I Don't Care

by hilzoy

Here's the latest in the "who doesn't care about the working class?" parade:

"In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them.""

Alan Wolfe on the Clinton campaign's response:

""So, you've got two guys we've barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?... Sounds totally and completely reliable," responded Jay Carson from the Clinton campaign. Make that three. I was there. I hope people have heard of me. And Barber and Boyte have it right."

Theda Skocpol:

"I have gone back to my 1995 notes to check my recollections of the event. My notes do not have any exact words, so I am not going to try to corroborate a particular phrase from Hillary Clinton or any other speaker.

But what is clear in both in my memory and my notes is that there was extensive, hard-nosed discussion about why masses of voters did not support Clinton or trust government or base their choices on economic as opposed to what people saw as peripheral life-style concerns. Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.

I vividly remember at the time finding it impressive that Bill Clinton (not Hillary Clinton) showed real empathy for the ordinary people whose motives and supposedly misguided choices were under analysis. Ironically, just as Barber reported, Bill Clinton was the one who combined analysis and empathy, much as Obama himself did in his full San Francisco remarks."

And now the real question: so what?

I find it completely comprehensible that Hillary Clinton should have said something like this. I don't like it much: I think that you should always make overtures to people, even people you think have done nothing for you. More to the point, insofar as "doing things" for working class white southerners involves matters of policy, it should not depend on who supports you, but on what is good policy. If white working class southerners don't support you, but as President you can do something to help them out, something that makes good sense in policy terms, then of course you should. The Presidency should never be just about rewarding your supporters or penalizing your enemies. But I can easily understand why someone might say what Hillary did. More to the point, I don't see that the mere fact that she said it shows anything particularly deep about her character, at least in isolation. People sometimes say things they regret. They get angry or frustrated or tired, and say things they undoubtedly wish they could take back. If we don't like that, we might as well just give up on electing actual human beings and welcome our robot overlords.

For that very reason, though, I find Clinton's willingness to pursue these attacks depressing. She knows as well as anyone what it's like to have your every word twisted and taken out of context. Before this latest bit of news came out, I was absolutely sure that sometime, somewhere, she must have said things that sounded at least as bad as anything Obama had said about small towns. All this news tells me is what, exactly, one of them was.

If anyone wants to get into the parsing-every-word game, then surely "screw 'em" is just as much fair game as Obama's comments. Personally, I'd rather not go there at all. We are, after all, in the middle of a war. Our foreign policy is in free fall. Our administration has decided that neither the law nor the Constitution governs its conduct. The economy is in deep trouble. Inequality is increasing. Wages are stagnant. There are food shortages all over the world. Our country has yet to begin to address climate change. We have a lot to talk about. Neither Obama's comments nor Clinton's make my list of the top ten thousand topics.

(PS: This story by Will Bunch, on how ABC found one of its citizen questioners, is very much worth reading.)

Comments

[Frank]

Nice one. Hillary has to do this garbage in order to pretend to be a viable candidate. If she weren't going negative and parsing every word possible it would be more obvious that she had no game plan.

When she stops the TV news people and the Republicans will start concentrating their fire on Obama. Also once she is out of the picture the media won't have to pay attention to relatively neutral horse race coverage like the debates and will be free to do what they like best: find good things to report about the Republican and find bad things to report about the Democrat.

[Frank]

Nice one. Hillary has to do this garbage in order to pretend to be a viable candidate. If she weren't going negative and parsing every word possible it would be more obvious that she had no game plan.

When she stops the TV news people and the Republicans will start concentrating their fire on Obama. Also once she is out of the picture the media won't have to pay attention to relatively neutral horse race coverage like the debates and will be free to do what they like best: find good things to report about the Republican and find bad things to report about the Democrat.

[Frank]

Ok Firefox officially sucks.

[Frank]

Ok Firefox officially sucks.

[Frank]

Shoot I thought that was the refresh button, but it was the back button. There also has to be an easier way to get a new window on the post I am looking at than going back to where the link to it is and opening it in a new window.

[cleek]

i think Hillary's handling of Obama's comment, especially given her and Bill's own comments in this area show a lot about her character and the kind of President she'd make: lousy, in both cases.

IMO, we really don't need another calculating, divisive, constantly-pandering, serial liar.

[A Differnt Matt]

"And now the real question: so what?"

How is Hilary's quote any different from Rummy's infamous "You go to war with the army you have, not the Army you wish you had?" Or Bush's "Heck 'uv a job, Brownie" while bodies were still floating face down in N.O?

This is Friedrich Nietzsche's abyss. We're staring into the abyss - we democrats and liberals - and we've become so fixated on the hate and contempt and destruction of that which we purport to stand against that we internalize it as normal; we, over the course of time learn to identify with the nothingness in the void. Indifference from our political leaders is natural, expected, hardly worth getting worked up about...

except after 7 long, long years of Bush have we learned nothing about power, about the roots of strife and injustice? That words matter and the greatest harm begins not as overt acts but soft words? Hilary's skipped even the foreplay here. What results do we expect?

I don't want Hilary channeling Rummy while calling upon Mark Pen in matters of crises or conscience. This can only end badly.

Hilzoy, you're just another hack with this post. You've figured out how to make the phrase "let them eat cake" palatable for the masses with your obviously heavy-hearted sentiments summed up as: "what's necessary is to look past the problem to the democratic solution" even though it's the democrat that's the problem. Maybe your weighted words could replace Kristol's in the NYT.

[Jesurgislac]

IMO, we really don't need another calculating, divisive, constantly-pandering, serial liar.

Fine, don't help to elect McCain, who is all of the above and a Republican.

Which means, don't campaign for McCain by campaigning against either of the Democratic candidates, which includes not repeating the right-wing frame of Hillary Clinton as if it were a factual reason why she shouldn't be President.

You think Obama would make the best President? Fine. Talk up his positive qualities. Don't make it appear that he's the choice because Hillary Clinton is just so awful.

[cleek]

Which means, don't campaign for McCain by campaigning against either of the Democratic candidates, which includes not repeating the right-wing frame of Hillary Clinton as if it were a factual reason why she shouldn't be President.

wait. a Hillary supporter said this ? the irony shines brighter than a billion suns. i must look away, afore i am made blind.

it really is shocking how Clinton supporters take their own candidate's failings and try to pin them on Obama.

Don't make it appear that he's the choice because Hillary Clinton is just so awful.

he's the choice because the people chose him. if you want to work for the Dems, face the math.

[Kyle E. Moore]

Speaking of inanity, anyone want to weigh in on whether or not Obama flipped Hillary the Bird?

This has got to be my favorite debacle of what should be intelligent people for this current span of five minutes.

[Jay]

"She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is."

The "screw-em" part is meaningless. This is the bad part. It's clear, with her dismissal of all except those who voted for her, that she still feels that way.

As an African-American male I'm terrified of a Clinton presidency. We're already screwed as it is. I'd hate to see what happens to our community with Clinton as president since we didn't support her.

[cleek]

Speaking of inanity, anyone want to weigh in on whether or not Obama flipped Hillary the Bird?

it seems really hard to say one way or the other, since fingers are pretty interchangeable, when it comes to scratching.

[felix culpa]

we've become so fixated on the hate and contempt and destruction of that which we purport to stand against that we internalize it as normal;
words matter
hack

the roots of strife and injustice?

Epidemiologist heal thyself?
(Disconnect intended; a rhetorical device.)

Good post, hilzoy. Taken with Publius’ preceding post, a compact assessment of the inducements to mindlessness in the tale told by idiots at ABC and their co-belligerents.

we, over the course of time learn to identify with the nothingness in the void. Check.
You and me, DiffeM.

[borehole]

Jay, I wish she had dropped out a long time ago, but "terrified?" C'mon. Their only real difference on domestic policy is the health care mandate (and I'm pretty sure she's right, though I can't think of an issue I'm less qualified to speak to). Now, if you were Iranian, being terrified on behalf of your community might make a little more sese.

And I'd really caution against giving too much weight to the Skocpol piece. Gee, her totally subjective impression of Hillary left her cold? Forgive me if I don't elevate that to the status of "data point." Plus--and this is just me being prickly, granted--she refers to herself multiple times as "an intellectual" as though that's an actual job description, which is just obnoxious.

Disclosure: I check Balloon Juice two or three times a day to get my Hill-hate on, so it's not like I'm chronically averse to denying her the benefit of the doubt, but I really thought TPM was off-base printing that smear job.

[Jake]

The article quoting Reich's recent endorsement is much more to the point, IMO:

I saw the ads” — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama’s bitter/cling comments a week ago — “and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It’s the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we’ve developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn’t possibly believe and doesn’t possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I’ve seen growing in Hillary’s campaign. And I’ve come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can’t in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They’re lending legitimacy to a Republican message that’s wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past 20 years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It’s old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It’s just so deeply cynical.”

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/04/heilemann_robert_reich_to_endo.html

[Tracy]

Frank: I don't know if this helps you, but under options you can set your tab properties to open new tabs as copies of the page you're already on. This may or may not be part of an add-on called Tabbrowser Preferences (I'm not sure since it's been a long time since I've used Firefox without it). It's in the "Tabbed Browsing" section of the options menu, under "User Interface".

[brewmn]

I'm home today with a cold, and forced to watch cable news. And Jesus H. Christ, CNN is flogging the William Ayers thing on an hourly basis ("Obama and Ayers - How Close Were They Really?").

Clinton deserves a ton of blame for not denouncing this type of coverage on behalf of all Dem candidates. Obama, to his credit, has rejected and dencounced, as opposed to Hillary asking the Mostly Silly Media to bring it on, and he has (mostly) refrained from piling on her about the silly stuff.

The fact that Hillary is losing in spite of enthusiastically playing the gotcha game should be a cause for rejoicing on the left. Instead, you have Paul Krugman writing a column emphasizing the worst of the distortions of Obama's "bitter" remarks.

Clinton supporters, let it go. We will be better off as a party and as a people once the Clintons are removed from the spotlight.

[ResumeMan]

Re: flipping the bird

Here's a photo that pretty definitively refutes it:

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm137/jimmyhoffa2222/79695420le6.jpg

[Ara]

I suppose I think it is significant because I see it as part of a pattern. I don't think of her as a fickle populist, whose lack of commitment is demonstrated by these remarks.

I tend to see here as the worst enemy of the people she claims to champion. I tend to think that she's insulting people's intelligence in a particularly patronizing way right now.

Her strategy of talking up the "bitter" comment is a strategy that relies, for its success, on people misgauging the significance of those remarks.

There is something particularly repugnant about manipulating people who are down-trodden.

And it's even more repugnant to exploit those very fears (fears of out-of-touch elitist politicians and so forth) that have arisen as a consequence of people having been down-trodden for so long.

But none of this is beneath her.

[cleek]

quick quiz!

1. Who said this:

“[candidate X] has been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support [candidate X].”

(mark one)
[_] Rush Limbaugh
[_] Hillary Clinton
[_] John McCain
[_] Joe Lieberman

answer here!

[Turbulence]

cleek, I didn't believe you. I thought for sure Clinton wouldn't go that far. Damn. She did. It's a shame too: I just got my bonus today. A chunk of it just went to Obama's campaign.

Hillary: Barak is very grateful for your attempts to fund his campaign by pissing me off. Really, good job! Keep up the great work!

[cleek]

i hope posting that wasn't sexist. i hope i didn't repeat a right-wing frame by posting Hillary's own words. and i hope that's a valid reason why she shouldn't be (a Democratic) President.

i'd hate to be unfair to such an honorable woman.

[felix culpa]

Cuteness and smiles for the whole family; on Colbert, a walk-on for Hillary, and Obama declaring (by video feed) “Political distractions, you are officially put on notice”.
OT, The Cheney visit apparently mobilized Maliki, but not in the way Cheney had intended.

The main point of Maliki's operation, however, was that it would exclude US troops. As Maliki explained in an interview with CNN correspondent Nic Robertson on April 7, he had demanded that US and British troops stay out of Basra, "because that would give an excuse to some militant groups to say that this is a foreign force attacking us". {Asia times

[Adam]

Apparently Moveon doesn't count anymore, either... this (warning: Great Orange Satan link) is just one of the most politically inept moves I think I've ever seen. Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. How has this primary even gone on this long? This is absurd.

[jonp72]

What I want to know is "Is Nash McCabe a racist?" I've canvassed in Pennsylvania for Barack Obama. I've already met an older woman who said "the last thing we need is a Negro for president." My fiancee who was with me heard another woman say, "I'm not going to vote for that foreigner," meaning Obama. Nash McCabe's question has the potential to influence both a primary and a general election. If she asked that question out of racial motives (especially when you consider that she didn't apply the "lapel flag pin test" consistently to Clinton, McCain, Gibson, Stephanopoulos, or pretty much anybody else but Obama), then I think that is relevant. I don't care if she's unemployed. If she's a racist, I need to know that as a voter. Empathy is paramount, but racism should not be explained away as some sort of badge of white working class authenticity. My mother grew up in the heavily working-class anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania, and I was brought up not to be racist. Not all white working class voters are like Nash McCabe, imposing "flag pin tests" in a way so that the black guy flunks.