Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

I'm With Her

Hillary Clinton is not dishonest.  She's secretive.  That's what veteran reporter Jill Abramson concludes, and I have to agree with her.  Clinton has moved positions, because the 1990s is not the 2010s.  Even Obama moved his position on same sex marriage, and everyone knows that was a political calculation in 2008 that was no longer beneficial in 2012.  Clinton has done the same.  Sanders is having a salutary effect on her by forcing her to commit more to progressive positions.

But Clinton is a victim of her own resentment of the cost of being a public figure.  She is not transparent, because the press has always had the sharp knives out for the Clintons.  As Annie Laurie notes, if you want transparency, you have Trump.  That guy is a window pane.  A window pane that looks into a bordello, but a window pane, nonetheless.

Clinton does not lie about substantive matters, but she hides from scrutiny in ways that do her no favors.  She is clean, but her constant closed curtains suggests she is dirty.

Abramson says she doesn't have a "rhino hide" and these things hurt her, which is why she keeps those curtains drawn.  But the fact that she is out there still fighting, still pursuing the office shows that she's plenty tough.

And plenty honest.

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