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“Likable” Bernie: Hillary doesn’t think so — 30 Comments

1. You are absolutely on target to Hillary with her own description of Bernie!

2. And what on earth did she get done about which she might feel genuinely proud?

   neo: Perhaps you are unaware that Hillary set records as Secretary of State for miles flown (almost one million!) and countries visited (112!).

   Deep vein thrombosis from air travel is no laughing matter. Hillary was putting her body on the line!

   The Atlantic celebrated Hillary’s time as SoS:

   Clinton’s time at State will be remembered for many reasons, but one of them is this: The secretary, despite all the telecommuting options available to her, reinforced the power of being there — in a place, in a context, in a moment. She reminded the world that Woody Allen was right even when it comes to diplomacy: 80 percent of success really is simply showing up.

   https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/hillary-clinton-traveled-956-733-miles-during-her-time-as-secretary-of-state/272656/

   As Arthur Miller wrote in “Death of a Salesman”:

   Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.

3. I am shocked Hil dosent adore Bern he is just her type, older dude Leftist, honeymooned in Moscow, did the Russian reset before it was cool. I mean wasnt she just over the moon about Alinsky? Easily she is the most un accomplished person to rise so high in the Lefty pantheon second only to the One.

4. The tractor in the ad is overheating, it’s so excited!

5. I probably saw that Ike commercial as a 3 year-old. I have no memory of it. Interesting that it markets him with less substance than was in any Pepsi Cola commercial.

   I don’t think Obama in that clip appears unlikeable, despite my extreme disdain for the man.

   Hillary just plain hates.

6. Bernie doesn’t really want to be president – but he uses the primary process to build his movement. He’s succeeding in that. If the Democrats take power in 2020, the Bernie Bros and sisters will exercise some clout in national policy.

   By the way Hillary: “nobody likes him” ?????? How about AOC and her squad sisters ?

7. Ira:

   I find him repellent in that clip: a venomous comment cloaked in superficial politeness; the shiv in the back while he keeps a pleasant face all the while counting on his own supposed “likability.”

   And according to this article, anyway (for what it’s worth), quite a few voters felt the same way, at least for a time.

   Trump is a lot meaner, of course – but he’s upfront about it and doesn’t pretend to be doing anything other than being nasty when he’s actually being nasty. I much prefer that more honest approach.

8. Actually, she’s satisfactory in that clip. I don’t find BO offensive either.

9. Since time has moved us on it is interesting to look again at their dynamics. I find Obama odious in these clips, shuffling papers looking bored, seeming to be well aware how much Mr & Mrs Clinton loath him , it s in his body language. To me she seems to come across as vulnerable, looking for sympathy(?) perhaps.

10. First, the Hillary clip, she has that smug, self-satisfied smirk as her mouth makes noise and then at the end that bobble-head movement, a trademark of hers that sets my teeth on edge. Her reputation both as first lady of Arkansas and then in the White House was that of a shrew, a disaster in the way she treated those beneath her, she was never a nice person except to those who she could use.

    Now, I remember the “I Like Ike” songs and buttons and both parties approached him about running for president. He was the successful General who led the Allies to Victory in WWII, it was easy to “Like Ike” and for us grade school kids the song was easy and fun to sing.

11. Art Deco:

    I agree that it’s one of Hillary’s better moments – actually, a rare good moment. She’s actually relatively “likable” in that clip.

    But I’ve already said what I think of Obama there.

12. Huxley:
    Regarding Hillary’s extensive travels, Carly said it best:

    “Like Mrs. Clinton I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles but flying and traveling is an activity, it’s not an accomplishment . . .”

13. “Nobody likes him…”
    Holy ROTFL

    “Nobody wants to work with him…”
    ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!!!

    “[H]e got nothing done…”
    Outtasight Hillary. Simply AMAZING!!!

    “It’s all just baloney”
    Stop it, for the love of Pete, stop it, I’m going to explode, I’m going to die laughing right here, right now. STOP IT HILL!!

    [Having recovered—miraculously—hours later…]

    …Someone should really give Hillary some basic irony training. Immediately.
    (Bill, where have you been all these years? There’s a dire and desperate need here and for Zeus’s sake, she’s YOUR WIFE.)

    Suggested syllabus:
    – Basics of Irony 101 (What/Why/When used)
    – Recognizing Irony 101 (+ how irony differs from projection)
    – Employing Irony 101 (+ uses of)
    – Analyzing Irony 101 (Philosophy credit)
    – Appreciating Irony 101 (Aesthetics credit)
    – Responding to Irony 101 (includes basic breathing exercises / Qigong)
    – Dos and Don’ts of Irony 101 (course review and wrap up)
    – Pumping Irony 101 (Phys. Ed. credit)
    – Taking it to the streets (practical applications and real-time exercises)

    DO IT, Bill. Sign her up NOW!!

14. Cap’n Rusty on January 21, 2020 at 3:24 pm said:
    Huxley:
    Regarding Hillary’s extensive travels, Carly said it best:

    “Like Mrs. Clinton I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles but flying and traveling is an activity, it’s not an accomplishment . . .”
    * * *
    I am reminded of the old joke about the job hunter who was asked if he really had 10 years experience in the field, or just 1 year repeated 10 times.

15. “It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

    My favorite part. The lady who warned us about the vast right wing conspiracy is now warning us about getting sucked into Bernie’s baloney.

16. OldTexan on January 21, 2020 at 3:09 pm said:

    Now, I remember the “I Like Ike” songs and buttons and both parties approached him about running for president. He was the successful General who led the Allies to Victory in WWII, it was easy to “Like Ike” and for us grade school kids the song was easy and fun to sing.
    * * *
    I wasn’t doing politics in those days, being less than a year old when the election was held, but I got here as fast as I could…

    If it’s true both parties wanted him, it seems to me that Eisenhower had a great advantage in the election over the Democratic candidate (and that would have applied to any of the contenders), because Stevenson’s own party had already admitted he was their second choice. However, the attempt to draft Ike for the Donkeys was unsuccessful and not a widely spread position.

    https://www.dwighteisenhower.net/partisanship-and-ideology

    No one knew Ike’s partisan leanings in 1948. Republicans feared he was a closet Democrat. Democrats led by Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for Ike to replace Truman as the party’s nominee in that year’s election. Ike quickly announced he was not running and said, “It is criminal to allow people to waste their votes on a candidate who is not running.” Ike was disappointed when Truman defeated Dewey.

    Truman lobbied Ike to run as a Democrat in 1952, assuming Ike was a Democrat in the Roosevelt-Truman mold. Ike declined, asking, “What reason have you to think I have ever been a Democrat? You know I have been a Republican all my life and that my family have always been Republicans.” Ike considered the Democrats too liberal on economic issues.
    Ike was asked if he was really a Republican at the 1952 convention. Ike replied that, while growing up in Abilene, the locals referred to Democrats the way they would the town drunks.

    Ike’s political inexperience led him to not understand that the South had been solidly Democratic since the Civil War. When told he shouldn’t campaign in the South, he asked, “What do you mean I’m not going into the South? I’m running for president of all the country, aren’t I? I’ll tell you, gentlemen, I’m going to go into the South right after Labor Day.” He became the first Republican to win any Southern states.

    Wikipedia doesn’t mention that draft attempt, however, and it appears that not everyone liked Ike at the time.
    Also, the shenanigans of the DNC in 2016 pale in comparison to those of 1952, by both parties.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_United_States_presidential_election

    (Republicans)
    …
    After being persuaded to run, Eisenhower scored a major victory in the New Hampshire primary, when his supporters wrote his name onto the ballot, giving him an upset victory over Taft. However, from there until the Republican Convention the primaries were divided fairly evenly between the two, and by the time the convention opened, the race for the nomination was still too close to call.
    …
    When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, Illinois, most political experts rated Taft and Eisenhower as neck-and-neck in the delegate vote totals. Eisenhower’s managers, led by Dewey and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., accused Taft of “stealing” delegate votes in Southern states such as Texas and Georgia. They claimed that Taft’s leaders in these states had unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters and put Taft delegates in their place. Lodge and Dewey proposed to evict the pro-Taft delegates in these states and replace them with pro-Eisenhower delegates; they called this proposal “Fair Play.” Although Taft and his supporters angrily denied this charge, the convention voted to support Fair Play 658 to 548, and Taft lost many Southern delegates. Eisenhower also received two more boosts, firstly when several uncommitted state delegations, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, decided to support him, and secondly when Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower, whose moderate policies he much preferred to those of Taft. The removal of many pro-Taft Southern delegates and the support of the uncommitted states decided the nomination in Eisenhower’s favor.

    However, the mood at the convention was one of the most bitter and emotional in American history. When Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois, a Taft supporter, pointed at Dewey on the convention floor during a speech and accused him of leading the Republicans “down the road to defeat,” mixed boos and cheers rang out from the delegates, and there were even fistfights between some Taft and Eisenhower delegates.
    …
    Most historians now believe that Eisenhower’s nomination was primarily due to the feeling that he was a “sure winner” against the Democrats; most of the delegates were conservatives who would probably have supported Taft if they felt he could have won the general election.
    …
    (Democrats)
    With Truman’s withdrawal, Kefauver became the front-runner for the nomination, and he won most of the primaries. Other primary winners were Senator Hubert Humphrey, who won his home state of Minnesota, while Senator Richard Russell Jr. from Georgia won the Florida primary and U.S. diplomat W. Averell Harriman won West Virginia. However, most states still chose their delegates to the Democratic Convention via state conventions, which meant that the party bosses – especially the mayors and governors of large Northern and Midwestern states and cities – were able to choose the Democratic nominee. These bosses (including Truman) strongly disliked Kefauver; his investigations of organized crime had revealed connections between Mafia figures and many of the big-city Democratic political organizations.[8] The party bosses thus viewed Kefauver as a maverick who could not be trusted, and they refused to support him for the nomination.[8]
    …
    The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago in the same coliseum the Republicans had gathered in several weeks earlier. Since the convention was being held in his home state, Governor Stevenson – who still proclaimed that he was not a presidential candidate – was asked to give the welcoming address to the delegates. He proceeded to give a witty and stirring address that led his supporters to begin a renewed round of efforts to nominate him, despite his protests. After meeting with Jacob Arvey, the “boss” of the Illinois delegation, Stevenson finally agreed to enter his name as a candidate for the nomination. </bThe party bosses from other large Northern and Midwestern states quickly joined in support. Kefauver led on the first ballot, but had far fewer votes than necessary to win. Stevenson gradually gained strength until he was nominated on the third ballot.
    

    So, Hillary is looking to be the new Stevenson, is she?
    Maybe she was channeling Adlai with her deplorables comment, but just couldn’t get the tone right.

    Known for his good nature, Stevenson was once approached by a young woman supporter, the first time that he decided to run for the president’s post. She said, “Governor, every thinking person would be voting for you”. He retorted, “Madam, that is not enough. I need a majority.”

    I thought this was amusing, given the pearl-clutching over Trump’s moral defects.

    Stevenson attracted the support of the young, emergent postwar intellectual class, however Eisenhower was seen as more appealing to Main Street. Stevenson was ridiculed in some quarters as too effeminate to be president, the staunchly conservative New York Daily News called him “Adelaide” Stevenson, even though he had a reputation as a ladies’ man and several mistresses.

17. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/21/bernie-sanders-refuses-to-defend-himself-from-hillary-attacks-my-focus-today-is-impeachment/

    Sanders, who has an established pattern of refusing to defend himself from colleagues who go after him, failed to condemn Clinton’s remarks.

    “My focus today is on a monumental moment in American history: the impeachment trial of Donald Trump,” Sanders said in a statement, according to Politico’s Holly Otterbein.

    “Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history,” he said.

    Sanders also brushed off Clinton’s remarks with a joke, according to NBC News’s Geoff Bennett, telling him, “On a good day, my wife likes me, so let’s clear the air on that one”:

18. Back to the 1952 Convention, General MacArthur was keynote speaker and endorsed Robert Taft, after locking up a bit Ike won the nomination however if Taft had won it is most likely he would have MacArthur for his running mate as V.P. and as we all know, Robert Taft died less than a year later, if he had won the presidency then of course Doug MacArthur as V.P. would have become president of the U.S.A. MacArthur a man who had not lived in the United States from 1937 until 1951 by the summer of 1953 would have been our president which would have made interesting history. 1952 was an interesting year.

19. I was too young to like Ike, but his VP was young Nixon, added so that Ike would have a better chance in Nixon’s home state of California.

    Obama’s mean comment was said in his wonderful baritone voice. It’s well known that normal people, when seeing good looking folk, assume those with good looks are “good”. I’m pretty sure a similar, but less studied and more subjective effect has many folks thinking that somebody who “sounds good”, acoustically, is saying good words.

    I really liked the way Obama sounded; while hating the way Sarah Palin sounded. I liked Palin’s policies, and opposed Obama. Was sad Obama won.

    But I still like his voice.
    I’m pretty sure I’m jealous / envious of it.

20. Re: Adlai Stevenson…

    AesopFan: I’ve been on a Kubrick kick lately and watched “Dr. Strangelove” yet again. The American president, inimitably played by Peter Sellers, was semi-bald, bespectacled and obviously based on Adlai Stevenson.

    Although Kubrick and co-screenwriter, Terry Southern (a classic sixties personality who also wrote “Candy”), were quite liberal, they named the Sellers president “Merkin Muffley,” which is (you can look it up) a double pussy reference.

    I did love the Bob Newhart-inspired dialog of Muffley breaking the news to the (very drunk) Soviet Premier Kissov that there was a little problem of renegade American bombers about to attack the USSR with nuclear weapons.

21. Re: “I like Ike”

    Do advertising slogans get any better than that? Simple, positive, memorable.

    I’m reminded of the brilliant “Raid kills bugs dead.” Which is positive (from the human point of view) as well as being simple and memorable.

    Lew Welch, a sixties Beat poet, came up with that line while he was going straight as a corporate advertising man. Welch’s big influences were Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams. It shows.

    Walt Kelly, the genius behind the “Pogo” cartoon strip, came up with “I go Pogo” in response to “I like Ike.”

22. huxley:

    “Where’s the beef?” was pretty good.

    And although I think it was a local New York City thing, the “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s” campaign was excellent, too.

    Also, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

    And although it was extremely obnoxious, “Ring around the collar” was effective, as was “My wife, I think I’ll keep her.”

    As for political slogans, I don’t remember too many, but “All the way with LBJ” (an echo of the earlier “All the way with Adlai”) was somewhat memorable because of the rhyme, although vapid. I remember Goldwater’s dreadful “In your heart you know he’s right” – dreadful because Goldwater’s appeal was definitely to brain, not heart, if he had any appeal at all.

23. I was always rather fond of “You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pep-so-dent” and “See the USA in your Chevrolet” — I don’t watch TV anymore, so don’t know if any of the new ads have any memorable jingles or catch-phrases.

    Judging from the response to the Peloton ad, I don’t think any current flack would get a pass on “My wife, I think I’ll keep her.”

24. “I remember Goldwater’s dreadful “In your heart you know he’s right” – dreadful because Goldwater’s appeal was definitely to brain, not heart, if he had any appeal at all.”

    Also, it lent itself to this: “In your guts you know he’s nuts.”

25. On ads, there was also “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin”, for soft toilet paper.
    Richard Pryor (on the comedy album … meets the SLA – with jokes about Patty Hearst), makes fun of the ad and notes that there ain’t no TP to soft for his ass.

26. I’m not placing “My wife, I think I’ll keep her” but wonder whether there’s an allusion to Henny Youngman’s old joke in there somewhere?

27. “My wife, I think I’ll keep her” was a Geritol commercial!?

    The guy sounds so much like Matthew McConaughey.

28. More than fifty years later I still can’t get “Yipes! Stripes! Beech-Nut’s got ’em” out of my head. For a gum with with fruit stripes.

    And it’s still being sold…

    Fruit Stripe is an artificially and naturally flavored fruit chewing gum with a strong yet fleeting flavor.[1] It proudly claims to be the only gum with painted-on stripes, and is packaged in zebra-striped wrappers, which also act as temporary tattoos.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_Stripe

    Yipes!

29. “My Wife” was a Geritol ad.
    Youtube queued up Mary Carpenter’s song of the same name for me, which I hadn’t heard before – although I noted it was mentioned in the comments on the ad.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tQ4vpdB-24

    Interesting to me to see that the ad was an affectionate quip by the male half of a presumed elderly couple of long-standing (although the woman looks considerably younger, it is Geritol), and she certainly isn’t displaying any hostility about it.
    In that context, it would not be offensive to me (were I the wife), because they had already passed that point in their relationship.

    In the song, Carpenter gives a decidedly less positive slant, in the mold of Friedan & Gloria “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” Steinem.
    (I have serious disagreements with both of them.)

    My take: there is nothing inherently wrong about being the homemaker who keeps things running on time, even if it involves doing things for the other half of the couple (and all of the kids), presuming he (and sometimes she) is out working. The line about “no pay raise” is probably not true in most cases; assuming the spouse is making regular career progress, a rising tide lifts both boats.
    However, if the husband in that couple, in their early years, was crowing in public about him keeping her, I would also (as the song-wife did) reconsider whether or not I wanted to keep him.

30. huxley on January 21, 2020 at 9:06 pm said:
    Re: Adlai Stevenson…

    AesopFan: I’ve been on a Kubrick kick lately and watched “Dr. Strangelove” yet again.
    * * *
    Picked up some graphics for you from a PowerLine comment thread.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/668a351403a6edce28b1db676dde652b42110a585bb3bb1d6b0837d4b0c2d208.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cef20ca3df387ab1367b600b3e1b3d242bf5a23e2a2835e589a701990e32bb32.jpg

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