Hillary’s Pique

Obviously, Hillary Clinton will run on a strong gay rights/marriage equality platform, but it’s interesting to note how her views changed with the shifting political winds (a phenom that’s ubiquitous in politics). Of course, the rolling disaster of the Obama administration’s foreign policy might be more pertinent to her campaign.

More. Yes, ubiquitous. Wisconsin’s GOP governor (and presidential wannabe) Scott Walker puts his finger to the wind.

Furthermore. Andrew Sullivan observes about Clinton, “the idea that she has ever risked an iota of her own power to back the equality of gays and lesbians is preposterous.”

15 Comments for “Hillary’s Pique”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Clinton’s public “evolution” is a textbook example of the challenges faced over the years by those of us who worked on turning the Democratic Party. The process took three decades and required an enormous amount of work.

    It isn’t news that most Democratic politicians shifted on marriage equality with the winds of public opinion. It isn’t news that many Democratic politicians “evolved” privately long before they “evolved” publicly. It isn’t news that a few politicians “evolved” publicly under pressure from the Democratic base, well before they “evolved” privately, assuming that they did so at all.

    That’s the nature of politics, and all of us who spent the last thirty years turning the Democratic Party can tell plenty of war stories about our dealings with individual politicians. If I had a dollar for every time a politician told me “I’m with you, but I can’t go public yet …”, I could take all my neighbors out to a fish fry tonight.

    I wonder, frankly, whether the folks who are upset about the fact that politicians “evolve” about two steps behind public opinion ever did any work in the political arena. If so, they certainly didn’t learn anything from the experience.

    I think that the relevant point is not that politicians are neither pure of heart nor courageous, but that we did do the work necessary to move the Democratic Party, and the party moved.

    I just wish that conservative gays and lesbians would have worked within the Republican Party over the last thirty years, as we did in the Democratic Party.

    If they had, I don’t think that conservative gays and lesbians would be in a position where they treat politicians Dave Brat, a social conservative who didn’t use “anti-gay bombast in his campaign”, a ray of hope. If “not foaming” is the new “gay supportive” in the Republican Party, the path forward is uphill indeed.

    The problem is this: Nobody did squat over the last thirty years to challenge social conservatives, and, as a direct result, Republican politicians are not ready or able to move with the changing political winds.

    That, not the messiness of Clinton’s “evolution”, is the story we should be paying attention to, in my opinion. Clinton has “evolved”, for whatever reasons. The question is how do gay and lesbian conservatives “evolve” Dave Brat?

  2. posted by Lori Heine on

    I heard that interview on NPR. It’s being viewed, by Hillary-lovers and Hillary-haters both, with the same cult-of-personality, celebrity-worship mentality such people always display toward politicians.

    I don’t care whether Hillary always loved gay people. I have no desire to sit on her lap, gaze deep into her eyes and find out how she really-really-really-really FEELS about us. Or how long she’s felt that way, or when she first began to feel it.

    If she is elected president, she will be the servant of the people. We will be the boss. It would be her job to run the country, not to rule over us. Whether she’s a heckuva gal, and we’d all like to have a beer with her, or a real b*tch is actually beside the point.

    I want to hear what she will do (and equally important, what she will not do). All this blather about how she started to feel about it years ago is stupid. It’s degrading, and totally unworthy of a free people.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      I thought it was a horrible performance on Clinton’s part. It wasn’t that hard a question and she obviously didn’t want to answer honestly but rather regurgitate some fluffy talking point and expect everyone to be satisfied with the nebulous non-answer. More significant for Clinton is that she voted to authorize the Iraq War which is biting our country in the ass yet again (see today’s headlines). Had she voted against it, she’d have been elected president in 2008 (and maybe in 2004).

      • posted by Lori Heine on

        I’m certainly hoping somebody else — with a serious chance — runs besides Hillary. If I vote for her, it will be a lesser-evil type of choice for me, once again.

        The Hillary-worshippers, who treat her like some combination of Joan of Arc and the Second Coming of the Beatles, are absurd.

        I just don’t know if any other Democratic candidate can withstand the full-scale onslaught that will come from the GOP and the political right. They’ve thrown everything at Hillary, and she’s still standing. No matter how thin-skinned she gets in interviews (and she certainly was hyper-sensitive in that one), she does have a particular sort of toughness when it comes to withstanding bombardment from her enemies.

        All Howard Dean had to do was let out an ill-considered, ebullient scream. And look what happened to him.

        • posted by Houndentenor on

          Same here. I’m not optimistic. And as much as I’m not a fan, I am going to stock up on popcorn to watch the 24/7 Hillary Derangement Syndrome freak-out on the right. That should make for some seriously twisted media for the next couple of years. (I would like to point out that at this point in 2005 Hillary and Rudy were considered their respective parties’ inevitable nominees. Two years is a long time. HRC’s worst case scenario is an ongoing conflict in Iraq to remind Democrats of why they didn’t nominate her in 2008.)

          • posted by Doug on

            “. . . ongoing conflict in Iraq to remind Democrats of why they didn’t nominate her in 2008. ”

            And why we sure as hell don’t want a Republican in the White House in 2016.

  3. posted by Jorge on

    “Hillary Clinton didn’t refrain from supporting same-sex marriage for political reasons—before last year, she earnestly believed that marriage equality should be denied to gays and lesbians. That’s the story the 66-year-old Democrat settled on when NPR host Terry Gross pressed her on her views.

    In a primary, Clinton could be forced to explain a longtime position that a significant part of that Democratic political coalition now views as suspect or even bigoted. Most famously, the Silicon Valley left forced the ouster of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich for a 2008 donation he made to an anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative.”

    I would like to see that explanation. It would do the rabid extremists among both the political left and right a good deal of good to see a pro-gay person who has been against same-sex marriage for sincere reasons.

    I take Mrs. Clinton at her word, but I do not believe she is saying much. Why are moderates and conservatives allowed to evolve on legalized same-sex marriage for pragmatic, socially conscious reasons, after seeing it really is no big deal, while liberals are not?

    It used to mean something that even some of the most homophilic Democrats did not support recognizing same sex marriages. I do believe that they changed their views for reasons of political convenience, but I also believe that they had the same information the rest of this country did. More, even.

    Hillary Clinton is ruthlessly diplomatic, and I would leave it at that.

    More significant for Clinton is that she voted to authorize the Iraq War which is biting our country in the ass yet again (see today’s headlines).

    She was right. And if she had been on the other end of the phone at 2am last night, phone would have never rang, because ISIS woulda been ITWAS a long time ago.

    Whether or not Iraq is biting our country in the ass yet again depends on whether you support the pullout or not. If you support it, you should be happy it is no longer our problem. If you did not, you should be bemoaning the fact that our current president is an idiot. I didn’t vote for the idiot. I supported the candidate who was the most hawkish in the 2012 primary and who lost his Senate seat because of his steadfastness. The country made its choice, and having made that choice I am of a mind to support our president in the name of this country’s collective wisdom. I do not approve of those anonymous former defense officials being critical of President Obama for his decision to sublimate military policy to his domestic political needs. He won. As Lindsey Graham says, elections have consequences.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      We went into Iraq, guns ablazin’, with no exit strategy and no long term plan. That a civil war would break out at some point was inevitable. It didn’t matter who became president after we ill-advisedly started this mess. This is going to be a mess for the rest of my life. That’s not to say that Saddam Hussein wasn’t a horrible person, but on the list of horrible, ruthless national leaders, he wasn’t even in the top 20 at the time. We fucked up, and we and that region are going to pay for our fuck-up for decades to come.

      • posted by Jorge on

        Even if everything you said is true, the War on Iraq doesn’t change the message that if you are a state sponsor of terrorism who threatens the United States and its allies, you risk getting obliterated.

        Nor does, frankly, our exit.

        President Obama ultimately takes this stand. It is simply that Russia and our various enemies know what the loopholes are.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    A side note about Wisconsin: Judge Crabb issued an order containing a series of permanent injunctions banning state officials at a variety of levels from refusing to issue and process marriage licenses for same-sex couples, and then, citing the requirements of the Supreme Court in Herbert v. Kitchen, issued an immediate stay of the order pending appeal. Marriage equality has ended in Wisconsin for the time being as a result of the stay.

    With respect to the stay, the order reads:

    “After seeing the expressions of joy on the faces of so many newly wedded couples featured in media reports, I find it difficult to impose a stay on the event that is responsible for eliciting that emotion, even if the stay is only temporary. Same-sex couples have waited many years to receive equal treatment under the law, so it is understandable that they do not want to wait any longer. However, a federal district court is required to follow the guidance provided by the Supreme Court.”

    Wisconsin’s brief period of equality was joyous, and we await the coming of permanent equality.

  5. posted by Tom Jefferson III on

    1. I am less concerned then how a politician ‘personally feels’ about LGBT people, then how she or he will behave int terms of public policy.

    Reagan (who I do not universally dislike) may have been a very nice man — even to gay people that he knew — but his administration pretty much ignored gay rights issues or did what they could to pander to the ‘Moral Majority’.

    As for Obama’s foreign policy — the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars (which I supported) were never going to end particularly well

    • posted by Tom Jefferson III on

      Jorge;

      That is not how things tend to work in real world, nuts and bolts politics.

      For example, Ronald Reagan generally liked certain gay people ‘personally’, but his administration had no interest in promoting gay rights of any sort.

      We can probably find similar examples from both major political parties….

  6. posted by Jorge on

    I am less concerned then how a politician ‘personally feels’ about LGBT people, then how she or he will behave int terms of public policy.

    One depends on the other. It is the responsibility of our leaders to act in a way that serves both the greater good of society and the individual good. That balence and how one interprets it is often a matter of conscience.

    Well, that last line just killed my whole argument. I think as long as the individual good is respected, the choice that is made is not something to complain overmuch over at the present time. The choice of whether or not to recognize that responsibility is what is most important.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      But the political reality is that often one has nothing to do with the other. Our politicians do extensive polling and often choose positions to appeal to core demographics. None of that has anything to do with their “personal beliefs”. I’m not sure that even half of Congress have any personal beliefs of their own unless a lobbyist or pollster tells them what they think about a particular issue. I think there are a lot of Republicans who personally don’t have any problem with gay people but they might as well belong to Westboro Baptist Church for how they vote. it’s their vote that matters. I wish that personal convictions led to actions, but I just don’t see that in our current politics and until we do something about the Gerrymandering and obscene amounts of money thrown around in our politics (Citizens United basically made bribery legal.) then that’s not going to change.

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      If you really believe that “one depends on the other,” then you probably believe in Santa Claus — and unicorns, too.

      These people are borderline sociopaths. They’ll do absolutely anything to get and hang onto power. They’re the scum of the earth, and the more power we dangle before them, the lower they’ll sink.

      That’s true totally regardless of whether they’re Republicans or Democrats. One side is no better than the other.

      In the annals of self-interest and self-promotion, both Clintons exist in a category all their own. Anyone who was an adult during the 1990’s knows that. No interview on NPR, in 2014, will tell us anything new.

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