Hillary Clinton and fantastical thinking

The common comment:

Hillary Clinton has admitted her past mistakes.

One: admitting your mistakes when all the data shows you that they were indeed mistakes is hardly groundbreaking.

Two: admitting a mistake is not the same thing as learning from it

The ideal of course is not making the mistake in the first place based upon the data at the time especially when many others warn that it would be a mistake in the first place.

The sure sign that you have not learnt from a mistake in the first place is when you try to justify the reasons for making the error after the fact.

We all make mistakes some even learn from them many do not, so just admitting a boo-boo is not the same thing as saying you will be more careful the next time around the block. American foreign policy has been a continual process of making similar mistakes but hoping the result will be different, that is not learning that is ignorance.

It's a similar thing with Climate Change if we ignore it long enough it will all go away, or maybe when it gets bad enough an American hero will arise and wave a magic wand just like in the movies.

A more cynical view would be that Hillary Clinton not only admits mistakes when it is politically expedient to do so, but makes deliberate "mistakes" when it appears to be politically expedient to make them. This happens to be my point of view.

This was the thinking behind the tough on crime three strikes and you're out tragedy, one could even go further and say it was deliberately misleading.

After 9-11 it was harder to face up to potential war crimes than to avoid committing them in the first place, politically expediency demanded a deliberate mistake. It's easier to claim exceptionalism when trying to bury such massive errors as Honduras after the fact.

There is a massive error lurking in the minds of the voter, despite evidence to the contrary, that supporting the Democratic Party without breaking the mould will make it better, that just more is sufficient. The other is by closing off the primary process to only the party faithful will ensure a better tomorrow.

Then I finish with this

Now that Hillary Clinton has dispatched Bernie Sanders, she’s making a big play for one of his core fan bases: young voters.

The first high-profile Sanders staffer, specializing in college student outreach, decamped earlier this month from Burlington to Brooklyn, joining other battleground state aides who had worked for the Vermont senator and are now in Clinton’s camp. Advisers to both candidates say more Sanders staffers will be hired soon.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s allies in the environmental, labor and women’s health communities are tapping into the same data, digital and other messaging tactics that Sanders used to such great effect in galvanizing millions of millennial supporters.

Note the keywords: play, tapping, messaging, tactics

They forgot: Real, authentic, sincere, substance

After insulting millennials throughout; I suppose that was just another mistake and now it's politically expedient not to kick them any more?

I wonder how many will be disappointed by end of April 2017? I'll give her the standard 100 days to come up with the "it's not realistic" excuse.

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Lookout's picture

She doesn't understand it is about substance- the value of ideas. I sure hope the email release this week is as damning as Assange claims!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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Alison Wunderland's picture

different results?" There's a word for that.

Meanwhile, keep the primaries close, gerrymander (depending on your flavor of corruption), disenfranchise as many voters as possible and it gets easier and easier to install one version of Tweevildee or Tweevildum with each cycle.

It's a pathetic charade.

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"Admitting" is not the same as taking responsibility. Taking responsibility is not the same as asking for a job promotion.

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"Admitting" is not the same as taking responsibility. Taking responsibility is not the same as asking for a job promotion.

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I've heard the narrative concerning the Iraq war vote; "That she made a mistake, and she admits the mistake so stop bringing it up. Just move on." It's as if she added too much salt to a sauce recipe, rather than support a policy that has cost thousands of US lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraq lives, and made refugees of millions more, will end up costing over six trillion dollars (and counting), and created a political vacuum which has given birth to ISIS among many other consequences. There seems to be no limit to how horrific ones judgment has to be to make it career ending if you are a member of a particular class. At one time members of the meritocracy had a responsibility to resign, and retire from public life if judgments like those listed in this essay were exposed. But they are not examples of terrible judgment, they are policy positions that have become unpopular, hence; mistakes. Oops!

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wilderness voice's picture

She is still best buddies with the neocon authors of the Iraq disaster and they have endorsed her candidacy.

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elmo's picture

It's not like the Iraq war is comparable to getting a blowjob from an intern and then lying about it to the American people.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, lives have been destroyed, and people continue to die even to this day as a result of that pointless and ghastly blunder.

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Even the smallest person can change the course of the future

No sense of responsibility for her actions. The Democratic party has no future, except on TV, unless it jettisons this whole corrupt, Clinton machine.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

"mistakes". Everything she has done is calculated and intentional for her maximum benefits, her personal gain. Only when she is called on them will she say they're mistakes and that is for political purposes only. Also, she will never say she's sorry and if she did it would only be because she got caught. You can bet she's sitting on tons of "mistakes" that will never see the light of day.

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are the ones where she gets caught,the rest never existed so in her view she gets away with it 99% of the time.

Anyone who expects anything domestically or internationally from Hillary other than the standard Neo-Liberal methodology of stripping the wealth of the world and redistributing it to the 1% with trickle down working for the next 9% maybe, will likely be dissapointed. The rest of us Fuck You

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mouselander's picture

Hillary and Bill will invariably embrace a particular policy or course of action that suits their short-term interests - i.e., paying off corporate donors, or pandering to the passions of the moment - and then, when deemed advantageous, will seek to distance themselves from those positions in order to reap yet more political benefit. They try to arrange things so they benefit both on the front end and on the back end. Think welfare reform, NAFTA, crime bill, Iraq war vote, gay marriage, Keystone pipeline, fracking... in fact, on just about any contentious issue, the Clintons can reliably be expected to be on both sides of the fence, according to what they perceive as serving their self-interest at any given moment.

Accordingly, once the campaign wraps up, and assuming Clinton wins the election, it's not hard to predict that she will quickly become a born-again free trader, will rediscover her enthusiasm for fracking, and will otherwise walk back any quasi-"progressive" positions she felt obliged to embrace while in campaign mode.

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inactive account

Hillbilly Dem's picture

the absolute masters of triangulation. The Clintons have raised it from a campaign tactic to a way of life.

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"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey

And her corporate backers are in on the game. The Clintonian backers know that they sometimes have to 'fool the rubes' by saying whatever the fuck they need to in order to get done the bidding of their masters. That's how, 'things get done'. In fact a lot of good meaning 'liberals' have fallen for this tripe.

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

NWIA's picture

Great summary, LaFem.

This entire problem that the Dems have inflicted on the country begins with Billary. They announced themselves on the national stage as sincere fighters for us who were victims of unprovoked rightwing attacks. Shed a tear or two and then send more blacks to prison. Bite your lower lip and then cut welfare. Obama has this act down very well. Show passion when he has no authority to correct a wrong, and then exacerbate existing problems when he actually has power to eliminate them.

I get the allure of Bill and Barack. Their roles are charming blends of outward strength and compassion, while the dirt is hidden in paperwork. But Hillary? You truly have to be dense to believe she can play the part. No charm, all snark, long list of self-evident hypocritical actions. She is a female Jeb Bush. She is the Vin Diesel to Bill's Lawrence Olivier. And her supporters still are ready to present the Oscar to her.

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Nobody says, 'I am Groot" better than him!

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Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?

I wonder how many will be disappointed by end of April 2017? I'll give her the standard 100 days to come up with the "it's not realistic" excuse.

Hillary would have to announce this during any victory speech. Obama made his "fuggeddaboutit" announcement the day after his party in Grant Park. He confirmed this position with his first nominations to his Cabinet.

Don't count Hillary out in doing this, for She Must Be First And Best!

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

Ravensword's picture

Words that Hillary's surrogates and Hillbots use to describe her.

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dervish's picture

she's going to make will be in Syria. Iran is likely next, then Russia, China, the world?

It's going to be a long four years.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."