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Hillary Clinton: Fabulist, unelectable
Some thoughts on Clinton's most recent tale (video here):
- Hillary Clinton did not vet her story: The details strain credulity -- a hospital denying emergency care to a pregnant woman who didn't have $100 to her name? If warning bells weren't going off in her mind, they should have been. We don't need another president who doesn't check the facts.
- Hillary Clinton presented the imaginary elements of this story in vivid detail: Even though she had not checked to see if the story was true, Hillary Clinton told the story as if she had been there herself. Perhaps she had -- in her own imagination.
- Hillary Clinton is a fabulist: Tuzla. NAFTA. Superdelegates. Now this. All politicians stretch the truth from time to time -- yes, that includes not just McCain but also Obama -- but Clinton does it with a comfort that is terrifying.
This campaign, Clinton has embarrassed herself repeatedly with exaggerations and falsehoods. Voters don't trust her -- and she keeps on giving them good reason not to. Clinton says that she, not Obama, is the candidate who can beat John McCain. Actually, the opposite is true.
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Comments (40)
Ready on day one to lie to the American people.
April 5, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lies and fabrications are definitely infecting the Hillary campers' discourse.
More importantly, the public exposure of those lies and fabrications is great. That exposure provides inoculation against [and, if already swallowed, a cure for] the poisonous deceptions the Hillary camp has put out about Obama, and their vile distorted cherry picking about Rev. Wright
April 6, 2008 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the sort of fabrication to which the Republicans will latch on like pit bulls just to tear apart the possibility of health care reform. It is sloppy at best, dishonest at worst, and can lose us the GE.
Hillary is not ready on day one. Sadly, this video makes me cringe but also saddened because behind the fabrication, there seem to be good intentions. However, good intentions coupled with incompetence will not win the White House for Democrats come November.
April 5, 2008 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup. I cringed too, because there are real stories out there that are as tragic as the one Hillary told. And everybody knows that.
It sucks that cable news just loves these sensational stories. And since they're lazy and always looking for the cheapest and easiest sensation du jour, they'll end up making Hillary look as silly as possible on this.
April 5, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Laura, for your valiant efforts to keep us focused on the real conflict instead of this compulsive Obama v. Clinton argument. I get mad at Hillary too, but it's good to be reminded that the goal is better health care and the opponents are on the right.
April 6, 2008 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Meh. In a vacuum, this would definitely be a non-story. She repeated a story told her by a deputy sheriff who heard the story from the woman's relatives. Her campaign should've vetted it better, but it wasn't a complete fabrication. There's enough truth to the story that one can imagine them half-way vetting it (the woman and her fetus did die due to complications of her pregnancy/child-birth as far as I can tell). It's a mistake, but a minor one. It's only significant as a piece of a larger pattern, and even then it's not very significant.
April 5, 2008 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ben, how is the mistake a minor one? Yes the baby and the woman died. That happens every day, unfortunately; even to people in the best medical centers. The point of the story that Hillary told was that the woman and the baby died BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE INSURANCE OR $100, AND THE HOSPITAL REFUSED TO TREAT THEM. That was her point, so how is it that the main points are minor?
Yes, Saddam was a viscious tyrant, and now he's dead, but at the expense of our country's good name because HE WAS NO THREAT TO OUR COUNTRY AND HAD NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION despite what we were told!
Yes, Hillary went to Bosnia and came home, but she took her daughter, and then she claimed combat creds when she SAID SHE WAS BEING SHOT AT and she wasn't! There is a creepy pattern here, no?
It does matter that she gives truthful examples;
I disagree with you on this one. It wouldn't take a lot of work to find a true horror story of someone who got shoddy care due to lack of money and insurance, but making stuff up discredits the argument. Tell me this. Why should we believe anything she says, as long as her excuse will be "sleep deprivation," "incomplete vetting," or "I was briefed, and so I didn't read the nie?" Sorry, I just can't trust her. Can you?
April 5, 2008 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's minor because I'm comparing it to Snipergate. In this case, she wasn't there and she never claimed to be there. Mistakes were made and she admitted to them instead of claiming that the NYT was just out to get her.
Were there enough warning flags in her story that she should've vetted it better? You betcha. Compared to Snipergate, it's a complete non-story, however. We're all permitted to screw up now and then. If it weren't part of a larger pattern, I wouldn't think this was worth mentioning beyond simply correcting any false impressions her story might have given.
April 5, 2008 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that it isn't as PERSONALLY damaging, but it bruises the argument she was making for universal health care. It allows those who don't want it to move the argument to her false statements. It hurts the dialogue; it discredits the discussion.
Just wait and see how it is used when universal health care gets into the national discussion. We have to be scrupulous in our examples and arguments. That is all I'm saying.
I agree that it doesn't hurt Hillary that much; it just hurts the things she says she stands for...not the same thing at all.
(It does hurt Hillary for me, however, because I truly can't believe a person who has lied as many times as Hillary has)
April 5, 2008 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a really good point. Do we want someone who is careless with their arguments to be the voice for reform? Good of you to point it out.
April 5, 2008 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would second that. Cville Dem is absolutely right that the Republicans can use this to attack universal healthcare (not rationally, but emotionally). Just to make it clear, when I said it was no big deal, I was really meaning as far as how it relates to Clinton or her candidacy.
April 5, 2008 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Allow me to argue that it DOES undermine her candidacy, because it again it proves that she's not politically savvy enough to not openly LIE and embellish.
We might not grill her over it now, but she'll be grilled over it in the general, and if (God forbid) she wins, during her presidency.
We don't want a candidate OR a president that is so detached from reality that they just latch onto stories that help them make their point, without regard to their veracity! NO MORE BUSH THINKING IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
April 5, 2008 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Compare this mistake to her bigger blunders, however. Putting a rock on top of Mt. Everest technically makes it taller, but it's not something I'd think cartographers would need to know about, if you catch my drift.
April 6, 2008 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ben's right here, I think. Failing to vet the story is sloppy, and in the context of her other fibs, that sort of sloppiness is a substantial political mistake.
But it's not in the same league as Tuzla. I can imagine this sort of screw-up happening to a candidate I supported. And if it did, I would shrug it off. I would have had a hard time shrugging off the Tuzla story, because in that case it was HRC lying -- straightforwardly and repeatedly -- about herself.
April 6, 2008 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who do you want to answer that Healthcare Reform Crisis phone call at 3am?
April 5, 2008 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just hope they don't call me, unless I get to actually make the decision. If I get the call, I will wave my magic wand, and we will have single-payor national health care. Forget Hillary. Forget Obama. Think Jan:
We will cherry-pick the facets from all the other countries in the world who have national health care, and use their experience to craft a system which is paid for by us as individuals, and our government. Although employers will give tax-deductible contributions to our health care programs (to attract good employees), health care will not be linked to employment. There will be no middle-man making a profit by denying or complicating care.
Trees that would have been felled to provide the reams of paper to document pre-authorizations and denials of care will LIVE! Money that would have gone to insurance companies who make their money by creating log-jams hindering health care, will actually go to HEALTH CARE! What a concept!
People currently in the insurance ?industry? will be retrained to start a new movement in our country: the green, renewable energy industry. Especially the CEO's!
OK, I'll stop
April 5, 2008 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look Obama straight up LIED about saying he never heard Wright Preach the "words". What do we hear from the MSM? Nothing....not one thing. Something about that is disturbing. Could there be bias against Hillary?
April 5, 2008 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, he didn't lie. The story that claimed he was in church the day those statements were made turned out to be easily proven wrong. Just as with Hillary's story here, a modicum of fact checking was all it took to prove that story wrong.
If instead you're conflating those statements with other possibly inflammatory statements, then that's a different error.
Actually, the bias in the media is pro-Hillary. This story will get very little play compared to the field day they had with Obama's story about our troops using discard munitions. I know you mean well, but you're not getting your facts straight.
April 5, 2008 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bullshit. Parsing his words is cute but you know as well as me what he said. Before the speech he declared "i wasn't there". During/After the speech I was there but rejected what he said.
Or another whopper: I didn't have anyone talk to the Canadians.
Or: these http://newsbusters.org/blogs/john-stephenson/2008/03/30/more-obama-lies-media-will-ignore
April 5, 2008 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
a. He was in Florida when the sermon was preached
2. It was Hillary's people who actually told the Canadians that she was dissembling about NAFTA to get elected.
III. Check it all out!
April 5, 2008 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you assume he's telling the truth, it's the natural way to parse his words.
If you assume he's lying, then you'll tend to "parse" his words such that it's what you think he means rather than what he's actually saying.
Not much of a lie that way, is it?
April 5, 2008 11:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Silly me -- could you please show some proof for this allegation? Thanks.
Oh, and maybe this will make you feel better:
WRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHTWRIGHT
OK? Just like a tonic, hu?
April 5, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wright
April 5, 2008 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, let it go already. The only remaining explanations for your fixation are one-too-flattering, so do yourself a favor and just let. it. go.
April 6, 2008 12:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Newsbusters. Louisville cites Newsbusters.
Have you noticed how many times Hillary supporters have begun citing right-wing sources to "prove" their points about what's wrong with Obama? It's amazing. I've seen references to Fox News, including Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, and now Newsbusters. There are probably lots of others, too, but it's too depressing to research and list them.
Then too, there are some Obama supporters who are citing opinion pieces by Peggy Noonan and David Brooks to affirm their dislike of Hillary.
We should all realize these right-wing sources are just making hay while the sun shines and while over-zealous Dem supporters make idiots of themselves during the Dem candidate primaries.
April 5, 2008 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is a wonderful comment. Any comment that calls out HRC folks for Newsbusters, and Obama folks for Noonan and Brooks is gold!
We gotta' realize that Brooks' entire agenda is to create division amongst supporters -- when the reality is that the only real division we have is among candidates.
April 5, 2008 11:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Allow me to argue that it DOES undermine her candidacy, because it again it proves that she's not politically savvy enough to not openly LIE and embellish.
We might not grill her over it now, but she'll be grilled over it in the general, and if (God forbid) she wins, during her presidency.
We don't want a candidate OR a president that is so detached from reality that they just latch onto stories that help them make their point, without regard to their veracity! NO MORE BUSH THINKING IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
April 5, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know why I'm getting involved with this, but when Obama said in his speech, "I have heard controversial statements," it seems some Hillary supporters heard, "I was there on that day." But he was not. I wouldn't care if he had been, but he wasn't. He did not lie about that.
April 5, 2008 11:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really don't care about these chickenshit little "gotcha" imbroglios that so fascinates America's lazy and incompetent "free press." I want to punish -- through non-promotion at least -- the Iraq-War perps You-Know-Her and John McBomb. They let a dyslexic dwarf chimpanzee like Deputy Dubya Bush make monkeys out them authorizing his trumped-up stud-hamster vendetta against Saddam Hussein; and any person of our generation dumb enough to fall for Gulf of Tonkin II in the Bay of Goats deserves the all-time Alzheimer's Award for Amnesia. I have my reasons for this opinion.
Upon graduation from high school in 1965, my own government threatened me with prison if I did not either submit to the Army draft or voluntarily enlist in one of the alternative services. I chose the Navy, but wound up serving eighteen months in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-72) anyway. Senator You-Know-Her, on the other hand, spent the same period of time matriculating at a posh, all-girl finishing school for upscale debutants followed by post-graduate study at Yale Law School which prepared her to flunk the Washington, D.C. bar exam.
Between You-Know-Her and me, I've actually experienced sniper fire in a useless, pointless imperial quagmire; and the memory -- among many others -- leads me to insist on the tarring and feathering of any and every American political "leader" who so betrayed our country as to cavalierly launch another such disaster. Senator Barack Obama may yet disappoint us, too. But You-Know-Her and John McBomb already have. And they need to pay for it -- "big time" -- as Sheriff Dick Cheney likes to say.
At any rate, You-Know-Her's ludicrous Bosnia sniper-fire fabrication did not so much concern me as merely one more example of a political hack lying just to keep in practice, but rather as a typical, obtuse confirmation that real war and its real consequences have never come close to penetrating You-Know-Her's sheltered, pampered existence. So, to all those who say (as so many also said back in the day in Southeast Asia) that we can't do anything "precipitous" or "hasty" (after five years or more) -- like swiftly and effectively "leaving" Iraq to the Iraqis -- I say, in verse: no more "endless precipitous hasty procrastination." Time's up.
http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2008/04/endless-precipitous-hasty.html
April 6, 2008 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
well, at least one good thing about Clinton, her supporters don't come in their pants when they see her on youtube. It's extremely distasteful to observe the smug and smarmy attitude of Obama's folk, even more distasteful than the Rev Wright's dashiki. I assure you, when pretty boy screws up foreign policy and the economy, you won't be coming in your collective pants anymore, you'll be shitting bricks : )
April 6, 2008 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
What a lovely example of a Hillary supporter. Thanks. You've prooved my point beautifully.
April 6, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Milla has posted the same comment on 6 threads. Ignore it.
April 6, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The whole flap over Clinton's credibility based on a few stories that turned out not to be true is deliberately overblown. Last night on ABC News they covered this issue. And they pointed to several stories from Obama that were equally untrue, including the one about the questionnaire he denied ever seeing, which turned out to have his handwriting on it. The fact that people are going to such lengths to make an issue out of such trivial things points to how similar the two candidates really are.
But Obama has a lot of baggage when it comes to race. Rev. Wright is going to be a huge issue starting the day after Obama wins (if he does) the nomination. The GOP swift boaters are just drooling. And there is more on the racial issue yet to come out. It's going to be quite ugly.
April 6, 2008 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are one of those Swift Boaters and you have been playing that race card for weeks on TPM. Who do you think you are fooling.
April 6, 2008 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your comment: "when pretty boy screws up foreign policy and the economy" indicates a temporal lag in understanding that Deputy Dubya Bush already did those two undesirable things. (In all fairness, Shrub did have a little help from President Bill Clinton appointing George "slam dunk" Tenet to head the now-defunct C.I.A., bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and repealing the Glass-Steagall Act.) I realize that the Republicans had a complete pack of nobodies to choose from -- and so chose a nobody -- but it beggars belief why anyone in a Democratic Party primary would vote for one of Deputy Dubya's chief Republican-lite enablers: namely, that sniper-dodging Senator You-Know-Her.
I can name any number of women in American public life who would make a better candidate and/or President than Bubba Bill's bitter-half. I sincerely hope that our nominee Barack Obama picks one of them for his vice-presidential running mate. That qualified woman political leader will then most assuredly become the Democratic Party's nominee in 2016 -- and thus America's 45th President of the United States. Women political leaders have a lot to offer America, just not the fabulous fabricator of fraudulent fiction, You-Know-Her (a.k.a., Buffaloed Girl.)
April 6, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with Clinton's hospital story flap is that it feeds into the greater narrative of Hillary (and Bill) not telling the truth and being untrustworthy. The videos make these two stories even more damaging when watched while the real facts are known. Because of these stories, when I saw her MLK speech about her reaction to the news of his murder, I immediately thought it another gross embellishment, a self-aggrandizing over-dramatization. I will probably never know for sure, and probably wouldn't have thought that if not for the sniper story, but now, whenever I hear her, it is through this lens of distrust. This is how I have come to hear Bush as well, and that is a big problem for her.
As for Obama, he has consistently said he was not there for the specific videos of Wright that have been endlessly televised, but he was there for some other inflammatory remarks. Only the Clintons and their supporters have turned this into something it clearly is not.
April 6, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well they have to try and distract us from the coverage of Hillary's Jon Lovitz tour, with her wife Morgan Fairchild, Yeh, Yeh; That's the ticket!
April 6, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jed
you rock. your videos and analysis rock.
BTW--in your latest video tracking Clinton's stance on Iraq it would be great to have her latest--I was a critic before Obama--in it, since I think that just tops them all. Just a thought!
Thanks
April 6, 2008 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
People are calling this "Hillary's song". Got to love that:
dlsxpatriate.blogspot.com
April 6, 2008 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jed
Thanks for your work on these videos and fact-checks. Great job!
April 6, 2008 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
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