I'm waiting for someone to ask HRC "So whose decision was it to throw Jocelyn Elders and Lani Guiner under the bus -- yours or Bill's? And that 'welfare reform' that tossed all those poor kids off Medicaid insurance? Genius stuff! Looking at how well you ran healthcare reform, I can only presume that was your handiwork! But you know, since you won't let us look at your White House records to evaluate accurately your 'management experience' as First Lady, all I can do is guess."

(Really, if she and Bubba weren't being so nakedly Rovian, I'd cut them more slack. But man, the stench of entitlement. Privilege hath its rank, as they say.)

Lani Guinier was brought up during that Gloria Steinem debacle on NPR last week, but like she did on every topic , Steinem back pedaled like crazy. Did you hear that? It was a hot mess.

Shit, no, I missed that! Probably a good thing. My apoplexy is bad enough as it is.

. . . did anybody ask Steinem how she can square her concern for the lives and well-being of women with her support of a woman whose Senate votes helped ensure the destruction of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women? Or are those women acceptable "collateral damage" in the all-important battle to make sure white women of privilege get to see someone who looks like them in the White House before they shuffle off this mortal coil?

You gotta listen...
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/14/race_and_gender_in_presidential_politics

It's a beautiful thing.

Someone else linked me to this--it's AMAZING.

Wow, Gloria sure took a lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing, didn't she?

It's the Boomer way.

Thank u so much for posting this.

And in HRC's quote, I love that Obama is just a great man and she is working to break "the heaviest and hardest glass ceiling there is" Whut???

the sad thing is, if she saw this, she'd be sad because she wouldn't be able to use it because it's too inflammatory.

poor dear...

I nearly fell of my chair. Hilaaaaaireeeous!

Hilary Clinton's health care reform in the 90's was actually a good one, spoken as one who read large parts of it.

It was just bombed because America wasn't ready, and because the voters of 94 gave away the house to the republicans.

As a person from a country with vastly better health care than the US (Sweden), Hilary's reform plan was quite interesting, and there was a large committee of progressive economists creating it.

I always get surprised when even liberals slam her for that.

My take on her healthcare reform plan while her husband was in the White House is this: she couldn't manage to get it through. It may not be her fault--she was surely targeted by the Republicans throughout Bill's presidency. I would say that I'm not convinced that won't still be an issue if she is elected. To me, the fact that Rush Limbaugh is currently talking up Obama makes clear just how deep the hatred of Hillary runs. That won't make it possible for her to lead very well.

But as for what's being referenced here--the Personal Responsibility Act of 1996, that ended federal welfare, thereby screwing millions of children out of the healthcare they already had in Medicaid--oblomova is right on target.

The healthcare reform measure bombed out in 1993, before the "Republican revolution" and when there was a Democratic Congress in place. Meaning that Hillary wasn't effective in working with people of her own party. I'm not questioning whether or not the plan itself was of value -- but her leadership skills obviously were lacking if she was unable to get something through when her side held both houses of Congress at the time. And she also obviously failed to frame the issue effectively in order to counter the attack ads launched by the insurance company (attacks that a savvier politico would have seen coming a mile away). It's not her fault alone -- Bill Clinton's first major address on healthcare came in September, 1993 -- nine months after taking office. But many leaders in Congress at the time, including Sen. Bill Bradley, said that the usual Clinton modus operandi of closed-door negotiations and leaving key Congressional members out of the process harmed its acceptance at the time.

I think Hillary generally gets slammed by liberals more for failing to get it done than for making the attempt. That, along with the aforementioned sealed records, is what makes her whole 35 years of experience making change so weak.

As for the voters "giving" the house to the Republicans, I'd argue it was the Democrats who "gave" it away by giving voters no other choice.

I don't think liberals are slamming her on the healthcare reform plan itself, but on how it was handled in trying to get it to pass. I think most liberals acknowledge that some form of universal healthcare is better than none at all, but due to the crippling effect of lobbying in our federal government, the back-and-forth between the Clintons and Big Pharma/GOP in the '90s essentially left a lot of people feeling as if they were screwed over when they cast their votes for Bill back in '92.

It's not the Clintons' fault that the GOP and lobby-happy corporations were on their heels from the minute Bill took office, but it's reasonable for the public to be gun-shy about what will happen on the healthcare front if Hillary does win the nomination and the general election in November.

Americans were ready for it in the 1990s, but the corporations weren't having any of that. And people are worried that this is just going to be a repeat of that song-and-dance.

hee.

Ha! Made my afternoon. Thanks! :-)

Nice.

WOW. That interview was an absolute beating. I'm sitting here with my mouth open.

Well, you know, that there were—there is pornography on the—you know, about her. There’s nutcrackers and with her legs as nutcrackers.

holy shit, she sounds bat-shit crazy!

I said to someone else that I seriously was wondering if Gloria hadn't had a series of small strokes during that interview, she was so vague and off-topic.

I also was glad that Harris-Lacewell mentioned that Obama and his family have had death threats to the point where their Secret Service protection has been doubled. But you never hear him boo-hooing about how the mean ole rednecks are out to get him.

Although, to be fair, Steinem is referencing this, which is a real thing, and yeah, I think it's offensive. But germane to the discussion of whether black women should be forced to choose between their race and their gender? Not so much.

ugh -- I hadn't seen the nutcracker, although I figured she must have been referencing something along those lines. But ...basic lucidity? Missing!

hahaha.

did you get my text last night?