Coming from the Sanders side the following might be my own effort(s) at reconciling myself to our candidate and putting in perspective the platform battles. I'm definitely influenced by her speech yesterday about BLM and Dallas, but I remain put off by her speaking style. I apologize to Hillary supporters who could react to this as reducing enthusiasm; these thoughts are addressed to people like me who are trying to generate more enthusiasm inside ourselves (i.e., some Bernie people like me).
My exercise here is basically to compare Hillary to Michelle Obama and contrast them both with Condoleezza Rice regarding the "honesty" meme. My premise is that the public's perception of Hillary as less honest than Trump or Bernie -- leaving aside the right-wing's decades of unfair attacks -- has everything to do with the way skilled lawyers seek to use words they can stand behind. In other words, rather than emphasizing emotional affect and dribbling sentiment all over the place, lawyers consider their use of language with care for its long-term reliability and truth. For Hillary-bashers, I'll concede there are a few limited examples where she prevaricates or misstates, but my argument is that these are minor. I also see her as comparable to FDR or LBJ as a canny Democratic party politician seeking the support or non-opposition of powerful interest groups that are national stakeholders and consistently play a role in politics in a well organized and well funded way.
The fact that our first lady as well as our previous Democratic first lady are both attorneys is notable. This comes with a lived experience that should be honored and validated, not brushed over or overlooked. Although Michelle Obama doesn't come across as lawyerly, I remember in the first campaign when there was some reporting about concern whether she was making public statements that were too freewheeling and candid. Hillary's experience as an Arkansan lawyer (who also has been subjected to decades of attacks on her statements, e.g., twisting their meanings) represents some of her substance and a domain of life lived and skillful self-expression that deserves to be recognized and honored. Having flunked out of law school myself, my personal experience of attorney-culture gives me anecdotal perspective. Although I've lived in Los Angeles more than 20 years, I grew up in New York City and my personal "honesty" issues were a major part of what made me a mismatch for law school. There is a fundamental difference between being deliberative and being manipulative, and open emotionality has a persuasive importance that can be considered an effort to manipulate in itself. I think both Michelle and Hillary are seen primarily as women and insufficiently as professional women who cultivated their ability to stand up under pressure in the male-dominated legal community. For all of Hillary's important or major statements, she gives us words we can stand behind and reflect on. I suggest the reaction some people have about her "honesty" -- again, disregarding the RW false-meme-factory attacks -- is inadvertently sexist. Both Michelle and Hillary take care to use the right words, words that can stand the test of time. This reflects their high level of professional achievement in their lives prior to the White House and is fundamentally a part of their valuable lived experience as women. I think Angela Merkel is a fair comparison for people who are favorable toward Merkel and do not Germany-bash.
Condoleezza Rice is my contrast and I apologize that I don't have lots of links for people whose memories are fuzzy or non-existent about her spokesperson duties as we invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. She had a unique way of saying things that were technically true but required careful parsing because otherwise the statements were superficially misleading. When Krugman described Mitt Romney's business model as a raider as "breach of implied contract," I immediately thought of Rice's use of words. I know Democrats who think very highly of her as having been a reasonable voice behind the scenes, making the best of a bad situation. What I remember was how much I wanted information, how much I cared about what I heard from the GOP administration while it was fresh, and how disappointing it was to consistently discover that C. Rice's statements could be true-yet-misleading sooo consistently. She was one of the more likable representatives of this awful tendency in America life (note Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them). I remember when she said "I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity" on Jan. 18, 2005, it cracked me up at the time. I did not feel like bashing her, but I thought that really was a significant issue because of her use of lawyerly and misleading language that carefully parsed could mean almost anything. I can't think of a single important time either Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton have done anything like this. I have to go back in memory to Bill Clinton's use of the Southern meaning of the phrase "sexual relations" (equaling intercourse and nothing less) to recall a Democrat doing anything comparable, although I think there were some examples in the run up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act when Dems tried to fuzz over their strong loyalty to insurance and pharmaceutical interests.
This crosses over into the platform fights right now and relates to Hillary's ties to big business, Goldman Sachs, and Israel's national use of social pressure in the U.S. Bernie did a great job of making this an issue but it is now our job to keep progressive pressure on Hillary from within the Democratic party. I know people can argue about whether Bernie took things too far or whether he is still taking things too far, and my bias is pro-Bernie. But I don't know how I feel about TPP although I'm certainly pained about the Israel issue. I'd just as soon see TPP ditched, but Hillary's movement on TPP already impresses me as an example where she is responding to popular pressure. I wish both Hillary and the platform would become more progressive and personally I'm with Cornel West on use of the word "occupation," but while the implications of these platform-item issues are huge, it can't be allowed to make us lose perspective about defeating Trump and unifying our party to get Congress back. I think Hillary does prevaricate at times on issues like these, in her choice of language, and Elizabeth Warren or Alan Grayson are the obvious contrasts, as well as Bernie. But I also think she is practicing smart politics. The conventional argument that has some credibility with me is that Nixon was able to go to China because of his solidity with the national security apparatus. It seems certain to me that Hillary could do more to reign in America's financial sector than either Bernie or Warren could. This is comparable too to Obama's smoothing things over with insurance and pharmaceutical interests while shaping the ACA and trying to get it passed. Hillary does politics and her role in our lives is political. Not antagonizing major stakeholders so that they become strongly opposed to everything about an individual candidate is conventional politics. Hillary's skill at this is part of the "rules" of the political world she comes from.
So for people who still want to believe in Bernie's "Revolution" (e.g., me) the platform battles make perfect sense and the need to disagree with and pressure our party on issues must become a fundamental long-term commitment. Looking at Hillary's speech yesterday about BLM and Dallas, the influence of the Bernie-wing was pretty clear. We paved the way. Now that Hillary is definitely the candidate we have, we will be keeping the pressure up but we'll see how good we are at it. It's not like young people voted for Bernie in such impressive numbers in New York or California (sad face!). I suppose my bottom line is that the kind of "Honesty" Hillary practices is presidential. While it is conditioned by politics, it is better than that. Like President Obama's speeches, Hillary uses words that can be quoted as spoken in 100 years. We need to cultivate respect for her lived experience as an attorney, using words reliably, and argue against the celebrity-angle where we'd like someone more headlong and bubbly-frank. Even Trump is having to put up with the GOP telling him to cut back on that free-speaking spontaneity. That Hillary does not do it is a plus.
As a parting note, I want to acknowledge how much I admire her statements about America needing more love and kindness. Having raised two children, I can speak to how horrible this period has been for glamorizing brutality and inhumanity. That has consequences and breeds resentment and hate. "Love and kindness" could be made into a politically sensible and powerful platform that assists U.S. interests and international standing, so this is another area where we shouldn't assume we know what she means or what that approach could lead to. The policy consequences could be historic and social-science statistics generally support the idea of building positive approaches. Deadly face-offs are what we have been doing since Bush was judged to have beaten Gore in Florida. Hillary is not a lightweight. I'd love to spend eight years under a love-and-kindness regime and I would probably take Schadenfreude pleasure from the segment of GOP America that hated every minute of it and tried to denigrate such an approach in sexist terms. It makes financial policy sense to me to respect people as human beings and avoid having our society degenerate into more potentially lethal battles.