A Different Perspective on HRC

March 13, 2008 5:12 PM

Where's a good place to read some well-thought-out articles or websites that are in favor of Hillary?

The places I tend to visit seem to be rather on the side of Mr. Obama, and while I find myself veering that way myself, I'd like to make sure I'm well-rounded enough to make an honest decision, and not just staying on my side of the tracks. I don't want to get into a political debate, just want some thoughtful pro-Hillary analysis from someplace that's not directly related to the HRC campaign.

posted by hoborg to law & government (14 comments total)

I know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but here are my own writings on the matter. I hope it's thoughtful, but you'll have to decide that for yourself.


I'm currently supporting Clinton. Here are my pros and cons for both Clinton and Obama, which hopefully will reveal my thought process:

1) Iraq - point to Obama. I like that he's been against it from the beginning, and I'm irritated that she won't say her vote for it was a mistake. However, their actually current positions on the issue aren't all that different, and their voting record on it whenever they've had a chance to vote has been pretty much identical. Otherwise, this would be a more important difference.

2) Healthcare - 2 points to Clinton. Her plan is much better. His is terrible. Her plan isn't wonderful, to be honest, but it may frankly be the best actual universal healthcare plan that currently has a chance of getting through in the U.S. Obama's plan does not guarantee universal coverage (several analyses I've read have estimated it will leave 15 million uninsured). It will also be de facto more expensive because of this (fewer people putting money into the general pot). I don't care that Clinton's plan has "mandates" - I *want* "mandates"; we need universal healthcare, and if it needs to be done through a weird backdoor tax as in Clinton's plan, I'll take it for now.

3) Other important issues - no points either way. I have not found significant differences between the candidates on the environment, energy issues, civil rights issues, the economy, etc. Some economists are supporting Obama on the grounds that he *might* represent a change from certain poor Bush/Clinton policies, but since there's no evidence of this - they're basically rolling the dice on someone new - I think it's a poor argument.

4) "Experience" - point to Clinton. This is an issue for me. "Outside the beltway" presidents have often done a lousy job for several years because they don't know how to get things done at first, with admittedly some notable exceptions (such as Lincoln.) She has a lot more time in Washington, and therefore a lot more connections and ability to get stuff done. This matters.

5) "Change" - point to Obama. I'm not a big fan of the DLC and the Republican-lite centrism Clinton is associated with. Obama does have a chance to clean things up and end the power of the DLC, although it's far from certain that he will. Clinton almost certainly won't.

6) Historical candidacy - no points either way. Both would end the parade of old white dudes. This matters to me. Would have been a consideration if Edwards was still in it.

7) Electability - no points either way. I disagree with the online conventional wisdom that Obama is obviously more electable. True, Clinton is a polarizing figure who is disliked by the left-wing base and hated by the far right. But Obama has never run a national campaign and his one statewide election was against a certifiable lunatic.

Result - Clinton by a hair. In a nutshell, I like her healthcare plan a lot better, and they have equal pros and cons elsewhere.
posted by kyrademon at 5:39 PM on March 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Thanks. So refreshing to hear about actual issues rather than campaign issues. This is precisely what I'm looking for, and for what it's worth, I agree with you on nearly everything, especially #3, which a lot of people tend to forget.
posted by hoborg at 5:54 PM on March 13, 2008

I don't know how thoughtful most of them are. They seem pretty divorced from reality to me, but the people at hillaryis44.com are SUPER pro Clinton and SUPER-DUPER anti-Obama.

Paul Krugman at the NYT seems to be a Clinton supporter. You could try some of his columns.
posted by willnot at 6:21 PM on March 13, 2008

Yeesh. Hillaryis44 is pretty much the opposite of what I'm after. Just seems angry, and, as you say, more anti-Obama than pro-Clinton. I went right for the "Why Hillary?" link, but it's coming soon.
I'm just a little tired of seeing plaudits for those blacks who are strong enough to vote for Hillary, or those women who are strong enough to vote for Obama. I'd really just like to see a discussion based on merit, such as the one given above, and no speculation based on flimsy contradictory polls. As for Mr. Krugman, his focus seems to be the economy of late (probably a good idea, given the nastiness in the MSM), in which neither candidate has the upper hand, as far as I can see. Thanks for the reply.
posted by hoborg at 6:39 PM on March 13, 2008

No real suggestions, other than to say that surely there are some Kossacks for Hillary over at dailykos.com, but I'd say that Krugman is more anti-Obama on the basis of his health care plan than pro-Hillary.

And I like and respect Krugman so that gave me, an Obama supporter, some pause.
posted by lackutrol at 6:40 PM on March 13, 2008

No real suggestions, other than to say that surely there are some Kossacks for Hillary over at dailykos.com

*Some* would be the operative word there. Last I saw of the dailykos straw polls at the end of January she was polling at 11% vs Obama's 76%.
posted by daser at 8:46 PM on March 13, 2008

Just an anecdote:
Last weekend, I spoke to a relative who's a federal employee and in a position to be very knowledgable about diplomatic/foreign policy matters. He's for Clinton because she's had some diplomatic experience and has been around Washington and international politics longer, and we have some track record of her performance in those areas. He felt she had generally done a good job, not always stellar, but that these things (diplomacy, knowing the history with certain countries, etc) have a long learning curve. He was very concerned about what he saw as Obama's inexperience in those areas. I asked if any of this was based on non-public knowledge, he said no.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:12 PM on March 13, 2008

I get the feeling that any foreign policy experience disparity between the candidates would be washed out by the giant sigh of relief electing either one would get from the international community (and indeed most of the U.S.)upon Voldemort's exit. Like in technical matters, some experience can often be more harmful than none. Either candidate will need to surround themselves with people who have the experience to fill in the gaps; gaps which Bush never acknowledged existing.

If Hillary's campaign is first flummoxed by the question of her foreign policy experience, and then she herself points to her somewhat ancillary role in Northern Ireland as the apex of her work outside the U.S., I can't help but feel a little nonplussed. That being said, if your relative isn't using some sort of "insider knowledge" to make this case, I'd be interested to know what he was thinking of in particular, so I can look into it.
posted by hoborg at 6:42 AM on March 14, 2008

I think it'll be really tough to find some place truly objective, but I find it fascinating to read superdelegates reasoning for supporting her. These are typically people who have known her and her family for years, so they know her and her accomplishments and her personally as well as professionally. So I'd seek out (I could link some of them but I think it's most objective if one can look for it themselves) the folks that are supporting her, and read their statements as to why. Not comprehensive, but it will give you insight and another angle with which to judge. For instance I liked George McGovern talking about supporting Hillary at DemocracyNow.
posted by cashman at 7:19 AM on March 14, 2008

hoborg - my relative refused to be drawn further on his basis for this view. I believe the idea was, she was around it for a bunch of years and did some junior-varsity bits of it herself, and he felt that this experience was still much better than no experience.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:41 PM on March 14, 2008

I appreciate it, trust me. If finding an unbiased source were as easy as falling off a log, we'd all be in better shape. All someone would have to do to one-up Bush would be to play Civ II for a couple of weeks, so I feel like I'd be getting my vote's worth either way.
posted by hoborg at 4:20 PM on March 14, 2008

Hillary-friendly blogs: MyDD, TalkLeft (Jeralyn I think is for Hillary, Big Tent Dem is Obama but fair), The Left Coaster (this one I like very much)

Pro-Hillary blogs: Taylor Marsh, No Quarter, The Confluence, Tom Watson, Anglachel..

My favorite blogger in regular media: Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic. Not pro-Hillary, just good objective reporting.

From Watson: The Few, the Proud...the Clinton Bloggers

Hillary's supporters on Kos just went on strike and decamped en masse to MyDD and elsewhere.

Go Hillary! :)
posted by citron at 3:07 PM on March 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Also, James Wolcott over at Vanity Fair voted for Hillary. One of the best & funniest writers in the blogosphere.
posted by citron at 3:09 PM on March 15, 2008

Paul Krugman has written approvingly about Hillary's health care plan as compared to Obama's, saying that the principal policy division between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involves health care. Maggie Mahar at Health Beat gets a bit more into who benefits under each candidate's health care proposals. Ezra Klein also talks about differences in the two candidates' policy visions for health care reform.

I know that's mostly on health care, which seems to have fallen off the radar since a few months ago. It tends to be a pretty high-priority issue for me, although obviously your mileage may vary.

On another note, less policy-oriented but interesting nevertheless, the fabulous Bitch PhD wrote a very compelling blog post about why voting for Clinton was a feminist vote, because she has made an explicit point of putting women's issues front and center in her political career. (Interestingly, the writer actually voted for Obama, but makes a good case for why someone whose primary concerns are feminist ones would be better off voting for Clinton.) I think it does a really good job of outlining some of Clinton's strong points.
posted by iminurmefi at 12:19 PM on March 17, 2008