“Something strange happened the other day. All these different people — friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read — kept saying the same thing: They’ve suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we’ve reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.
“The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters. Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We’re not frothing Clinton haters like…well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they’d go away.” — Jonathan Chait, a contributing editor to L.A. Times‘ “Opinion” and a senior editor at the New Republic, in a 1.26 article.
I used to hate Hillary but love or least greatly enjoy Bill. Now that they’ve (apparently) succeeded in downgrading the Democratic presidential primary race into a race referendum, in thoroughly putrifying this race compared to what it all felt like 23 days ago, I really and truly despise both of them. If I could find it in my head or my heart to vote for McCain or Romney in the general election, I would do just to spite Clinton (presuming she wins the nomination, which seems likely given the leads she has over Obamain California and NewYork due to the wide support she has among traditional older Democrats and particularly older women). But I can’t vote for McCain (not with his Iraq War suppport) or Romney, and this choice makes me miserable.
Everyone is going to spin Obama’s almost certain South Carolina victory today as a racially-driven and nothing more. The Clintons and their disgusting surrogates have colored this race over the last three weeks, and damn them to hell for doing this.
Here’s a portion of a Peggy Noonan piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 1.25: “Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment — this is a former president of the United States — is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.
“There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Barack Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are ‘high minded’ on the surface but ‘smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years.’
“That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.”