Holy Far Reach, Batman! This is really out there in left field! In fact, it’s so far out there, that it’s left the stadium and was last seen leaving the stratosphere, this newest CT by Steve Bannon and Jason Miller, and headed for the moon.
Back story first: Hillary Clinton is teaching an online Master Class, the “Power of Resilience. In the class recently, she read the acceptance speech that she intended to give in 2016, had she won, as confetti in the shape of glass shards was supposed to fall from the ceiling of the Jacob Javits Center and Hillary would have made history as the first woman to break the glass ceiling and be elected president of the United States. As you are painfully aware, that didn’t happen that night, something horrible and unthinkable did instead.
The New York Times and other outlets reported the Master Class tidbit late last week. Right-wingnuttia got hold of it and here’s the spin they’ve doctored.
Bannon asked Jason Miller why Hillary Clinton would choose now to read the 2016 victory speech that she was never able to give. Miller said she is running for president in 2024: “She’s circling around Joe Biden almost like a buzzard looking at a carcass on the ground.” pic.twitter.com/sGZza4Beb5
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 13, 2021
Listening to these two spew Hillary hatred brings back memories. Hillary was the victim of what she termed “the vast right-wing conspiracy” which trashed her for 20 years. Never has a wonky scholar who loves children been depicted as the abject monster that we have seen Hillary characterized as. It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic and if the disaster that it led to, i.e. the election of Donald Trump, wasn’t continuing to haunt us to this day.
What a blast from the past, Miller and Bannon venting their venomous spleens. The speech has aroused interest on other levels, besides whack-a-mole CT.
For scholars of the American presidency, the speeches candidates prepare and then discard on election night can be fascinating, Professor Jamieson said, adding that she would have loved to have read the victory speeches prepared by Barry Goldwater, Hubert H. Humphrey and George McGovern, among other losing candidates.
“There’s always a curiosity about where we were about to go, or what we were about to experience,” she said. The speeches, she said, hint at “the course not taken.”
Tim Hogan, a former spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said on Twitter that watching her read the speech and choke up “has me sobbing right now.”
Others were not as moved.
“I’m not sure 1) Why Hillary Clinton is teaching a ‘MasterClass’ on anything or 2) Why MasterClass is selling access to watch her cry while reading her 2016 victory speech that was all for naught,” Spencer Brown, a managing editor of the conservative website townhall.com, wrote on Twitter.
Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster and a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, said that reading the speech was simply a way to promote the class.
“She has a product to sell, a new product, and it’s clear that she thinks reading what would have been her 2016 acceptance speech is the best way to sell that product,” Mr. Hobart said. “I don’t think it’s really anything more than that.”
So now she’s being compared to Trump, doing a branding exercise and scraping for cash. Dear God. But one thing that is consistent, is that no matter what Mrs. Clinton does, somebody is going to impute the worst possible motives to it. This we have seen, this does not surprise us. The surprise would be if she was simply accepted as an elder statesman and former presidential nominee sharing something of value, without all the derisive commentary. Don’t hold your breath.
IMHO, Mrs. Clinton was the best qualified person to be our President, ever. She has vast experience with being First Lady of AR, Senator from NY, First Lady of US, and Secretary of State. No one has had a resume like that. I also saw the residual hate that some had for her husband and I realized she would be made impotent by them, should she gain the Presidency.
What’s most distressing about all the hatred directed towards Hillary is the number of “progressives” who were ready and willing to get into the proverbial bed with right-wing extremists to work against Hillary. (It wasn’t unlike the feminist movement in the 1980s which joined up with the Religious Right in an anti-porn campaign.)