"In the course of a single conversation, I have been assured that Hillary is cunning and manipulative but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic; that she is a hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that she is a base opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on her side. What emerges is a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an actual person."
You may have read that quote before. It is from a fascinating article in the New Yorker from 1996. More recently, it was included in a widely shared (and wonderful) Facebook post about Hillary Clinton.
Despite being written two decades ago, it still describes the public's perception of Clinton. In the public eye for thirty years and under a microscope for the last twenty, Clinton has flaws and mistakes that have long been magnified far out of proportion. The Republicans have slandered her for years, ever since she revealed herself as a nontraditional first lady. Shocking social conservatives, she pushed a universal healthcare initiative rather than choosing china for the White House.
Clinton slowly became a cartoon, a caricature, of her real self. From Whitewater to Benghazi, false narratives have controlled the perception of her character. When Sanders began his campaign against her in the primaries, some of these myths found a home among the Democrats. The tight race gave baseless allegations and ad hominem attacks time to grow and fester. Sanders supporters became a megaphone for allegations concocted by the Republicans. Sanders fans at the DNC echoed the "Lock Her Up!" cries from the RNC.
Here are 3 are of the most common myths I hear about Clinton.
1. "Hillary is not a real liberal."
I hear this all the time from Sanders supporters, especially those in the #BernieOrBust movement. The allegation usually goes something like this:
"Clinton voted or voiced support for (the Iraq War / DOMA / the PATRIOT Act / etc) and is therefore not a liberal."
Here's a simple three steep method to negate almost all of these allegations.
First, ask yourself what other prominent Democrats were doing at the time. In the case of the Iraq War, for instance, almost all prominent Democrats in the Senate voted for the war. These Senators include Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, Dianne Feinstein, John Edwards, and Joe Biden.Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, in the homophobic nineties when the Speaker of the House was able to brashly call homosexuality a disease "just like alcohol... or sex addiction... or kleptomania." Unsurprisingly,most Democrats in the Senate and the House voted to pass DOMA. In the case of the PATRIOT Act, it is worth noting that it passed the Senate 98-1.
Second, ask yourself what Clinton believes today. Like the rest of the party, chances are that she has evolved. She came out against the Iraq War once it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction. She changed her mind on gay marriage, as did most of the country, including President Barack Obama in 2012. If you have a problem with Clinton changing her mind on certain issues, then read my objections to the second myth.
Thirdly, check her overall record. She was ranked the 11th most liberal representative in the Senate based on her voting record. To be clear, this means that she was more liberal than 9/10 of Senators and 4/5 Democratic Senators. These representatives include Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Clearly, she is less progressive than Sanders (no one is denying this), but Sanders is a socialist. He cannot reasonably be the benchmark for a liberal politician.
(P.S. I know that her husband is a centrist Democrat, but if you are judging her based on her spouse's positions, then you might be a sexist.)
2. "She has no values, only positions."
This is a frequent insult lobbed at Clinton, insinuating that she only runs for office out of personal ambition. It fits the narrative that she will say anything to be elected.
Take a moment to read her Wikipedia page. She spent much of her time at Yale Law School, studying child-abuse. Clinton also interned at the New Haven Legal Services and Yale-New Haven Hospital to provide legal aid to children and the poor. Her first job out of college was at the Children's Defense Fund. Clinton is not some highfalutin lawyer who decided to run for government office for her own sake. She has consistently championed liberal causes like women's rights and children's health. Clinton helped to set up the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which insures 8 million children. To claim that she is somehow valueless is to buy into a straw man. If you are confusing the cartoon for the real thing, you are willfully ignoring the differences.
The more common accusation that I hear, however, is that Clinton behaves like a blade of grass. When the political wind changes, she bends in that direction. While it is undoubtedly true that she changed her position on a number of issues, including gay marriage and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is important to be fair. Context is clearly important, for one. Clinton changing her mind about gay marriage within a 15 year time-period is not a flip flop. Try and see if you have exactly the same opinions on every major issue two decades from now. Take Bernie, for example. It is true that he opposed DOMA and voted against it in 1996 when he was a member of the House. Yet, according to a TIME magazine article, when his Chief of Staff was asked about why he voted against DOMA, her response was that that the law weakened the constitution. “We’re not legislating values," she said, "We have to follow the Constitution, and anything that weakens the Constitution should be (addressed) by a constitutional amendment, not by a law passed by Congress.” The point is not that Sanders is some sort of hypocrite, but rather that it is perfectly acceptable for a politician to evolve on an issue over (literal) decades in office.
Secondly, Clinton still occasionally changes her position for political expediency, yet that is hardly unique. She might alter her stance on the Ethanol mandate conveniently before Iowa, but Sanders clearly moved to the left on gun control, and Trump completely flip-flopped on abortion rights. Get used it. What matters far more is that she is willing to include certain positions in her platform and can be held accountable for getting them done. If she pandered more often than other politicians, then it might be a justifiable criticism, but the reality is that, too often, people maintain a double standard for her.
3. "Hillary is a serial liar."
Of all the baseless insults, this one is the easiest to prove empirically false.
Politifact, the non-partisan fact checking website which won the Pulitzer Prize, rates politicians and pundits on their truthfulness. Believe it or not, Clinton was ranked the most truthful, major politician to run for president in the last 8 years.
She barely edged out Sanders and Kasich for the position. This is not to say that she is incapable of lying, or even that she lies very little (she is a politician after all). Instead, it really makes you wonder why Trump, the least honest candidate in the last two election cycles, is able to get away with branding Clinton as "congenital liar." She is misquoted consistently, her words twisted and taken out of context at every turn.
For instance, analyze her oft misquoted line from the Benghazi hearings through this CSPAN video. According to Ted Cruz at the RNC, Clinton responded "to the death of Americans at Benghazi by asking, 'What difference does it make?'"
That sounds pretty damning; is Clinton really so callous? Of course not. If Ted Cruz bothered to read a transcript of the event, watch a video from the hearing, or (more likely) had decided to tell the truth, he might have mentioned the fact that, in context, the quote makes perfect sense. Clinton was responding to a particularly pointed set of questions by a Republican colleague about the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Libya, which killed four Americans. She was attempting to explain that finding out whether the attack had been motivated by a video or jihadist group was a relatively low priority in the first few days. The status and safety of Americans in Libya was more pressing.
This is a common tactic of the Republican party. You might remember the theme of the second night of the 2012 RNC was "We Built It," based off an egregiously out of context soundbite from President Obama. At a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia, Obama had spoken about the importance of government investment in the public sector to help businesses. His exact wording was, "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that." Clearly, Obama was speaking about roads and bridges when he said "you didn't build that." Common sense was no impediment to the Republicans when they slapped the words "If you've got a business – you didn't build that" on shirts, signs, and advertisements across the country.
Democrats were dismayed, but not surprised, when the Republicans twisted Obama's words out of context. Progressives should recognize that Clinton is a victim of the same smear campaign and that she has done little to bring this label on herself.
Hillary Clinton has been a punching bag for Republicans for twenty years. As Joseph Goebbels once said, "keep repeating a lie enough and people will come to believe it." I am scared that the propaganda campaign against her has already become accepted as fact.
The truth is that Clinton has been the target of sexist attack, after sexist attack, after sexist attack. The baseless assaults on her character are hardly better than the attacks on her appearance. Yet, despite all this, she keeps breaking glass ceilings. Not supporting Clinton is a valid choice, but make sure that if you do dislike her, you are voting against the real Clinton and not the caricature. As for me, #I'mWithHer and proud of it, too.
