Hillary and Bill

I almost never watch the late night comedy/talk shows, but I heard that Jimmy Kimmel was going to have Bill Clinton and James Patterson to talk about their new book collaboration, “The President’s Daughter,” so I watched that part.

Bill was as sharp as ever. The questions were about the writing, not about politics, but there were a couple of occasions where he talked a bit about various foreign policy aspects of his Presidency. I miss him as President, he was my favorite whom I actually witnessed. And I thought about what an amazing presidency Hillary would have had, with Bill helping in various aspects.

Bill and Hillary were perhaps the most gifted and intelligent and generally compassionate political couple in American history, with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt of course being right there. And once again, it is impossible not to be upset at how Hillary and Bill were the unceasing targets of attacks and slanders and lies from the Republicans. And even with that, they could have surmounted all of it, except for the almost unaccountable help the Republicans were given by the major media in their dual war against the Clintons.

We remember it all too well. Why was it that the vast majority of the media were engaged in a decades long effort to attack, disparage, mock, sneer at Hillary? Misogyny is of course a major factor, but it is certainly more than that. She seemed to crystallize everything the male media hated: she is smarter than they are, she doesn’t fall to her knees and abjectly apologize to them for whatever the new topic was that they wanted her to apologize for. Some of them compared her to their mother-in-law, or their ex-wife, any woman who could make them feel inadequate or wrong.

But of course there were plenty of female media people who attacked Hillary, some perhaps with even more ferocity than the men. She was not to the manner born, though she did manage to go to Wellesley, and Yale Law School. She didn’t dress elegantly. She went farther then they did in their careers. They didn’t like that she didn’t divorce Bill, as if it were any of their business what she chose to do in her private life. She grasped policy like no one else, except Bill, while the media people had some basic knowledge of issues, but not very deep or nuanced.

And it was all a fun game, for the people who unfortunately seem to predominate in the media, particularly the broadcast media. As if the fact that they have a microphone and can get on TV and shake their heads, and mock and sneer, means that they win, they are more powerful than their targets. It was both unseemly and embarrassing, and of course immensely detrimental to the fate of the country. Imagine that they managed to get Trump, a psychopath with no intelligence, ability, or decency, elected over Hillary, and then actually seemed to be gratified by it.

Jason Johnson, who somehow has garnered a regular spot on the MSNBC cable shows, said a few months ago that “Hillary Clinton was the most loathed Presidential candidate in American history.” When someone says something as stupid and sneeringly arrogant as that, you can bet it is because he is the one who loathes her. Hillary got 66 million votes for President, and that was with Russia putting all its power behind Trump; Facebook going along with it by running millions of lies and slanders about Hillary; people like Johnson and Eddie Glaude actually saying (in Glaude’s case) that they would not vote in the election., or that Hillary was loathed.

Hillary was always hated by the Right, because they feared her, she was not someone they could roll over. The Left learned to hate her, because Sanders goaded them into it, and also because the Left always hates mainstream Democrats. So in that sense, she was loathed by the two extremes, and very popular in the reasonable middle, and she got an immense amount of votes, more than her opponents, even Obama when she ran against him. But Johnson is sure that she was the most loathed candidate in history. It is this kind of thing, gratuitous and stupid insults from hack pretend journalists, which Hillary has had to deal with for her entire political career. And if she had stayed home and baked cookies, they would have hated her for that.

So we lost out on potentially the greatest president of the last 80 years or so, because of Right wing fear and hatred of her, and a bunch of immature wannabe media types who derived their sense of importance from trying to get the people they liked and partied with, elected.

James Patterson mentioned that he and the Clintons were having dinner somewhere, and Bill and Hillary were holding hands under the table. I found that touching. They always loved each other, even despite Bill’s self-indulgence and foolishness. Much of the media could not stand that, they think that getting some TV or newspaper gig means that you are qualified to judge everyone else’s choices and morals.

I am sure that the Clintons are happy enough; they have many friends, they stay engaged with national and foreign matters. But the entire saga is a tragedy for America, for tens of millions of people who have issues and concerns, and want someone in charge who will care about them, and try to help them. Biden is that, but he does not have the immense grasp of issues and policies that Hillary and BIll have; and he also has this aspect where he believes that he can work with Republicans, that they are mostly decent people who have been led astray, rather than power hungry fascists who will take away the rights and liberties of anyone who is not exactly like them.

Bill and Hillary, while generous people, have no such illusions, and would have found ways to keep the Democratic Party in power, just as Bill set it up perfectly for Gore, only to have Donna Brazile and Gore himself blow it, by not letting Bill campaign for him. And yet we know that whomever the Republicans nominate, the media will be kinder to him or her than they ever were to Hillary. All she ever really wanted to do was to serve, to make America better. I am very glad that Bill and Hillary are still out there, still doing what they can, heads held high, in the face of the Far Right and the Far Left and the frat boys and mean girls of the media, who have not matured a day since junior high school.