Friday, August 26, 2016
The Speech Where Clinton Did It All
This speech in Reno was a defining speech for Hillary Clinton, as a reaffirmation of her values, and defining for Donald Trump, in that she took the campaign he had been running so far and looped it around his neck like the stinking, rotting albatross it should be. The transcript reads just as well as her measured and presidential demeanor in the giving of the speech. And Donald Trump can cry at this late date, that she is manipulating the optics and using the tired tactic of labelling someone as racist--but really, is that the problem? Or is it the verbatim quotes of how Mexicans were supposedly racists and criminals, and the comments about black people that were right out of a Ron Paul newsletter, and an immigration policy that, despite whatever changes he has been polling his shrinking crowds about, would have to be absurdly cruel and desperately un-Constitutional. She defined him by wrapping him up in his words and deeds and spelling out the narrative and context of his associations with the former head of Breitbart.com, and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. She highlighted their fringe nonsense. And she connected homebrewed fringe nonsense, to the international problems of fringe nonsense people getting power.
It was damn effective, IMHO, because she used a kind of political akido to use his strength against him. I thought it was all rather well done on her part, and being followed by revelations that alt-right CEO new-hire Bannon was accused of wife-beating just hammers home how rotten Team Trump is.
What does Trump do? Madly try to disassociate from current connections and disavow all previous racialist statements? Or tell the establishment to screw off and cling tighter to the fringe than he ever clung to the cushion.
Both are likely vote-losers. There is no needle to thread, here. Clinton put the evil eye on, and it isn't ever coming off.
And he can yell that she's a bigot now, if he wants, and if he knows what that word means. But the "I'm rubber you're glue" shit doesn't play in this schoolyard. Nah, son. We saw you hugging the website that lynched ACORN for registering black people and tried to ruin Shirley Sherrod. WE know what birther Donald Trump was doing several summers ago.
She read his ass for dirt and dirt it will stay. Amen.
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2 comments:
Hi Vixen, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party simply cry out for a movie produced by the Coen brothers.
I think she probably jumped the shark with this one. I'll explain why.
First, Donald Trump was raised in New York City. He no doubt knows all about the Gambinos, the Luccheses, the Bonannos, the Colombos, and the Genoveses. He probably knows about the Latin Kings and other street gangs that I don't have a clue about. But the KKK was primarily a phenomenon of the deep South. Had he grown up in Mississippi or Alabama, or some other Southern state, it would still be ridiculous, but it would at least be contextual. And this is why everyone in the South who hears this assertion by Mrs. Clinton is laughing themselves to death at the sheer ludicrousness of the charge.
Bear in mind that Donald Trump is my age and he grew up in the Civil Rights activism period rather than in the night rider period. People my age were flying in the face of these old Southern Democratic policies, not embracing them. Trump knows as much about the Klan as anyone who reads the newspapers.
The thing about these universal declarations that bounces back on the speaker is when virtually everyone of the accused knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is completely untrue. There simply is very little racism among Republicans. And the problem with the charges is that all these Republicans know it. So at least half the country knows how ludicrous the assertions are before they ever leave the conception of the speaker.
When Trump, Hillary, Bush(43) and I were kids, the adults were trying to charge that marijuana would create hysterical, homicidal, sexually impotent murderers. The problem was that so many people were smoking marijuana that virtually every young person knew that these charges were utterly baseless.
So the assertions by Mrs. Clinton are already known in the light of day, before she finishes uttering them, to be false.
She might as well say that all Republicans have six arms. Since this charge would be ludicrous on its face, it can only be supported by the dim-witted.
You're doing some unnecessary backflips here. For one thing, the Klan totally existed up north for some time, which is why Trump's daddy seems to have been arrested at a Klan rally in 1927.
http://www.vice.com/read/all-the-evidence-we-could-find-about-fred-trumps-alleged-involvement-with-the-kkk
Up North, it was more about anti-immigration and anti-Catholicism, but it was certainly a thing. Also--this generational thing about your generation was the civil rights bandwagon--nope. Let's say my generation is the LGBT civil rights generation, but that doesn't mean there are *no* people my age who are virulently anti-gay--there's plenty. For that matter, America was still making baby racists after the civil rights marches of the 1960's.
Her speech, if you read the transcript, actually ponted out that the racebaiting Trump's crew does isn't ordinary conservatism or ordinary Republicanism, and she name-checked Republicans like Bob DOle, GWB and John McCain to say that she knows this isn't how many if not most Republicans are.
Seems like what she said was only false if you really misrepresent it.
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