Monster Hillary Clinton hypocrisy... Tax returns show a monstrous disregard for consistency...

Hillary Clinton, monster? That's up for debate. Here's a certainty, though.
She is a Hypocrite with an intentionally capitalized H.

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With the exception of Bill Clinton back in '92 (if I remember correctly), every serious presidential candidate has ponied up his (or, in the case of this year, her) income tax filings.
Barack Obama put his out there months ago. Hillary Clinton has not.

She won't show all of those hardworking folks who are worried about their kids' safe slumber while Hillary works the night shift answering phones at all hours of the night how much money she and Bill made.

We're not just talking about last year, either. She's mum on everything for the last seven or eight years. It's been top secret shit. Either that, or she needs to find an accountant to help the one who managed to work with her on that $5 million dollar campaign loan. Maybe she lost them. Regardless of the reason, she's been stonewalling on her returns for a long time now.

Gay Species put it thusly:

She can answer the telephone at 3 a.m. in a string of pearls, but she cannot operate a photocopy machine? Xerox must be a "monster" that Hillary cannot handle.

Finally, one of her crew has decided that Ms. Solutions will make the info public "around" April 15. That's conveniently after Ohio/Texas Tuesday, but potentially before Pennsylvania. Potentially, I say, because Terry McAuliffe did say "around". Who the hell knows how close one has to get to qualify for "around" status?

THE LIKELY TRUTH ABOUT THE RETURNS

Here's the crazy thing, it probably doesn't matter all that much in the bigger picture. I doubt we're going to learn anything too wild and crazy about the Clintons that we don't already know. Whatever lurks within those income tax statements is unlikely to change anyone's opinions about the monster. Did I just say "monster"? Whoops, I meant Hillary.

Personally, I don't really give all that big of a hoot about the contents of the tax returns. I can also understand why Hillary has probably been reluctant to release them.

They make a lot of money and some of it undoubtedly comes from people that Democrats don't really love. We know that already, but the release party for the returns will undoubtedly result in about 98,982 news stories about Clinton money.

It will also cause millions of "regular folk", the "real Americans" to whom Clinton is targeting her campaign to say, "Holy fuck, these people make ALOT of money. How many god-damned zeroes is that on the end of that number?"

The filing statements she's compelled to provide as a Senator and another statement released as part of the presidential candidacy process gives us a ballpark assessment of the Clinton family fortune. Nonetheless, it will all be treated like NEW news when she turns over the returns.

She still has an ass-load of Wal-Mart stock? Wow, I wonder how those union people will respond to that when they hear about it ad nauseum.

She has BP and Amoco stock? Wasn't she the one who talked about sticking it to big oil? That will be contentious, too.

All of those individual investments, along with money Bill's been making in and from countries who aren't on most Americans' list of favorites (you know, like China, Saudi Arabia, and Ihateamericaland) can only result in negative press for Hillary's campaign.

Some of the criticism will be fair. Much of it will be stupid. I'm guessing none of it will be that important, in the big picture.

So, I can understand why Hillary doesn't want to open up the books for us. I get it. I don't blame here.

WHY IT STILL MATTERS

Even though I think Hillary Clinton is a symptom of a cancer that is slowly killing almost everything good about liberal democracy, I doubt she has anything BIG to hide in those returns. So, why should she subject herself to scrutiny and the inevitable negative attention by releasing the documents so that assholes like me can read them and beat up on her?

Here are a few good reasons...

1. Obama. He released his early and he's been arguing that one of the big problems in America is a lack of transparency in government. Every day Hillary spends hiding her returns merely increases the persuasiveness of his candidacy.

2. Assumption. I'm a reasonable guy. I don't think Hillary's tax returns include massive payouts from the KKK or a write off for a donation to the Suicide Bomber Family Remuneration Fund. Other people, however, aren't so generous. The longer she sits on the documents, the more traction the psychos get on their "she MUST be hiding something" argument. It looks suspicious.

3. Example. I think it's probably a good thing for people to know who's buttering whose bread. That's why this whole "releasing your tax returns" thing has caught on over the years. The governed deserve to know who's paying the governing. Stunts like Hillary's record hiding are a poor precedent. It can be used by those who truly are nefarious to avoid scrutiny in the future.

The advantages of these three reasons SHOULD be enough to neutralize the negative press stories that will follow the release for a few days. Unless she does have something to hide, I suppose. Plus, it would just generally be a good thing to do.

You know who else used to argue that releasing tax records was a good thing to do? A senate candidate named Hillary Clinton. That brings us to the fourth reason she should release the returns ASAP.

4. Hypocrisy. If she doesn't hand over the goods, she's a complete hypocrite of the worst kind.

WHY THE CLINTON STALL IS ANOTHER PUTRID ACT OF HYPOCRISY

Before Hillary started her run for POTUS, she had to beat a Republican to win a NY senate seat. Remember Rick Lazio? That's the guy Hillary beat.

One of her arguments during the campaign was that Lazio was being a prick for NOT RELEASING HIS TAX RETURNS.

No, really. The same woman who is holding her documents close to the chest jumped Lazio's shit big-time for the very same offense. Sherman, set the wayback machine for the year 2000. Clinton vs. Lazio.

If you showed up for a Lazio campaign event back then, you might run into Tax Man. Tax Man was a Clinton campaign staffer, dressed up like Uncle Sam. He was sent to Lazio events to draw attention to the fact that the Republican candidate was keeping his tax records a secret. That's right, Clinton's campaign actually disrupted an opponent's events with a dude in a fucking costume holding a sign and actually YELLING at Lazio to hand over the IRS forms!

She said that Lazio's failure to engage in full disclosure was "disturbing". Her words.

She once had one of her campaign staff show up at a Lazio function to demand, in person, the release of his tax returns. You see, Hillary was FULLY CONVINCED that candidates should provide voters with this valuable information and was so pissed off at Lazio's refusal to abide by that unspoken rule of good conduct that she dispatched one of her henchmen to emphasize the IMPORTANCE OF RELEASING TAX INFORMATION.

She sent none other than her current communication czar, Howard Wolfson. Wolfson showed up to bug Lazio.

Howard Wolfson? Tax returns? Why does that ring a bell. Oh, I know why... Because of YESTERDAY...

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's guy, was on TV talking about tax returns yesterday. Barack Obama said that Hillary should release her tax records. Obama didn't have a guy dressed in a costume yelling at her or anything, but he did indicate that people might want to take a peek at her 1040. Howard Wolfson handled the official campaign response.

Wolfson's response: "I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president".

Obama asked about Clinton's tax returns and gets compared to Ken Starr. What the fuck does that make Hillary circa 2000, Howie? What's worse than Ken Starr? Maybe a monster?

It seems really weird that Hillary Clinton would pretend like 2000 didn't exist when she's simultaneously reminding us of her 35 years of public life every 20 seconds. But that's Hillary for you. I like this little summation from NewsDay:

Principled people would reason as follows: "Since we made a huge fuss about Lazio's returns in 2000, to be consistent we should be very diligent about being just as transparent as Obama and releasing our own returns this year. Otherwise, we would be behaving like hypocrites."

But that's not what they're doing. So the reasoning is apparently this: "We acted like Lazio's tax returns were a big deal in 2000 because it was in our self-interest to do so, and this year we'll act like our returns aren't a big deal because it's in our self interest to do so. We don't act on principle, and we don't care about being consistent, and we don't care about being hypocritical."

Hillary Clinton replaces principle with convenience. Hypocrisy substitutes for consistency. It's okay to beat the shit out of your enemy for keeping his returns under wraps, but when someone asks you about YOUR returns, it's perfectly reasonable to smear him all to hell? Wow.

Bill in Exile asks:

"So why was it "frankly disturbing" that Lazio refused to release one years worth of tax returns but when HRC refuses to release six years worth, not so much?"

Good question.

Here's the answer:

Hillary isn't about intellectual honesty, fair play, quality debate, answering the phones at 3 a.m. or doing what's best for the hardworking people of the USA. She's a fighter, but she's fighting for herself. Period.

You can call it anything you'd like. I call it being a monster.

I'd love to see one of the pro-Hillary geniuses who vomit forth praise for The Monster explain to me why this income tax thing is anything short of pure political hypocrisy. Maybe one of the rocket scientist Hillary lovers from Taylor Marsh can explain this whole thing to me. Nah, they're all over Rezko and Power calling Hillary a monster, having forgotten all about Whitewater and ignoring the accuracy of Samantha's comments in the process.

Someone, please... Tell me why it's all good for Howie Wolfson to bug Rick Lazio over tax returns when a comment from Barack transforms him into Kenny Starr?

Answers?

Apparently, enough heat has been applied to the ass of Senator Clinton that she will reveal her tax documents around April 15. I wouldn't hold my breath.

The horrible irony in all of this is that she's gone out of her way to be a sack of crap on an issue that really isn't THAT big of a deal. Why be a monster hypocrite and a slimeballer on something that is, in the big picture, relatively trivial? Why create character mountains out of personality molehills? The only thing I can come up with involves things like narcissism, self-centeredness and an inability to see or do anything that can't be gnarled and twisted into a bullshit hit and run political point.

Monster.





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Hillary's post-Potomac strategy is creepy and wrong...

Hillary Clinton's post-Potomac push provides proof positive that she shouldn't receive the Democratic nomination.

Yes, I'm aware that I went overboard with the alliteration.

Her standing as the "inevitable candidate" has eroded and she's now trailing Barack Obama in pledged delegates. In order to force a close final tally, she's focusing her efforts on Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. She doesn't have a choice, really. Those three delegate-rich states are her only apparent hope in that department.

You can't fault Hillary for holing up in Ohio (which seems to share "center of the political universe" standing with Florida over the past several years).

You can't argue that going after Pennsylvania is a bad move.

It's easy to understand why Texas may play host to a Clintonized version of the Alamo.

The three-state gambit is unavoidable.

The Democrats' proportional delegate distribution system, however, makes things very tough for Hillary. She can't just win those states--she has to win them big. It's becoming increasingly clear that she's unlikely to muster three landslides. That's why her overall strategy includes a few other wrinkles. These additional Clinton efforts provide clear evidence of why Hillary Clinton is an undesirable candidate.

Florida & Michigan

The Florida and Michigan state parties decided they wanted to move up their primaries to attract additional attention and to increase the significance of their states' electorates in choosing the presidential nominee. When they floated the idea to Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee big shots, they received a big thumbs down. The DNC told the states that they could do whatever the hell they wanted, but that a schedule change would result in a harsh penalty--the state delegations wouldn't get a seat at the national convention.

At first, I figured Dean was all bluster but it soon became clear that the DNC meant business. Florida and Michigan fully understood that early primaries would eliminate the states' influence at the national convention. The FL and MI crews went ahead with the date change anyway and candidates were advised to skip campaigning in the rogue states.

Obama (and Edwards) yanked their names off the Michigan ballot completely, an act encouraged by the DNC. Clinton kept her name on the books. No one campaigned there. In Florida, both Obama and Clinton appeared on the ballot and both candidates steered clear of the Sunshine state. Yes, there was a question about an Obama ad that appeared on some Florida televisions (apparently an unavoidable element of a larger media buy). Yes, Hillary "made her presence known" without campaigning as the Florida election approached. Overall, though, both basically ignored Florida, a delegate-less contest that lacked DNC approval. Hillary "won" both states.

Now, we could argue whether the DNC's punishment fit the crime. They could have went with a Republican compromise (the date change thing wasn't just a D issue this year) and seated only a percentage of the usual delegation. They could have negotiated some other settlement. The fact remains, however, that they did not. Florida and Michigan did what they did knowing that the early dates reduced their elections to the level of mere "beauty contests".

The candidates knew it, too. They didn't fight for votes in Michigan or Florida. Clinton didn't make appearances. Obama didn't give speeches. Hillary herself said that the contests didn't matter because there were no delegates at stake. No one ran campaign ads. Voters understood that, too. They realized that their participation would have no impact on the nomination process.

They were two meaningless elections without substance producing results that had no impact on the nomination process. It's tough to say that because real people did show up at real polls to cast real ballots, but the end results of the exercises are beyond tainted in terms of reflecting the actual positions of the states' electorates. We don't know how and if campaigning would've made a difference. We don't know how many people stayed home who would've otherwise turned out. We don't know if the unique circumstances surrounding the no-delegate elections influenced participants or if either candidates' supporters were more or less likely than the other's to bother voting in a mere exhibition match. You simply cannot take those results seriously. The gap between "come vote for a Presidential nominee" and "come vote just for the hell of it" is just too big.

This morning, however, Hillary is losing the national delegate count and she has two "wins" in the forbidden zone. That's why part of her last-ditch effort involves rallying support for the bankrupt idea of sitting the FL and MI delegations based on the beauty pageant results. That's right, the same Hillary who dismissed those renegade primaries as meaningless has now decided they should matter.

The fact that Clinton is pushing to seat delegations from states who clearly acted in violation of the DNC's mandate and didn't have "real elections" as we generally understand them is sick opportunism at best. In the process of advocating this kind of stupidity, she's also making a complete turnaround on her earlier position. It's a daily double: mendacity and hypocrisy!

The merits of the argument, however, are much less important to Clinton than the end result of winning the argument. If she could get the DNC to seat the delegations based on the tainted election returns, she gets much-needed delegates. So what if doing so is a complete pile of hogwash. It's the result that matters. The intellectual dishonesty is a moot point. The hypocrisy is insignificant. Recognizing the DNC's authority to organize the process by which it selects a candidate? Yawn. It's all about getting Hillary the delegates, baby.

Hatin' on the Caucuses

I personally think the superdelegate element of the Democratic nomination process is a grotesque abomination designed entirely to help those who already have authority within the party maintain their positions of power. That being said, it's also a ground rule for this year. It was in place before the process started and although I'd love to see it changed for the next cycle, it's not really up for debate at the moment.

It just so happens that the superdelegate component of the convention may offer more more hope for Hillary than Barack. Most indicators hint at a Clinton lead in superdelegates and her longer history as a party icon definitely won't hurt her as she tries to recruit more support.

As an Obama-backer, I should be all pissy about the way Hillary is winning the super delegate race. I should be pissed off that she's sending her daughter out on breakfast dates with supers (sort of like political daughter-pimping, huh?). I should be dismayed that Madeline Albright is calling state party activists on the phone like old pals, trying to sway supers toward Hillary. Shit, even Big Bill is working the phones on this one. I should be UPSET.

I'm not. We should change the process and decrease the potential power of the super delegates in tight elections, but I (and everyone else in the world) knew about it before things got rolling this year. It's a ground rule. Just like an absence of Michigan and Florida voters is a ground rule.

Obama has people making calls, too. He's also trying to persuade the superdelegates to vote baed on the wider election results and/or on the individual states' results. I don't know whether he'll get mileage out of that or not, but he's certainly entitled to make the argument. In the end, the supers will vote for the candidate of their choice and we can only hope they won't fuck up.

What does this super delegate thing have to do with "hatin' on the caucases"? Well, in an effort to persuade supers to back Hillary, she's arguing that they should look past the results in caucus states--or at least take them with a grain of salt:

"Mrs. Clinton’s aides said they would also argue to superdelegates that they should give less deference to a lead from Mr. Obama because much of that had been built up in states where there were caucuses, which tend to attract far fewer voters than primaries, where Mrs. Clinton has tended to do better than she has done in caucuses."

I'm not a political mathemetician, so I don't know if we can project what primary turn out would've been like compared to actual caucus turnout in many states this year. I do, however, know that an assload of people showed up (I believe the term is "record turnout") at many of the Obama-won caucuses this year.

I also remember someone with the initials HC yelling about "this is how the west was won" and explaining the significance of her primary win in Nevada to anyone who'd listen back in January. Remember that meaningless Nevada caucus? The one with the Hillary campaign-supported lawsuits? The one where Bill and Chelsea were wandering around casinos glad-handing people and acting like it was the Biggest Moment in American Political History? Yeah, that one. "This is how the west was won" but winning the west, it seems, no longer means shit. It was a caucus. No biggie. (I suppose that sunk in with Clinton when the math showed she lost the delegate count by one, huh?)

Mark Penn, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, and the only guy in the room crazy enough to even breathe the name "Walter Mondale" during a campaign conference call, took advantage of a few seconds when at least one of his feet wasn't in his mouth to utter:

“I think for superdelegates, the quality of where the win comes from should matter in terms of making a judgment about who might be the best general election candidate”.

Apparently my Kansas caucus doesn't measure up to Penn's standards. The quality of our caucus doesn't rival the polls of Virginia and their non-caucus primar--oh shit, she got her ass kicked there, too, didn't she?

Yes, it's true. Hillary has done better in "line up at the polls" states than in caucus states. That's true. A good portion of that success, however, is probably more attributable to the nature of the states in question and the campaigns conducted in those states than it is to the actual methodology of decision making. Pretending as if it makes sense for supers to look down their Democratic noses at caucuses and the caucus-goers who attend them is pure silliness.

And this whole thing about supers choosing based on the best general election candidate... Mark, have you checked the Obama/McCain poll numbers lately? They're better than the Hillary/McCain numbers. Signficantly.

The Point of this Diatribe

I understand fighting to prevail in the face of massive obstacles. Hillary is fighting and I can respect that. I can understand and appreciate digging three foxholes (TX, OH, PA) and doing battle until the bitter end. I'm down with that, Hillary.

However, doing contortionist mental gymnastics in an effort to rationalize the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations doesn't play. It's nothing more than desperate opportunism. It's stinky, cheap and just the kind of behavior one doesn't want out of a President or a presidential candidate. It's beneath me and the party. It should be beneath you, too, Hillary. But it isn't. That says something.

Denigrating the caucus states in an effort to sway superdelegates is also a pile of crap. It's amazing that Clinton supporters play the "disenfranchisement" card in an effort to seat FL and MI, while Hillary is trying to woo supers by minimizing the value and meaning of caucus results. Hey, the superdelegates are out there and they're fair game. But is pissing on caucus states really the best way to get the job done? It's also a little creepy coming from someone who lauded the Iowa caucuses as a wonderful thing when they were criticized and was (temporarily) downright giddy about the Nevada caucus process. This new angle on persuading supers is sad.





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