Clinton Hatred Origins?

[Xaios]

I never hated her, although "Pokemon Go-to-the-polls" proved that she was that awful combination of pandering while still being incredibly out of touch. Granted, I never thought she was nearly as out-to-lunch as Trump. Otherwise, she's a career politician. In 2016, that was a bad thing for her. Here in 2021 after 4 years of Trump, I can think of much worse things.

 

[groverj3]

Radical right wing media hates women, women in positions of power, and Democrats.

That's simplistic, and there's baggage there with her husband's record as being scandal-prone, but I honestly don't think that's the reason there's so much hatred for Hillary. It's mostly sexism and political polarization.

 

[philkilla]

She is the most famous serial killer in American history after all..

 

[Shoeless_jose]

I more meant even the left hated her I never try to understand right wing motivations just so much loathing and disinterest even from within her own party but yeah she does suffer from crippling lack of Charisma likely wouldn't have even got elected to congress without Bill.

 

[groverj3]

I more meant even the left hated her I never try to understand right wing motivations just so much loathing and disinterest even from within her own party but yeah she does suffer from crippling lack of Charisma likely wouldn't have even got elected to congress without Bill.

The left doesn't like her because she's the definition of a centrist, and panders to left wing causes when convenient.

But that's most Democrats.

I think the root is still sexism.

 

[philkilla]

Radical right wing media hates women, women in positions of power, and Democrats.

That's simplistic, and there's baggage there with her husband's record as being scandal-prone, but I honestly don't think that's the reason there's so much hatred for Hillary. It's mostly sexism and political polarization.

The exact same is true for left wing media as well...

 

[MaxOfMetal]

The exact same is true for left wing media as well...

You're not wrong.

The overwhelming majority of news media is aimed at appealing to straight, white, Judeo-Christian men. Anyone who deviates, regardless of politics, is typically cast in a poorer light vs. the archetype.

There's still just not a lot of diversity in leadership roles in newsrooms, and that definitely applies to the more centrist and left leaning ones too.

 

[Drew]

One reason people hate her was when she lied about being in that helicopter taking fire. I don't hate her or like her.

Eh, this kind of stuff is a symptom of hatred for Clinton, more than it is a cause. It's also only about half false, as they didn't land IN sniper fire, but passengers were issued flack jackets, they were briefed at length about the risk of potential snipers before landing, the helicopter flew in under gunship escort, and the passengers were originally told a brief welcoming ceremony on the runway was cancelled due to a bomb threat, before it went back on after the area was deemed clear. The "Aftermath" section of this provides a lot of interesting context that emerged in the aftermath of the NY Times' original fact check report.

I say symptom of hatred more than cause, because a lot of this stuff got legs precicely because a whole bunch of people in this country were looking for reasons to hate Clinton, so a lot of the alleged "causes" of this hatred were found after the fact. I think the causes are pretty simple, though.

Bill Clinton was the first popular, successful Democratic president in, honestly, generations. Probably since JFK. He ran an underdog campaign, was (then) young, charismatic, and (in the eyes of the GOP) even worse, presided over a period of American economic peace and prosperity that we hadn't seen since. He even played the damned sax well enough to be credible, and he re-energized the Democtatic party and was the first Democratic candidate to win a second term in the White House since LBJ finished JFK's term and then won a second - since the Great Recession/WWII if you exclude presidents who stepped in after the death of their predecessor. Clinton's legacy is a little more tarnished today than it was ten years ago, particularly his criminal justice reforms (which, in context, the DNC was getting blown out in national elections for being painted as "soft on crime," which doesn't make it right but probably makes it unavoidable), welfare reform, and of course the sex scandals, but he was also unquestionably a successful Democatic candidate and democratic president and was in no small part responsible for the Democratic party not becoming completely marginalized at the federal level. After serving out his second term, his nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, was actually a fairly successful force in global philanthropy and has done a fair amount of high profile, important work. Of course the right hated him. The Whitewater scandal probably didn't help matters, and was before my time so I can't speak to details, but I think it's important that even the GOP couldn't find enough evidence to make it stick (doesn't mean they were innocent, just that there wasn't enough evidence to prove anything), and Bill eventually got impeached for lying about a blowjob, not for anything directly related to the real estate deal in question.

Clinton had the bad fortune to not only be a Clinton, but also a woman, with an opposition party that really hates women who have the gall to be both seen and heard. Even then, people only seem to hate her when she's running for office - she was quite popular, both with her constituents, and her colleagues, in the Senate, and had high net favorability when serving as the secretary of State under Obama that held up and only tanked when she began to show signs of having ambition in 2016.

It's pretty simple, I think. People hate Hillary because she's a Clinton, a name the GOP has been busy whole-heartedly hating since the early 1990s, and because large swathes of this country, particularly those that vote Republican, hate women with ambition. Pretty much all the "evidence" that people point to for why they hate her is stuff that's been identified well after the fact, and some of the examples - the helicoptor story above, which is both kind of silly but also is pretty plausibly an honest mistake, or Benghazi which after countless hearings even the GOP had to quietly admit, in a report released late on a Friday so it would be buried in the news cycle, that Clinton had done everything right. Even her famous email server, Clinton points out quite rightly that this was done before her tenure in the State department, was done with their knowledge, was still done after (no one on the right seems to give a shit about Jarrod and Ivanka's use of a private email server), nothing was hacked or lost, and the only "classified" emails that made it to the server were not classified at the time they were sent and only retroactively classified, and the whole thing was a trumped up Clinton-hunt that ironically is probably the only reason she didn't win in 2016, thanks to Comey's 11th hour letter.

FWIW, in Clinton's "What Happened," she spends a lot of time on the fact that her sex was used against her in the election, with (I think) a fair amount of justification, but she doesn't really acknowledge how much her being a Clinton hurt her, after the right spent 30 years trying to demonize her husband for having the nerve to be a well-liked two-term Democratic president at a time where even the Republican voters had to say stuff like "well, I don't like him... but get a look at this economy!"

 

[Drew]

I still voted for her in 2016, but some of the pandering was difficult to stomach. When you appear on an urban syndicated morning show with a predominantly young black audience and the first thing you mention about what's in your purse is hot sauce, it comes across as disingenuous and reaching.

I don't want to come across as a Clinton apologist, and this doesn't preclude the fact that the whole thing was calculated pandering... but one of the things that I found the most unexpectedly humanizing about her take of life on the campaign trail in 2016 in "What Happened" (which I did not expect to like, but wanted to at least get a better sense of her side of the story to see how it jives with my own, and again as noted above I disagree in places) was an anecdote about how one of her staffers came back with a bottle of Marie Sharpe's hot sauce from a vacation in Belize, and she and her staff loved it so much that they all basically fought over access to that bottle until someone realized you could order as much as you wanted on the internet. As a guy who, longer ago than I'd care to admit, spent a spring break on one of the Cayes off the coast of Belize and also came home with a bottle of that stuff because it was awesome, I could completely relate (and wasted no time placing my own order). I'd also say that it's not THAT surprising that someone from a state bordering Lousiana and Mississippi had a thing for good hot sauce.

 

[bostjan]

Surprised to see the argument so often that people who dislike HRC are just misogynists. Had HRC beaten Obama in 2008, she would have run against a Republican with a female running mate, so, in that case each major ticket would have included at least one female.

I really never personally heard anyone outright say that they disliked her for being female. I'm sure at least someone did, but I highly doubt that was a mainstream reason, especially now that we have a female veep who is much better liked, only four years later, with a president who is old enough that she will be likely to run for president in four more years.

I've already given my reasons why I didn't particularly like her, but also take into account how her campain was run. Trump played her. She ended up in this crazy place where she was flipping back and forth between telling it like it was ("deplorables") and trying to be political. Some of her followers were acting as insane as Trump's followers. Sander's grass-roots campain was up against a stacked deck with the way the DNC is set up, which also soured some people, whether they were Bernie Bros. or not. It all added up for a lot of people, and they'd rather not vote or vote 3rd party than pull the lever for Clinton or Trump.

It's likely a lot of people would be happy to see a woman president, but not just any woman.

 

[jaxadam]

was an anecdote about how one of her staffers came back with a bottle of Marie Sharpe's hot sauce from a vacation in Belize, and she and her staff loved it so much that they all basically fought over access to that bottle until someone realized you could order as much as you wanted on the internet. As a guy who, longer ago than I'd care to admit, spent a spring break on one of the Cayes off the coast of Belize and also came home with a bottle of that stuff because it was awesome, I could completely relate (and wasted no time placing my own order). I'd also say that it's not THAT surprising that someone from a state bordering Lousiana and Mississippi had a thing for good hot sauce.

Thanks a lot Drew! You know me and my hot sauces.

https://www.mariesharps.bz/

 

[jaxadam]

Surprised to see the argument so often that people who dislike HRC are just misogynists. Had HRC beaten Obama in 2008, she would have run against a Republican with a female running mate, so, in that case each major ticket would have included at least one female.

This. Everyone keeps forgetting that the Republicans were the first to put a female on the ticket.

It's likely a lot of people would be happy to see a woman president, but not just any woman.

I would have totally gone for Tulsi.

 

[mastapimp]

I don't want to come across as a Clinton apologist, and this doesn't preclude the fact that the whole thing was calculated pandering... but one of the things that I found the most unexpectedly humanizing about her take of life on the campaign trail in 2016 in "What Happened" (which I did not expect to like, but wanted to at least get a better sense of her side of the story to see how it jives with my own, and again as noted above I disagree in places) was an anecdote about how one of her staffers came back with a bottle of Marie Sharpe's hot sauce from a vacation in Belize, and she and her staff loved it so much that they all basically fought over access to that bottle until someone realized you could order as much as you wanted on the internet. As a guy who, longer ago than I'd care to admit, spent a spring break on one of the Cayes off the coast of Belize and also came home with a bottle of that stuff because it was awesome, I could completely relate (and wasted no time placing my own order). I'd also say that it's not THAT surprising that someone from a state bordering Lousiana and Mississippi had a thing for good hot sauce.

Yes, I ended up liking her a lot more after her sit down on Howard Stern a while back. Definitely humanized her to hear her explain things in a long form interview.

 

[bostjan]

This. Everyone keeps forgetting that the Republicans were the first to put a female on the ticket.

Well, first would have been Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, I think, but I think the point still makes sense either way.

 

[mastapimp]

Well, first would have been Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, I think, but I think the point still makes sense either way.

Wasn't Geraldine on the Democratic ticket?

 

[MaxOfMetal]

I thought he was just dunking on Dan Quayle.

 

[bostjan]

I thought he was just dunking on Dan Quayle.

Potatoe.

Ferraro ran with Walter Mondale on the Democratic ticket. IIRC, she was the first female VP candidate on a major party ticket.But my point was that the GOP had a female candidate on their ticket before Hillary Clinton was on the Democratic ticket, not that the Republicans had the first female candidate.

 

[nightflameauto]

I would have totally gone for Tulsi.

Yup. Gabbard, Warren, even Klobachar, while not my favorite people, I would have happily tossed a vote at them. Harris has some policies that make me wretch, but she's still an acceptable candidate in comparison to what the Republicans were offering.

As a person that isn't at all on the Hillary Clinton train, the constant refrain that all of "us" must be misogynists gets a little tiring. But it is what it is. We either love all women all the time, or we're misogynists.

 

[BenjaminW]

I thought he was just dunking on Dan Quayle.

*insert anything about Dan Quayle and JFK here*

 

[StevenC]

Independent lady who has been saying America isn't #1 at everything consistently since she came to prominence. When she became First Lady she went around the world to figure out how other countries were doing things better than the USA. Came to prominence at the same time as large portions of the world stopped seeing America as an aspiration place and started realising how much better their own countries were.