The Dish

A reader writes:

She just went there. Hillary said to Newsweek that "even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to." Funny, a couple of weeks ago when Politico reported that a senior Hillary campaign person said they might try to peel pledged delegates from Obama, there were furious denials and suggestions that the notion was simply outrageous.  Could you perform a public service and collect a bullet point list of Clinton campaign contradictions and reversals?

Four more immediately leap to mind:

HIllary telling a New Hampshire reporter back in October ’07 that New Hampshirites should not be upset that she chose to leave her name on Michigan ballot because "clearly" the Michigan votes won’t count.  Hillary dissin’ Mississippi in Iowa when she could not imagine Mississippi would matter. Hillary telling Stephanopoulos in December of 2007 that the race will be over on February 5 and telling Texans that she "always knew" Texas would be a big battle.  Penn saying that the race is about acquiring delegates until it became clear Obama was winning more delegates. 

There must be another dozen obvious statements made on one day that, within a short time, were "no longer operative." You should challenge your readers to send in more. Then we can ask the question: how can she get away with it?  Will the press vet her absolute lack of concern over consistency?

 

Alas, they won’t. But the pattern is exactly the same as it was in the 1990s. They will say anything to anyone any time it suits their interests. When their interests change, so do their statements. Hitch’s useful little monograph on the Clintons had a title that sums up their exhaustive and exhausting shamelessness: no one left to lie to. And yet, as the Clintons know, there always is.

You may have missed it – almost everyone missed it – but Bill Clinton was on Rush Limbaugh’s show the day of the Texas primary. You can hear the radio here. Limbaugh himself was sick that day, apparently, but he had already urged Republicans to cross over to keep Hillary Clinton in the race. Bill saw an opening – and went there.

Now just wrap your mind around this: the Clintons were happy to support a cynical, partisan Republican campaign to wound the Democratic front-runner, and they were brazen enough to go on the Limbaugh show to do so.

There also seems little doubt that Republican mischief played a real role in affecting the results. And they call Obama’s call for them to release their tax returns a tactic worthy of Ken Starr. I repeat: the chutzpah and the cynicism just leave you speechless. And as you find it impossible to do much but splutter, the Clintons plow on with new self-serving lies.

You know how I realized this? I saw first hand the way they dealt with gay issues in their first term. They didn’t just wimp out on our push for marriage equality, they actively pivoted off homophobia to get a few points (ask Dick Morris; it’s one of the things he’s actually ashamed of in retrospect). The Clintons even put anti-gay ads on Christianist radio stations in the South to build support for the 1996 re-election. And they continue to show up at gay events claiming to be avatars for our civil rights. And the stupid gays still believe them!

A reader writes:

I found out about Samantha Power when I was flipping through one of my girlfriend’s girl magazines (Cosmo or Glamour or some such thing), while taking a dump at her house. She was very impressive. I wish I could remember which mag and which month is was. Anyway…

The great tragedy of "Monster"-gate is that a woman who betrayed the ideals of the feminist movement exclusively for political gain secured a political victory at the expense of a woman who only owed herself for her achievements. A few days before International Women’s Day, no less. It is absurd that women can say, with a straight face, that they support Hillary Clinton because "she’s a strong woman". If we couldn’t before, we can now and in the future chalk this up as – exclusively – identity politics in its purest form.

Amen. And this primary is also a decisive moment in the history of identity politics. One candidate relies on it as a crutch when necessary. The other has made every possible effort to transcend it.

Greg Mankiw links to this hilarious but dead-on guide to the mortgage mess. 

S.V. Dáte explains why Florida probably won’t have a re-vote.

The Senate re-authorization of the president’s admirable and successful initiative to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has now included the removal of the Jesse Helms ban on travel into the US of any HIV-positive foreigners. It’s up to Nancy Pelosi whether to insist in retaining this in the final bill. Here’s hoping she does. This is not a trivial matter.

It’s been extremely frustrating to see such progress in fighting both HIV and the stigma attached to the disease, while the US retains its anachronistic and stigmatizing ban on anyone with HIV coming into the country. HIV is not smallpox or the bubonic plague. Even China has now rescinded its ban because of international embarrassment around the Olympics. The US has effectively had to stop being an international conference destination for HIV and AIDS because of the irrational legislative hangover from the 1980s. Many Republicans support lifting the ban – Richard Lugar and Gordon Smith are the most prominent in the Senate. Like many people living with HIV, I’m immensely grateful that they see through the panic to the rational contours of a humane and sensible policy.

No major Western country has such a ban. No other illness is treated legislatively this way by the US in immigration and travel. The US, despite America’s pioneering work in developing treatments and unequaled generosity in helping Africa, now keeps company only with the following countries in this respect: Armenia, Brunei, Iraq, Qatar, South Korea, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Is American really as hostile to people with HIV as Saudi Arabia? A critical factor in treating HIV and AIDS is reducing the stigma of the disease. How can the US do what it’s doing and remain a beacon for that stigma in the world community? It’s long past time that this formal government discrimination against people with HIV be brought to an end.

"Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle," – Kos commenter, Jsn.

Paul Constant on his experiences with book thieves:

In my eight years working at an independent bookstore, I lost count of how many shoplifters I chased through the streets of Seattle while shouting “Drop the book!” I chased them down crowded pedestrian plazas in the afternoon, I chased them through alleys at night, I even chased one into a train tunnel. I chased a book thief to the waterfront, where he shouted, “Here are your fucking books!” and threw a half-dozen paperbacks, including Bomb the Suburbs and A People’s History of the United States, into Puget Sound, preferring to watch them slowly sink into the muck rather than hand them back to the bookseller they were stolen from. He had that ferocious, orgasmic gleam in his eye of somebody who was living in the climax of his own movie: I suppose he felt like he was liberating them somehow.

Want to know what a second Clinton White House would be like? Pretty much like the first and pretty much like the Clinton campaign: a bunch of extremely unpleasant people being extremely unpleasant to one another. Money quote:

“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”

Look at the two campaigns. Which one is disciplined, inclusive, decent and dependent on grass-roots empowerment? And which one reminds you of Washington at its very, very worst?