Republicans continue fueling the pathetic narrative that Hillary is a person of bad character, a perception they have striven so hard, so consistently, and over so many decades to create. A recent Wall Street Journal column by the conservative writer, Peggy Noonan, threw more accelerant on that fire, roasting Hillary as a person of overweening ambition. Noonan, referring to a Fox News poll, averred that Hillary would do anything to be president. According to Noonan, Hillary needs to be in the limelight because otherwise she would be reduced to watching tv alone at home.
If her lifelong record of public service shows anything, it shows that watching tv alone is one place she would not be.
Republicans liked Hillary well enough when she was running the State Department. They gave her a bit of a break when she was merely a woman who had devoted her life to working for human rights, children, health, and educational opportunity, while furthering the international interests of the U.S. They liked her when she was an effective Senator working across partisan lines. But, now that she's threatening to win the White House, their "character" line of attack has been revived: polls showing her "high negatives", polls reflecting in good part the vitriol they have heaped on her over the years, prove, they say, the "fact" that she is a "magnet for controversy". So, this twisted narrative continues, if citizens vote for her, it will only be because Trump is worse.
The implication, often explicitly stated, is that even if she should win by a landslide, she will have no mandate to govern. But I am encouraged and amused by a Republican friend's recent words: "If she does prevail, it will be important for her to show bipartisanship by including some of us in her Administration."
Bipartisanship requires movement on BOTH sides. When are Republicans in Congress going to move towards Democratic positions? And, unlike Trump, Hillary and the Democratic Platform very clearly set out their detailed policy proposals on everything from massive jobs growth to climate change.
New York Magazine
Let's work to ensure voters elect Hillary to the White House and a controlling Democratic majority of the Senate to create a real mandate for change that Republicans in Congress will have to recognize.
####
September 8, 2016
