Hilary Clinton Secretary of State Portrait
A lot of people don’t like Hillary. Some on the left even hate her.
For a few, it may be because she is a woman. For most it has much more to do with policy.
Pretending that people are unreasonable when they hate a politician who voted for a war which was a war crime is good spin, but it’s not honest.
Hillary Clinton voted for war with Iraq. She defended that vote for years, though she now says it was a mistake.
Hillary Clinton defended the “Welfare Reform” put in place by her husband.
Hillary Clinton was for the Patriot Act.
Hillary Clinton voted for TARP.
There are real reasons to dislike, and even hate, Clinton.
Let us be clear, I do not hate Clinton. In 2008, I supported John Edwards, but when he dropped out, I supported Hillary. I did so, because after reading her platform and Obama’s, I decided she was slightly to his left. I also believed she would be far more likely to remove Bush apparatchniks from government posts, something Obama eventually did not do. I believed that Clinton was slightly to Obama’s right on foreign affairs, but not enough to matter.
The fact that Obama made Clinton his Secretary of State indicates I was correct on that last point.
Indeed, when Clinton said she was staying in the primary race because you never know what might happen, and the left-o-sphere exploded with accusations that she was calling for him to be assassinated, I defended her, and I believe I was the only person who did so on Huffington Post’s front page.
None of this is to say that Clinton was, then, a good candidate, simply that I considered her better than Obama.
So, I don’t hate Clinton. I don’t even dislike her. I am only one step from her, I know a LOT of people who know her, some of whom are her friends. By all accounts, she is a very likable person.
But, based on her policy decisions, she is either monstrous, or has terrible judgment. She is, at best, a “Lesser Evil” candidate. It is not deranged for people to dislike her or even hate her–she has supported policies which have impoverished and killed millions. If that isn’t reason enough to hate someone, I don’t know what is.
Of course there are those who do hate her for being an uppity woman, or for various conspiracy reasons (Vince Foster!), but it’s perfectly possible to hate her based simply on her public policy positions over the years.
I don’t like Sanders that much. He’s far better than Clinton on domestic issues, and he’s been on the right side of some important foreign policy issues, but he’s quite problematic on foreign affairs overall. Still, he’s clearly been better than Clinton on enough big items that matter, which is to say that, yes, if you’re a Democratic Primary voter, I think you should vote for Sanders.
Hillary also appears to have become worse on Foreign Affairs over the years. Her hatred of Putin and Russia, in particular, worries me. It feels to me that Clinton still views Russia as the USSR, and that she personally dislikes Putin (not surprising, given he has personally denigrated her for being a woman).
I don’t see Russia as that significant of a threat, and I think treating it as if it is one is more likely to make it one. I also don’t like saber-rattling against a nation which has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world multiple times over.
Hillary is a conservative politician with bad judgment. Bernie is a left-center candidate whose policy suggestions would be mainstream in most European countries (for instance, real universal health care).
Hillary is good on women’s rights and she is a woman herself. There is an argument that having a woman president is important. It is, from a left-wing perspective, the only strong argument I can think of for choosing Hillary over Sanders.
But, to me, at least, it doesn’t trump voting for the Iraq war. That’s a lot of dead people to write off.
Your mileage may vary.
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