she wins the nomination, as I expect she will. But the snark and self-righteousness of the talkers who do zero real work will turn off many, especially the young who may not bother to vote and others who will show less ardor in working and donating during crunch time. People on the left should not defend her steamer trunks full of garbage politics and should probably zipper their lips rather than antagonize the people she can easily lose even while they are the voters who should be in her camp. And yes, STom, I am putting you right on the top of that list.
Yes, TBD, I expect no less from you. The commentary from you and ryepower12 exemplify why this election is not a runaway landslide for our party.
This is a community, and I am frankly weary of your relentlessly hostile outbursts towards us.
I’m also happy to be at the “right on the top” of your “list“.
I don’t hate you STom. If you think so then you place too much importance on yourself. Honestly, I don’t even think of you except when I see your posts. Some of them are good, like your first response to me upthread and some of them are nasty like your second one about Bernie good, Hillary bad.
As I have written repeatedly, I am here to add detailed facts to the debates here and to stop the “truthiness” that thrives here. You are one of the propagators of truthiness and Christopher demonstrates it again with his comments in this thread, and his thread starter last week claiming that Romney had filed papers with the FEC to maintain a possible candidacy for President. It took less than a three minute search for me to find definitions of “misspeak”, something he said he did not understand, and an equal amount of time to find the FEC website that proved him wrong about Romney. I embedded that fact in a list of some of the comical names of “people” who had filed, so I would not hurt his feelings.
Go back and read my post that you find objectionable. I tagged you as one of the people who drive people away from HRC with your bombast, that’s all.
…for being wrong on Romney. I cited my source on that one, which is all any of us can ask.
That is not how it works in the adult world, Christopher. We can and should ask for more from a participant here than saying the equivalent of “hey it is not my fault that I do not make even a perfunctory effort to see if something is true before I post it.” As I noted above, it only took me three minutes to demonstrate that the claim was false.
If you worked for a campaign and reported to the manager on an unsourced claim that caused the campaign to shift resources or strategy, and it was discovered your source was a fraud then you would lose credibility if not your job.
If you worked in a restaurant and saw a tweet from somebody you don’t know claiming that an angry mob was on its way to bash the customers, and the manger closed the place based on your mistake, you would be fired.
IIRC, you are a substitute teacher in public schools. If a student submitted a written report on space exploration based on the Star Wars movies, you would fail them. You would not let the student say it is the movie maker’s fault that they made something that is not true.
I feel enormous sadness for you that you think that posting ten or twenty times per day is good, and that volume means you do not need to be accurate.
There are a lot of reasons why Hillary Clinton has failed to inspire record turnout, like Barack Obama before her. That has nothing to do with Bernie Sanders supporters, the polite or fiery versions.
A lot of it isn’t her fault. It’s difficult to rev up the base when your party’s been in power for 8 years. And, certainly, there’s an unfair hatred of her on the right.
Much of it is her fault, though, both for running flawed campaigns, and being such a compromised politician, who’s been on every side of just about every issue, and the on the wrong side of some of the core issues of the past 36 years.
Rest assured, though, neither I nor TBD, nor anyone on this thread, or anyone on BMG or like-minded liberal blogs, supporting any of the candidates, has a single thing to do with Hillary’s current failures to win this race by the landslide that she should have been able to win it by as the most heavily favored non-incumbent Presidential candidate in the history of Democratic Presidential primaries.