Hillary Clinton: Woman Enough

Binary does me just fine.

Hopefully you're joking. I was just bringing up one way in which the mentality of "WE MUST BE HARDER ON CRIME!" becomes too much (particularly drugs with a topping of terrorism paranoia).

I think you and I can agree that tanks are an overreaction to even rape. If that ever does happen.

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I was half joking. I don't think stronger police forces is necessarily a deterent in itself. Especially when we already have strong police forces. I think harsher penalties is. I especially think we have a problem with repeat offenders in the areas I mentioned before.

I'm iffy on the war on drugs. While I do think it's crazy some of the things we send people to jail for, I don't think it's a coincidence that many of our crimes are committed by people with drug problems. Especially now that meth and other home made chemical drugs are what people are using now. We are frying our brains, not good times.

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I think we're on the same page.

You can tell a lot about someone's preconceptions based on whether or not their first response to this was to talk about guns, or terrorism.

Yeah he went in near closing time (when it would be at its fullest), and just opened up. Sick. None of these "crazies" have the cajones to go somewhere that people can defend themselves and shoot back. Punkass coward. I wish one of these p.o.s. shooters would get bumrushed by the crowd one time and beaten into a smear.

Yeah, what are you CHICKEN??? You wanna go shoot up some people? Show us you're a BIG MAN and come to our shooting competition and see how many of us you put down!

I dont get it at all. What does Michael J Fox have to do with what youre saying?

Ah! Gotcha

Actually, that's just a coincidence. I was making a "no one calls me chicken" joke.

Yeah, that's not how terrorism works. Clues kind of in the title.

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I've wanted to reply to this for awhile, because I don't think it jibes with the facts, and the FBI making a statement about the matter, in which they say Clinton was "extremely careless," is a good excuse to finally do it.

It's certainly true to say that both Clintons do when you're describing: their reflex when accused of something is to deny it, true or not, and then walk back that denial piece by piece if evidence comes out that forces them to. By the end of the process, the line has changed dramatically enough that "I did nothing wrong" has been watered down to "They didn't formally charge me, so I'm exonerated."

It'd be awfully credulous (and part of that same conflation of the legal with the ethical I just mentioned) to think that she could have been ignorant of these laws, even absent any other evidence. And it's not much of a defense, since it's basically arguing that she was incompetent rather than malicious.

But even if you buy that, it's not like we don't have further evidence: her shifting statements on the matter prove an intent to deceive. The timeline of her statements about the server shows her saying things that were not true, and which she could not plausibly have thought were true. So, at best, we're parsing whether the lie was fully deliberate, or just the kind where you don't really know or care if it's true. Which in my book is still a lie:


We can hold off, for the moment, on whether or not this should be a dealbreaker (particularly in 2016, in the ultimate "Lesser of Two Evils" election), but I really don't see how this can be dismissed as mere stubbornness, let alone just a tactical error.

Not saying this is a good thing, but this seems to be a characteristic of the powerful, not just the Clintons? It's odd to say that's specifically the formulaic way when the "deny first until pressured" is pretty ubiquitous? Do you disagree that it's pretty standard for politicians of any stripe to issue a broad denial, and then clarify (i.e. change) their statements based on new evidence?

I don't think you'll ever catch me saying that the Clintons are above the norms of the political class. I definitely think they are politicians. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways.

But you kinda just made my point for me, I didn't learn anything new about Hillary through this scandal. This is baggage, this is a concern, this is known. She often takes the expedient path. I don't want this to come off as "So what?", because it's a downside.

Like, in four years with Rubio runs for president again, will I really change your mind if I show you his 20 tweets saying he was not seeking, and would not want, re-election to the Senate, and then running for it later anyway? I think you'd say yeah, he made a mistake, but overall I think he's a good candidate. If I said he had a meltdown during the debate, do you think it's fair for me to say that he can't handle Putin (it's always Putin for some reason) in negotiations?

I think those are exceptions, I think Rubio would have been a strong candidate for the GOP, even though I think he's dead wrong on a lot of issues, I couldn't say that he seems actively dishonest or incompetent in negotiation. I think that he'd negotiate for the wrong things, or at least things I don't like, sure.

My point here is not that since Rubio made small mistakes, Hillary's bigger mistake is alright. But that you are aware of these weaknesses and presumably you've decided the candidate is still worth a vote.

There's also Paul Ryan. Who has a lot of disastrous ideas, but the thing that really bugs me about him is that he lied about his marathon time. Marathons are excruciating, and I swear that you never, EVER, forget what your time was (Okay, maybe if you run many, many marathons and you conflate them, or have other memory issues). But he made up an incredible time (sub 3 hour) when he ran above a 4 hour. Though this upsets me on many levels, if I take a step back, honestly I don't care (except I do care that my time kicks hiss ass). It doesn't radically alter my perception of him, he just has a big ego and made up a time to fit it. Nothing new (and honestly, he is an important person, he doesn't need to have a good marathon time).

I think Clinton was incompetent on this issue. I think she made a mistake, and specifically walked the line to reveal as little as she could on it. It's hard to know now, but had she just admitted it from the get go, she might be in a stronger position.

But have you convinced me that overall, she is an incompetent politician? No.

(Would I prefer a third Obama term? Yes.)

Here's what I said at the beginning of this thread:

Quick thought experiment, honestly. Think of all the things that a Hillary administration would do that you would dislike. All of the policies, all of the effects.

How many were affected by the knowledge of the server? Some probably, but did this email server radically alter your perception of Hillary? And are you expecting my perception to be radically altered?

Here's basically what I trust Hillary to do: standard democratic policies. I don't trust her to stand up to the party when it's wrong. She wishes to be, and IMO will succeed in being, a surrogate for centrist liberal democrats. She will compromise on some issues to make progress on others (often against my own views).

Bill was also a pretty weak president, but a stable one. I think he had less convictions than Hillary though (though she's stuck defending all of his record, unfortunately). I feel more like I'm voting in an idea than a person with Hillary. Which isn't like, exciting, but I have yet to be convinced it's the wrong move.

So if your questions are "Was Hillary being incompetent/dishonest during the server scandal, or do you think you'll still vote for her?", the answer is yes.

No, but I disagree that that's an accurate description of what's happened here. My whole point is that she didn't just say cagey or slightly misleading things, but actively false ones, which is a lot rarer than the kind of everyday spin you're talking about. The phrase "new evidence," for example, makes it sound like she's learning what she did from the FBI. But of course, it's new to us, not to her. And lots of politicians do come clean when confronted, and even those that don't aren't always reflexively calling every accusation a witch hunt.

There's also the fact that it keeps inexplicably working. Many careers are ended by the kind of stonewalling you're describing, so even though doing it may be common, surviving it, again and again, is not.

You learned that, when faced with the decision of protecting herself or protecting classified information, she chose to protect herself.

The only way to put these two things on the same spectrum is by classifying them both as "mistakes," a category so broad it encompasses both typos and ethnic cleansing. Errors and lies are both mistakes, but one is worse than the other. The same is true of strategic errors and moral ones. And it's those sub-categories we care about; zooming out and talking about "mistakes" is the thing politicians do in damage control mode, when they try to explain away scandal with everyone's favorite straw man, "I'm not a perfect person." Sure, they all make "mistakes," but they don't all brazenly lie, let alone about things of serious import.

Getting into the weeds on this particular example, applying even a little charity to Rubio's reversal would make it a simple error (and during a cycle where his entire party has been upended, no less), whereas I'm not sure any amount of charity can characterize Hillary's statements as anything other than actively dishonest. Changing your mind about running also isn't, ya' know, against the law. It also doesn't directly endanger anyone the way exposing classified information can.

Do you think she lied?

"Politician" is another overly broad word. I mean, she's here, so in that sense she's done something right, though I tend to think her political strength is almost entirely structural, and not down to political skill, or an ability to inspire people, or any real command of policy.

Are you convinced she was an incompetent Secretary of State?

I agree, and I like the question a lot; it's clarifying, because there's a lot of vitriol aimed at her that, at first glance, seems disproportionate to the type of center-left agenda she's likely to advance.

I think this scandal is different (or should be) because other people's lives are directly involved. Borderline quid-pro-quos with the Clinton Foundation are troubling, but certainly not new for the Clintons (or unheard of in politics in general). But political considerations seemingly directly overriding security ones?

I said in the Trump thread that there was a difference between accepting that something happens, and accepting its public display. In that context, I was condemning Trump for insulting people on stage, even though I'm sure everyone insults each other in privately all the time. But what we pay lip service to matters; failing to meet an ideal is a different failure than dispensing with it altogether. I think the same thing applies here: we all know you don't magically abandon self-preservation or political goals when you become Secretary of State, but that doesn't mean we have to sanction their blatant prioritization over security concerns.

There's a whole other post in analyzing why people hate her disproportionate to her likely political agenda, though. Some of it's unreasonable, but not all.

Without branching off into a whole other thing (unless you want to!), I would like to talk about this at some point. I have a lot of smart liberal friends exhibiting a metric ton of cognitive dissonance about the policies of the Clinton years right now.

I wasn't really responding to that part (though as I said above, it's a good question). I'm responding to the characterization of the email server scandal: I don't see how it can be called a political miscalculation or chalked up to stubbornness. It's pretty clearly a) knowingly mishandling sensitive materials to protect herself and b) lying about it. Agreeing on what this is is my only aim at this point. The implications of that for her supporters are another question.

I'm concerned you didn't really read what I wrote (or that I didn't do my job of communicating). I said that 1) Rubio's small mistake doesn't take away Hillary's big mistake and 2) The point is about acknowledging problems with a candidate, big or small. And also containing them to what they are.

The trouble I have with all of this is that it feels like the Republicans are overreaching. Not necessarily on the specifics of the case, but trying to drag down Clinton with one (admittedly significant) issue. They'd have to either do a better job making a case that there's a larger conspiracy, or that this one issue really does affect EVERYTHING else she does. Just saying that this issue shows incompetency, therefore it bleeds into everything else (even the things she does competently) isn't going to work, even if I'm not a massive Hillary fan.

If I actually wanted to go all Tu quoque on you I'd bring up Bush and the Iraq War, but I felt that would distract from my point, not add to it.

At all? Probably. Even when she tried walking that line, I think she slipped off of it into just lying. But do I think she's just a liar now? No.

If you're used to having people refuse to say any bad thing about their preferred candidate, and getting them to acknowledge one specific downside is a victory, then you've already done that. But it's not particularly hard, because I'm pretty open with that.

She's less honest than Obama and less honest than Sanders (whose honesty issues are more intellectual).

Political skill is a bit broad. I think she does have political skill, but is eh on inspiration (especially oratory) but does have a command of a lot of (but not all) policy. I think her strong suit is organization and tactics (both of which she failed in during the initial stages of this investigation, she, or a staffer, miscalculated).


I'm not. Not at all. I think for that one you'd have to bring in a lot of other issues. Do you even think she was an incompetent SoS?

1) Convincing me of specific and damaging favors performed by the Clintons for money would be much more damaging to my idea of Hillary than the server case.

2) This section is a good way to show why I don't find this convincing. You say the scandal is different, but I don't think you've proven that. Actually, here's a good way to put it. If I agree with you on many of the facts, I think I greatly disagree with you on the magnitude. If you think that doesn't matter, I think we'll just be separate on this issue. And it's not because, oh, she lied on that but it ended up small so it doesn't matter; it's that there's a different calculation for a lie that endangers other important issues, and one that doesn't.

I think she saw this issue come up, thought it was one that would be better swept away by denial and forgetting than admitting in the smallest way and diminishing. I think that was a miscalculation, because it's been in the time since then that a lot of the damage has been done.

Well, somewhat to your more general point. The combination of having structural advantages and being a centrist kind of annoys everyone. If undecideds don't like parties, they won't like how she flexes party strength; being a centrist means that she disturbs the bases of both sides.

And to be completely honest, and this might be the most unpopular thing I can say here: People think Hillary overplays being a woman, but especially before her tenure as SoS, the things she did that would have been considered strong (and possibly bullying) from a male politician were seen as manipulative and conniving by her. (This is NOT to say that she can do whatever she wants because she's a woman; people around here seem really sensitive about that)


Yeah, I get that sense too. Particularly about the Crime bill. Which I think was a terrible idea. Hillary is in a tough spot on that, because the actual truth is that marginalized communities actively pushed FOR that bill because they disproportionately experienced the effects of the crime wave. If she says it was the wrong move, she either has to say that the implementation was wrong, or that those communities were wrong (it seems like they didn't know what they were getting). In that same vein though, Sanders took the tact of ignoring their support of that bill, and decided to blame the Clintons, which did not reflect well on him to me (because he's supposed to be willing to take on those types of things, head on).

I'm not sure why you'd be concerned about that, because I think what I said is a direct response to them. You did say that one mistake doesn't excuse another, and that one is bigger, but you otherwise put them on the same moral plane, and that's what I'm objecting to. My response was (and is) that they're different not just in degree, but in kind, and that using the word "mistake" for both smuggles (perhaps not intentionally) the idea that an error is the same as a lie.

I take your point that neither of these things have to automatically disqualify us from supporting someone, but I don't think that's really the crux of the disagreement, and I think the comparison in question really just underscores the difference here.

I think the best case is what I said in the previous post: she had a choice between protecting herself and protecting classified information, and she chose to protect herself. The tendency to put one's own interests above the protection of others certainly seems, to me, like the kind of thing that would inevitably "[bleed] into everything else."

Feel free, if you want to elaborate. I think you'll find me, much like yourself, disconcertingly willing to admit mistakes by the people I support.

Well, I certainly am used to people who refuse to admit there's anything wrong with their candidate, but no, I wasn't expecting that from you. That's why I replied: I was surprised you (in particular) would characterize it as a mere political error.

Incompetent is probably too strong a word, but I think even her biggest fans would have to acknowledge that her tenure was a mixed bag. I don't think much of the idea, for example, that just being Secretary of State is a feather in her cap, even if her tenure there wasn't a rousing success.

I'm trying to talk about this without necessitating a really granular discussion that I probably won't end up having time for. But to answer directly: no, not incompetent. But I don't think it gave her anything to really run on, either, which is why the line the campaign has chosen is just citing the mere fact of her tenure, rather than specific accomplishments during it.

Well, in that case, maybe we should get into it. Obviously, we're talking about political quid pro quos, so the closest thing you ever get to a smoking gun is that X gives money and receives favorable outcome around the same time. Should I just start listing examples? I dunno if this is one of those things where one side of the political divide already knows all about it and the other has never heard any of it, or if you're already familiar with it.

I don't think I've "proved" it either, though I think I've explained it in fairly clear terms: most scandals are about image, or things like trustworthiness, and don't mean much because people don't trust politicians much to begin with. But directly putting your interests about national security is in a different ethical stratosphere than having an affair or hiring your cousin or something.

So maybe we have an impasse here, but we'll only have an impasse if we can establish that you either a) don't think putting your political considerations before national security is worse than most other scandals, or b) don't think she actually compromised national security. I'd be genuinely curious to know which.

I find it interesting that your descriptions of this are almost entirely about what she did after it was discovered. I don't think you've talked at all about her initial decision to set it up. For example, you say "she saw this issue come up," as if it's something that happened to her, rather than something she did, and was then noticed doing.

Well, I'll say something that might be unpopular, too: I think people have way less tolerance for her styling herself as a pioneer because she didn't work her way up. There are lots of remarkable women who came from nothing, and whose achievement is undeniable, and though Clinton certainly has a resume now, it all starts with the name recognition of being First Lady. I'm not suggesting this is unfair, but going to an Ivy League school, being married to a President, and then using that fame to become a Senator makes all the glass ceiling talk feel pretty disingenuous.

I have to imagine some of this has grated on you a bit, even as someone who likes her. Like when she's asked about whether she's enough of an "outsider," and replies that being a woman automatically makes her one. Or when Madeline Albright introduces her by saying there's a "special place in hell" for women who don't support other women.

There's that, for sure. But also the fact that DOMA is now (apparently) bigotry. Or that Bill Clinton cut capital gains taxes, which would be a non-starter in the Democratic primary today. It was pretty amusing in 2008 and 2012 watching people talk about the wealth of the Clinton years as a reason to vote for Obama, as if they had similar economic policies.

But yes, Hillary's in a very tough spot with this stuff. I don't ask myself about her, though, because she's a politician and probably more concerned with how to weave through this stuff than she is with finding an intellectually justifiable rationalization. The actual voters/activists, however, I expect a little more of, and I'm having a pretty hard time figuring out how they manage it.

This is why I think it's being misunderstood by you or misstated by me. I'm not putting the actions on the same moral plane, but trying to show how a voter contextualizes ANY downsides of a candidate they support.

By the way, the things mentioned are all on different planes, Rubio breaking promise not to run isn't in the same arena as the email scandal. But the email scandal isn't anywhere near the (alleged) deception prior to the Iraq War. But even saying that seems like I'm trying to dwarf this issue with a larger issue, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid by choosing a clearly smaller issue for comparison.

You seem to be under the impression that I'm making the case that all politicians lie, therefore if Hillary lies, it's okay. Which is not the point.

On a conceptual note, I don't think "error" is necessarily better than "lie" anyway! If Obama was asked by Putin to tell him the number of spies in Russia, I'd rather he lie and say "none" than "oh, well, 1264, I want to be honest".

I don't see the point of trying to smuggle anything in this conversation because I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. You seemed to want to know my thought process on the issue. I'm trying to explain it. I'm not trying to debate you on this one.

I'm glad you used the word tendency, because that's my issue with this. I don't see this as establishing a tendency that significantly undermines all of her other work. The tendency that I do have an issue with is the attitude of trying to always minimize damage than either admitting it up front, or taking on the issue and trying to change minds. Because that is more damaging to her (and often my) agenda than security tendencies.

And that is a tactical error, possibly interchangeable with what you were describing as a political error. It's possible when you think I'm characterizing something as a mere political error instead of a moral issue, it's that the political error is more significant to me, and the real downside in my mind.


Oh god no, based on the age of these forums I'm sure it's been fleshed out. But I appreciate the offer. And I do know that you are open about that sort of stuff.

This I agree with entirely. And while a big point of her campaign is how qualified she is, it's usually on the back of titles rather than accomplishments. Which is annoying because she should be running on those (and acknowledging the "accomplishments" that were actually mistakes, because I'd rather she project growth than impeccability, the latter is clearly wrong).

I've worked for a legislator that's gone through accusations of quid pro quo, and I've seen first hand clear examples of how many favorable decisions you can make towards a group and how often they give you money can align to spur quid pro quo. It takes a lot of effort to clearly show a case that could have just been a general allegiance of ideas rather than a direct trade. That said, while I worked there, there actually was a legislator (a democrat, by the way) that actually was clearly proven to have engaged in such activities. So it can happen. But know that my standards are pretty high.

By the way, I truly think I'm non-partisan on this one. I don't think I've ever accused the other side of QPQ either (at least that I can remember off the top of my head). I think ideological alliances between a fund provider and a politician are democratically uncomfortable; able to be alleviated but not extracted entirely. QPQ tends to be rare not because the system isn't corrupt, but rather because it's unnecessary.

Rather, the transfers of funds expose possible alliances. Which while legal, are still telling (Sanders in particular attacked Clinton on this).

I know many of the accusations against Clinton (but likely not all), and I haven't been swayed into believing QPQ allegations. If you want to tell them to me that's fine, but I'm not going to refute each one.

1) I actually do trust politicians on an individual level. I think that the structure in which they operate is uncomfortable at times, but whenever I've talked to them, they are decent people. I don't know if I've stated this, but I actually do find Hillary trustworthy, but there aren't many politicians I don't (Trump actually is an exception here. But Bush, Rubio, and Romney, for example, are not exceptions).

2) I don't think she compromised national security. Though admittedly the idea of NS is nebulous. This is the magnitude issue I mentioned. I think she broke a rule at worst, made a mistake in putting forth such effort in minimizing it rather than making the argument that she didn't undermine US stability. But I'll say up front, that I won't get into a long debate about what does and doesn't constitute a breach of national security. Not because it's not important for the conversation to happen somewhere, but because it feels helplessly abstruse (for me) to get through.

Will respond to the rest in a bit.

Honestly, I think we have a huge disconnect here. I'm confused because there's a whole lot of implications that could be in here and I'm not sure which are intended or not. I'm not quite sure what to say. I'm not going to stop celebrating Elanor Roosevelt even if she came into the public consciousness via being the first lady.

Yeah, I didn't like the Albright quote, which she herself has walked back. But actually I do think she has a true outsider perspective on many issues. I think she can fairly claim to be an outsider in some regards and not in others, but I'm not voting for her because she claims to be one. It's just a popular way to brand yourself right now, I get that. Overall she's more insider than outsider, if I had to pick?

For better or for worse, that kind of captures my stance on Hillary. I trust her to follow along most mainstream democrat ideals. If those ideals shift in the party, I'd expect her to shift. The median democrat in the 90's supported DOMA and the crime bill. I think they were mistaken in their support, but that was the party. Now she's either evolved naturally along the party, or she never actually liked either of those, or she still likes them and is willing to give up those issues for progress on other ones, but I trust her if she says that she's now against DOMA type policies (unless the party changed, then I think she might). Her convictions seem tied to the party, which make them kind of stable, to be honest (which again, isn't always a good thing, I like it when candidates stand up to their own party and tell them they're wrong).

By the way, I'm about to go on a trip for a few days. So unless I'm driven mad enough by something to type it out piecemeal on my phone, I'll be a bit quiet for a bit.

Also want to mention that typing these out can sometimes be a chore, but I feel a sense of relief/accomplishment/clarity after I'm done. So even though I have strong disagreements within, I'm glad to do it. I'll let you know if it gets to being just a chore though, because I don't think you'd want that (same goes for you too).

Hmmm, then if I am misunderstanding, perhaps it's because you're trying to convince me of something I was already taken as a given. I guess on the Internet, there's a constant implication that you must defend a candidate completely or else publicly abandon supporting them, but I don't think that's the case, so you don't need to convince me that it's potentially reasonable to say "yeah, they lied, but I support them anyway."

What would, then? Here we have a very sensitive matter, and the candidate in a very diplomatic position (by which I mean, we expect cabinet members, particularly Secretary of State, to put aside partisan things at least a little bit more than someone in Congress). And in that position she knowingly exposed classified information not because it was good for her country or consistent with her oath, but because she thought it would be good for her.

That is a tactical error. But what of the decision to setup the server in the first place? How can that be read as anything other than underhanded?

I agree, so I want to be clear on this: I'm usually the guy who thinks this isn't happening. That is to say, it bugs me when people just show the money, and show the decision, and suggest that's enough. They make no attempt to show causality. In other words, if the NRA gives money to someone who supports gun rights, they do it because they know they agree, not to convince them to agree. So a lot of things look shady that aren't. That said...

I'm not going to throw a ton of links at you. Just a general overview of the types of things we've learned about:

First (and this is obviously directly relevant to the above), it took years of lawsuits to produce documents showing meetings with Clinton Foundation donors that were ommitted from her official schedule. Obviously it's bad to hide emails and documents, and it doesn't look great to exercise authority over people that are also giving your foundation money...but hiding emails and documents about those donors? That's a particularly damning nexus. Show me a married man having lunch with a woman other than his wife, and I might think "no big deal." Show me the same man deliberately lying to his wife about it, and suddenly it looks very different.

As for the donations themselves, it's pretty straightforward stuff: someone gives a bunch of money and then is awarded government grants. Another is placed on the International Security Advisory Board despite being ostensibly unqualified for the position. I can list more on request, but you get the idea.

Could be, though part of me wonders if they get to where they are by being good at giving that impression. I interviewed a Congressman once, and I remember thinking that, between our segments on the show we were taping, he seemed surprisingly open and candid. It only occurred to me later that perhaps seeming that way with everyone is how one gets to be a successful politician in the first place.

I don't want to mislead, because I have no reason to think he wasn't a good person, but it's a sobering thing to consider. If you think a politician is honest, it either means you're right, or you're very wrong.

I'll say this, though: I think the number of politicians who lie is a lot higher than the number of politicians who think (or realize) they're lying. The best liars, as they say, believe their own lies. It's often less about maliciousness than finding ways to stop asking yourself what's true before you say it.

Yeah, I have no interest in combing through that either, so I'll keep it broad: the FBI said her setup was "less secure than Gmail." They couldn't find definitive evidence of it being compromised, but they also said they wouldn't expect to even if it had. They basically found every way to say "yeah, this was probably hacked" without literally saying it.

I'm not going to breathlessly pretend that anything which exposes any classified information is like the NOC list getting out, or whatever. But it seems similarly ridiculous to pretend there's no damage here. So let's flip things around: why are you confident none of the exposed information was important?

Nor would I ask you to, but then, Eleanor Roosevelt wasn't running for President and wasn't styling herself a trailblazer as part of an argument for why she ought to be, either.

There really aren't any buried implications in what I said. It's meant to be taken at face value: it already feels disingenuous enough for someone to call themselves a pioneer, and it feels doubly so when that person comes from privilege and built their career on the foundation of being married to a successful politician. The idea of her overcoming obstacles doesn't really ring true, given the advantages she's had. This doesn't mean there weren't obstacles, and that doesn't mean she hasn't exhibited skill, but those look pretty small in comparison to the things she's benefited from.

Which issues do you think she can claim to be an outsider on?

Boy, I don't even think it's close, and I don't know how someone could suggest it's close if they remotely buy her "most qualified" argument. She was married to the former leader of the party. She's been in politics for 20 years. She was in Congress. She was the Secretary of State. She's run before. She had the total support of the party in the primaries, an historic number of endorsements, and mind-boggling fundraising numbers. If she's not an insider, nobody is.

And again, I don't have a problem with her trying to thread this needle...but I think it looks pretty silly, and I expect reasonable people to see it for what it is: a clumsy attempt to capitalize on the political zeitgeist. And while most of them try to do this, most have the good sense to only do it when the shoe at least sort of fits.

This jibes pretty well with how I think of her, too. I'm going to put it in harsher terms (obviously) and say that I basically think she's a political cypher. I think the Presidency is its own end, and to that end she'll augment her positions quite a bit. I honestly think people like this, after awhile, don't even really think in terms of right/wrong or true/false any more, except at the extremes. I don't think they ask themselves the kinds of questions I'm asking of her.

No worries. Turns out I didn't get around to replying for a few days, anyway.

Yeah, I get all that, too. And I have zero problem with just focusing on the bits you think are most relevant. And if either of us thinks the other has left out something important that needs a response, they can just say so.

I'll reply later, but I'll say that as I read through recognized that I like interacting with people that are reasonable on top of wrong, rather than unreasonable on top of right. If that makes sense?

I give you a single point of rep, which I hold with miserly fingers.

It does, and I think the same way. "Smart people who disagree with you," as they say. You invariably learn something new, or at least clarify and sharpen why you believe what you do.

I will treasure it.