Liberal Amnesia

As a presidential candidate, says one political veteran, Hillary Clinton does not offer the country a “fresh start.” “For all of her advantages, she is not a healing figure,” he continues. “The more she tries to moderate her image … the more she compounds her exposure as an opportunist. And after two decades of the Bush-Clinton saga, making herself the candidate of the future could be a challenge.”

Who said this? Marco Rubio? Scott Walker? A consultant for their fledgling 2016 campaigns? In fact, none of the above. They are the words of David Axelrod, the uber-strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and are drawn from his new memoir, Believer. The hefty, engaging book has been dissected mostly for Axelrod’s analysis of his former client and his presidency, but it’s actually far more remarkable from another vantage: It is a reminder of how far liberals who were in the pro-Obama camp in 2008 have traveled in their view of Hillary Clinton—and how much they’ve allowed themselves to forget along the way.

This amnesia may seem harmless now, but it might come back to haunt Democrats in the general election.
The reconciliation of Obama’s following with the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee has been the great underexamined story on the Democratic side of the ledger heading into an election year. One simply cannot overstate how much ill will there was between the two camps in 2007 and 2008—that historic, down-to-the-wire primary standoff was based not in policy contrasts (good luck recalling the differences in their health plans) but in a deeply personal clash about the meaning and methods of progressive politics. “Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won’t do,” Obama said in his breakout speech in Des Moines in November 2007. “This party … has always made the biggest difference in the lives of the American people when we led, not by polls, but by principle; not by calculation, but by conviction; when we summoned the entire nation to a common purpose—a higher purpose.”


Clinton fired back sarcastically three months later: “Now, I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.’ ” The legions of young Obama foot soldiers in Iowa, South Carolina, and elsewhere were fired not just by airy notions of hope and change and making history but by the more negative motivation that the prospect of a Clinton nomination stirred in them.

snip

And yet here we are, eight years later, and it is almost as if that great showdown never happened. Some of those young Obama loyalists have now assumed leading positions in the vast Clinton apparatus, as have some of his most senior campaign staff. With no serious opposition looming in next year’s primaries, Clinton’s standing among Democratic voters is vastly stronger than it was at this point eight years ago (right around the time Obama announced his challenge), notes Nate Cohn in the New York Times. As was the case then, the papers are full of eyebrow-raising stories about overlap between her political backers and donors to the Clinton Foundation. Yet whereas in 2007 those stories were seized on by many liberals as confirmation of their wariness of Clinton, this time around there is little sign of the stories—or those about her continuing to rake in $300,000 speaking fees—causing any real agita on the left.


more..........

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/obama_s_supporters_may_have_forgotten_how_much_they_despised_hillary_clinton.2.html


Clinton speech to FMI-United Fresh meeting lacks vision
June 16, 2014


Clinton started off by saying she was "thrilled to talk to two groups that every day help families get access to healthy foods" and that she wanted to talk about "hard choices" in food and leadership in the country.

Clinton praised United Fresh for its program to provide salad bars in schools and noted that "there is a debate in Congress" about whether to stick with the healthier meals rules imposed on schools under the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. She did not specifically endorse sticking with the new rules, but said "the idea it is too expensive to provide healthy foods" is a "false choice."

She also noted that the Clinton Foundation cofounded the Alliance for a Healthier Generation with the American Heart Association. The alliance, she said, has convinced food and beverage companies to reduce calories in their products. The foundation, she said, has a partnership with McDonald's, "and we need more of those."


http://www.hagstromreport.com/2014news_files/2014_0616_clinton-speech-fmi-united-fresh-lack-vision.html


Hillary Clinton, tell us your vision

By Eugene Robinson

Her memoir of the years she spent as secretary of state, “Hard Choices,” offers little guidance. My view is that Clinton did an excellent job as America’s chief diplomat, but if she has an overarching philosophy of foreign relations, she left it out of the book. We know that President Obama believes in multilateralism and the sparing use of U.S. military force. We know that some critics believe we should be more interventionist and others believe we should be more isolationist. “Hard Choices” doesn’t really tell us which way Clinton leans, though her record suggests a slight nod toward the hawkish side.

In the book, Clinton rejects the idea of choosing between the “hard power” of military might and the “soft power” of diplomacy, sanctions and foreign aid. Instead, she advocates “smart power,” which seems to mean “all of the above.” When I hear officials talking about “smart” this or “smart” that, I hear a buzzword that is often meant to obscure policy choices rather than illuminate them.

Clinton’s message on domestic affairs is also unclear. At the Iowa event, she sounded what is sure to be a major theme for both Democrats and Republicans in the coming campaign: the need to ease the plight of the beleaguered middle class.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-hillary-clinton-needs-to-tell-americans-her-vision/2014/09/15/b1f39ee4-3d09-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html



HILLARY'S VISION



A couple of months ago, Robert Kagan wrote a manifesto that attacked Obama’s foreign policy as weak and cowardly. He hailed the triumphal return of neo-conservatism and interventionism, arguing that superior force must be central to US policy.

A follow-up interview with Kagan appeared in the New York Times:

“But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Now, in an interview with the Atlantic, Hillary shows boldly that Kagan’s confidence in her is not misplaced. It is a full-throated call for reliance on US power to subdue or tame all adversaries, and her list includes not only the jihadists of ISIS, but Iran, Russia, and China. She joins the chorus blaming Obama for a too cautious approach to military intervention. On Israel, she gives not an inch to worldwide condemnation of the occupation and the massacre in Gaza: “Israel did what it had to do.”

What’s most striking is the lack of vision beyond American superiority and the need to try to convince or compel the rest of the world to fall in line. Nowhere in the long interview does she mention climate change, poverty and inequality, or any of the existential problems that require international cooperation if there is to be any hope.


http://leonsoped.blogspot.dk/2014/08/hillarys-vision.html



Hillary's Evasive Views on the NSA


On Tuesday, the technology journalist Kara Swisher raised the subject of surveillance while questioning the former Secretary of State. "Would you throttle back the NSA in the ways that President Obama has promised but that haven't come to pass?" she asked. Clinton's successfully evasive answer unfolded as follows:

Clinton: Well, I think the NSA needs to be more transparent about what it is doing, sharing with the American people, which it wasn't. And I think a lot of the reaction about the NSA, people felt betrayed. They felt, wait, you didn't tell us you were doing this. And all of a sudden now, we're reading about it on the front page...

So when you say, "Would you throttle it back?" Well, the NSA has to act lawfully. And we as a country have to decide what the rules are. And then we have to make it absolutely clear that we're going to hold them accountable. What we had because of post-9/11 legislation was a lot more flexibility than I think people really understood, and was not explained to them. I voted against the FISA Amendments in 2008 because I didn't think they went far enough to kind of hold us accountable in the Congress for what was going on.

Swisher: By flexibility you mean too much spying power, really.

Clinton: Well yeah but how much is too much? And how much is not enough? That's the hard part. I think if Americans felt like, number one, you're not going after my personal information, the content of my personal information. But I do want you to get the bad guys, because I don't want them to use social media, to use communications devices invented right here to plot against us. So let's draw the line. And I think it's hard if everybody's in their corner. So I resist saying it has to be this or that. I want us to come to a better balance.
This will not do. The answer elides the fact that Clinton has not been a passive actor in surveillance policy. "What the rules are" is something that she was responsible for helping to decide. She served in the United States Senate from 2001 to 2009. She cast votes that enabled the very NSA spying that many now regard as a betrayal. And she knew all about what the NSA wasn't telling the public. To say now that the NSA should've been more transparent raises this question: Why wasn't Clinton among the Democrats working for more transparency?

Clinton may resist "saying" that surveillance policy "has to be this or that," but it must be something specific. "Let's draw the line" and "I want us to come to a better balance" are shameless weasel phrases when you're vying to call the shots. What is being balanced in her view? What should the NSA have revealed earlier? How much transparency should it provide going forward? What does the law require of the NSA? Since 9/11, when has the NSA transgressed against the law as Clinton sees it? Those questions hint at the many ways that her position is evasive. So long as no one else contests her party's nomination, she can get away with it.


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/hillary-clintons-evasive-position-on-nsa-spying/386024/