Hillary Clinton Has Some Tough Words for Democrats, and for Women

[RandySF]

n wide-ranging and unusually frank comments, Mrs. Clinton said Democrats had spent decades in a state of denial that a right enshrined in American life for generations could fall — that faith in the courts and legal precedent had made politicians, voters and officials unable to see clearly how the anti-abortion movement was chipping away at abortion rights, restricting access to the procedure and transforming the Supreme Court, until it was too late.

“We didn’t take it seriously, and we didn’t understand the threat,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Most Democrats, most Americans, did not realize we are in an existential struggle for the future of this country.”

She said: “We could have done more to fight.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comments came in an interview conducted in late February for a forthcoming book, “The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America.”.......

“This election is existential. I mean, if we don’t make the right decision in this election in our country, we may never have another actual election. I will put that out there because I believe it,” she said. “And if we no longer have another actual election, we will be governed by a small minority of right-wing forces that are well organized and well funded and are getting exactly what they want in terms of turning the clock back on women.”




https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/us/politics/hillary-clinton-abortion.html

[Cha]

1. TY & Hillary!

She's right, of course.

[DENVERPOPS]

49. They are going to royally

Fuck over every last person in the U.S. below the top 1%............

[MustLoveBeagles]

53. She's always right

[chouchou]

2. I'm a women but, with all due respect, it's also turning the clock back on Men.

Women, if they find themselves with child, will want monetary help from the father. (As she should).
You can bet your sweet ass, men... that you may not want to be a daddy but, the GOP will ..in a way..force you to support that child for
many years. THINK about that when you vote!

[erronis]

6. Absolutely, yes. Men lose when someone else tells them how to be a man.

Religion and cults enforce strict rules that limit everybody's rights. Men are frequently hounded or tortured or killed if they don't obey the current power.

[Hekate]

7. The religious fanatics will ensure the poverty of millions of men this way

[stopdiggin]

11. once a pregnancy is achieved

the decision on whether it advances or not is 100% the mother.

What a 'donor' feels - about financial obligation, parental roll, timing - or even, in extremis, viability or defect of fetus - means nothing unless the bearer of that pregnancy agrees or wishes to make accommodation for those opinions.

Think about it! Are we going to embrace going back to a time when boyfriend/husband has veto power .. ?

[lark]

12. I don't think GOP will ever force men to have to pay for all the children they have from forced birthers laws.

None of the laws being made touch men in any fashion - not one that I know about anyway. It's all about controlling and hurting women, zero about the saving lives or any sharing of responsibility at all. That's been proven when women are refused life saving medical treatment, even when the child isn't viable. It's about creating a huge pool of impoverished workers, who will have no health care, no-little free schooling and no labor laws and no hope.

Men taking responsibility - ha, just like ric htake care of their workers - nice when it happens but it's certainly not mandated.

[TSExile]

14. YES!! EXACTLY!!!

It's the entire modus operandi of the Grand Old Patriarchy!!

[Traurigkeit]

28. Republicans are the party of 'No Responsibility'

[LisaM]

32. No they won't.

If they were true, they'd be getting DNA samples from every boy who was born. Or giving forced vasectomies at puberty.

Neither of those things is true. The GOP is pro-rape and pro-incest and they have zero plans or interest in holding fathers accountable.

[Haggard Celine]

50. You would think that more men would think ahead

about how anti-abortion laws affect them too. A lot of men don't even want to pay child support, so why aren't they protesting right along with the women? It doesn't make any sense.

[Upthevibe]

65. Haggard Celine.....

I hear ya! I think it'll start to occur to them (hopefully some point soon).

I've predicted that men will start getting vasectomies and women will start getting tubal ligations at breakneck speed (once they have the number of kids they want or if they don't want kids then even at younger ages).

[Haggard Celine]

67. I think they will, too.

That is, if some states don't ban those procedures as well. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Hillary Clinton tried to warn us

Link to tweet

[sop]

19. Never has anyone been proven so right in so short a time.

I think Hillary knew a lot of classified stuff about Trump, stuff than she was unable to reveal.

[LisaM]

22. She is almost always right.

I have huge issues with people who were against her in 2016 and yes, 2008. One of the worst experiences of my life was the 2008 caucus in Seattle when the Hillary people were given zero space and respect. That year also put me off MSNBC, in particular Olbermann.

I was so put off by the 2008 caucuses that I didn't even go to the ones in 2016, because I knew what I would encounter would be ten times worse (I voted by waiver, but the stories I heard later of how the Hillary voters were treated by ostensible Democrats curled my ears).

[radical noodle]

30. I know it's not something that's normally said here

but I agree 100% about Olbermann that year. I haven't watched him since.

[LisaM]

31. MSNBC Boys' Club.

It was a thing.

[cally]

4. Speaking truth

[Hekate]

5. As always, Hillary speaks truth to power.

[Tetrachloride]

27. as always ?

[comradebillyboy]

35. Yes Hillary is unflinchingly honest.

[Tetrachloride]

36. i have never heard of any American being unflinchingly honest

[Tetrachloride]

39. i am incorrect. Boot camp drill instructors

[et tu]

8. we usually judge

others with our own set of values.
we have given the extreme rw to much grace.
they don't think like we do, nor do they act the same.~

[DFW]

9. And IF such a calamity were to occur, many ignorant idealists will finally get the answer to a naive question

Too often, I see a question posed, one so reeking of ignorance and naïvété that I never bother to answer:

"Well, if the government is awful, why don't the people just rise up and overthrow it?" This is not Russia in 1917, where the country was technically more backward than even 1917 western Europe. The National Socialists of Germany, and then their observant "socialist" enemies of the Warsaw Pact afterward, as well as many of the US-educated anti-Shah forces in Iran after 1979, learned from precedent. If you take over a country, and impose rule that you know from the outset will oppress your people, you institute structures that solidify control, make communication difficult, and crush opposition as "unpatriotic," as so many idealistic anti-Shah Iranian "students" found out as they faced firing squads made up of fellow "revolutionaries."

In socialist East Germany, it was forbidden for groups larger than four people to sit together at cafés. It's not that East Germany had only small tables. They just didn't want dissent to have the chance to grow. It grew anyway, of course (1953 put any doubts to rest). But resistance got reality shoved back in their faces. Only when the true boiling point was reached, ""Tommy" style ("We're not gonna take it" ), did the regime, sticking to their old ways of repression, get overwhelmed. There would be enough right wing technocrats in a Republican-led dictatorship to overcome even sophisticated opposition. The National Socialists and the socialists of Eastern Europe never knew what it meant to lose an election. The Republicans know only too well. If their extremists gain power, the first thing they would do would be to maintain the fiction of elections, and then make defeat in those elections an impossibility.

Minority rule is not an impossibility in the USA, just an illegality--until one minority manages to change what's legal. Getting six out of nine like-minded members of the Supreme Court on their side might be a good start in that direction. Gee, does anyone think that could happen? Let me ponder that for a second.....................

[Hekate]

59. Thanks for your well-informed post

[Botany]

10. Damn I feel a sense of loss that she didn't get the job that should have been hers.

N/t

[mahina]

66. Daily

I try to let go of regret. I fought hard for her in 2016. I volunteered and I gave her money I couldn’t afford to give, but I could’ve done more.

[oasis]

13. Hillary and America got a rotten

deal throughout 2016.
The world continues to pay the price,
BIG TIME.

[Woodwizard]

16. Right if someone has a reason to talk about a stolen election it is her.

[JoseBalow]

20. Ask Bernie Sanders about Debbie Wasserman Schultz

[oasis]

24. What would Bernie have

to say about DWS

[betsuni]

40. Here's what Bernie said about the DNC email hack: "If they went into our emails, I'm sure there would

be statements that would be less than flattering about, you know, the Clinton staff. That's what happens in campaigns." Rigging nonsense is a myth.

http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

[betsuni]

57. I love you.

[JoseBalow]

64. Get over yourself

I could not care less about Bernie Sanders, or his whiny supporters.

Or his whiny haters.

Deal with it yourself

[shrike3]

68. Hillary won more delegates and more primaries.

I voted for Bernie in 2016. Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn't stop me. Nobody stopped me. All those people at Bernie's rallies, where were they? I showed up, why didn't they? If they had, they wouldn't have had to scream nonsense the way they did.

[oasis]

23. Pre-election theft by combination

of anti-Clinton MSM and Comey tipping the scale at the last minute.

[triron]

25. And with the 'help ' of Putin.

[CBHagman]

69. The media also gave Trump billions in airtime.

By the spring of 2016 the media were already reporting on that story.

Here's a piece from after the election:

[link:https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house-13896916|

[MustLoveBeagles]

54. A thousand times this

[AllaN01Bear]

15. the rs will be wiping out a lot of things that we have been fighting for years .

mom said , let it go down , let it all go down and then the rs will whine and pine on how good they had it. hank you mrs pres

[dalton99a]

17. Kick

https://archive.ph/Z87pO

[mcar]

18. All those fools who, in 2016,

said SCOTUS wasn't important and voted their "conscience," will never admit their part in this.

[oasis]

26. Yup "dont 'blackmail' us with

SCOTUS.
That was their favorite go-to.
Backing the Democratic nominee was a bridge too far.

[mcar]

29. I will never forget or forgive

[MustLoveBeagles]

55. Me neither

And I say this as a Sanders supporter. You support the Democratic nominee period.

[betsuni]

58. Yes. It would be different if there were apologies, but there aren't any. The Grudge will never end.

[Baitball Blogger]

21. "We could have done more to fight."

That's what most of us on DU said since the Bill Clinton years.

Just going to say, Centrism didn't help the cause. But, it's always better late than never.

[betsuni]

42. Republicans controlled the House for six out of eight years of Clinton and Obama's administration,

and now two of Biden's. Presidents can only do what they legally can to "fight" Republicans.

"Centrism"

[Baitball Blogger]

43. I lived through that era.

Because of triangulation and capitulation, progressives and Liberals fell out of fashion. Bill Clinton did both. Triangulate and capitulate. If you want to defend progressive ideals, it's not a good idea to have a leader who was doing everything he could to appease the right. That was a time when we had Democratic leaders like Lieberman.

[betsuni]

44. From Nancy MacLean's "Democracy in Chains":

"In the end, as their representatives in Washington should have known all along, even those voters who revered Ronald Reagan, and cheered on the contract-signing candidates in principle, were not ready, when they learned that free markets would leave them with sole responsibility for their own fates, to give up their Social Security and Medicare, their public schools, and their government-backed air, water, and earth protections. As important, Bill Clinton's legendary ability to 'triangulate' -- taking on as his own some of the goals they proposed while drawing the line against such extreme measures as a balanced budget amendment -- took the steam out of the House GOP's sails. To be repeatedly outwitted by Clinton, a president the radical right had spent much effort and untold treasure trying to undermine, made the defeat all the more sharp."

Dealing with a Republican Congress, it's politics, the reality of politics. No matter who is president they'd do the same. If Democrats ever have very large majorities in Congress and a normal Republican Party who worry about being voted out of office and Democrats still refuse to pass progressive policy, then and only then are accusations of being centrists and same as Republicans and so on justified. It's certainly not now.

[Baitball Blogger]

48. So he threw the baby out with the bathwater.

His bargaining chips were programs that were usually defended by progressive Democrats. Regulating the markets for example. Welfare programs. And, because we no longer were a party that was there for the Democratic base, we would continually lose elections. It wasn't until Obama restored the minority base in our elections that we squeaked back.

[Rob H.]

47. Thanks for pointing this out

It feels as if a lot of people have forgotten about it or are very pointedly pretending it never happened.

[msfiddlestix]

61. Who is this "We" (didn't fight hard enough) referred to?

[Baitball Blogger]

62. You'll have to ask Hillary.

From my perspective, the Centrist party broke our momentum.

[msfiddlestix]

63. Not happy about it, but I have to say I am in full agreement

I feel evidence has been laid bare for quite some time. longer than I care to think about.

[Mike Nelson]

33. She is...

... correct, again. Hillary has a keen understanding of US and world politics.

[calimary]

46. She sure is.

She has a better track record on this kind of understanding, wisdom, and perspective than just about anybody else I can think of.

[Cheezoholic]

34. RBG also was waving the warning flag with Hillary about the vulnerability of the Roe decision her entire career

"She believed that the Roe v Wade case had based the right to abortion on the wrong argument, a violation of a woman's privacy rather than on gender equality. This, she thought, left the ruling vulnerable to targeted legal attacks by anti-abortion activists."
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240315-in-history-ruth-bader-ginsburg-foresaw-threat-to-us-abortion-access

If/when we get enough power across the 3 branches we must demand our lawmakers address not just abortion but many of the "rights" we enjoy that are only there due to "interpretation's" of Constitutional meaning, like how about a freaking absolute right for every citizen to vote!!!

[JustAnotherGen]

37. She DID take Roe seriously

She told us then. She's telling us now.

[Evolve Dammit]

38. Damn straight Hill.

[LudwigPastorius]

41. "We didn't take it seriously..."

With all due respect, if she's speaking about Democrats, and not the country at large, that is not what I saw leading up to the 2016 election.

Especially on DU, we knew Trump, if elected, would have the chance to overturn Roe after Scalia's seat was stolen from Obama by McConnell.

[BlueKota]

45. She's 100 percent right

[blue-wave]

51. As usual, Hillary is spot-on

I know people are getting tired of Nazi analogies, but the Nazis NEVER gained a majority of the vote in any election. They were able to reek havoc on Germany and the world by chipping away at established German society.

[eppur_se_muova]

52. Vote Republican in 2024, and you'll never need to vote again.

(not that you'd be allowed to.)

[HandmaidsTaleUntold]

60. Handmaids Tale

Get ready to revolt. Organize. Buy guns.