Hillary Clinton

The conclusion is inescapable: Trump's mishandling of facts and propensity for exaggeration so greatly exceed Clinton’s as to make the comparison almost ludicrous.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician, confirmed goat worshiper a member of the Democratic Party, and the wife of former President Bill Clinton. Mrs. Clinton was elected Senator of New York in 2000, and unsuccessfully ran for president twice, in 2008 and 2016. She was the second-most hated presidential candidate in US history, slightly behind her 2016 opponent Donald Trump. On November 8, she lost the election to Trump (despite getting more votes than he did), ensuring her name will be synonymous with smug incompetence on a massive scale.

Clinton, who evidently does not consider herself a "natural politician", waltzed into the national spotlight when her husband and then-President Bill tasked her with reforming the healthcare system, and has been taking flak from both left and right ever since. Democrats were unhappy about what they perceived as a "two-for-one" deal. Republicans were appalled both because it cut deep into a controversial issue, and because it was at odds with the presumed roles of a First Lady. Sexist language directed against Hillary is not uncommon, and a disappointingly high proportion of the American political right seems to believe that she dines on babies and killed four people with her bare hands in Benghazi. Not one to pass up a competitive edge, she has been known to use said magic to her advantage. Despite her own modest self-evaluation above, Clinton was so good at getting Republican Senators to walk her way during her time in the Senate that Karl Rove attempted to forbid Republicans from talking to her. Clinton also joined a congressional prayer group, usually dominated by conservatives. When Sam Brownback saw her there, he broke down and confessed to hatred and uttering derogatory remarks against her, and asked her to forgive him. She did. The repentance fostered an unlikely relationship that has yielded political bounty (according to some, at least): Clinton and Brownback went on to cosponsor a measure protecting refugees fleeing sexual abuse.

While there is quite a bit of nonsense in circulation regarding Clinton, there are serious issues that cause many to distrust her. Even as politicians go, Clinton's apparent willingness to act out of political expediency alone is stunning. She's quite amicable with a number of the finance industry's biggest; Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, for instance, hired Clinton for at least one private speaking appearance. Even among Democrats, there existed serious tension over her presidential bid. Many in anti-establishment, grassroots, or otherwise left-leaning company within the Democratic Party have expressed serious dissatisfaction with the grip she and other present-day plutonomists have on its reins.

Early history
I don't recognize this new brand of Republicanism that's afoot now which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I'm very proud that I was a 'Goldwater Girl'. And then my political beliefs changed over time. But I've always thought that the role of citizen, the role of advocate, were as important in our democracy as running for office.

Raised in a conservative household, Hillary was a Republican, describing herself as a "Goldwater girl". In fact, she volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964. The level of campaigning which Hillary did was not substantial, as she was ineligible to vote due to her age at the time. Contrary to pro-Sanders memes online, although Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act, he did not express any intent to "re-segregate" the U.S. once he became president. Goldwater only wanted to nuke North Vietnam and get it over with rather than a ten-year unwinnable quagmire with boots on the ground. But this was a terrible suggestion given the fact that Communist China and the Soviet Union, the North's allies, both possessed nuclear weapons of their own.

A believer in "rugged individualism", Rodham's early political development was shaped mostly by her high school history teacher, a fervent anti-communist, who introduced her to Goldwater's , and by her Methodist youth minister, who was concerned with issues of social justice and with whom she saw, and afterward briefly met, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. at a 1962 speech in Chicago's Orchestra Hall.

As the director of the student Republican organization in a mock election at Maine South High School in 1964, Rodham argued with Democrats over Vietnam and US nuclear policy. During her Wellesley College years, Clinton says she became "a different kind of Republican". In her freshman year as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans, with this Rockefeller Republican-oriented group, she supported the elections of John Lindsay to Mayor of New York City and Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke to the United States Senate. Clinton also collaborated with Wellesley's black students to call for changes, such as recruiting more black students and faculty to the school.

She later stepped down from this position four years later, as her views changed regarding the African-American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War; she left the GOP for good after Richard Nixon won the presidential nomination. In a letter to her youth minister at this time, she described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal". Bernstein states she believed this combination was possible and that no equation better describes the adult Hillary Clinton.

Rodham was involved in student activism against the war in Vietnam; in contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it. She worked in the offices of Rep., who became Nixon's first Secretary of Defense. As a Yale Law School graduate and a staffer for the House Judiciary Committee, she would help pass the articles of impeachment against Nixon.

At the turn of the last century there were all the immigrants and the schools were the place where kids were socialized--where they were given the chance to learn how to fit in and conduct themselves. And I think we're leaving too many kids to raise themselves; it does take a village to raise and teach a child. The public school system has been, I believe, second to the Constitution, the most important institution in making America the great country that we have been over the last 200 plus years. Hillary would do a lot of big-time lawyer stuff while her husband was busy getting elected to things. In 1977, Hillary co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund. Later that year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Hillary had been the 1976 campaign director of field operations in Indiana) appointed her to the Legal Services Corporation's board of directors. She served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981. Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Hillary became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979. Bill appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year, where she secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees. She finally entered the private sector when President Reagan started zeroing in on the LSC budget. Despite being backed by many trade unions (including those who oppose Wal-Mart's anti-union practices), Clinton joined the Wal-Mart Board of Directors from 1986 to 1992 and was present "during a major campaign by the world's largest retailer to defeat labor unions representing its employees". Although she did not speak out against this practice, Clinton used her role to push for more environmentalism and to combat sexist discrimination within the organization – albeit ineffectively. In 1991, Clinton was involved in a "Buy America" program with the corporation, while the corporation itself got most of its goods from overseas using cheap, underaged labor from Bangladesh, often under the signage "Buy America"; more recently, she has criticized Donald Trump for similar practises.

From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on the board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation, which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.

Liberal progressivism
Associated with the "New Democrat" trend first set forth by her husband, Hillary is seen as a flip-flopping on a number of issues: whilst she has recently adopted a socially liberal attitude on topics such as same-sex marriage, Tony Brasunas writes in The Huffington Post that Clinton is "generally at home with moderate conservative ideas, such as a hawkish military, strict immigration laws, reduced welfare, laissez-faire rules for Wall Street, and international business treaties that favor large corporations".

Self-descriptions
By the standards of the early 20th century, Clinton's decision to adopt the label "progressive" could mean almost anything. Most likely, it means nothing at all. Clinton describes herself as having the "mind of a conservative and the heart of a liberal" and as "a progressive who likes to get things done", preferring the term "progressive" to "liberal", which Clinton sees as associated with support for "big government". This type of labelling creates a compromise and makes an appeal to both the left and right wings of the Democratic Party. It is also a more politically popular phrase to use than "liberal": whilst "liberal" was considered "a term of opprobrium" by the time Bill and Hillary became involved in national politics, the term "progressive" has consistently referred to vaguely positive notions of progress, from Republicans and Democrats alike, although in the modern era it is considered part and parcel of "general leftishness" in American politics. Clinton has a history of making very liberal public statements on policy and politics. Clinton rates as a "hard core liberal" per the OnTheIssues.org scale. These metrics rate her as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and barely more moderate than Bernie Sanders. While Obama is also pegged as a "hard core liberal", Clinton again was rated as more liberal than Obama.

In response, journalist-blogger Ben Breier argued that those metrics are outdated because the Democratic Party is more left-wing than when she was Senator. Claiming that "removing Blue Dogs and moderates would drastically reduce Clinton's numbers here," Breier found that under these new criteria, Hillary is only more liberal than 12% of modern-day Democrats. It should be obvious why Clinton appears to be less liberal when all the moderates are removed.

Sanders' comments


During the primary campaign, Sanders repeatedly criticized Clinton for her more right-wing views: Hillary has adopted a more hawkish attitude towards the War on Terror, emphasizing increased mass surveillance methods and longer terrorist watch lists to supposedly defeat terrorism. She has also:
 * Called for more US forces to be deployed in Iraq and Syria to combat DAESH
 * Voted in favor of the Iraq War
 * Voted in favor of the Wall Street bailout measure created in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis
 * Opposed breaking up big banks by opposing the reinstatement of the (repealed in 1999)
 * Voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act
 * Been one of Obama's loudest advocates for the Trans-Pacific Partnership
 * Supported the use of capital punishment and harsh sentencing for prisoners
 * Supported improved security along the US border
 * Not taken a strong stand against the from its inception until 2015, originally stating she would be "inclined" to sign off on the project if it were in the national interest

On July 12, Sanders reluctantly endorsed Hillary Clinton for President of the United States, claiming that it was better to unite against the then-presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, citing some of Clinton's left-wing credentials:
 * Anti-poverty advocacy
 * Support for universal health care
 * Promises to raise the minimum wage and make higher education tuition-free.
 * Campaigning against income inequality
 * Support for renewable energy and concern about global warming and climate change

In return, Clinton admired Sanders for "[bringing] people off the sidelines and into the political process", as well as "energiz[ing] and inspir[ing] a generation of young people who care deeply about our country". For supporting Clinton, many Sanders supporters accused Bernie of being a sellout to the Democratic establishment; Jill Stein from the Green Party accused Sanders of attempting to "have a revolutionary campaign [with]in a counter-revolutionary party", and Trump  who never sees a populist bandwagon he can't join – said that Sanders "has totally sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton".

Connecting with young voters

 * Bonus content: Hillary Clinton Meme Queen 2016. Are her memes too dank for you?

Although the situation is a lot more complicated than "left=young, right=old", younger people are generally more socially liberal and Democrat-leaning than older generations. (If you don't believe us, check out Category:Leftists who turned right with age.) In contrast to the youth enthusiasm, the septuagenarian socialist Bernie Sanders engendered, Hillary Clinton always had an image problem with young people; only 26% of young whites have a favorable image of Clinton. While it is true that most millennials had a much more disfavorable image of Trump overall (polling at 9%), around 40% have expressed sympathy for a third party candidate such as Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

Her pandering to the young and an attempt to connect led to some awkward moments, to say the least. Obama likened "Hillary trying to appeal to young voters" to "your relative who just signed up for Facebook. 'Dear America, did you get my poke? Is it appearing on your wall? I'm not sure I'm using this right. Love, Aunt Hillary.'". One of the most cringe-worthy attempts at pandering to young voters was to come later:

I don't know who created 'Pokémon Go', but I've tried to figure out how we get them to have Pokémon Go-to-the-polls.

First Lady
Bill managed to win the election in '92, despite allegations that ranged from sexual assault to drug running to bribery by the Chinese. ( "The Clintons are headed for jail soon!" has been a running theme amongst the anti-Clinton bloc for literally decades.) Once installed, he appointed Hillary to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, and she suggested some pretty modest changes. Republicans accused her of trying to impose a Communist-style takeover of the US health care system, and the voters got really nasty about it — to the point where she had to start wearing bulletproof vests at some rallies. They dubbed the reform package "HillaryCare", and her poll numbers sank from the high sixties to the mid-forties over the issue. Clinton's evil twin, Betsy McCaughey, arrived from the Netherrealm holding a hit-piece in her hand laying out "an ominous Clintonian world of price controls and rationing," where Americans could not hang onto their existing doctors or plans. The bill collapsed in the House and Senate, thanks to the southern Democrats serving up their own middling bills. The Republicans used that as a springboard for the midterm elections in '94. (See, it's like poetry, it rhymes.)

She continued to play an insider role after that, though less overtly since she had officially become a liability to the administration. In 1997 and 1999, she advocated for creating the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act—all of which dealt with healthcare in ways HillaryCare could not. This is a watershed moment in the Clinton saga: she took the Sanders track of fighting the insurance industry for basic healthcare and got her teeth kicked in. Then she became more pragmatic and secretive. Clinton guards her privacy and surrounds herself with a loyal cadre of advisors. For better or worse, it is really the defining feature of her political persona.



Truthfully, the smear campaign started long before that. After all, she had the nerve to continue working while having a child, having a postgraduate degree, and keeping her maiden name... These were all attack lines used against the Clintons in '92. It was hardly a partisan issue: People hated Nancy Reagan until the day she died (and beyond) because she stuck her nose where it didn't belong. The '80s were when women were first breaking into careers, but the vast majority stayed at home. In the '90s, the "mommy wars" really heated up, and here was someone who epitomized everything that "values" voters didn't like.

Basically, the right-wing lost its collective mind during the Clinton Presidency. The greatest hits:

One relatively-respected outlet in particular, The American Spectator, destroyed itself "investigating" and "exposing" all the nefarious machinations of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
 * Majoring in lesbianism at Wellesley.
 * Framing Nixon for Watergate.
 * Boasting about freeing a child murderer.
 * Kissing Robert Byrd (a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan)
 * Murdering her lover Vince Foster, then somehow embezzling a small fortune by losing money on the Whitewater land deal
 * Firing everybody in the Travel Office to fill it with her friends from Arkansas ("Travelgate").
 * Hacking the FBI ("Filegate")
 * Webb Hubbell is Chelsea's illegitimate father Forget Webb Hubbell. Chelsea was conceived when Bill forced himself on Hillary in Bermuda.
 * The eagle brooch worn by prominent Washington ladies. Some screamed it was proof Hillary was a "6th-level Illuminist Witch."
 * The Christmas tree decorated with crack pipes.
 * Ordering a hit out on... a cat.

On marijuana
Casual attitudes towards marijuana and minors’ access to cigarettes raise the likelihood that teenagers will make a sad progression to more serious drug use & earlier sexual activity. Unlike Bill, who "didn't inhale," Hillary Clinton claims she has never smoked pot and wants to "wait and see" what the polls say in a year what kind of results the legalization for recreational use of marijuana has on states like Washington and Colorado before taking a stance on marijuana legalization. Clinton also questions the medical benefits of marijuana, arguing that there has been insufficient research.

Stances on LGBT issues, same-sex marriage
After many years of working with and listening to American adolescents, I don't believe they are ready for sex or its potential consequences – parenthood, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases – and I think we need to do everything in our power to discourage sexual activity and encourage abstinence. When Bill won the Oval Office in 1992, both he and Hillary were more liberal towards the LGBT community than their predecessors, Reagan and Bush; the Clintons at least acknowledged that gay people existed. That said, there was a lot of room for improvement.

Hillary supported the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which stated that marriage has historically and religiously been between a male and a female. Clinton claimed that this was to offshoot any further anti-gay backlash – i.e., to prevent a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman – a claim many gay activists such as (a supporter of the Clintons) reject outright.

Furthermore, she supported the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, claiming that it was a compromise between banning homosexuality in the military and accepting it fully; however, in 1999, Hillary claimed she was against the measure, saying that: "Fitness to serve should be based on an individual's conduct, not their sexual orientation."

In 2004, on the Senate floor while attacking a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (SSM), Clinton stated:

Clinton has generally been opposed to SSM, but has supported or has not opposed same-sex civil unions. Even during the 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton opposed recognizing SSM at the federal level, in favor of letting states decide. In 2000, Clinton stated:

In a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council in December 2011, Clinton said that "Gay rights are human rights", and that the U.S. would advocate for gay rights and legal protections of gays abroad:

Clinton publicly opposed SSM until 2013. In 2013, Clinton stated:

Many have claimed that Clinton changed her position on SSM purely for political reasons rather than out of principle. President Obama has undergone the same "evolution." But, unlike Hillary Clinton, Obama has not contrived revisionist history and outright falsehoods to cover for his prior, anti-gay positions and statements.

Beijing speech
If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all. In 1995 a suburb of Beijing hosted the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women. As a First Lady, Hillary saw an opportunity to advance the main cause of her career, but she also saw the provocative speech as a way to shape her own identity apart from that of her husband’s.

While planning the speech, Hillary clashed with White House aides who thought a first lady should not dive into delicate diplomatic issues. Bill Clinton read the speech in its early stages, but his advisers did not. Factions at the National Security Agency and State Department also pushed back at her trip, fearing Hillary's presence would upset the Chinese. (It did.)

Clinton’s image had already taken a hit in her failed efforts to overhaul health care, and conservatives accused her of advancing a "radical feminist agenda” in Beijing. Catholic groups called the gathering of 1,500 delegates from around the world an "antifamily" rally.

Aides who traveled with Mrs. Clinton to Beijing remember the staid United Nations delegates pounding their feet as she declared "it is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food or drowned" simply because they are born female, and "it is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution." After her speech, where she presented a 12-part plan to advance the cause of women, tens of thousands of workers with nongovernmental organizations who were not allowed to attend the conference gathered amid a downpour and the heavy security in Huairou, 30 miles outside Beijing, to hear Hillary deliver a version of the speech.

Melanne Verveer, who served as the ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues at the State Department under Clinton, said that "To this day, people will introduce themselves saying, ‘I was in Beijing,’"

At a Clinton Foundation event in New York before her 2016 presidential announcement, Hillary called the Beijing conference "historic and transformational".

Yugoslavia
In 1995 Clinton as First Lady gave support for her husband's decision to support the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia, saying that she "urged [Bill] to bomb" via.

In 1999, Clinton supported the launching of a second war in the region, against the former Serbian president and accused war criminal Milošević's earlier complicity in genocide, saying that "You can't let this ethnic cleansing go on at the end of the century that has seen the Holocaust". Political author claims that this is one of the first times the Holocaust was used as a pro-war argument, however, Hillary was far from the only public figure to invoke the Holocaust as a justification for intervention in Serbia. Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders also supported the campaign.

Senate term
She ran for a Senate seat in New York in 2000 despite never having lived there before and was accused of carpetbagging (moving to the state solely for political gain). She won the election soundly against Rick Lazio, 55% to 43%.

Following the September 11 attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment. She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.

On foreign policy, she was much more hawkish, voting for the Iraq War and supporting the continuing war in Afghanistan, one of her main concerns being the condition of women's rights in the country. She also voted for the PATRIOT Act and its renewal. However, she did express concern regarding civil liberties. I have very serious concerns that the current Patriot Act Reauthorization conference report, which was negotiated largely without the input of Democrats, does not do enough to strike this proper balance. I believe that we can be both safe and free. The conference report falls well short of achieving that goal. I am hopeful that bipartisan negotiations can result in a compromise bill like the one agreed to in the Senate in July, a bill which did a far better job of protecting our civil liberties. She was against an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, unlike some liberal activists, putting her in the unique position of having conservatives hate her and many progressives not like her either. She would later oppose the "surge" in Iraq in 2007 and voted for a withdrawal plan that set a deadline which was vetoed by President Bush.

On domestic issues, she sided with the Democrats more. She voted against the Bush tax cuts, the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, voted for the Immigration Reform Act and against the Federal Marriage Amendment which sought to ban same-sex marriage. In 2007 she voted in favor of increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.50. Based on her voting record as a senator, she was consistently on the left of the Democratic party. She voted for a bankruptcy bill that favored big banks and protected deadbeat dads from child support payments much to the dismay of Elizabeth Warren.

Clinton voted against Bush's two major tax cut packages, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. She also voted against the 2005 confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States and the 2006 confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, filibustering the latter.

In 2005 she introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, which would have made it a federal offense to sell a 'mature' or 'adult' rated video game to anyone under seventeen. Her legislation paralleled a California law struck down by the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds in 2011. She cited the game Grand Theft Auto as an example of the sort of game she wanted to keep out of children's hands. She continued to push the bill through her first presidential campaign in 2008, but it never passed.

Looking to establish a progressive infrastructure, Clinton played a formative role in conversations that led to the 2003 founding of the Center for American Progress, shared aides with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and advised the Clintons' former antagonist David Brock's Media Matters for America, created in 2004.

She ran for re-election in 2006, spending over $30 million on the race and trouncing Republican John Spencer (not the actor) 67% to 31%, proving she had the seat locked.

2008 presidential nomination campaign


Widely seen as the frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, her votes for the Iraq War and PATRIOT Act made her especially vulnerable to a long-legged mack daddy! political outsider who vocally (and sufficiently) opposed the War on Terror. They dueled throughout all 50 states in the primaries, a first in American history, before she was finally bested by Obama, who then chose her as his Secretary of State. Her stay only lasted until the second term, when she stepped down to prepare for her requisite presidential run. Again seen as an heir apparent, Hillary again faced stiff competition from the left. She's the Democratic Mitt Romney: unpopular with the base, flip-flops on convenient issues, but you could do worse. Clinton had been preparing for a presidential run since at least 2003, and during the first half of 2007, she led in all the opinion polls among Democrats running for the party's presidential nomination; after actually having to deny she was a lesbian, the media widely assumed she would win.

Primaries and caucuses
I remember one reporter comparing her to a "late-stage Lenny Bruce," as she increasingly spent stump time pleading her case against her tormentors... The lasting memory of Hillary the candidate was that her whole camp was consumed by tilts against a variety of windmills at the end, especially when the race extended beyond the point of mathematical elimination. There was a lot of fighting for a sake of fighting. The race dragged through all 50 states between Clinton and Obama. Clinton placed a dismal third in the Iowa caucus, shattering the perception she was a shoo-in for the nomination (Obama placed first and John Edwards came in second). Clinton won the New Hampshire primary (a reversal of post-Iowa predictions), which some attributed to sympathy for when she showed a rare moment of emotion during an interview. The two had a head to head battle throughout the Democratic primaries, threatening to split the Democratic base as the contest went on and on. Clinton won big states like New York, California, and New Jersey on Super Tuesday while Obama won more, but smaller states. They roughly shared the popular vote.

Clinton wasn't prepared for the long slog though, having thought she'd won the nomination by Super Tuesday, and from there, her campaign lagged behind Obama. What cemented it was the book Game Change, where Obama started pulling ahead, and the Clintons went completely batshit off-camera. Obama won a majority of the contests, but Clinton won just enough primaries to stick in out, namely Ohio and Pennsylvania. Bill was livid because it was destiny that his wife becomes president. (It was pre-ordained! This Obama guy must be cheating!) She became a source of ridicule and was mocked as power-hungry, some pointing out it was almost statistically impossible for her to win now. She made several gaffes like claiming to have been shot at with sniper fire while visiting Bosnia as First Lady, despite video evidence showing differently. After a swath of superdelegates declared for Obama on June 3rd, his delegate wins in South Dakota were enough to push him over the 2118 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Clinton refused to immediately concede the contest, but on June 7th, she suspended her campaign and threw her support behind Obama.

In an interview with the Sioux Falls Argus Leader editorial board, she brought up the 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Senator Robert Kennedy when asked why she remained in the race. Ostensibly, she mentioned the assassination and her husband's 1992 primary campaign to illustrate that previous primary seasons have run into June. However, one implication of citing Kennedy's assassination and her reasons for remaining in the primary race was the possibility of something bad (very bad) happening to Obama.

An investigation had shown that Clinton mentioned the 1968 assassination on at least four occasions in conjunction with her desire to remain in the primary race. Many pundits, however, considered it to be a major blunder wishing the black guy would get shot and the death knell of Clinton's campaign. She "sort of" apologized "in case" anyone was offended.

DNC 2008
The moment of truth was scripted at the Democratic National convention in 2008. Slated as a guest speaker on August 26, everyone was ready for her to filibuster at the podium while her disgruntled supporters made all kinds of trouble. However, these expectations were shattered as she gave a rousing speech praising Obama, ripping into John McCain and calling for unity in the Democratic Party. As if the speech wasn't enough, Clinton cemented her intentions firmly by calling for Obama to be nominated as the candidate by acclamation, only adding to the applause. She then pledged her full support to the Obama campaign, erasing any thoughts of ill will from the voters and Democratic Party members' minds. She was rewarded with an appointment as Secretary of State.

Secretary of State
In 2009, President Obama chose Clinton to be his Secretary of State (much to the disdain of conservatives and some liberals who hadn't gotten over the primaries). In an attempt to revive the beloved Clinton-Obama rivalry from the Democratic presidential nomination, pundits quickly invented rumors of a titanic power struggle between the State Department and the White House. Didn't happen until they started blaming each other for the Syrian and Libyan fiascos. Clinton's critics frequently bring up the 2012 Benghazi attack, which an entirely preventable security shortage could have short-circuited. While much of it is the usual conspiracy-mongering from wingnuts, her handling of the situation was decidedly less than optimal, and much of the conspiracy-mongering could have been headed off if she hadn't completely blown it to start with. She later resigned by the end of Obama's first term and was replaced by John Kerry.

Her lasting accomplishments as Secretary of State were characteristical of a hawkish route. Showing she learned nothing from the Iraq War vote she disavowed during an election campaign, Clinton backed an escalation into the Afghanistan War despite the power being accumulated by regional warlords due to the conflict. She was a leading proponent for a "humanitarian" intervention against the government of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya; she was actually caught having a laugh on-screen upon learning of his death. Said intervention led to the disintegration of the country into rival governments along the coastline, with terrorist gangs including al-Qaeda and Daesh setting up shop and taking over cities as the unrest continued for the better part of the decade. Additionally, the chaos Hillary helped reign in Libya spilled over into Mali, allowing Tuareg and Islamist rebels to seize half the country and prompting a French military intervention to stop the government from falling to al-Qaeda.

In October 2009, on a trip to Switzerland, Clinton's intervention overcame last-minute snags and saved the signing of a historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations.

She pressed Obama to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. Clinton supported view that if the United States did not arm them, then extremists would give the rebels money and lure them into their organizations. She endorsed the usage of airstrikes against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad within the Obama administration.

Perhaps her most telling decision was to have her State Department enable Obama's expansion of lethal drone strikes against people said to be terrorists by John Brennan, who later became Director of the CIA. Her adoration of Israel, AIPAC, and Benjamin Netanyahu also led her to block every effort Palestinians made at the United Nations to achieve recognition, even UNSC resolutions declaring Israeli settlements illegal.



In a prepared speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies between the Iron Curtain and the free and unfree Internet. Chinese officials reacted negatively towards it. The speech garnered attention as the first time a senior American official had clearly defined the Internet as a critical element of American foreign policy.

During April 2011 internal deliberations of the president's innermost circle of advisors over whether to order U.S. special forces to conduct a raid into Pakistan against Osama bin Laden, Clinton was among those who argued in favor, saying the importance of getting bin Laden outweighed the risks to the U.S. relationship with Pakistan. Following the completion of the mission on May 2, which resulted in bin Laden's death, Clinton played a crucial role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead al-Qaeda leader.

It was later revealed through her emails that, as Secretary of State, she had supported the Libyan intervention (even though there were major humanitarian concerns), pitched Iraq as a "business opportunity", used the Global Shale Gas Initiative to push fracking on various countries around the world, and that she was the main advocate of the TPP within the Obama administration.

In a formulation that became known as "", she viewed women's rights as critical for U.S. security interests due to a link between the level of violence against women and gender inequality within a state and the instability and challenge to international security of that state.

2016 presidential run


On April 12th, 2015, she announced another run at the White House. Her campaign was soon riddled with scandal fodder. Most of the information about the Clintons wasn't new (nothing sticks to the Clintons), but it was repackaged and retold for today's audience. In June 2016, she became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president.

Bernie Sanders was her chief rival for the Democratic nomination before finally withdrawing in July and endorsing Clinton's presidential candidacy:

On November 8th, 2016, Clinton lost the key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by razor-thin margins, causing her to lose the Electoral College to Donald Trump.

Foreign policy
Mexican government policies are pushing migration north. There isn't any sensible approach except what we need to do simultaneously, you know — secure our borders, technology, personnel, physical barriers if necessary, in some places. With the possible exception of, say, John Kerry, the Secretary of State is little more than a Consigliere. HRC was no exception. Historically, she has been a hawk:  She pushed for a no-fly zone over Syria and using ground troops against Daesh. Even though Hillary says she strongly backs the nuclear deal, she would enact new sanctions on Iran (following in the footsteps of Madeleine Albright). More disappointingly, her campaign has accepted money from Boeing through her Foundation. and has befriended some of the worst despots around the globe.

A simple scorecard assembled by compared Clinton's foreign policy statements to three remaining Republican candidates for president at the time. On every issue that Global Zero measured, Clinton is indicated as far less hawkish than all three of those Republican candidates: she supported a diplomatic solution to the crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear weapons program when John Kasich was the only Republican to do so and supported bilateral negotiations with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons to the measly sum of 1,000 each.

Criminal justice
The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act... stopped the revolving door for career criminals with its "three strikes and you're out" provision. (Reform) the “strike” system to focus on violent crime by narrowing the category of prior offenses that count as strikes to exclude nonviolent drug offenses, and reducing the mandatory penalty for second- and third-strike offenses. On the campaign trail, she successfully presents herself as a friend to African Americans. Black politicians and pastors are endorsing her, she has a huge lead with minorities, and her husband was often called the first black president. However, some critics like to bring up her quote, as First Lady, about young, impoverished black children who had to turn to crime: "They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel." The Clinton "tough on crime" policies were disasters for black communities, and they used the Republicans' dog whistles to sell it.

Today's critics fail to understand that these were policies that the black community actually wanted at the time. Like many tough-on-crime policies that have been passed in the U.S. since the late 1960s, the law enjoyed the support of many black activists and political leaders, who saw it as an imperfect but necessary measure to combat pervasive violence in poor black urban neighborhoods. Gang violence was out of control in the early 90s, and there was a perception that no one seemed to care until Bill Clinton was elected. In general, this is why older (i.e., the most reliable block of primary voters in the electorate of any race) black voters refused to hold it against Hillary. Even with the dog whistles and the mass incarceration.

Scandals, both real and imagined
She's just a devil woman, with evil on her mind Beware the devil woman, she's gonna get you from behind

At this stage, we don't want to know whether Hillary slept with Vincent Foster. We want to know if she killed him...Clinton is the most unpopular First Lady ever; and, more substantively, she is the first First Lady to stand before a grand jury... Everything she touches turns out to have the word gate tacked on to the end of it: Cookiegate, Cattlegate, Travelgate, Fostergate, Whitewatergate; and now Thankyougate.

"Vast right-wing conspiracy"
The great story here, for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it, is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. The "vast right-wing conspiracy" is a slightly overblown snarl word created by Clinton during the ongoing investigation of her husband's improprieties (alleged and real) during his administration. It is also known under the somewhat more sober codename the

The term referred to a loosely-aligned group of conservative lawyers and journalists, some neoconservatives, and some of the Religious Right, whose primary mission seemed to be retaliation for George H.W. Bush losing his reelection and the premature end of Bill Clinton's term in office by any means necessary. Insofar as there was truly a conspiracy in the accepted sense of the word, rather than a mere confluence of obvious interest, it centered around the funding activities of conservative banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife, political pressure groups such as Newt Gingrich's GOPAC, and conservative media outlets such as Matt Drudge's online Drudge Report, the Scaife-funded American Spectator magazine and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

However, there was considerable independent pressure from other conservative voices, and despite the defection of prominent supporters such as Arianna Huffington (admittedly a class act even as a Newt Gingrich supporter) and David Brock (one of its slimiest perpetrators, turned liberal media activist), much "VRWC" spin continues unabated today, keeping alive a period in American politics which many, both inside and outside the United States, consider highly distasteful and even dangerous.

Whitewater
This scandal has been forged to the suicide of White House lawyer, Vince Foster, by avid Clinton scandal-mongers. No evidence has ever been found. Whitewater turned out to be just a garden variety real-estate deal gone bad, though some of the nicest people from Arkansas went to jail.

Foundation
The Clinton Foundation, originally issued a Tax ID number to build and maintain the Clinton Presidential Library, has evolved into an octopus of global front groups and is a lightning rod for roughly half of the Clinton Conspiracies. Take the issue of Uranium One, which from all superficial appearances, is quite the sordid tale. The latest chapter occurred when the Russians, who needed and obtained Clinton's approval, took control of a massive uranium company around the same time that a bank with strong connections to the Kremlin made heretofore undisclosed donations to the Clinton Foundation. Hilariously, this scandal was so unfounded that Fox News' Shepard Smith debunked it, much to the horror of Fox viewers. Her foundation also accepted donations from oil companies who were lobbying for more favorable oil policies.

Early in her campaign, it was revealed that the Foundation had taken donations from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar while she was Secretary of State - these countries also bought guns from various military contractors who had also donated to the Clinton foundation. 89% of Clinton Foundation money goes to charity, including worldwide treatment of Aids.

KKKlinton
Following Donald Trump's shiftiness on whether he should or should not disavow former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "Dr." David Duke, after he had received the support of such a wonderful gentleman, a 2004 photograph of Hillary Clinton kissing former KKK member emerged on social media, as well as a 2010 speech Clinton gave after Byrd's death.

This would have been an ordinary tu quoque fallacy if it were not for the fact that Byrd left the Klan after only a year of membership and completely disavowed his former membership (spending most of his life apologizing for his brief stint as a member of the KKK) and has been congratulated by the NAACP for his support for civil rights. In contrast, David Duke continues to be involved in white nationalist politics through Furthermore, Byrd actually endorsed Obama for president.

This line of attack is similar to how some people call Clinton "Goldwater Girl", despite her being one only an extremely short time of her teenage years, and her harsh denouncement of the Republican party as the party of "racists" after the 1968 Republican National Convention.

But her emails
Long story short, most politicians are technophobes. Some of the State Department's emails contained highly-classified information that was sent from an insecure server. Later on, somebody dug up a policy, blew some dust off it, and discovered that what everyone was doing was against official regs, effectively saying Hey, stop using your smartphones and go back to using state e-mail.  This memo was about as popular as the plague and went conveniently ignored.

BlackBerrys caught on with politicians back when they were the top mobile company. That peculiarity never really went away. Obama was granted a secure BlackBerry as he requested, as was Condoleezza Rice, the previous SoS. Clinton was repeatedly denied one as it was too much of a security risk, and they wanted to phase it out. (In exchange, the NSA offered her this monstrosity. ) She could have had two devices, one for state.gov (which, based on the Mills deposition, can be accessed from State-issued mobile devices ) and one for her private email. That would have given her more protection since she could say everything on her private server is personal; everything on the state.gov server is 'work.' Clinton stupidly used only one of each (at home! ), because didn't want to have to partition conversations between different devices and addresses.

Even the State Department IG report mentioned how inadequate their digital infrastructure is: For example, Colin Powell justified his use of a private email address, saying, "State's system at the time was inadequate." State's e-mail has been hacked extensively by Russia, and they didn't get around to scrubbing it for months (perhaps Russia is still balls-deep in the network as we speak?). There is also no money to fix it. One of Clinton's e-mail exchanges in 2011 concerning how inadequate State Dept. technology was. The Department's Director of Policy Planning wrote to Clinton and her aides:

And Clinton agreed. They discussed a strategy to get more funding to improve things, but didn't want to go public with it out of fear of alerting enemies to another snafu. It doesn't seem to be an isolated issue: John Kerry was caught in December 2015, still using a private email account. There's a long Daily Show segment (actually, several segments) covering in detail the complete inadequacy of the computer systems at the Department of Veterans Affairs and how it's made their job effectively impossible and defied any attempts to fix it.

Slashing government funding has consequences, even if they're not immediate. In retrospect, it was brilliant on Republicans' part, because she gets blamed for a lot of the fallout, e.g., cutting funding for embassy security after Clinton warned them that it would affect national security (but that's another topic.)

So why not just use a state.gov address? Well, here's where FOIA may come into play. Clinton is a paranoid person, mostly because she has been under constant scrutiny for the last quarter-century. Most of those investigations have included FOIA requests. The Freedom of Information Act can perform its transparency function only when government employees follow the e-mail guidelines. Clinton supporter and former Governor and senator of Nebraska, Bob Kerrey, is disturbed by the email scandal: “It is about wanting to avoid the reach of citizens using FOIA to find out what their government is doing, and then not telling the truth about why she did.”  Though, she likely hasn't done anything criminal, her subsequent improper deletion of 30,000 emails violated the. The FBI conducted a criminal investigation into this matter, and it appears that the use of the private server violates several federal criminal statutes.

On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey issued a statement that said that Clinton's use of the server was 'careless', but that no criminal charges had been recommended:

More or less torpedoing the idea that blanket punishments should be applied severely and across all avenues of life.

Just days before election day, Comey thought that it would be a swell idea to forego the Justice Department's standards of election non-intervention to inform Congress of the discovery of new emails that could be "pertinent" to their previous investigation. This spurred a week-long media speculation-fest on what the emails could be, though they mostly turned out to be duplicates.

Hillary and big $$$
From 2013 to 2015, Hillary Clinton made $2.9 million on 12 speeches to big banks and $225,000 from a single speech for Verizon Wireless although there is nothing illegal about former Secretaries of State earning money on the speaking circuit. And according to sources in the industry, there is nothing unusual about someone with the name value of Hillary Clinton being able to charge so much. It was later revealed that Hillary and her husband have raised over $3 billion over 41 years in charitable and campaign donations. The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation. Her campaign has also accumulated $6.9 million from fossil fuel donations. The Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee, has funneled $60 million in donations through 33 state-affiliated Democratic parties. This tactic had previously been used during her 2008 campaign run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

To her credit, she called for more financial regulations after the 2008 financial crisis, but these regulations have been considered as weak tweaks and not an overhaul. Her refusal to reinstate Glass-Steagall was criticized by Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley.

To the delight of her non-wingnut detractors, Charles Koch, the GOP billionaire mega-donor, intimated on ABC's This Week that "it's possible" Hillary Clinton would be a better president than anyone in the GOP field. Clinton tweeted that she didn't want his endorsement. Meanwhile, she also began a full-bore campaign to solicit money and support from right-wing Wall Street Republicans, including Jeb Bush’s former finance chair.

Israel
Clinton has been described as "a staunch supporter of Israel for her entire career" by her own Super PAC and has even been willing to implicitly criticize Obama's position on Israel in general and on Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. One particularly hideous statement of hers came when she justified Israel's attacks on civilians in Gaza (i.e., a UN school housing refugees), claiming it "was impossible to know what happens in the fog of war", in sharp contrast to the Obama administration's condemnation of the "disgraceful" shelling and when the UN found there to be no Hamas equipment/military activity near the school.

In November of 2015, she published an article in  declaring her strong support for Israel and declaring that "fighting for Israel isn’t just about policy — it’s a personal commitment to the friendship between our peoples." Clinton omitted all reference to Israeli settlements in the West Bank as well as the siege and bombings of Gaza. In her Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from a Young Palestinian Feminist, about the Forward piece, Layali Awwad wrote, "when you chose to speak about my homeland, not once did you mention Israel's human rights violations against Palestinian women and children." In her widely circulated letter, Awwad asked, "Did you know that half of Palestinians are women and girls? Did you know that like our brothers, we also live under military occupation and that Israeli settlers steal our land?" At AIPAC 2016, Hillary attacked racist anti-semitic lunatic Donald Trump for his anti-semitic dog whistles, seizing on the opportunity to pander to Trump's right-wing supporters by attacking his promise to allegedly "stay neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict". She also denounced the movement (as she has done before ), endorsing an even stronger and hawkish alliance with Israel.

Being wrong about Nancy Reagan and AIDS
LGBT activists and their allies, especially those who lived through the terror-filled decade of the 1980s, were outraged and furious when Hillary Clinton took the occasion of Nancy Reagan's funeral to state: It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan – in particular, Mrs. Reagan – we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it. Nobody wanted anything to do with it. It seems, however, the Reagan White House laughed about AIDS and would not publicly address it, much less authorize sufficient funding for treatment or a cure, at a time when tens of thousands of gay men were being stricken by this severe and then-fatal disease. There is no evidence that Nancy Reagan cared about the plague taking so many young lives; her silence was deafening.

Hillary Clinton's praise for Nancy Reagan elicited an immediate and angry backlash on social media, and several hours later, she "apologized" on Twitter for having "misspoken". This apology caused more anger, with long-time activist Dan Savage decreeing: "Not. Good. Enough." Hillary followed with issuing an apology, noting that the national conversation on HIV and AIDS was started by "generations of brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies, who started not just a conversation but a movement that continues to this day" but failing to address the issue of the Reagans' terrible record in acknowledging the AIDS epidemic. This is not so much a Clinton scandal as a personal shortcoming, i.e., a not uncommon failure to remember recent history. The offended community would doubtless be less offended were Clinton now president, by comparison.

Courting the paranormal vote!
In 1996, it was reported that Clinton talked with the dead, notably Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt, with the help of "Mystery School" founder Jean Houston. Clinton confirmed the talks but downplayed them as a somewhat-common thought experiment. On her talks with Eleanor, "I occasionally have imaginary conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt to try to figure out what she would do in my shoes. She usually responds by telling me to buck up or at least to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros." Clinton wrote. Hillary and her husband now joke about "communing with the dead", and sites like WND take them literally.

In 2016 it was reported that Clinton believes extraterrestrials have likely visited earth. Her in-depth knowledge about UFO terminology, and willingness to disclose information the US government is supposedly withholding, has gained her the confidence of Joseph Buchman and other believers in Area 51 conspiracies.

Other woo
Hillary's friendship with Dr. Mark Hyman has led her to rely on him concerning health matters, despite his history of advocating an alternative medicine called "functional medicine".

In 2008, Clinton responded to a question about the causal relationship between vaccines and autism by promising to invest in research on possible environmental causes of autism... like vaccines. She openly stated that it was unknown whether or not vaccines can cause autism despite the claim being thoroughly debunked at that time. It is unlikely that Clinton was presenting herself as a medical authority of any kind. What would Donald Trump have to say about autism and vaccines? That they are unrelated? No such luck.

The Clinton hate mill
Everything about this campaign, and everything about this candidate, was rotten from the very start. Mrs. Clinton has the most unappetizing combination of qualities to be met in many days’ march: she is a tyrant and a bully when she can dare to be, and an ingratiating populist when that will serve. She will sometimes appear in the guise of a “strong woman” and sometimes in the softer garb of a winsome and vulnerable female. She is entirely un-self-critical and quite devoid of reflective capacity, and has never found that any of her numerous misfortunes or embarrassments are her own fault, because the fault invariably lies with others. And, speaking of where things lie, she can in a close contest keep up with her husband for mendacity. Like him, she is not just a liar but a lie; a phoney construct of shreds and patches and hysterical, self-pitying, demagogic improvisations.

One reviewer of No One Left to Lie To said Hitchens "is appalled by virtually everything the President (Clinton) does." This variety of wild polemic has become quite popular in American politics, and there is a plethora of anti-Clinton literature made for readers who already dislike the Clintons.

Neo-Nazi and Republican nicknames

 * HillDog
 * Crooked Hillary
 * Killary Klinton
 * Shillary
 * Hitlery
 * Hildebeest
 * Hilla the Hun
 * The Butcher of Benghazi
 * The Bitch of Wall Street
 * Wicked Witch of the West Wing

Videos

 * DNC in a nutshell. "They're shouting boo-urns."
 * "We came, we saw, he died!" No wonder Americans voted for the other guy.
 * "I don't believe you change hearts." Jokes aside, Hillary's downfall was that she doesn't have the patience for the emotionalism which passes for politics.