The most important word in politics is "you". "You" being the voter.
Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to know this. Her campaign is all about her. Every time she gets the microphone she talks about herself, about her struggles as a woman, her "fight", her enemies getting after her, her sufferings, her determination.
Who cares! Everybody's got their own woes, baby! They don't want to hear about yours. Nobody asked you to go into public life.
Maureen Dowd captures Hillary's weakness perfectly: "Bernie has a clear, concise 'we'
message.....: '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'. When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism
Hillary's concept of being about the voters is to pledge that she is a fighter.
But we are all fighters. We fight the daily grind of trying to pay our bills with inadequate incomes, of getting medical care, of helping kids and grandkids pay off killer amounts of college debt. Some of us are raising great-grand-babies (happily I am not) because the grandkids can't get jobs that pay enough for day care. In our lifetime we elders have seen America fall from where one income could support a family in pleasant middle class life. Now two incomes can't do it.
And the rich just keep getting richer. Twenty of the wealthiest Americans now have as much as the lower 50% of all other Americans. That's outrageous.
Hillary can't talk in a feeling way about the voters, partly because she has been focused all her life on herself. She doesn't care about us in a deep way. Why should she? She came from a comfortable life and entered politics as a Barry Goldwater supporter. Goldwater was as far right for his time as the Tea Party is now. He wanted to abolish Social Security. That's about as heartless as you can be. Yet Hillary Clinton worked for his election to the presidency. Even as a young person, an age when many people are idealistic, Hillary wasn't idealistic. She was a Republican, a "practical person". As the wise man once said, "The difference between the two parties is that Democrats care about people and Republicans care about money." Hillary Clinton has proven she sure cares about money. Example? Her $260,000 for each 20-minute speech for bankers.
This explains why Hillary's passion is all about herself. She loves money. At bottom, she is still a Republican of the 1960s. It's why she isn't passionate about the voters, as is Sanders. It's why raising her voice makes her sound shrill and angry. Passion sounds like something else. It isn't just shouting. It sounds like Bernie Sanders. And you can't fake it.
Hillary was counting on women and blue collar workers and minorities to support her. Maybe she thinks that, because they have all suffered, they would identify with her "suffering" persona. It works with older women who are still fighting the opening battles from our women's past history, but not with younger women who don't feel second-rate to anyone and don't need a symbolic woman in the White House. It doesn't work with blue collar workers because they have plenty enough troubles of their own and Sanders speaks their lingo.
Does it work with minorities? Apparently not with the younger ones. They are better educated. They may even know that the Clintons don't deserve their friendship. That Bill Clinton led a "law and order" movement in the Democratic party, replete with draconian measures like "three strikes and you're out." Because of Bill Clinton and his "centrist" ilk, the American prison population soared, chiefly composed of Latino and black men. He also pushed into law a measure that—may God forgive him because I can't—reduced our access to habeas corpus. This is the "Great Right", the one we chiefly celebrate in celebrating Magna Carta. It's the ticket out of prison for the unjustly accused or wrongly convicted, especially necessary for those who, being poor, had inadequate legal counsel at trial.
Even if they don't know what happened to habeas corpus, the younger blacks and Latinos may know that the 2008 financial collapse was because of bank speculation in bad home mortgages, a speculation made possible by Bill Clinton's deregulation of the banks. Thanks to President Clinton, mortgage lenders victimized a lot of the black and Latino parents of today's young voters. These young people are now among Bernie Sanders' voters. They saw their parents lose their precious equity in those foreclosed homes, the mite they had struggled for years to save. They saw their parents' hearts broken as they walked away from their smashed dream of home ownership. Some of those young people probably remember the ensuing homelessness.
You can fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool educated young people for much time at all. Chickens are coming home to roost and they are telling who the fox was that "guarded" the henhouse back in the day.
Save your tears for yourself, Hillary Clinton. I weep for the Latino and black children who had to sleep in the parks or in crowded, demeaning shelters because you and your husband were—and still are—so cozy with the banking industry.
Between you and Bill, you have earned $150,000,000 in speaking fees from banks since 2001. Yes, that's ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS!
And that is disgusting.
So you see, Hillary Clinton, it's not about you. Not at all.
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