Hillary Clinton

yallerdawg

(16,104 posts) Sat Oct 24, 2015, 02:37 PM Oct 2015

Exactly as I remember it! (Hillary Group)

We are going to be hearing this 'fractured fairy tale' and 'revisionist history' based on consequences of legislation made a couple decades ago.

Well, I remember.

I remember voting for Jimmy Carter and watching Ronald Reagan get inaugurated. I remember voting for Michael Dukakis and watching George Bush get inaugurated, a third Republican presidential term in a row!

I remember voting for William Jefferson Clinton (twice, in fact) and watching him beat an incumbent president and bring the Democratic Party back!

When you want to tell so many members of DU what happened and how it led to what we have now, please remember many of us were there, and know exactly what happened!

Rachel Maddow asked Hillary about it (transcript):

MADDOW: On – on the issue of finding a path between the left and the right, finding what’s doable and what’s not doable, I’m a true-blue liberal, and I’m allowed to say that. OK?
(LAUGHTER)

But one of the things that I have been struck by – and during the Obama administration – is that a lot of the – really, the civil rights achievements of this administration have actually been undoing things that were done in the Clinton administration.

Whether it was “don’t ask, don’t tell” or the Defense of Marriage Act or the – you know, tough on crime (ph) mandatory sentences. Former President Clinton is progressive on all those issues now…

CLINTON: Right.

MADDOW: …but the policies that he signed – for politically practical reasons – in the ’90s have taken – you know, the political mural – miracle of Barack Obama’s election and – and – and a decade of progressive activism to unwind those things to get back to zero.

And so I know that you and President Clinton are different people, and I know that – I don’t – you – you’re not responsible for what he did as president. But is your approach to civil rights issues the same as his, or is it different?

CLINTON: Well, I – I want to say a word about the – the issues you mentioned, because my – my – my take on it is slightly different.

On Defense of Marriage, I think what my husband believed – and there was certainly evidence to support it – is that there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution of the United States of America, and that there had to be some way to stop that.

And there wasn’t any rational argument – because I was in on some of those discussions, on both “don’t ask, don’t tell” and on – on DOMA, where both the president, his advisers and occasionally I would – you know, chime in and talk about, “you can’t be serious. You can’t be serious.”

But they were. And so, in – in a lot of ways, DOMA was a line that was drawn that was to prevent going further.

MADDOW: It was a defensive action?

CLINTON: It was a defensive action. The culture rapidly changed so that now what was totally anathema to political forces – they have ceded. They no longer are fighting, except on a local level and a rear-guard action. And with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, it’s settled.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is something that – you know, Bill promised during the ‘92 campaign to let gays serve openly in the military. And it’s what he intended to do.

MADDOW: Firestorm (ph). Terrible firestorm (ph).

CLINTON: And then – yeah. Oh my gosh (ph), it was the most astonishing overreaction, but – by the military, by the Congress. I – I remember being – you know, on the edge of one of those conversations, and – and so “don’t ask, don’t tell,” again, became a defensive line.

So I’m not in any way excusing them. I’m explaining them.

MADDOW: Yeah.

CLINTON: And the same with the crime bill, which was a result of a lot of reaction – particularly from poor communities, communities of color – to the horrific crime rates of the 1980s. And there was just a – a consensus across every community that something had to be done.

That went too far. First speech I gave in this campaign was about mass incarceration, and about reform of policing practices. And I think that sometimes, as a leader in a democracy, you are confronted with two bad choices. And it is not an easy position to be in, and you have to try to think, OK, what is the least bad choice and how do I try to cabin (ph) this off from having worse consequences?

My take on this, now, is we’re gonna have an election that is truly going to be, at bottom, about fundamental rights. A woman’s right to choose, defending Planned Parenthood, marriage equality, taking on the continuing discrimination against the LGBT community. You can get married on Saturday, you can get fired on Monday. Voting rights – the most profound citizenship rights that we have being blocked and undermined at every turn.

We are gonna have a very vigorous debate in this election, because the Republicans are all on record as trying to reverse and rip away the progress that has occurred.

A lot of it, because of decisions that the court has finally made – both for good and for bad. I mean, the marriage equality decision for good, the terrible gutting of the Voting Rights Act for bad. And the local activity in states against a woman’s right to choose and defunding Planned Parenthood.

This is going to be – at – at the core of this stem election.