Why would Hillary have her husband Bill campaign for her — unless it's to remind us of all the reasons why we shouldn't vote for her.
Washington Post (December 28, 2015) Bill Clinton is more popular than Hillary Clinton. But does he really help her?
As expected, the campaign of Hillary Clinton announced Monday that her husband would host organizing events in New Hampshire after the New Year ... It is also expected because Bill Clinton is almost certainly more popular than his wife ... Bill also does better with groups that have been convinced to support Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
CNN (April 17, 2008) Bill Clinton's gaffes stump Hillary
Ten years after Bill Clinton was publicly exposed for his extra-marital interest in a White House intern, he's turned into a tireless campaigner in his wife's bid for the presidency. Trouble is, lately he's been getting in her way, and the strain of it is beginning to show ... When the campaign started, [Bill] Clinton's role was behind the scenes, but as months passed and the effort faltered he began campaigning widely ... "Every time she seems to get some traction, Bill Clinton comes along and says something that throws her off again," says journalist and author Cokie Roberts. He is hardly going to cost her the election, but once again it makes you wonder what one of America's most public marriages must be like in private.
The Guardian (January, 2 2016) Clinton campaign hopes Bill will deliver a New Hampshire 'comeback kid' boost
Bill Clinton has taken a backseat thus far as Hillary Clinton’s national campaign hits its stride, but with a New Hampshire rally set, his impact is anyone’s guess. Even as Bill holds a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Monday, Trump will be campaigning 20 miles away in Lowell. The Clintons might have attended Trump’s third wedding but the tycoon, bristling at accusations of sexism, has shown he will not hesitate to dig up skeletons from their past. He recently referenced Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and branded him “one of the great abusers of the world”. Will the former president be able to resist taking the bait?
The Guardian (December 30, 2015) Donald Trump accuses Bill Clinton of abuse in escalation of sexual politics row
Referencing Hillary Clinton’s recent claim that Donald Trump is sexist, he said: “And she wants to accuse me of things. And the husband’s one of the great [sexual] abusers of the world.” (Clinton had previously accused Trump of having a “penchant for sexism”.) Trump’s focus on the sexual realm is playing into an area that many conservative strategists believe could still harm the Clintons, both in terms of Bill Clinton’s history and Hillary Clinton’s defense of it. Trump tweeted:
“If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong! ... There certainly were a lot of abuse of women, and you look at whether it’s Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or any of them ... Frankly, Hillary brought up the whole thing with ‘sexist’, and all I did was reverse it on her because she’s got a major problem, happens to be right in her house.”
Bill Clinton has declined to respond to Trump while the Clinton campaign put out a statement saying: “Hillary Clinton won’t be bullied or distracted by attacks he throws at her and former President Clinton.” While consultants note that Clinton’s approval ratings rose after revelations of her husband’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky were made public, it’s also problematic territory for the Democratic frontrunner. Trump’s attacks present an opportunity for Clinton opponents to remind voters of the seamier aspects of the Clinton presidency that for many pre-dates their political consciousness. Hillary Clinton played a large part in defending — or of even enabling — aspects of her husband’s behavior. In the opinion of Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus: “Trump has smeared women because of their looks. Clinton has preyed on them.” That leaves the door open to Bill Clinton to reiterate his regret for the Monica Lewinsky affair. Last year, the former White House intern made news again in Vanity Fair when she gave a TED lecture on bullying. “At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss. At the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences.” Strategists believe it’s highly unlikely Bill Clinton will respond. But the latest attacks could erode his value as a surrogate campaigner for his wife. “It’s almost a generation since he was president. Now he’s just a popular fella. Trump’s strategy is to make Bill Clinton’s campaigning less valuable, to put himself on the same standing as Hillary, and then to begin to try to knock her off her pedestal.”
The Washington Post (December 28, 2015 by Ruth Marcus) Trump is right: Bill Clinton’s sordid sexual history is fair game:
He has a point about Clinton playing the “woman’s card,” and about the male behavior that’s more concerning: her husband’s. Nothing would make the Clinton campaign happier than some good old-fashioned male chauvinist piggery directed her way — all the better to rile up female voters who seem surprisingly nonchalant about the prospect of electing the first female president ... We’ve seen this playbook before. During her first Senate race in 2000 ... and during the 2008 presidential campaign ... But it wasn’t misogyny that doomed Clinton back then. And we’ve seen this tactic earlier this campaign, when Clinton allies tried to turn Sen. Bernie Sanders’observation about how “all the shouting in the world” would not solve the problem of gun violence into a sexist effort to quiet his opponent ... Bill Clinton has a penchant for something. He had a successful presidency — with an ugly blot. “Sexism” isn’t the precise word for his predatory behavior toward women or his inexcusable relationship with a 22-year-old intern. Yet in the larger scheme of things, Bill Clinton’s conduct toward women is far worse than any of the offensive things that Trump has said. Trump has smeared women because of their looks. Bill Clinton has preyed on them ... Ordinarily, I would argue that the sins of the husband should not be visited on the wife. What Bill Clinton did counts against him, not her, and I would include in that her decision to stick with him. What happens inside a marriage is the couple’s business, and no one else’s, even when both halves crave the presidency. But Hillary Clinton has made two moves that lead me, gulp, to agree with Trump on the “fair game” front ... It should surprise no one that Trump has barged right through it.
The Guardian (December 31, 2015):
Even alpha leaders who are not to the manor born, alertly pick up on the mores of the American predator class once they land in its orbit. Bill Clinton, poor Arkansas son of a widowed single mom, became notoriously possessed of Kennedyesque fleshly appetites as he rose to prominence. And once he was restored to private life, he gleefully consorted with the likes of tumescent supermarket mogul Ron “Air Fuck One” Burkle and Jeffrey “Lolita Express” Epstein. Meanwhile, in Clinton’s last act in office, he graciously extended the hand of presidential mercy to rogue fraudster-cum-megadonor Marc Rich.
Gawker (March 30, 2010) Ron Burkle, Billionaire Creep, Owes Bill Clinton Money
Back in the early post-presidency days, it was a beautiful friendship between these two known skirt-chasing creeps. Bill was some sort of vague "adviser" for Burkle's investment funds and really just got paid a shitload of money to party with this billionaire and lend him some of that ex-president cred ... It had to end, though, because of Burkle's affinity for terribly young women and the stories about his plane being called "Air Fuck One" — and also the occasional shady business dealings (like secretly owning Radar, a defunct pornographic magazine). And then Bill's wife Hillary became the Secretary of State, which was pretty much the end of this affair.
* Editor's Note: Besides Bill Clinton, there's a who's who list in this other Gawker post by Nick Bryant titled "Flight Logs Put Clinton, Dershowitz on Pedophile Billionaire’s Sex Jet" ... Prince Andrew, O.J. Simpson attorney Alan Dershowitz, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell (daughter of the late media mogul Robert Maxwell), Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker, Clinton confidant Gayle Smith (who served on Barack Obama's National Security Council), actress Chauntae Davies, former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell and scientist Stephen Pinke. The Slate article by Justin Peters titled "How Eric Holder Facilitated the Most Unjust Presidential Pardon in American History" is about Bill Clinton's very controversial pardon of the felony fugitive crook March Rich. Which led me to these other articles below — beginning with this long post, which was excerpted for length for this post:
Vanity Fair (June 30, 2008) The Comeback Id:
This winter, as Clinton moved with seeming abandon to stain his wife’s presidential campaign in the name of saving it, as disclosures about his dubious associates piled up, as his refusal to disclose the names of donors to his presidential library and foundation and his and his wife’s reluctance to release their income-tax returns created crippling and completely avoidable distractions for Hillary Clinton’s own long-suffering ambition, I found myself asking again and again, What’s the matter with him? ...
I realized just how much about the former president is not known, and not knowable, at the moment, mostly because of his unapologetic stonewalling. Virtually no one, except Ron Burkle, knows just what Clinton put into Burkle’s investment business, or just what he has done since to earn millions of dollars, with the prospect of reaping millions more. Most of the names of the donors who have contributed some $500 million to Clinton’s library and foundation over the past decade are not known, either. Virtually no one, except his doctors and family, knows the precise state of Clinton’s health. Virtually no one really knows what strategic role he has played in his wife’s campaign ...
There is reason to believe that Clinton, who never made more than $35,000 a year as governor of Arkansas and left the White House about $12 million in debt, has had his head turned by his ability to enjoy his post-presidential status; that the world of rich friends, adoring fans, and borrowed jets in which he travels has skewed his judgment or, at a minimum, created uncomfortable appearances of impropriety. There is ample evidence that his eight-year absence from a political workplace that has changed radically in the interim has left him conspicuously rusty at the craft of which he was once a master ...
It may well have been Clinton’s displaced anger (at the media, the Obama campaign, or both) on his wife’s behalf that led to his charged performance in the South Carolina primary, where he campaigned extensively against the wishes of Hillary’s high command in the mistaken belief that he could help her among black voters. He not only failed to do so but damaged his own relations with many prominent blacks, just as black voters were flocking to Barack Obama for the first time in large numbers. Hillary’s campaign was arguably never the same again ...
At a private meeting in New York City in 1992, aids activists, who were lobbying Bill Clinton to include a speaker with aids at the Democratic convention that summer, presented him with a big batch of condoms, and a participant told me at the time that Clinton instantly replied, “My staff thinks this is the last thing I need.” Less amusingly, in the run-up to the 1996 re-election campaign, when Clinton took one of his many fund-raising trips to California, I teasingly asked his press secretary, Mike McCurry, whether the president intended to go jogging with Eleanor Mondale, the daughter of the former vice president — as he had on a previous trip — after he was spotted with her (and Barbra Streisand) in the wee hours of the morning. The next day, as we boarded the plane at Andrews Air Force Base en route to Los Angeles, McCurry, whose effectiveness as Clinton’s spokesman was aided by the fact that he never fell in love with him, sidled up to me and told me that he had passed my question on to the president, and that Clinton had responded, in vivid terms he knew I could not print, that I should not confuse exercise with extracurricular activity ...
[Bill Clinton] had ended his administration in a firestorm of criticism over his eleventh-hour pardon of a raft of assorted miscreants, including the fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife, Denise, contributed $450,000 to Clinton’s presidential-library fund, approximately $1 million to Democratic causes, including $70,000 to a fund supporting Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign, and $7,000 worth of furniture for the Clintons’ new home in Chappaqua, in suburban Westchester County.
Soon enough, Clinton was busy with plans for his library, and for the foundation that would not only build it but would undertake philanthropic and policy projects around the world; with paid speeches at $150,000 to $250,000 apiece; and with the writing of what would become his best-selling memoir, My Life, published in 2004. Deeply in debt with Whitewater - and impeachment-related legal bills, he set about earning an income that would “support a senator,” as he put it. He more than succeeded. This spring, when the Clintons—under intense pressure from Barack Obama and the news media—at last released their income-tax returns for the years since they left the White House, the total haul amounted to a staggering $109 million. Included in that total, besides Hillary Clinton’s Senate salary and Bill Clinton’s presidential pension, were $10 million in book income for Hillary and $29 million in book income for Bill, along with $51 million in speaking fees for the former president.
Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California. There has been talk of a female friend in Chappaqua, a woman in a bar at a meeting of the Aspen Institute, and a public sighting of Clinton, Bing, and a ravishing entourage in a New York elevator that, a former Clinton aide told me, led a business leader who saw them to say: I don’t know what the guy was doing, but it was so clear that it was just no good...
About 18 months ago, one of the president’s former assistants, who still advises him on political matters, had heard so many complaints about such reports from Clinton supporters around the country that he felt compelled to try to conduct what one of these aides called an “intervention,” because, the aide believed, “Clinton was apparently seeing a lot of women on the road.” The would-be intercessor was rebuffed by people around Clinton before ever getting an audience with the former president, and another aide told me that the effort was not well received by either Bill or Hillary Clinton and that some Hillarylanders, in particular, were in denial about the continuing political risks that Bill’s behavior might pose ...
Whatever the facts of Clinton’s personal life, it is beyond dispute that he has associated with some decidedly unpresidential company. In 2002, Clinton flew to Africa with the New York investor Jeffrey Epstein on his private Boeing 727 on an anti-aids and economic-development mission. (Others on the mission included Kevin Spacey and the comedian Chris Tucker.) In 2006, Epstein was indicted on state charges of soliciting prostitution in Palm Beach, Florida, and he later came under investigation by federal authorities amid allegations that he hired under-age girls for massages and more in a house stocked with sex toys and genitalia-shaped soaps. He remains the subject of at least four pending civil lawsuits from young women and is reportedly expected to accept a plea deal on a state charge that would give him 18 months in prison, followed by house arrest, in lieu of a trial now set to begin this month...
[Bill Clinton's] old flame Gennifer Flowers, who has endorsed Hillary, referred to him as an “idiot husband.”
This is Clinton’s most grievous sin, his steady refusal to take grown-up responsibility for the consequences of his own actions. In the White House, on the day of his last sexual encounter with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton told her that he was worried that a foreign embassy might be listening in on their calls, and that if she were ever questioned, she should say they were just friends. Then he looked into her eyes and sang, “Try a Little Tenderness,” a song that goes: “She may be weary, women do get weary, wearing the same shabby dress.”
University of Missouri-Kansas City (March 30, 2005) The Stained Blue Dress that Almost Lost a Presidency:
In November 1997, Monica Lewinsky told her confidant and supposed friend, Linda Tripp, that she had in her possession a blue Gap dress that still bore the semen stain that resulted from her administering oral sex to President Clinton in February of that year ... In late July, 1998, Lewinsky turned the dress over to Kenneth Starr's investigators after signing an immunity agreement. A blood sample was taken from Clinton on August 3, and on August 17, the FBI reported its conclusion that Clinton was the source of the semen on the dress "to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty." When news of the the existence of the dress surfaced in published reports in early August, politicians and commentators alike agreed that the blue dress proved Clinton lied when he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky ... A George Washington law professor, Jonathan Turley, appearing on "Meet the Press" said of the semen stain: "No one will be able to spin him out of that."
USHerald (February 19, 2015) Bill Clinton’s Pattern Of Adultery Could Derail Hillary’s Presidential Ambitions:
The nation during Bill Clinton’s presidency suffered through an extended period of scandals caused by his serial infidelities, and evidence has emerged that Bill Clinton has continued his indecorous behavior out of office. When he was in office, Clinton was found in civil contempt of court by a federal district court judge based on his failure to answer truthfully to questions asked of him when he was deposed in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones. The questions were about Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky later produced a blue dress containing dried semen. Clinton, while President, then had the inside of his cheek swabbed by court order. His DNA was found to match what was found on Lewinsky’s dress. It wasn’t the sex, by the way, that got Clinton into legal trouble, it was his lying under oath about it in Jones’ sexual harassment action ... As Hillary was preparing her 2008 campaign for the presidency, rumors emerged that Bill Clinton had slept with actress Gina Gershon on Burkle’s private jet, had be seen repeatedly with a high-profile Canadian businesswoman, and had pursued numerous one-night stands while traveling. Bill Clinton began to distance himself from Burkle in 2007, just in time for Hillary’s candidacy, and has not been seen in his company since 2010. He has also cut ties with Epstein ... But the Clintons continue to present their marriage to the world as a real one, and that leaves open the question of whether, in office, Hillary would be subject to blackmail by those who have direct knowledge or evidence of Bill Clinton’s past misdemeanors, or his future ones.
Silver Doctors (January 6, 2015) Bill Clinton And The Pedophile: The Sex Scandal That Could Destroy Hillary’s Presidential Ambitions
Why did a convicted billionaire/pedophile named Jeffrey Epstein — a man who pimped out underage girls to powerful men — have 21 contact phone numbers for Bill Clinton? And why did Clinton fly on “multiple occasions” to the private Caribbean island where Epstein regularly held wild sexual orgies with underage girls? Let me give you a hint: it was not to discuss politics over milk and cookies. Every once in a while, we get a small peek into the twisted sexual world of the global elite. In this case, a Florida lawsuit that alleges that Britain’s Prince Andrew had sex with a 17-year-old “sex slave” provided by Epstein is making headlines all over the planet. But of potentially even greater importance is what this lawsuit is revealing about Bill Clinton. If it can be proven that Bill Clinton had sex with underage girls provided by Jeffrey Epstein, it could destroy any chance that Hillary Clinton has of winning the presidency in 2016.
The Smoking Gun (January 5, 2015) Billionaire Sex Offender's Phone Book Contained E-Mail Addresses, 21 Phone Numbers For Bill Clinton
Now that Prince Andrew has found himself ensnared in the sleazy sex slave story of wealthy degenerate Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton can’t be too far behind ... According to court records, Clinton “frequently flew” with Epstein aboard the investor’s private jet from 2002 to 2005, the year news of the police investigation of Epstein was first reported ... While Clinton was never deposed, lawyers obtained Epstein’s computerized phone directory, which included “e-mail addresses for Clinton along with 21 phone numbers for him, including those for his assistant (Doug Band),” according to a court filing.
Daily Mail (January 5, 2015) Bill Clinton identified in lawsuit against his former friend and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein
Flight logs pinpoint Clinton's trips on Epstein's jet between the years 2002 and 2005, while he was working on his philanthropic post-presidential career and while his wife Hillary was a Senator for their adopted state of New York. "I remember asking Jeffrey what's Bill Clinton doing here kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said well he owes me a favor", one unidentified woman said in the lawsuit, which was filed in Palm Beach Circuit Court. The woman went on to say how orgies were a regular occurrence and she recalled two young girls from New York who were always seen around the five-house compound, but their personal backstories were never revealed. At least one woman on the compound was there unwillingly, as the suit identifies a woman as Jane Doe 102. The claim prompted a nearly year-long investigation that led to the eventual charge of soliciting prostitution which came as part of a plea deal. Epstein spent 13 months of a 18-month sentence in jail and remains a registered sex offender. Several of his famous friends cut ties, including Clinton and then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer ... but not all of them: Prince Andrew reportedly stayed at Epstein's mansion in New York in 2010, months after he was released from jail. Bill Clinton was also friends with an unnamed woman who stored pictures of underage girls for Epstein, and though Clinton cut ties with Epstein after his arrest, he invited the woman to Chelsea's 2010 wedding
New York Post (April 12, 2015) A breakdown of every scandal swirling around Hillary (by Maureen Callahan):
How to explain her decades-long defense of her womanizing husband — a philanderer at best, a predator at worst? In 2014, the papers of Hillary’s late friend Diane Blair were made public; in them, Blair wrote that Hillary dismissed Monica Lewinksy, then a 22-year-old White House intern, as a “narcissistic loony-toon” and insisted that Bill had not abused his power. As for Bill’s other women — including Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey, who alleged sexual harassment, and Juanita Broaddrick, who accused him of rape — the Clintons often embarked on a “nuts and sluts” campaign, denigrating the accusers. According to Carl Bernstein’s “A Woman in Charge,” Hillary called Bill’s longtime mistress Gennifer Flowers “trailer trash”; she also encouraged his team to get signed statements from all of Bill’s other women, swearing they’d never had sex with him. Willey later said that Hillary spearheaded a “terror campaign” against her. “She is the war on women, as far as I’m concerned,” Willey said.
Western Journalism (May 20, 2015) Website Exposes This Gigantic List Of Clinton Scandals:
Covering Bill’s dirty deeds: Amid allegations of sexual assault against Bill Clinton that cast a negative light on the political power couple, Hillary reportedly aided her husband not only by publicly defending him, but by using shady – and potentially criminal – tactics in an effort to delegitimize his accusers.
Washington Times (October 12, 2015) 21 most consequential Clinton scandals, ranked from most important:
#1 — Monica Lewinsky: Led to only the second president in American history to be impeached.
U.S. News (September 30, 2011) Clinton's Top 10 First Year Scandals:
Gennifer Flowers: Almost out of the chute, Clinton was hit with allegations that he had an affair with a former cabaret singer, Gennifer Flowers. He would later go on 60 Minutes following the 1992 Superbowl to admit to having caused "pain" in his marriage.
Inside Gov.Com (September 24, 2015) from The Top 17 Hillary Clinton Scandals:
Paula Jones was a state clerk in Arkansas when, according to her account, then Gov. Bill Clinton sexually harassed her in a hotel room in Little Rock, Ark. Jones filed a civil suit in January 1994, seeking $700,000 in damages; ultimately, the parties settled out of court where Jones was awarded $850,000. Fast-forward to May 2015, when Jones did an interview with the Daily Mail Online and said that Hillary Clinton is not fit to be president because of Bill Clinton’s actions. “There is no way that she did not know what was going on, that women were being abused and accosted by her husband,” Jones said in the article. “They have both lied.”
Washington Examiner (April 12, 2015) A brief guide to Clinton scandals
Hillary Clinton is entering the presidential race in a cloud of scandal surrounding foreign contributions to the Clinton family foundation and her use of a private email account and server to conduct official business while secretary of state. But she and her husband are no strangers to scandal. There often seemed to be no end of the scandals during President Bill Clinton's two terms in the White House and Hillary Clinton's campaigns for the Senate starting in 2000 and the Oval Office in 2008. Political experts began diagnosing "Clinton Fatigue" long ago ... Hillary Clinton may become America's first woman in the Oval Office despite the heavy baggage of her last name, but the scandals will surely play a dominant role in the 2016 presidential race. To help readers keep track of them all, herewith is a list of significant Clinton scandals over the years ...
Editor's Note: To my knowledge, Senator Bernie Sanders has no such scandals. It's been a generation since Bill Clinton was the president, and Hillary is trying to get the woman's vote to make herself the "first woman president" — despite her husband's sexual predatory past — while at the same time, preaching to women who suffered from rape and sexual abuse. Eleven months from now Hillary wants voters to put her and her husband Bill back in the White House again — maybe for another 8 years. We have ultra-rich pop stars, who are supposedly feminists (like Katy Perry), who are endorsing Hillary. Why? Just to have "the first female president" and the first "First Man" in the White house? Is that alone a good enough reason to vote for Hillary Clinton? Personally, I would prefer either Senator Bernie Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren — but almost anybody else other than Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Follow the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
ReplyDeleteWall Street Journal (Dec. 30, 2015):
At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state, she promised she would take "extraordinary steps ... to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest." Later, more than two dozen companies and groups — and one foreign government — paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said "no evidence exists" to link any actions taken by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department to organizations hosting Mr. Clinton’s speeches, and that all of her actions were in line with Obama administration policies and priorities.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/speaking-fees-meet-politics-for-clintons-1451504098
CNN (Dec. 30, 2015):
The Clinton campaign has raised money in the fourth quarter for the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee, and for Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting the Democratic candidate. Clinton will also raise money with Warren Buffett on Thursday, January 7, in Los Angeles, according an invitation, at a $2,700-per-person event hosted by Karen Mack Goldsmith, a CBS producer and author, and Russell Goldsmith, the chairman of City National Bank. Clinton headlined her first fundraiser with Buffett in December in Omaha, Nebraska, as part of her fourth quarter tour. Clinton will also raise money on Thursday at the Jim Henson Company Lot in Los Angeles. The event is hosted by Lisa Henson, a television producer and the CEO of The Jim Henson Company, and David Pressler, an animator and character designer.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/30/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraising-bernie-sanders/index.html
About 40 percent of the New Hampshire electorate is independent (officially called undeclared) — a greater voter share than either party can claim — and is allowed to participate in either primary. And their choices could be decisive for two very different candidates, Donald J. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders, who are counting on independent support to win the state ... Mr. Sanders, desperate to broaden his appeal beyond the left, has taken pains to court the undeclared, particularly because independents have often provided significant support to candidates who were not the party favorite ... Fifteen of the last 20 winners of New Hampshire primaries went on to become their parties’ nominees. One who did not, Mrs. Clinton, who won the state in 2008 but lost the nomination to Mr. Obama, is hoping to impress independents by focusing keenly on local issues like the heroin epidemic ... In New Hampshire [2008] about 42 percent of the 289,000 Democratic ballots cast came from undeclared voters — compared with about 31 percent among Republicans.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/us/politics/independents-could-be-decisive-in-both-new-hampshire-primaries.html
Washington Post (January, 3, 2016) A New Hampshire state representative, Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien, heckled Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop over Bill Clinton’s history of infidelity. Later, Prudhomme-O'Brien told reporters that she wanted to raise the issue of Bill Clinton's alleged sexual misconduct and was incensed by "the hypocrisy of the so-called women fighting for women."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/03/heckler-disrupts-hillary-clinton-town-hall-over-bill-clintons-sexual-history/
CNN (January 3, 2016) Bernie Sanders said Donald Trump should focus on accepting climate change and improving worker wages rather than Bill Clinton’s infidelities. "I think we have got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton's sex life." Carly Fiorina said that attacking Bill won’t hurt Hillary, and the only way to defeat her is to focus on her record.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1601/03/sotu.01.html
UPDATE:
ReplyDelete* NOTE: Joan Walsh (a regular on MSNBC) and Chris Matthews are diehard fans of Hillary Clinton.
The Nation (posted by Joan Walsh on January 5, 2016)
Donald Trump, the man of the bottomless bottom, is making headlines for slurring Hillary Clinton as an “enabler” of her husband’s sexual misbehavior. Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball, who doesn’t shock easily, seemed staggered by it Monday night, insisting he’d never heard such a claim about Clinton before ... Blaming a woman for her husband’s infidelity takes a special kind of misogyny ... But I don’t think Trump’s insult gambit is without political danger for Clinton. We can say her husband’s behavior was litigated in the 1999 impeachment battle; he left office with higher approval ratings than ever. But lots of people voting this coming November know little or nothing about the Clinton wars of almost 20 years ago, and some of those who do have easily triggered Clinton fatigue. And while none of the ugliest charges against Clinton were ever proven (and his many enemies tried), our culture is a lot more sensitive to allegations of sexual harassment or abuse than we used to be, for the better.
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-to-understand-donald-trumps-sexist-new-low/
* NOTE: Hillary -- all those times -- could have divorced Bill, but she didn't (for whatever reasons, that's her business); but that also makes her an enabler. The Clinton fans wants us all to believe that this is all ancient history — and that it's all meaningless drab, and that it's a HUGE waste of time to dig up the past: "Nothing to see here folks, so just move on." The Clintons want us to completely forget, and doesn't want the next generation to know, just how creepy this political couple really is.
UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteThe Washington Post (January 5, 2016) Bill Clinton: Asset or liability for his candidate-wife?
Former president Bill Clinton spoke in New Hampshire in support of his wife — his first solo outing on Hillary's behalf. The Granite State was where then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, beset by scandals over an extramarital affair and his efforts to avoid the Vietnam draft, pulled out a better-than-expected second-place finish that resurrected his 1992 presidential campaign. Nearly a quarter-century after the New Hampshire primary night (when he pronounced himself the “comeback kid") Bill Clinton looked grayer and thinner. His voice was so raspy that technicians had to turn up the volume to make him audible in the modest-size gymnasium. But the audience of 720 people did not seem to mind. Stumping for his wife, Bill said: "I do not believe in my lifetime anybody has run for this job at a moment of greater importance who was better qualified by knowledge, experience and temperament to do what needs to be done." [Barf bag please....]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bill-clinton-asset-or-liability-for-his-candidate-wife/2016/01/04/9ad8c310-b2fb-11e5-a842-
0feb51d1d124_story.html
New York Times (February 15, 2015)
ReplyDeleteJohn Podesta helped save Bill Clinton’s presidency from the fires of scandal and impeachment. He spent the last year trying to salvage Barack Obama’s presidency from gridlock and malaise. And now he has handed in his White House pass to try to create a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency from the ashes of her last failed campaign ... It will fall to him to impose discipline on the sprawling and fractious Clinton universe, including the candidate and her famously undisciplined husband. Paul Begala, a former Clinton White House aide and longtime friend: “He’s not afraid to use power, and ruthlessly if necessary." After going to work for Mr. Clinton, Mr. Podesta rose to chief of staff, presiding over a White House rocked by revelations about the president’s sexual adventures with Monica Lewinsky. To keep the staff focused on business, he threatened to fire anyone caught talking about the scandal. But he understood before colleagues did that they would lose a House vote on impeachment despite popular support for Mr. Clinton, and he oversaw a strategy emphasizing the partisanship of the process to delegitimize the House vote and win a largely party-line acquittal in the Senate. After leaving the White House, Mr. Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, enlisting wealthy donors like George Soros. In 2008, Mr. Obama tapped Mr. Podesta to run his transition, to the chagrin of the loyalists who had helped beat Mrs. Clinton for the nomination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/us/politics/for-hillary-clinton-john-podesta-brings-a-right-hand-with-punch.html
UPDATE: Opposing views from socialist feminists -- one for Hillary and one for Bernie:
ReplyDeleteWhy this socialist feminist IS NOT voting for Hillary (by Liza Featherstone)
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-this-socialist-feminist-is-not-voting-for-hillary/
Why this socialist feminist IS voting for Hillary (by Suzanna Danuta Walters)
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-this-socialist-feminist-is-for-hillary/
Donald Trump uses Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner and Monica Lewinsky in a new campaign ad against Hillary Clinton on women's rights.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.instagram.com/p/BAPvZ-1GhbP/embed/captioned/?v=6
[My question: Why are "scandals" often mentioned as though they were only rumors, and not true?]
ReplyDeleteFrom the Washington Post (January 6, 2015) The Bill Clinton scandal machine revs back up and takes aim at his wife:
The ghosts of the 1990s have returned to confront Hillary Clinton, released from the vault by Donald Trump and revved up by a 21st-century version of the scandal machine that almost destroyed her husband’s presidency. This is a moment that her campaign has long expected. What remains to be seen is whether a reminder of allegations of sexual impropriety against Bill Clinton — which were deemed to have varying levels of credibility when they were first aired — can gain new traction in a different context. The fresher case being made is that Hillary Clinton has been, at a minimum, hypocritical about her husband’s treatment of women, and possibly even complicit in discrediting his accusers. And it is being pressed at a time when there is a new sensitivity toward victims of unwanted sexual contact, and when one of the biggest news stories is the prosecution of once-beloved comedian Bill Cosby. Juanita Broaddrick had accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978, when she was working on his Arkansas gubernatorial campaign. Broaddrick, now a Trump supporter, tweeted Wednesday: "I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73 -- it never goes away." In an interview, she said she had watched Bill Clinton’s first solo campaign appearance on his wife’s behalf on television Monday. "He looked so beaten, and he looked like everything in his past was catching up to him. He looked so downtrodden. It made my heart sing."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-bill-clinton-scandal-machine-revs-up-and-takes-aim-at-his-wife/2016/01/06/a08cf550-b4be-11e5-a76a-0b5145e8679a_story.html
UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteBill Clinton was asked by reporters whether he thinks he is hurting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign now that his sex scandals have re-emerged due in part to GOP front-runner Donald Trump. Clinton said: "I don't have a response. If he wins the Republican nomination, we'll have plenty of time to talk about it if Hillary wins."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/07/bill-clinton-on-scandals-well-have-plenty-of-time-to-talk-about-it-if-hillary-wins/
UPDATE (January 11, 2016) Boston Globe
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton downplays husband’s infidelity
Clinton, sitting down with the Boston Globe’s editorial board last night, said her husband’s past infidelity won’t distract voters from the important issues.
“I think most Americans have made up their minds one way or another about all this and I think it will be up to voters to sort it out,” she said during an hour-long session.
“This is something that the Republicans have been trying to turn into political gold for a long time. And it hasn’t worked. So if that’s what they want to spend their time talking about, that’s their choice. It is certainly, in my view, not a campaign that is going to really deal with the issues that most Americans are concerned about.”
[Nothing to see her folks, so just move on.]
On “Meet the Press” yesterday morning, Donald Trump said he will continue to attack Hillary over Bill’s past behavior. “I don’t want to say it’s a threat,” he told Chuck Todd, “but it’s a threat.”
Donald Trump is arguing that Hillary Clinton sought to discredit women who made accusations against her husband, and he would therefore be a better champion of women’s rights than she. [Actually, Bernie Sanders would be the best.]
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2016/01/10/clinton-downplays-sex-issue/dqflCEI7tZAHI70IIC0PTL/story.html
NOTE: Despite what Bill has done, these women will still vote for Hillary to put Bill back in the White House and aboard Air Force One again. Just BECAUSE she is a woman.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Washington Post:
Lena Dunham: "I can't talk about Hillary Clinton without also acknowledging that she has survived horrific, gendered attacks on nearly every single aspect of her character with tremendous grace and aplomb. The way she's been treated by the media is just more evidence of the anger that exists toward women, particularly ambitious women, and the way we are not allowed to exist on our own merits, rather than extensions of powerful men. That really moves me. It reminds me that we can all fight to rise above." She choked back tears: "It really moves me," she said again.
In the 1990s, when media coverage and congressional investigators pored over Bill Clinton's sex life, Hillary Clinton often benefited from public sympathy. The millennial women whom Dunham is campaigning to reach have faded or gauzy memories of that period; a voter turning 18 on Election Day 2016 was in diapers when Bill Clinton was impeached. Conservatives, who have watched skeptically as the standards for sexual consent have evolved, are increasingly asking why old allegations against Bill Clinton should be treated any differently from the excavated accusations against Bill Cosby. Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas woman who claims that Clinton raped her 38 years ago, set up a Twitter account and made a fresh round of headlines. The inherent question: Would women raised in the new millennium, unfamiliar with the long, legal vetting of the old Clinton stories, be inclined to believe the accusers and reject Clinton?
(No. Despite what Bill has done, these women will still vote for Hillary to put Bill back in the White House and aboard Air Force One again. Just BECAUSE she is a woman.)
"I think that's a bunch of crap. What Hillary Clinton did was make a personal decision about her marriage. That was their business. When people decide to attack women, it's because they don't want women to succeed."
"That is really rehashing old stuff that's been through the media. I mean, I don't necessarily respect Bill Clinton all that much. I feel he has done some things in his presidency that I didn't agree with and the way he does womanize — it bothers me. It doesn't hold me back from supporting Hillary because they are two different people and she deserves to run on her own right, not on what her husband does or doesn't do."
Lena Dunham, who did not specificially address the Broaddrick or other Bill Clinton accusations, has nonetheless argued that any attack on Bill Clinton's behavior was a cynical way to get at his wife. "I think that women should not be forced to constantly answer for the rhetoric around their husband's lives," Dunham told People magazine over the weekend.
"Why use what her husband did against her? She wasn't going out doing those things against her husband. Her husband did these things to her. Trying to work through a marriage is hard without having the public eye in your relationship. I couldn't imagine. I think it's wrong. They need to leave her alone about it, to be honest with you. I went through a divorce. My husband cheated on me — so are you going to criticize me because my husband cheated but it was my fault?"
"It seems unfair because none of it was her doing."
NOTE: Despite what Bill has done, these women will still vote for Hillary to put Bill back in the White House and aboard Air Force One again. Just BECAUSE she is a woman.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/10/lena-dunham-makes-the-feminist-case-for-hillary-clinton/
Monica Lewinsky is offered $1 million by Las Vegas sex museum for DNA-stained blue dress she wore during affair with Bill Clinton.
Deletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3075274/Monica-Lewinsky-offered-1MILLION-Las-Vegas-sex-museum-DNA-stained-blue-dress-wore-Clinton-affair.html
One woman makes the case why you should vote for Hillary Clinton JUST BECAUSE she is a woman, but the reader comments don't seem to agree.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/15/go-ahead-and-vote-for-hillary-clinton-because-she-is-a-woman
Via the Wall Street Journal (Dec.29, 2015)
ReplyDeleteThe Clinton War on Women:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-clinton-war-on-women-1451432109
Mrs. Clinton described Ms. Lewinsky as “a narcissistic loony toon,” according to the personal papers of Diane Blair, a close friend of Mrs. Clinton from Arkansas. This September Mrs. Clinton declared that “every survivor of sexual assault” has “the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed.” But when her own access to political power was at stake, she dismissed the women and defended her husband.
When news of that affair came to light, the Clintons also waged war on her reputation. Ms. Lewinsky “was known as ‘the Stalker,’” Mr. Clinton told adviser Sidney Blumenthal on Jan. 21, 1998, according to Mr. Blumenthal’s grand jury testimony. Mr. Clinton added that she “came at me and made a sexual demand on me,” but the President “rebuffed her” and the lowly intern then “threatened him.”
Mr. Clinton was a genuine sexual harasser in the classic definition of exploiting his power as a workplace superior, and the Clinton entourage worked hard to smear and discredit his many women accusers.
Start with “bimbo eruptions,” the phrase that Mr. Clinton’s Arkansas fixer Betsey Wright used to describe the women who had affairs with Bill. Gennifer Flowers almost derailed his primary campaign in 1992, until Hillary stood by her man on CBS ’s “60 Minutes” and the media portrayed Ms. Flowers as a golddigger.
Paula Jones, an Arkansas state employee who testified that a state policeman working for then Governor Clinton invited her to Bill’s hotel room where he exposed himself and sexually propositioned her. Ms. Jones filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit and Mr. Clinton lied under oath, resulting in his impeachment. The Clinton menagerie did their best to destroy her too. “If you drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find,” James Carville famously said about the women accusing Mr. Clinton.
L.A. Times (February 4, 2016)
ReplyDeleteWhy young feminists are choosing Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-millennial-women-20160203-story.html
Bustle (February 8, 2016)
6 Powerfully Feminist Bernie Sanders Quotes That Prove He's Always Been An Outspoken Women's Rights Champion
http://www.bustle.com/articles/140199-6-powerfully-feminist-bernie-sanders-quotes-that-prove-hes-always-been-an-outspoken-womens-rights-champion
Skeletons in the Clinton Closet...may come back to haunt them.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-women-idUSMTZSAPEC288843FQ
UPDATE:
ReplyDeleteWashington Post (February 7, 2016)
Hillary Clinton looks to sisterhood, but votes may go to Sanders
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/02/07/8c73740c-c50a-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html
* I suppose women know a Pander-in-Chief when they see one ;)
New York Times - Feb. 13, 2016 - Maureen Dowd - “When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/when-hillary-clinton-killed-feminism.html
Hillary’s coronation was predicated on a conviction that has just gone up in smoke. The Clintons felt that Barack Obama had presumptuously snatched what was rightfully hers in 2008, gliding past her with his pretty words to make history before she could. So this time, the Clintons assumed, the women who had deserted Hillary for Barack, in Congress and in the country, owed her ... It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at Hillary as a candidate rather than as a historical imperative. And she’s coming up drastically short on trustworthiness ... Hillary started, both last time and this, from a place of entitlement, as though if she reads her résumé long enough people will surrender. And now she’s even angrier that she has been shown up by someone she considers even less qualified than Obama was when he usurped her place. Bernie has a clear, concise “we” message, even if it’s pie-in-the-sky: The game is rigged and we have to take the country back from the privileged few and make it work for everyone. Hillary has an “I” message: I have been abused and misunderstood and it’s my turn.
Mel Sandico, a.k.a. Mel Cavaricci, a.k.a. D.J. Mel, has become the house D.J. of Bernie Sanders’s parties ... and will be at Sanders’s election-night watch party on February 20 in Nevada, where he regularly plays at the Cosmopolitan hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. Until recently, Mr. Sandico said he was only slightly aware of Mr. Sanders, whom he had seen on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” and was torn between the senator and Mrs. Clinton. Then, Mr. Liipfert, who had begun putting together events for Mr. Sanders, contacted him and proposed the gig. “I was like ‘Hell, yeah, I’ll do it,’” Mr. Sandico said. Since then, he said, he has read up on Mr. Sanders, adding, “I feel the Bern.”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/fashion/the-house-dj-of-the-bernie-sanders-campaign.html
Bernie Sanders Is Winning Feminists, Even at Hillary Clinton’s Alma Mater
ReplyDeletehttp://time.com/4220427/bernie-sanders-wellesley-hillary-clinton-femisim/
Exclusive: ‘Hillary Clinton Took Me Through Hell,’ Rape Victim Says The woman at the center of the scandal over Hillary Clinton’s defense of an alleged child rapist speaks out in depth for the first time.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/20/exclusive-hillary-clinton-took-me-through-hell-rape-victim-says.html