Have you noticed that most of the things you've been told over and over again about Hillary Clinton -- how crafty, organized, and ruthless she is -- have turned out not to be true?
- Although they are pretty much tied in the primaries, Obama has beaten her like a drum in the caucuses, where organization and technical mastery of arcane rules matters most.
- On her staff, the loyalists like former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, are incompetent. But her mercenaries, leakers, and backstabbers are also incompetent.
- Yet, she hasn't been ruthless at all in running against Obama. For example, the Rev. Wright DVDs were available for the whole world to buy from Rev. Wright's church, but Hillary didn't use them.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
The ideal politician has an IQ between 130 and 140. This is nothing special and there are 100s of thousands of women who are capable of the job, at least in a minimal sense. The fact is, for a woman to actual become a head of state, she has to raw skills that only occur in 1-in-a-billion people--that is the degree to which people don't want a woman lording over them.
ReplyDeleteI could care less. If we could get Michelle Malkin or Coulter to run, I'd vote for them no matter how much they wept on the campaign trail.
I still think Hillary is the best of the 3. On her own she may have been far better than with Bill. I do think that Bill's could-care-less attitude about most things has been a problem for Hil. Hil is really a serious hard-working kind of person, even though she is ideologically off course, whereas Bill was glowing in his apparent charisma and following around his dick.
ReplyDelete"The ideal politician has an IQ between 130 and 140." How could anyone know?
ReplyDeleteI suspect that Hillary's biggest surprise is that she's not as diabolical as the "Republican Attack Machine" makes her out to be. It's what would have saved her in the general election, had her lack of cunning not spoiled her opportunity to get that far.
ReplyDeleteThe democratic party appears to be engaging in a "hail mary", attempting to cash in on popular discontent with the Bush regime to install the most liberal and un-American candidate in our history. The entirety of America will be screwed when the 527s bring an end to the Obama candidacy and an impulsive, senile, old warhawk gets a mandate to bring on four more years of Bush diplomacy, Bush "conservatism", and open borders advocacy.
Steve Sailer: Although they are pretty much tied in the primaries, Obama has beaten her like a drum in the caucuses, where organization and technical mastery of arcane rules matters most.
ReplyDeleteI'm almost certain that this is due to the Bradley/Wilder effect.
The charge of "Racism" has become so toxic in left-wing discourse that the Lefties are petrified of being branded with it, hence can only cast their ballots confidently for Hillary within the secrecy of the voting booth.
Steve Sailer: Yet, she hasn't been ruthless at all in running against Obama.
Cf the paranoia about the charge of "Racism", as above.
[BTW, this will also haunt the McCain campaign.]
Furthermore, Hillary knows that if she attacks too hard on any particular scandal [e.g. Rezko or Odinga], then Obama can hit back with Cattle Futures/Castle Grande/Rose Billing Records/Vince Foster Murder-Suicide/Craig Livingston-Anthony Marceca/FBI Files/Grand Jury Testimony/John Huang/FALN Terrorists/New Square Hasidim/Etc Etc Etc.
I.e. Hillary is the worst possible candidate to hope to mount any sort of "Good Government/Holier Than Thou" opposition to Obama.
[BTW, this will also haunt the McCain campaign - cf the Keating Five.]
To date, there seems to have been something of a tacit agreement between Obama and Hillary in which both understood that it would do neither of them any good to veer off into the uncharted wilds of scandal-mongering.
Kinduva a mutual assured destruction standoff, if you will.
Steve Sailer: On her staff, the loyalists like former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, are incompetent. But her mercenaries, leakers, and backstabbers are also incompetent.
Here you are correct, but this has always been the case with the Clintons - they have always been utterly incompetent.
What's different this time is that The Blob [the MSM & the chattering classes, not to mention the doe-eyed true-believers] have abandonded the Clintons and cast their lot with the Obamas.
Without the power of The Blob behind them, the Clintons have been unmasked as just another pair of charmless, money-grubbing, ruthless, psychopathic grifters.
Which, BTW, is precisely what Barack & Michelle are, themselves, but it will be a cold day in Hades before anyone in The Blob has the courage to point that out.
[In fairness, I think that Christopher Hitchens sees the Obamas for who they really are, but he's a drunk and no one takes him seriously anymore, and, besides, I think that he may have been forced to return his Bat Decoder Ring over his support for the Iraq & Afghanistan nation-building exercises.]
Anne Coulter?
ReplyDeleteIt's not particularly surprising that Hillary and her crew are incompetent. They always have been. It's just that in the past the Clintons have had the fortune to run against weak and incompetent candidates (George H.W. Bush and Dole with the help of Perot and, for her Senate campaign, that clown Rick Lazio).
ReplyDeleteThe one thing the Clintons have been, however, is vicious. Their first instinct has always been to dig dirt on and smear their opponents. The reason Obama has gotten a free pass from the Clintons' standard operating procedures is his race: They can't savage him without ticking off blacks and sending latte liberals (whiter people) into apoplectic fits of PC shock over "racial insensitivity," and she needs both of these consituencies to win.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have no chance with the above mentioned constituencies and should have no problem giving Obama the mother of all swiftboatings. If they do this, the election should turn into a cake walk because, despite all the PC indoctrination and white guilt, most whites would still be very reticent in the privacy of the the voting booth to chose a man as President with the contempt for white people expressed in Dreams for my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. The only question is whether they have the brains to do this.
-PhillyGuy
Have you ever noticed that most of the most aggressively pushed "facts" are the precise reverse of the truth, i.e. a Big Lie? In marketing, but also particularly in politics and education. Most public statements have the same truth status as "We're the government and we're here to help," "Diversity is our greatest strength," "Anybody can be anything they want to be," etc.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a country or culture of lies, or opposite-of-the-truths.
"Have you noticed that most of the things you've been told over and over again about Hillary Clinton -- how crafty, organized, and ruthless she is -- have turned out not to be true?"
ReplyDeleteYes. Could it also be that she is not terribly manipulative, devious and Machiavellian either? Could it be that she is perhaps an earnest policy wonk, married to a real piece of work?
Hillary may be more serious, and is probably more interested in actual governance than Bill. But, of the two, he seems to have most of the people skills - both in choosing allies and manipulating the rubes.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve. Love your work. Hey have you checked out this blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/
Thought you might enjoy it. A friend tipped me off to it and their "Real homes of genius" feature.
I'd heard the soap opera rumours but this still comes as news to me. These aren't serious people.
ReplyDeleteI miss Bill Clinton. Why?
Say what you will but the man and his team could out-wonk *anyone* back in 92. He really knew his public policy stone cold. Policy and deficits mattered immensely back then, not "change" and wars in Asia. We debated ideas, like The Work of Nations.
The problem with Hillary is her inability to understand ordinary people and connect to them. Heck she can't understand rich white yuppies and connect to them, or grievance ridden minorities.
ReplyDeleteObama can understand the rich white radicals (like Bill Ayers) and grievance theater blacks (like Al Sharpton, Rev. God Damn America) but that's it. Within that group however he does quite well.
Bill Clinton in 1992, less so in 1996, understood what ordinary, middle/working class Americans were like, socially, could pretend to be one of them, and could couch his appeals to their emotional buttons to make them think he was on their side in important issues.
As he became wealthier, more socially isolated, and less understanding of what ordinary people are like, those skills eroded to what he is today. Now he's like George Herbert Walker Bush "This is for checking out?" (laser upc scanners at the grocery store -- it was obvious he had not bought groceries in decades).
Hillary's problems mainly stem from having no clue what ordinary people are all about. It's why she surrounds herself with incompetents, cronies, etc. Bush 2 at least had Karl Rove, who while no genius had a shouting distance knowledge of ordinary people.
The fact that HRC did not use the Wright videos against St. Barack may show not a lack of ruthlessness but an excess of caution. Attacking a non-white candidate from the right in a Democratic primary would be deeply offensive to a large number of Democratic primary voters (the white liberals and blacks who dominate these affairs). Such a move could provoke a backlash against her and possibly sink the Obama November campaign to boot.
ReplyDeletetesting99:
ReplyDeleteThat incident with the first President Bush and the grocery store cash register was debunked years ago.
jamieB, perhaps, but it stuck. It stuck because people found GHWB detached and aristocratic. It's why W works so hard at the redneck thing.
ReplyDeleteWistful Wonk -- Bill Clinton in retrospect represents the biggest waste of opportunity America experience. A re-elected Buchanon. While the world drifted into nuclear proliferation (Clinton did NOT go to War with Pakistan to prevent them from getting nukes) we got Osama, Jihad, and nukes popping out all over the place while both Reps and Dems rushed to see how weak and accomodating we could be to tribal peoples.
The cost of delayed push-back on Tribes with Nukes(tm) will be terrible. Clinton was the President, it was his responsibility to do what had to be done, no matter how unpopular or ugly it could be. [Yes Reps share the blame. But Bill was the Pres.]
I don't think McCain will be too constrained against Obama in practice. He'll say nothing and tons of 527s, Viral Videos without his name will feature more sayings of Rev. God Damn America with Obama nodding along in the front pews.
Seems I spoke on this in an earlier post. You are keeping track,right? :P I recalled the "Woman Effect". Democrats put women in top positions in their campaigns to "prove" something or other. Dukakis,Kerry and Gore were the prominent examples. (The Jewish chick whose name escapes me,Beth Cahill,and Donna Brasille respectively) They were not nearly as competent in the nuts and bolts organizing as men are--period. Now Hillary,she is really invested in being not just a candidate who mis a woman,but the Woman Candidate. had she been elected---Jiminy Cricket! You would see so many hatchet faced women rolling into D.C. in their volvo's and jeeps!! She used a lot of women in her organization,and maybe as Camille Paglia suggests,the men around her are not hard=charging alpha males. Bill may not be very competent as a RULER but he is superb as a candidate, HE couldve won this nomination. he is much more amenable to tough-minded smart men,like Carville. he used Bill Daley to get Nafta passed. Hillary might have felt the need for Affeminist Action,and put some ditsy broad in charge of such a project. NO way is Obama responsible for the precision of his campaign;its the organization that surrounded him!!
ReplyDeleteNow Hillary [...] had she been elected---Jiminy Cricket! You would see so many hatchet faced women rolling into D.C. in their volvo's and jeeps!! [...] maybe [...] the men around her are not hard=charging alpha males.
ReplyDeleteYes, the White House would become a mediocre corporate culture like so many workplaces are today - ruled by women, staffed by women (plus a sprinkling of male homosexuals).
But even that would be better than Barack "white people are bitter losers" Obama and his spiritual advisor Rev. God Damn America.