Will someone please help me understand why Hillary Clinton has been dubbed the "Working Class Heroine?" What about her life makes her a champion for the working class? Nothing about her campaign is about the working class!
For starters, she and her husband have claimed $109.2 MILLION in income over the past 6 years or so. I'll never ask an obese person for advice on how to diet, I'll never ask a socialist to teach me about free market capitalism, and I'll never ask someone who has made $109.2 million in their life to explicate the plight of the American working class. Does Hillary really know how hard it is to pay $40 a week for gas? Does she really now how hard it is to pay for health insurance? Does she know how ridiculously impossible it is to sign up for government welfare programs? Does she really know how sucky it is to have a college education, yet only make 24k a year?
Let me explain why I am wary of Hillary Clinton. One of her strongest base of voters is uneducated, white, unionized middle class workers. Wow! Let me tell you, if I could choose a substantial block of voters I don't want choosing the leader of our country, it would be the uneducated, union workers who think the gas tax holiday will really save them money. There isn't a group in America who does more disservice to the country than those who could have, but chose not to go to college, instead shortchanging the economy by forming and joining unions, and expecting "corporate America" to fund their bad decisions through increased taxes. She isn't the champion of the working class. She is the champion of the vulnerable, gullible, entitled-to-the-free-American-dream class.
And finally, how can someone who inserted 281 pork barrel projects, totaling nearly $300 million funded by federal tax dollars, honestly claim they care about the working class of America at large. Give me a break!
So if anyone out there can please show me where I'm wrong, I'll be happy to reconsider my opinions.
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7 comments:
oh how i have missed these posts. how right you are my friend, how right you are. what i love about your posts is that they are illustrated and substantiated by cold hard facts. i wish the body of the american people were so educated. but, as you pointed out, most just don't bother.
You win, and she's going to lose. Hannitize the vote!
Babe, she is a Midwesterner. Born and raised in the heart of Chicago...or was it Indiana? She knows all about roughing it. Wait, I mean she is from New York, so she knows how difficult it is to make it in a competitive and expensive climate. Er, actually, I think she is from downtown Philly, and she spent the summers shooting pheasants in the outskirts of Pennsylvania. No, no I have it wrong. She is definitely a south'ena. Arkansas, yeah, she is from the south. So she is black. And she has had it really tough. Well, except for the last few years when she made a bajillion dollars doing nothing...It's complicated. You wouldn't understand.
I've been pondering my response, sorry for the delay.
I am in no way the champion for Hillary, as I think the Clinton's are toxic and divisive to American politics and as we all know I have a little crush on Obama. That being said I have a few problems with your argument.
First of all, I don't need my president to be "one of the fellas" or even likable. I've voted for the likable dumb guy twice now and we ended up in a tragic war and a tanking economy. Hillary doesn't need to be poor, to sympathize with poor. I want my president to be the smartest, most succesful person possible. At least as smart and more succesful than me.
Second to assume that an entire class of people conciously made the choice between college and a mid-low range pay union job is naive. Has anyone ever suggested to you that you shouldn't go to college, or that once you got there you would have to pay for it? Now imagine the opposite were true. There are plenty of bright, hardworking people who have not had the same encouragement we have had.
And finally, do you know who besides the "uneducated union worker" is the only other idiot who thinks the gas tax holiday is a good idea? John McCain.
Glad midterms are over and you finally posted Blogdor!
Lisa,
In response, I do concede that you have some good points. The first being that the Clinton's are toxic and divisive. Second, McCain's tax holiday support is equally as dumb as Hillary's. McCain isn't a very smart guy. In fact, I have serious issues with all 3 candidates. My biggest one with McCain is that he can't even spell economy, let alone feign to understand it.
I also agree that the president shouldn't be "one of the fellas," per se. My biggest issue with what Hillary has done is beautifully portrayed by my wife's comment. She manipulates people into thinking she really is like them. She simply isn't. Compassion is a divine quality when sincerely possessed. When imitated for political purposes, it's condescending and contemptuous. In my personal judgement of Hillary, she ascribes to the latter.
On a side note, I really think it is unfair for people, the media, and the world at large to blame Bush for the war and the economy. That may be fodder for a future post.
My problem with Hillary's voting base isn't that they as individuals are uneducated and unionized. On a strictly individual level, I have no right to judge someone's decision in career path and their ability to provide for their family. My bigger problem is that America has failed to take advantage of its last real asset that the rest of world hasn't better and more cheaply replicated: higher education. That is a huge disservice to America, and is why we as a country are short of scientists, mathmeticians, engineers, chemists, physicists, and economists. In short, we are lacking in every area required to maintain the socioeconomic scaffolding required for universal improvement and acceleration. The decision this class of society has taken was situationally the best decicision for them. I don't want to take that away.
The second problem is with unions. Under the guise of proper treatment, protection and equality, unions artificially inflate wages, prices, and standards of living. That turns out to be a huge problem when businesses decide they can hire ununionized labor, or outsource their labor in efforts to maximize profits. The only real answer I see to solve the plight of the uneducated, unionized working class is to provide adequate and relatively inexpensive advanced training programs in technology and science. Government bailouts a la Clinton will only entrench our economic trends in the long run. The real spark of hope for an uneducated man should be that of a promising education.
One of my favorite quotes reads, "Following the path of least resistance is what makes men and rivers crooked." In this case, a vast number of Americans have chosen this path. And that is not good.
So in my mind the decisions this class and generation (and our generation isn't much better) has made is shortsighted in context of the greater good of America and its future. I don't want a President to be elected because he or she made ridiculous and realistically unattainable promises to a specific group of people.
I hope that clears up my inability to express that in the post. If you still have issues, we'll talk over dinner...and after a few drinks preferably.
I can't believe you're still against Hill-dawg after all she's been through. Don't you remember a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia and narrowly escaping with her life from sniper fire???
I can't believe she didn't win your heart right there.
Dude, Blogdor, read my blog.
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