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I have been paying attention to the campaign as it goes along--nothing extreme, not following every speech or exit poll result--listening to enough to get the pattern of things, and to hear some of the same things over and over. Others have expressed similar opinions about things noticed, but I also wanted to make a point of a few things.
Most importantly, this whole campaign season indicates how the country changed completely, with no help from "superior" paid commercial "framing" consultants, and how the corporate-lobbyist-connected candidates--ALL of the "top" ones--were so cut off for so many years, that they were oblivious, and had to completely rewrite their speeches, change their "phrasing," and address people as adults, and not "tricked consumers" they were selling products to. The "D"LC candidate, Hillary Clinton (and yes, John Edwards is "D"LC, too, which Edwards supporters never admitted), went from arrogant and throwing weight around, giving orders and laughing at fellow debaters, an actual planned campaign strategy of appearing to be the "inevitable candidate," to trying desperately to grab onto any life-raft to fit in. How few months ago it seems, that the "D"LC had a stranglehold on the real Democratic Party, threatening to cut off funds and all other support for any Democrats who did not bow down to Rahm Emanuel, Schumer, etc., and the corporate lobbyists they approved. It was not long ago that Hillary Clinton and Tom Vilsack were giving snide, angry speeches vowing the "D"LC would "never" give up control of the Democratic Party, and that progressives and anti-corporate types could just go to hell. Now, they pretend they were designing economic plans for middle class unemployed workers, all along. If anything at all is clear, it is that we are witnessing the ignominious end of the "D"LC and its arrogance.
Bill Clinton calimed that "the era of big Government is over," and shoved it down the throats of those who need big Government to help them, against the corporate criminal oppressor; Clinton cut millions of poor women off of welfare, with Republicans, and gave them nowhere to go and no help. Reagan, Clinton, both Bushs, etc., ushered in the era of the "Global Gilded Age" of total corporate control of Government, then launched covert slander campaigns, just like a Republican, against anyone who tries to get the corporations out of the process again. The entire Democratic Party was dismantled as a National organization, and remade as the " 'D'LC Bill Clinton Fan Club," losing majority support, and turning to corporations (and their demands) for all fundraising. It took Howard Dean to rebuild it as a Party--which might also explain why Hillary Clinton's campaign is so bizarrely mismanaged on even the most basic levels of competency: same people.
This then leads to "Hillary Clinton's" (or the male "D"LC's, anyway) campaign this year. I have heard several speeches from Hillary Clinton on C-SPAN, and if anything sounds like the nightmare-world of fake, mask-wearing corporate-consultant " 'frame'-speak," this is it. I can't even count the number of times that she has been talking about "reaching across the aisle to Republicans," or "giving tax relief to our hard-working businesses," or "people who use the Emergency Room for non-emergencies, which we all pay for," and thought--God damn it, quit talking like that! Say something people care about; talk like a woman, and not a corporate male! I have watched her audiences, as big as Obama's, WANTING to cheer, wanting a reference to the historical rise of women, the importance of this moment, and it never comes. She refers to abortion rights only to do this shitty thing of demanding that there be FEWER of them, that they be "rare." She is still on this incoherent line about buying health care like the Congressional plan--I don't even know what the fuck she is talking about, except that it denies us Medicare-type coverage, so it is another fake ploy. "Tax cuts," "tax relief," all the Republican lines, but nothing that would help people in foreclosed homes, or God forbid, punish the predators who caused this disaster. Devastatingly, Obama has tied her to NAFTA, outsourcing, and the recession--this is a surefire criticism, as these things all badly hurt us, and the Bill Clinton Admin., with its "dot.com" "wal-Mart" friends, told us all to go to hell. Now it comes back to haunt her, and she cannot answer it.
Her advisers have done some kind of polling or something, and come up with the totally incomprehensible result that people "want" an explanation of her recent loan of her own money to her campaign. I have heard this section of her speech several times, and it is always unreal. She starts off by saying that "you probably heard that I recently loaned my campaign" ($5 million, or whatever it was)--when I highly doubt most people even know what she is talking about, as they have problems of their own. Then she goes on this bizarre and annoying thing about how, then, supposedly some "young mother then donated what little she had" to the campaign, or something--it is so fake, so "focus group-tested," so cut off, so unnecessary a part of a speech--it brings all momentum to a screeching halt, as the audience wonders what the hell she is talking about, that you realize clearly how fatal was the effect of the male "D"LC slogan-spin machine. They really are going to kill this for her, when she might have won, if she had just sounded like a human being and not a manipulator.
Interestingly, Obama is as corporate as Hillary Clinton is: supporting "free" trade agreements, praising Reagan and Republicans, supporting all these new classes of work visas, to bring high-skilled, low-wage workers to the U.S. and kill unions, and even supporting "merit pay" for teachers. Obama has made many snide remarks about Clinton's support from women, that it is based on "emotion," throwing in the code-attack that they are "especially OLDER women,"and one time I heard Obama even end it with, "and there's nothing wrong with that." Why would you even say that? Obama's South Carolina campaign chair gave the media a five-page hit piece on supposedly "racist" wording from the Clintons, tells baby-boomers to "get over themselves," tells Hillary Clinton snidely that she is "likeable enough" and does not even look at her, tells the media the Republicans have a "dump truck" worth of evidence they could use against the Clintons, yet is treated, by a totally uncritical male media, as the candidate who will "bring us all together." After kicking the women in the teeth and pushing them out of the way?
Every staff change in Clinton's campaign is painted by the media as a "panic" or "shake-up," increasing the disaster sense; any problems encountered by Obama are "seasoning" the candidate. Obama is treated as a "brilliant orator" and "totally ethical, unlike the Clintons," and then when it is discovered that not only did Obama not write these things, but they were stolen from other speeches, anyone who mentions it is attacked by the media and treated as a race-baiter. Obama was recently called "the leader of a new movement" by some dick on the media, although none of them can explain what it exactly is. When anyone refers to what they actually call "Obama-mania," (really objective journalists here) as fans cheering as at a rock concert, and not serious, it is treated as someone breaking up the male media's fun party. Obama's supporters are labelled "young," "educated," "Green/environmental," and even, they gush, "white males"! Hillary Clinton's supporters are attacked with the code words "older women" and "downscale"--actual expressions used.
Hillary Clinton sounds as if she is being restrained by her male consultants from ever just coming right out and saying anything that women know or experience; as if everything is being scripted by males, for males, and so males will not ever, ever be offended. Barack Obama, meanwhile, speaks freely and is cheered for everything. Obama has accomplished exactly nothing in the Senate, and that is never referred to. Clinton meanwhile, is blamed even for Bill Clinton's Presidential failings. Clinton wants to get along with Republicans because she is so corporate and "D"LC; Obama wants to get along with Republicans, and that is so inspiring and will "unite" us all. Blah blah blah, so sayeth the male media.
If there are three main reasons why Hillary Clinton's campaign is such a shocking disaster, it might be that:
1) Barack Obama is allowed to be a black male, but Hillary Clinton is not allowed to be a woman, and;
2) This is the end of the rich corporate strong-arm tactics of the "D"LC, etc., as they have now gotten themselves completely cut off from people, and;
3) The male media attacked the woman and cheered the male from the start, no matter what, and as usual dressed up their bigotry against women, as a support for something--anything--else.
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