THE MODERN, EXTREMIST RIGHT WAS PRETTY MUCH INVENTED IN OPPOSITION TO HER (AND HER HUSBAND). NOW IT'S UP TO HER (ALONE) TO STOP IT.
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This Esquire article/sit-down interview is excellent reading. It lines out what is at stake in this election, and how ironic it is that the very person (along with her husband) who was the main target of the Extremists on the Right for the past 2 ½ decades is the person to defeat extremist Donald Trump and the GOP in the fall.
Politicians always say that "there's never been more at stake in an election"—when it happens to be the election in which they're running.
But what if, this time out, that's true? What if this is, like, it, the main event, the conclusion of a long-running series, the climax of a nearly metaphysical battle that started before most people had ever heard of her?
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If a person seems to be an unlikely fulcrum for forces much larger than herself, that only means...she is.
This election feels different than other ones in the past. The Republican nominee is a true fascist, a loudmouth and a boor, and he unapologetically constantly barks out insults that would make a Rush Limbaugh have to apologize to his audience the day after one of his shows. Moderate and moderating voices within the Republican Party have been silenced.
I have seen her, in other words, prove herself adept at the politician's task of making the novel seem familiar and the familiar seem novel. She never gets tired, just tiring, for she applies her indefatigability to the daily exercise of what her aides call "staying in her lane" and "executing." She doesn't try to appear extraordinary, only formidably accomplished, and on most days she succeeds at doing just that.
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She sets great store by the power of laying out plans. She holds firmly to the belief that America abandons its values at great peril, not only morally but strategically. But we know that already. What I want to know, now that the event is over and I'm sitting with her in the classroom in Salem, is whether she knows the stakes of her run—the role she's been chosen to play, her…fate. Since I don't want to sound crazy, I simply ask her why she wants to be president now, at this time in history, in this season of extremism and attack.
And this is how she answers, in part:
"I think we're at a real turning point, and I don't want to see the America that I love—that gave me and my parents and my immigrant grandfather and everybody that I know a real chance to live up to their potential—in any way diminished…. I don't think we have any choice but to wage and win this election."
She knows!
Hillary feels that a Trump presidency would diminish the country she loves to no end, and that we have no choice but to win this election. Anything else would be unthinkable. America’s future is at stake here, not just because of the massive implications on the Supreme Court that we are facing here; the stark reality of a choice between a 6-3 arch conservative Supreme Court for the next 3 decades versus a 5-4, maybe even a 6-3 Liberal/Progressive Supreme Court for the first time in over 4 decades), but because with Trump as President we would be looking at an end of the common belief that a majority of the American people and overall society is decent and good-hearted, not hateful, vindictive and narrow minded. Sure, those elements exist in any society, but not as a majority, up to now.
"It certainly enhances the sense of responsibility I feel to try to make my case as effectively as possible. It's also troubling to me. It's so contrary to what I think politics should be about, and the kind of people who should run for the most important job in the world. So I try not to be distracted by it or be knocked off course by it. But I do feel extra pressure when I hear some of what they say...It's deeply offensive to me that they are setting out an agenda that's both unmoored from reality and really, at its core, mean-spirited about the American people and the struggles so many are facing."
Does that mean that she considers herself a firewall between an extremist candidate and the White House?
"I think to some extent that's a fair description. But I have to win. I have to win to be a firewall against that extreme partisanship and that real rejection of compromise."
A Firewall is a good description of what she is now for all of us. Donald Trump can’t be allowed to be President. Hillary is in the way, and we need to do everything we can to make sure Trump is not elected to the Presidency.
Now, this will not surprise anyone who believes that what has always distinguished her is the overweening quality of her ambition—her willingness to say anything, do anything, countenance anything, and above all endure anything in her quest for power. And yes, an argument can be made that the determination and resolve she has exhibited since announcing her candidacy originates in the simple fact that this is her last chance. But that's just it: She is not just the first person targeted by the right wing; she is, right now, the last person with the chance to stop it. It is one thing to want to win as a matter of ambition. It is another to feel that you have to win as a matter of responsibility. She is the only candidate with a chance of winning the presidency—from either party—who speaks of preserving what we have rather than tearing it down and starting over. She is the only one who rejects the language of radicalism in her speeches.
Preserving the status quo against the fevered efforts of the GOP, who holds the legislative power, on the good we have achieved, such as a much better health care system than we had before (although we need to still get everybody insured, add a public option, once the GOP is out of legislative power again), advanced made for LGBT and transgender people in terms of work place discrimination and abuse, gay marriage, etc. Preservation and expansion of women rights, minority rights, etc. over the kind of radical changes Trump begets sounds pretty good right about now. As does making things better economically (big federal minimum wage increase, paid family leave, and so forth). With Trump as President and the GOP in charge of Congress, we would be looking at a throw into an era that is too dastardly to fully envision.
…..you have Republican candidates just excoriating our president and insulting people who had nothing to do with the terrorism we were watching unfold, and who don't have realistic ideas, don't have any grounding in foreign policy or national security, and they just go off saying what they think will get a rise out of an audience. It's really distressing, because that's not how we should conduct ourselves."
I had always wondered when she was going to say, These guys aren't in my freaking league. Now she had come pretty close, and the expression that I saw animate her narrowed eyes and her tightened lips was not one of anger, or even frustration.
It was one of contempt.
Contempt for the sheer stupidity and brashness of Donald Trump telling us we should close our borders to any Muslims, while at the same time he hypocritically builds huge sky scrapers in Dubai, paid for and commissioned by these “bad Muslims”, lining his oversized pockets. Contempt for the racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia expressed by Trump on a daily basis, foreshadowing the kind of President he would be.
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There is a lot more to this article, it goes into the Obama years and also talks about Hillary’s comments from 1998 about a “vast right wing conspiracy”, which turned out to be be prescient and predictive in their scope and sheer scope. Well worth a read, IMHO.
Note: This article was published in February when there were still a few more candidates running on the GOP side, but republished and made into a front pager today by Esquire because of the events of yesterday and today that left Donald Trump as the assured nominee for the GOP.
The author:
Tom Junod (born in 1958) is an American journalist. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the most prestigious award in magazine writing.[1]
Junod is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors. The first for a profile of John Britton, an abortion doctor,[5]the second for a profile of a rapist undergoing therapy while enduring what is known as "civil commitment." He is also a ten-time finalist for the award.[6]