Dana Milbank: Cheat off the Smart Girl, Bro!

Cross-posted from The New Agenda

Some of you might remember the reprehensible sexism of the repulsive Dana Milbank from back when he suggested that Hillary Clinton should drink “Mad Bitch” beer. Or from when he defended Alan Simpson after he likened Social Security to a cow with 310 million tits. Or perhaps from his numerous previous hit pieces against Hillary Clinton, both as a zombie candidate who just won’t die, and as the Secretary of State who takes on the easy work and demands constant praise. Even if you don’t, what you need to know is that Milbank has a history of bashing women on sexist grounds, and Secretary of State Clinton is one of his favorite punching bags.

And that history was continued on November 7th, when Milbank vomited more of his typical sexism into the world with an article ostensibly about the merits of Hillary Clinton. The article was, in fact, a series of backhanded compliments reinforcing every inane and unfounded stereotype that Milbank helped to propagate during the 2008 primaries. Milbank questioned whether or not Americans would have been better off under a Hillary Clinton presidency. As well he might, given the polling data: a Rasmussen poll over the summer showed that more voters felt that Clinton was qualified to be President than the sitting President.

Of course, Milbank wasn’t actually Asking anything. The article was simply a disingenuous process of concluding that, although Secretary of State Clinton is boring, uncool, hawkish, and in bed with business interests,… Despite the fact that she’s too pragmatic and partisan and ran a bad campaign from which she just wouldn’t quit, not even when Tim Russert and Dana Milbank told her to (and who is she to second guess Them?)… Despite all that, she may in fact have Some skills. Of course, he appears to suggest that the skills she’d have had would have been giving up on healthcare reform, starting a war in Iran, making business feel better about the bailouts they were given, and her ability to appeal to those unsophisticated white voters who are now abandoning Obama en masse. Boy, you really know how to flatter a girl, Mr. Milbank.

And the conclusion that Milbank comes to after his masturbatory exercise in rehashing 2008’s anti-Hillary tropes, is not that we as a country would be better off under the leadership of a smart, strong, qualified woman who showed excellent judgment and genuine concern for ordinary Americans. Rather he concludes, after little to no criticism of Obama himself, that Obama needs to learn to crib off of the smart girl (I guess he didn’t watch the primary debates, or he’d know that Obama has already learned that one). No doubt this is how Milbank himself got through school. It certainly couldn’t have been his brains.