I actually appreciate this because I think there's truth in it but not in the way Todd intended. He claims that 'like Gore Hillary has all the Bill Clinton baggage with none of the charm.'
Now this is kind of ironic as Gore went out of his way to distance himself from Clinton and that was likely a mistake.
Now we're being told that like Gore, Hillary is a wet rag that nobody likes-ie, she doesn't have any personality and she doesn't inspire passion.
Todd ought to spend some time around actual Hillary supporters and then say that.
Hillary's alleged wet rag persona didn't stop him and his Beltway buddies from urging President Obama in 2011 that Biden was a liablity as he was a 'gaffe machine' and that they should replace him with: you guessed it, Hillary Clinton.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/remember-when-media-wanted-obama-to.html
What is amazing is Todd's description of Gore's alleged problems. If you recall he was seen as unfit for office because:
1. He visited a Buddhist temple. Ben Carson made news earlier on Todd's show for saying that a Muslim is not fit to be President.
But implicitly in 2000 it was felt that simply entering a 'Buddhist temple' is enough to disqualify one for President so actually Carson is the liberal here. And Todd played clips of that now, so he seems to still think there is something perverse about Buddhists.
2. Gore had a photo op in a canoe and allegedly water was bucketed in to make it look deeper than it was.
Again, this is why he and not George W. Bush was fit for office.
In my mind I think there is a symmetry here but not because they both are bad candidates-Gore was endlessly referred to as 'wooden'-but what is similar in both cases is the Democratic nominee-or presumed in Hillary's case-is attacked on almost entirely trumped up personal reasons.
This certainly makes Barney Frank sound prophetic:
"The attack on Clinton in the fall campaign will be more on her personally than on her views. Whoever the GOP nominee ends up being, he will publicly de-emphasize his commitments to undoing financial reform, appointing Supreme Court justices who will reverse the same-sex marriage decision, and totally repealing the Affordable Care Act. Instead, the Republicans will try to impugn Clinton’s integrity by regurgitating the old accusations from the ’90s, supplemented by distorting the facts about Benghazi and greatly exaggerating the horror of her email trail. They will not be deterred by the inconvenient fact that Kenneth Starr grudgingly told the Judiciary Committee in 1998 that after spending several million dollars for three years, he was unable to point to anything she — or President Bill Clinton — had done wrong involving Whitewater, the FBI files or the Travel Office, nor by their inability after what will have been by then at least five congressional investigations to specify how she should be blamed for the murder of American officials by terrorists in Libya."
"Her ability to point to the total absence of any evidence to validate these charges will help blunt their impact, and she in turn will stress her commitment to the reforms that respond to the public’s dissatisfaction with the economic status quo. Given the appeal of her specific policy proposals, the Republicans will use the Sanders candidacy to make a two-pronged attack on her call for fairer taxation, tougher rules governing the financial industry, re-establishment of the right of working people to join unions, raising the minimum wage, incentivizing profit sharing, and increasing the availability of health care and higher education."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/why-progressives-shouldnt-support-bernie-120484#ixzz3mIIK6uP7
Unfortunately I don't know that his second paragraph can be presumed: The facts aren't enough by themselves. As David Brock of Media Matters tells us.
Here Yglesias shows what is really similar between Hillary and Gore-they did it to Kerry with Swfit Boat and Obama with Jeremiah Wright-personal attack in place of policy debate.
"Why is the media more interested in Hillary's email than in Jeb's profoundly dishonest tax pitch?"
"The formative experience of my political life was the 2000 presidential campaign, in which the media mercilessly persecuted Al Gore over a series of trivial exaggerations and now-forgotten pseudo-scandals while giving George W. Bush a pass on the fact that the central premises of his economic agenda were lies."
"People too young to remember the campaign may wonder how Bush persuaded the country that budget-busting tax cuts for the richest Americans were the prescription the country needed. The answer is that he simply misdescribed his plan. In speeches, in televised debates, and in advertisements he represented his plan as consistent with a continued budget surplus and as primarily benefiting middle-class taxpayers."
"Bush won the election and enacted hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Surpluses turned into deficits, and the promised economic boom never materialized."
"None of this was surprising or unpredictable to anyone who cared to dig into the details. The problem was political reporters had found those details much less interesting than snarking about Al Gore's wooden speaking style and complaining that his "demeanor"was disrespectful during a debate exchange in which Bush repeatedly attacked Gore with bogus math.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/matt-yglesias-has-very-important-post.html
So it's not that Hillary is inadequate as a candidate but that the GOP always tries to claim that the Democratic candidate is inadequate on a purely issue free personal basis.
Now this is kind of ironic as Gore went out of his way to distance himself from Clinton and that was likely a mistake.
Now we're being told that like Gore, Hillary is a wet rag that nobody likes-ie, she doesn't have any personality and she doesn't inspire passion.
Todd ought to spend some time around actual Hillary supporters and then say that.
Hillary's alleged wet rag persona didn't stop him and his Beltway buddies from urging President Obama in 2011 that Biden was a liablity as he was a 'gaffe machine' and that they should replace him with: you guessed it, Hillary Clinton.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/remember-when-media-wanted-obama-to.html
What is amazing is Todd's description of Gore's alleged problems. If you recall he was seen as unfit for office because:
1. He visited a Buddhist temple. Ben Carson made news earlier on Todd's show for saying that a Muslim is not fit to be President.
But implicitly in 2000 it was felt that simply entering a 'Buddhist temple' is enough to disqualify one for President so actually Carson is the liberal here. And Todd played clips of that now, so he seems to still think there is something perverse about Buddhists.
2. Gore had a photo op in a canoe and allegedly water was bucketed in to make it look deeper than it was.
Again, this is why he and not George W. Bush was fit for office.
In my mind I think there is a symmetry here but not because they both are bad candidates-Gore was endlessly referred to as 'wooden'-but what is similar in both cases is the Democratic nominee-or presumed in Hillary's case-is attacked on almost entirely trumped up personal reasons.
This certainly makes Barney Frank sound prophetic:
"The attack on Clinton in the fall campaign will be more on her personally than on her views. Whoever the GOP nominee ends up being, he will publicly de-emphasize his commitments to undoing financial reform, appointing Supreme Court justices who will reverse the same-sex marriage decision, and totally repealing the Affordable Care Act. Instead, the Republicans will try to impugn Clinton’s integrity by regurgitating the old accusations from the ’90s, supplemented by distorting the facts about Benghazi and greatly exaggerating the horror of her email trail. They will not be deterred by the inconvenient fact that Kenneth Starr grudgingly told the Judiciary Committee in 1998 that after spending several million dollars for three years, he was unable to point to anything she — or President Bill Clinton — had done wrong involving Whitewater, the FBI files or the Travel Office, nor by their inability after what will have been by then at least five congressional investigations to specify how she should be blamed for the murder of American officials by terrorists in Libya."
"Her ability to point to the total absence of any evidence to validate these charges will help blunt their impact, and she in turn will stress her commitment to the reforms that respond to the public’s dissatisfaction with the economic status quo. Given the appeal of her specific policy proposals, the Republicans will use the Sanders candidacy to make a two-pronged attack on her call for fairer taxation, tougher rules governing the financial industry, re-establishment of the right of working people to join unions, raising the minimum wage, incentivizing profit sharing, and increasing the availability of health care and higher education."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/why-progressives-shouldnt-support-bernie-120484#ixzz3mIIK6uP7
Unfortunately I don't know that his second paragraph can be presumed: The facts aren't enough by themselves. As David Brock of Media Matters tells us.
Here Yglesias shows what is really similar between Hillary and Gore-they did it to Kerry with Swfit Boat and Obama with Jeremiah Wright-personal attack in place of policy debate.
"Why is the media more interested in Hillary's email than in Jeb's profoundly dishonest tax pitch?"
"The formative experience of my political life was the 2000 presidential campaign, in which the media mercilessly persecuted Al Gore over a series of trivial exaggerations and now-forgotten pseudo-scandals while giving George W. Bush a pass on the fact that the central premises of his economic agenda were lies."
"People too young to remember the campaign may wonder how Bush persuaded the country that budget-busting tax cuts for the richest Americans were the prescription the country needed. The answer is that he simply misdescribed his plan. In speeches, in televised debates, and in advertisements he represented his plan as consistent with a continued budget surplus and as primarily benefiting middle-class taxpayers."
"Bush won the election and enacted hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Surpluses turned into deficits, and the promised economic boom never materialized."
"None of this was surprising or unpredictable to anyone who cared to dig into the details. The problem was political reporters had found those details much less interesting than snarking about Al Gore's wooden speaking style and complaining that his "demeanor"was disrespectful during a debate exchange in which Bush repeatedly attacked Gore with bogus math.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/09/matt-yglesias-has-very-important-post.html
So it's not that Hillary is inadequate as a candidate but that the GOP always tries to claim that the Democratic candidate is inadequate on a purely issue free personal basis.
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