Thank you! Hilliary Clinton appears consistent:" She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is. "

obviously true and reveals the real hillary clinton.
but havnt we seen this over and over this sense that she will cast aside anyone and anything in her persuit of ambition?.
voters dont count ,states dont count, friends dont count..etc.
so, why should it be so hard to see that her real personality is "screw them"?

Wow. Great post. Illuminating.
It confirms my opinions of both Sen. Clinton and Pres. Clinton and the intrinsic differences between the two.

Hillary Clinton i.e. Lady Macbeth

This is very distressing, because I was so optimistic for the Democratic Party--that we could rise above the Republicans. But now perhaps this is good--we need to get this out in the open so that we can move on and take the higher ground.

Barack Obama appeals to our better natures. He's gentlemanly. I hope like hell he wins this election.

thirteen years..i think i have learned a lot in that length of time

being first lady of all the country however acquaints one with a dose of reality along with all the glitz and pomp and circumstance.

since then she has won two state wide elections, if she was really a person who dispises lower class people, somehow i doubt she would have won with such ease

thirteen years ago what was obama doing and who cares, cause it sure as heck is not as important as national policy

she was arguing for liberal policies, like the ones the clinton bashers would have supported...so you bash her and do not consider the time spent lessons learned..just a snapshot in time, your moment of glory, big freaking deal

Thank you very much for this wonderfully presented insight by an actual observer. Your conclusions have that same ring of truth that I get from Obama, much to my consternation. I'm in my seventies and have never before voted FOR someone; each election I was voting AGAINST the worst evil. If Hillary wins the nomination, I will have to revert to that position again, but I still very optimistic that THIS TIME, I will be able to vote FOR Barack Obama.

Reality Check:

I think a lot of people are debating if we should be making an issue out of Hillary saying "screw 'em. If you just view those words, in a stand alone manner, then of course they are not worth making much of. However if you view them in context, they have great significance, and reveal what Hillary's Leadership approach has been, and will be.

After the Democrats got slaughtered in 1994, President Clinton talked about how to regrow the party, and about how to find some way to win back White Working Class voters. Bill wanted to rebuild the Democratic Party.

What was Hillary's immediate vindictive snarling response: "Screw 'em". That meant Hillary was then saying Screw the Democratic Party. We are not going to reach out any groups in order to restore the party.

That is Hillary in a Nutshell. All she boasts about is fighting. All she does is act spiteful and petty. You have seen it on full display on the campaign trail.

That is why what she said is a big deal. It clearly reveals that she is by nature a trench warfare divider. The nation can not afford four more years of that approach.

Here is what she said and the context in which she said it. Read it, and tell me that she was not only saying "Screw 'em' about the voters that we lost, but then also to the notion of restoring a Democratic majority.

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

I am writing off the cuff, meaning I don't have the text before me, but apparently, Hillary said in effect, "Screw them, you (Bill Clinton) don't owe them anything (meaning they were not the ones who put you in office)."

If my paraphrase is reasonably accurate that comment tells us something about Hillary Clinton, and has nothing to do with whether she was acting in an official capacity, or just a Bill's wife. She is displaying the attitude that in politics it is all about quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, what you can get out of someone's support, not whether or not this or that particular group of people deserve the assistance of the government.

This does not make Hillary unique at all. Virtually all politicians have the same attitude to one degree or another, including Obama. In Hillary's case it is relevant to day because she is going around the country telling everyone how much she cares about their plight.

Am I making a judgment on Hillary. Not necessarily. I am pointing to two different attitudes displayed by a candidate for the presidency, then and now.

As a scholar & member of the intelligentsia, Theda Skocpol has surely been in various meetings, conferences, etc. where the subject being discussed was treated with both disdain and distance. Doctors in discussion with their peers often refer to their patients by disease rather than name - does this make them less effective as doctors? Anyone who is of voting age needs to learn this one very basic lesson of politics - politicans show interest only in the political usefulness of (the voters') choices - and yes, we are a species apart - just as we are a species apart from Theda Skocpol and her intelligentsia circle. Just because Ms Skocpol chooses to write in a more empathetic voice does not make her the common voter's best friend. She has an agenda. Just like everyone else.

"Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is."

That's a perfect encapsulation of her personality, and it is why I have never really liked her, even when I liked Bill Clinton very much. (But, alas, he seems to have morphed into Hillary. So it goes.)

And I've long thought that one of things I like about Barack Obama is how much he reminds me of the empathetic, warm thinker that Bill used to be, to wit:

"I vividly remember at the time finding it impressive that Bill Clinton (not Hillary Clinton) showed real empathy for the ordinary people whose motives and supposedly misguided choices were under analysis. ...[M]uch as Obama himself did in his full San Francisco remarks."

Thanks for the eye-witness insight.

Wow. It is absolutely amazing the lengths to which some of Clinton's supporters will go to to rationalize voting for her over Obama. It must be that her storytelling about her "experience" is infecting some of her supporters. The whole Clinton camp is one big, giant, freakin' fairy tale!!!

What a disappointing turn for Sen. Clinton to take. What a disappointment to middle-aged, progressive white girls like myself who are supposed to be her constituency. By golly, she weathered all that hooplah over Bill's girlfriends, her unwillingness to stay at home and bake cookies for Chelsea, the flack she took for trying to deal with our health care mess, the blue dress, and on and on and on, but now she is simply BECOMING a scandal herself.

Who needs this?!

@ Workerbee, who says we mustn't judge harshly the former first lady because, you know, she was just a first lady:

Sigh.

I'd love to have a guide to those instances where we should judge Mrs. Clinton's 35 years of experience, in and around her husband's two administrations.

When asked about Keeping Bill in line (LA debate 1/31), she says, "You know, I believe in judging a person on their own merits." (No, don't judge that experience)

Then in some rebuttal of a point made about the recent past, she talks about experience, she mentions that the peace and prosperity of the 90s was pretty good (Yes, judge that experience)

Worker bee would have us put "Screw 'em" in the (No, she was just a first lady, so no, don't judge that experience)

Would somebody please, please, write an exhaustive guide of which of Hillary Rodham Clinton's experiences are part of the ones that we might properly weigh and examine?

Cause this kind of yes, no, no, but wait, but yes stuff is pretty damn confusing.

Tabloid journalism and her bias in the last sentence tells me it is garbage.

Get proof before you spew.

Thank you, Dr. Skocpol for your ongoing participation in this forum and your wonderful insight.

I've never been a fan of Hillary Clinton. I didn't know much about Senator Obama, and assumed that he "wasn't ready" to make a real run for the Presidency. I was resigned to the nomination going to HRC and not at all happy about it. I work with the Federal government and have had frequent opportunity to observe Senator Clinton up close and have been unimpressed. From my perspective, I've always seen her as simply exuding personal ambition and lacking any genuine investment in her public service.

So, as I've watched her conduct in this primary campaign and the depths that she's sunk to, I haven't really been surprised. I expected her to behave as she has. But, I have been sorely disappointed and disillusioned in Bill Clinton. I really believed in him and in his sincerity when he served as our President. His behavior during this campaign has cast my previous positive regard for him in question. I'm seeing him now as something much more akin to what his wife is - someone who is driven very much by personal ambition, no matter the damage that it may cause. There's something very sociopathic about them both.

Senator Obama is exactly what this country needs right now. And despite the hits that he's taking, he keeps coming back stronger and stronger. This guy is making me believe in the potential of our government to do good things if we have good leaders. Time will tell...

More electioneering. Look, when you're strategizing about how to lure the Southern used-to-be Democrats back, do you offer them the reinstitution of slavery? Do you go along with the Republican agendea on tax cuts, etc., etc., just to get them back? Or do you compromise where you can without "giving away the farm." At some point, you have to remind yourself that you're Democrats, and "screw 'em." The truth is, as an "answer" to "bittergate" (stupid name), this is bitter, stupid, old, gotcha politics. Every time you answer this way, you diminish Obama and start mudwrestling.

Thank you. This was absolutely fascinating and illuminating.

I do not like digging up and parsing everything a politician said to frame a particular judgment, as everyone can phrase something in an awkward way or say something in rage and regret what they say, but Hillary uses this as a weapon to bludgeon Obama and to portray him as an uncaring "elitist" so she's fair game herself now for the expletive she used for the same voters.

What I don't get is how Hillary supporters can now decry the airing of this "Screw 'em!" episode when Hillary has not only talked about the "cling to" gaffe but RUN ADS everywhere on this and Hillary supporters have been beating this dead horse on every blog.

This is unbelievable HYPOCRISY.

The only poster who hasn't is workerbee, but then she seems to judge Obama supporters much more harshly and holding them to a higher standard than Hillary supporters.

I don't like going down this route, but since Hillary makes this a major campaign issue, the voters need to know the TRUTH.

I wish this campaign and debate had been about both candidates' DETAILED plans about reviving small towns, developing new industries or services in these areas that capitalize and leverage on their advantages over big cities, etc. BUT HILLARY STARTED MAKING OBAMA'S "CLING TO" REMARKS THE BIGGEST ISSUE OF THIS CAMPAIGN, AS WELL AS AYRES, WRIGHT, FARRAKHAN, OBAMA'S PERCEIVED ELITISM, ETC.

IT'S HILLARY, NOT OBAMA, NOT US.

Why didn't she talk about all those issues herself??? She would have looked much better and voters can compare their plans and decide for themselves. Instead, now they're comparing what they said about them, and that's absurd. The only person who wins is McCain.

I DETEST Hillary from the bottom of my heat for screwing us all.

"Intellectual-scholar"?

Another thing, HIllary and ABC defend their ATTACKING of Obama's words as legitimate because it is about "electability and vetting", so what's good for the goose should also be for the gander. He needs to answer her on her challenge or he will be accused of evasiveness.

What's ironic is that she laments Obama's ONE "condescending remarks" about small towners "clinging to" "God and guns" but at the same time, she's using this same "God and guns" to run EVERY ONE OF HER HUNDREDS OF ADS.

Surely this amazing hypocrisy should be apparent to her supporters?

Hey, if she wants to make "vetting" an important campaign issue, then let's VET HER before the Republicans do, shall we????

Bring on "Screw 'em!"gate.

I’m not saying that Obama was purposefully denigrating Democratic voters but he was referring to Democratic voters who were not voting for him. The Clinton remark, in a completely different context, was not referring to voters who didn’t vote for Bill Clinton. She was referring to former Democratic voters who voted for Newt Gingrich and his crew. How would you have referred to them?

"A mind & vote is a terrible thing to waste"... think before you jump.

Hillary will clarify it.. she always does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exsmFDYyK4U&eurl

As far as 'admiration once felt' I can't help but think about how Bill "the Shill" Clinton so grossly, and not just on a few issues of popular concern and visibility, systematically betrayed the hopes and morally reasonable expectations of his progressive base in 93-94. On issues where he was supposedly "progressive" or at least supposedly tried to be, like gays in the military or Sec Babbitt's handling of Western lands, as well as on health care, their strategy could not have been better calculated to produce maximum political gains for Republicans with minimum risk of any serious gains for progressives.

I quite heavily quoted Walter Karp's political classic (for its logic, not its theories about Vietnam or the Roosevelt Court-packing) during that period, and it was the right analysis then and the right one in retrospect (namely, that supposed progressives elected to promote reform systematically undermine the results that a functioning democracy would produce out of popular desire for reform, and DO SO DELIBERATELY). I must confess that, in what I wrote in Dec 92 to a colleague at length, whatever the "recommended" (if you knew where your bread was well-buttered) popular line on it was at the time, I was overly and naively optimistic that Clinton would usher in at least a mild period of real progressive-direction reform. But that was before Clinton's inauguration -- within the first few months it became clear to me and others that what Larry Kramer dubbed "Bill the Welsher" was what he was, and what Karp recognized, then as the Clintons are now in the campaign.

I hope both to see Obama as president, AND to see him provide that modest promise of reform is fulfilled. We've already seen the Clintons in action (especially on issues like the environment and the greenhouse effect) and KNOW that even if HRC were more 'electable' that we'd just have more Clintonism. On the other hand, those fellow lefties who disdain the Democratic Party usually get a kind of gloating satisfaction every time the Democrats either throw an election or throw the possibility of reform, a disappointment that can seem as routine and mechanical as Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown.

Brilliant observation. I think I would have the same reaction to a "not Obama" decision by party leadership as I did to the "not Dean" decision by the media. I hadn't seen it before, but Obama provides the same feeling of hope and enthusiasm for me as Dean did, even though their styles seem to differ greatly.

Madison believed that we should have separation of church and state throughout the land, federal and local. There was a fascinating moment during the congressional debate over what became the First Amendment. How could the beloved First Amendment be harmful to religion? Huntington feared that it would overturn or interfere with Connecticut’s approach, which was to have state-supported religion.
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