Please stop saying that discussion about Hillary is "irrelevant" because she is not in power

[Maven]

Or because her campaign is in the past. Inasmuch as people keep accepting lies about her, and saying "Hillary is irrelevant" to avoid having to face the truth about those lies, they are completely missing the point. Hillary was the target of a coordinated smear campaign by the Republicans, the Russians, and too many on the left. She was the further target of media pundits who were obsessed with creating false equivalencies between her and an actual criminal and would-be dictator. The truth was completely lost as many voters were led to believe that HILLARY WAS WORSE THAN TRUMP. Think about how ludicrous that is, and yet many believed it. Some still do!

Unless we put a stop to the propaganda machine that caused that to happen, we are sunk. It will keep happening. They are already starting with Kamala Harris and other potential 2020 Democratic frontrunners. The discussion about Hillary and the way her character was assassinated with fake news and media bias is relevant and we should be talking about it.

We cannot simply "move forward" from this without examining how it happened and holding people and organizations responsible.

[bettyellen]

1. I agree. And accepting RW framing on this is the last thing Schumer should be doing.

Last edited Mon Jul 24, 2017, 06:47 PM - Edit history (1)

[Hortensis]

17. He's not. Look at who are deliberately misinterpreting his statement

for not-so-hidden agents already working to defeat Democratic candidates in 2018 and 2020. RW media overtly, of course, but the MSM long ago mastered the technique of "reporting" dishonest allegations, and many nationally recognized figures are already trying to keep hostile attention on Hillary alive, but not so much yet. Rump's president after all. Their audiences are far more interested in what he's up to. And, of course, DU has an anti-Hill contingent who clearly also have no intention of moving on.

[bettyellen]

35. He knows exactly how they'll quote him. Dumb move. It's not an accident.

Last edited Mon Jul 24, 2017, 11:40 PM - Edit history (1)

[leftstreet]

2. You can change future propaganda, but not past

You make excellent points about stopping the propaganda machine.

But nothing can change what the decades of propaganda did to Hillary

[Maven]

5. You're right, we can't change the past, but we must learn from it.

Trump and the GOP have declared war on truth itself, and they have built a machine to amplify their lies to such a degree that the truth completely gets lost. Public perception of HRC is evidence of that. They will do it to every candidate we run until we stop them. And part of stopping them means rejecting the continued lies about HRC, the same way we pushed back against birtherism.

[Kaleva]

9. My wife voted for Trump because of the decades of attacks against Hillary

She regrets her decision now as Trump has turned out to be the reality tv joke I was very sure he would be. But I couldn't overcome, before the election, her negative perception of Hillary that had been ingrained into her mind for so many years.

[leftstreet]

11. That's sad

But not uncommon

[niyad]

3. k and r

[KitSileya]

4. On another thread, I stated the criticism of Hillary is relevant

because it makes it so much more difficult for women to run in the future. For f#ck's sake, she was the most qualified candidate we've had in ages, and now she's hounded and denigrated after the election too. Of course women and other minorities see this, and they do the math. White men are making society as difficult as they can for minorities speaking out, and we don't need white men in the Democratic party to add to the burden.

You are right that this isn't irrelevant, because it makes it more difficult for minority candidates to make the decision to run for office, while white men again get an easier ride.

[Maven]

8. Yes, women will be targeted much more viciously than men

because misogyny is still very powerful in our society. Racial minorities will also be targeted (e.g., birtherism). I agree, we definitely do not need white men in our party echoing their lies and false framing.

[R B Garr]

15. Wouldn't it be rich if Hillary challenged Schumer for his Senate seat.

He is smeared by the same people who smear the Clintons.

[Baconator]

18. I would suggest that she was only partially qualified...

Jobs, experience, and policy? Check, check and check...

Campaign management and personality? Less so...

You have to have it all (or at least more than the opposition) to win...

[karynnj]

24. She was not more qualified than either John Kerry or Al Gore when they ran and they were white males

Note that they lost too. You might even remember that the lies about John Kerry led to a new word - swiftboat. Those lies were insidious accomplishing two things at one time - denying Kerry the opportunity to use his heroism, courage and incredible leadership skills that he had as a 25 year old and it made some people question his behavior. This even though the Navy's own records are filled with glowing reports on him. It was almost mindboggling to hear Republicans, like Guiliani, complain that he was being swiftboated by his 2008 opponents!

What I remember in 2005 was Bill Clinton belittling BOTH of these men in a New York magazine article, where he claimed that unlike the Clintons, they simply were not equipped to fight the right wing. The fact is that the right wing has an ever increasing echo chamber and it takes something like the situation by 2008 when people just wanted change. I do not say that to diminish Obama, who was a great President, intensely charismatic and the possessor of the best grin in politics!

Hillary Clinton was not smeared because she was a woman or even a Clinton, but because she was the Democratic nominee. I resent that, in your desire to see no flaws in Clinton, you actually further a meme that a woman can not get elected. It is not clear that either Gilibrand or Harris have the amount of baggage that Clinton did.

[Egnever]

6. Worse than trump?

Not in a million years. But she was a horrible candidate. Next to Trump no other candidate has ever had worse approval ratings justified or unjustified.

[Weekend Warrior]

7. Very little about her life has been "irrelevant".

I would never consider writing her off the the land of irrelevancy. Shit, I'm not arrogant enough to think I have that kind of power.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

[kentuck]

10. Hillary was a victim....

..of thirty years of right-wing attacks. There was more hatred for her on the right than any of us ever imagined.

Hillary is a great Democrat but her race showed just how effective right-wing propaganda has become in this country.

[samnsara]

27. well said- i agree

[karynnj]

31. It is not just Hillary, if you look at any right leaning media or search a name on twitter,

you will find that almost every prominent Democrat has been assigned a very distorted image. The higher the Democrat, the more developed and negative the various beliefs. You will find that they have gone to great lengths to create "proof" of many of their more outrageous claims.

One step I can think of is to discourage DEMOCRATS and allied media from stereotyping the Democrats they prefer not to win in a negative manner. One example is that it was Democrats who exaggerated Joe Biden's tendancy toward gaffes. Now, I would say that a better charachterization is the more complex one of a gregarious man, who is a natural story teller. As a story teller, he often does not pass everything he says through an internal filter that would insure he says things in a way that they can not be parsed in a way that creates trouble. Lost in all of that is the serious, caring, man, with excellent ability to reach out to Congress, who is also a foreign policy expert.

[msongs]

12. she can defend herself publicly if she wants to. other wise dems need to move along nt

[lunamagica]

13. Thank you! We will never forget. And we won't be silenced

[samnsara]

28. no we wont!

[barbtries]

14. agree

i would add that the anti- Hillary propaganda campaign goes back decades.

[R B Garr]

16. Great points!

[apkhgp]

19. I for one have always believed her to be innocent n/t

Whatever it was about her emails and Benghazi, nothing about all of that could ever convince me that she was not fine and upstanding.

[aquamarina]

20. I completely agree - excellent post.

[gilbert sullivan]

21. Actually, I have little problem with a slight mod of that title

"discussion about Hillary is irrelevant, because she is not in power"

[geek tragedy]

22. she is every bit as relevant as Al Gore and Mitt Romney nt

[NBachers]

23. I posted a non-rec of the other one. I will make a point of recing yours.

Sorry, the other one just rubbed me the wrong, wrong way.

[mcar]

25. K & f'ing R!

[Eliot Rosewater]

26. Since I am forbidden to talk about last year, and we will repeat the mistake if we dont talk about

it, but since I am, I will simply say

a. most qualified candidate in history
b. would have been most liberal president in history
c. does more for those in need in one day than 98% of us here combined do in our lifetimes

[Warren DeMontague]

29. People here need to support the Democratic Party, and Senator Schumer is a leader of that party.

They need to put their personal grievances and emotional over-attachments aside so we can have a real conversation about mistakes and direction.

[Maven]

33. We have a homegrown RW media machine and a hostile foreign intelligence service coordinating

to amplify and spread false information about center-left candidates to put extremists into office. In 2016, it worked. What happened Hillary is direct evidence of that. The fact that so many think that somehow it would only work on HRC because she was so singularly awful (for reasons they can never seem to convincingly articulate) is actually only more sad evidence of its success.

We are up against an opponent that is attacking the free press and gaslighting the public. They are attacking the concept of objective truth itself. It should concern you that so many actually believed ludicrous stories about HRC like Pizzagate. Because it can and it WILL start happening again unless we reclaim what is real. In reality, we ran a candidate in the last election who was infinitely better than the criminal lowlife piece of garbage the Republicans ran as her opponent. And yet, the GOP (and Russia) were able to convince a large segment of the population of the unreality that said piece of garbage was actually better and less corrupt. You think that won't happen again? It will.

You can condescend all you want about "personal grievances and emotional over-attachments" but that will not change the reality of what we face. Claiming that HRC lost solely because of her own failings is not only an egregious lie, it is a dangerous one if we ever want to win again.

And if Chuck Schumer doesn't get that, he should move out of the way and let others who do, lead. Not to mention that piling on someone who is strongly admired by a huge portion of the party's base is incredibly fucking stupid. I have no use for those who throw wounded soldiers overboard.

[Warren DeMontague]

38. We all voted for her. She lost anyway.

But speaking of objective reality, it seems obvious to me, as it does to Sen. Schumer- that our messaging could stand some improvement, as a party. Our last DNC chair defined "outreach" as going to the times and insulting millennials while defending the incarceration of marijuana users.

Guess what? We can do better.

[Squinch]

30. I just love how a certain faction likes to say, "She's Satan! Now stop talking about her because

she's irrelevant!"

Now if that same faction would get a clue about the meaning of party discipline, we might not always have to be the party that eats its own offspring.

[Maven]

34. Yes, this galls me. So many want to use Hillary hate as common ground

with those on the right, as though some greater good can be reached by embracing their hatred and sidestepping the issue of where that hatred comes from and whether it is justified. "Yes, of course we all agree she was the worst candidate who ever lived, but that's irrelevant. She's not in power!"

No, we don't all agree on that. And if we don't start calling out these lies and the people who spread them, we will not start winning again.

[Squinch]

37. And not for nothing but that woman has endured four decades of unmitigated shit

solely because she loves this country.

[MrsCoffee]

36. No kidding.

I was thinking similar, but you said it better.

[NotASurfer]

32. And not being in power does not confer irrelevance

Especially if you are not in power, and disenfranchised, and regardless what the trumpenfuhrer and his ilk wish they could do to you, as individuals we have both a right and a moral obligation to make our voices heard. Anyone who says HRC is irrelevant denies that she, and all of us, have that right to dissent.

Like the protest sign says, "they came for the Muslims..."