Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Hillary Clinton Did Not Melt Down - She Had a Human Moment!

Last night I was so angry - no make that furious - at the posts and, especially, the comments I was seeing around the blogosphere regarding Hillary Clinton's utterly human moment in New Hampshire. I wanted to write something but I was so irritated that I decided to wait until I could calm down enough to not be insulting or nasty to anybody.

This morning I found this post on The Women's Post, by Vivian Paige that absolutely nails it. She said what needed to be said with a few brief statements that contained dignity and clarity. It has the added bonus of being from a woman who has run for office herself.

Thank you Vivian!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Puhlease! Another calculated moment by the "Clinton Machine." We must stop them before it's too late.

Staff said...

As for myself I used the term "meltdown" in the political/organizational sense.

I don't think it happened because she's a woman, it happened because she's a human being in a very stressful situation facing several inter-related setbacks at the same time. I think a lot of men, perhaps even most men, could react the same under similar circumstances.

Understand, Clinton went from the inevitable candidate to very little chance of winning in about 72 hours. That's how long it took the post-Iowa polls to come out showing her behind Obama in New Hampshire by 10+ points.

And the frustrating thing for Clinton has to be that there simply is no time to change things. Only five days between Iowa and New Hampshire. All of the candidates are tired. Obama is losing his voice.

But Clinton's sinking fortunes put her under an additional level of strain. Likewise, she is also reshuffling the way her campaign is run, taking over direct control, taking on even more strain.

Clinton should have scaled back and slowed down a bit--she didn't and the strain caught up to her. I think it would have caught up with any human being.

After tonight, she'll have 18 days until South Carolina.

Mosquito said...

I really don't trust Hillary Clinton...I have no idea if that interview was genuine or not....However, I just saw an ad and it looks like she's now promising to get us out of Iraq, (of course with no timetable).

Looks like to me that she's going to start adopting the winning issues that her opponents are running on in order to ateempt to pull this lsing streak out of the fire.

However, it's destined to fail...This is the candidate who wants to now claim she's an agent of change AND Margaret Thatcher....

I tend to believe that corporate girl is willing to say anything to get elected....and if she is elected we are going to be stuck with the same ole same ole satus quo establishment ruled by the corporate donors who have bought the Republican party AND Hillary Clinton.

She may be a competent, cordial woman but I don't want her as my president. We can do better than Hillary Clinton as the first woman president of our nation.

buzz...Buzz...

Buzz....Buzz...

Karen Duncan said...

I think you are right, JC. In addition to being a human being in a stressful situation, I think she was seeing her dream evaporating before her eyes.

Whether you want her to be president or not, I think there should be compassion for any human being caught in that situation.

And that's what disturbed me so much about the widespread reaction to this. There was gloating and viciousness (not from you guys who just posted here). That's very different from simply not wanting her to be president.

I can respect you, Mosquito, and others. In fact, I'm likely as not going to end up a Barack supporter myself. I was originally for Edwards and my heart is still with him.

But, like Lowell, whose endorsement of Barack on RK was beautiful, I could support any of our candidates.

I find it troublesome, however, that there is still such a cottage industry of Clinton-haters out there. Can we oppose somebody without hating them and gloating at their personal sadness?

For me, this is about human compassion, not politics.