WHERE THE DEPLORABLES ARE: The Man From Hope!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017

Interlude—The journey away from bountiful:
Long ago and far away, the first Candidate Clinton won the White House. Two times!

He did so when it had started to seem like Democrats would never get there again. In a letter in today's New York Times, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason recalls the documentary she shot as part of that first campaign.

The film appeared in 1992. It was called The Man From Hope.

In fairness, that first Candidate Clinton didn't have to run against Vladimir Putin. He didn't have to run against James B. Comey (Comey the God), who hadn't achieved godlike status yet and hadn't even served his term chasing around in search of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal.

He didn't have to run against Maureen Dowd, who didn't yet have a column. He didn't have to run against years of her previous broken-souled columns.

Alas! Along with everything else, the second Clinton had to run against twenty-four years of demonization and pseudo-scandal. She had to run in the face of the code of silence, according to which the career liberal world had never raised its voice, or really said boo, about all that demonization.

(Dearest darlings, use your heads! Careers had hung in the balance!)

All this being said, the first Candidate Clinton had to run against a pretty fair dose of The Major Dumb too. Much of its came from within the mainstream press, especially at the start of his primary campaign.

This included the invention, by the New York Times, of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal, the pseudo-scandal which gave its name to an entire era. It included a lot of silly stuff from a lot of silly people. (He said he didn't inhale!)

In the end, that first candidate prevailed. It's worth recalling some of the ways he managed to do so.

For starters, that film was called The Man From Hope, not Here Come Da Judge. As far as we know, he never offered an estimate of the number of fellow citizens who were deplorable, perhaps irredeemable, and thus on their way to Hell.

He adopted a more hopeful, welcoming tone, especially toward the tens of millions of people whose votes he hoped to attain:

He said we don't have a single person to waste. He said he wanted to work on behalf of people "who work hard and play by the rules."

His official campaign book bore this title: Putting People First. When those early attacks occurred in New Hampshire, he told Granite State voters that he would stand by them, in the face of the economic downturn, "until the last dog dies."

Years later, after two terms in the White House, he discussed his home state's white Pentecostals in his memoir, My Life. He discussed this particular home-state group long before quoting us on page 934, the climax of the book.

Long ago and far away,
we recommended that earlier portion of the first Clinton's book. As we said at the time, we think that portion of his book helps explain how the first Clinton managed to get to the White House.

It also helps us ponder the journey the liberal world has taken since then. It has been a natavistic journey—a trip away from bountiful.

Why was this ex-president talking about his home state's Pentecostals? His rumination started with his honeymoon trip to Haiti, where he and his wife observed voodoo ceremonies.

Why in the world did he bother with that? We'll let that first Clinton explain:
CLINTON (page 237): I describe my brief foray into the world of voodoo because I’ve always been fascinated by the way different cultures try to make sense of life, nature, and the virtually universal belief that there is a nonphysical spirit force at work in the world that existed before humanity and will be here when we all are gone. Haitians’ understanding of how God is manifested in our lives is very different from that of most Christians, Jews, or Muslims, but their documented experiences certainly prove the old adage that the Lord works in mysterious ways.
He said he was discussing that experience because he's always been fascinated by People Who Aren't Just Like Him!

Shortly after his honeymoo ended, this same first Clinton was campaigning all over Arkansas for the job of attorney general. He soon attended a black church event in which the Reverend Robert Jenkins was inaugurated as pastor of Morning Star Baptist:
CLINTON (page 249): As Robert got into his sermon, the temperature seemed to rise. All of a sudden an older lady sitting near me stood up, shaking and shouting, seized by the spirit of the Lord. A moment later a man got up in an even louder and more uncontrollable state. When he couldn’t calm down, a couple of the churchmen escorted him to a little room in the back of the church that held the church robes and closed the door. He continued to shout something unintelligible and bang against the walls. I turned around just in time to see him literally tear the door off its hinges, throw it down, and run out into the churchyard screaming. It reminded me of the scene at Max Beauvoir’s in Haiti, except that these people believed they had been moved by Jesus.
Already, our modern lizards are loudly complaining about this man's overt racism. In this deeply atavistic reaction, we modern liberals keep displaying our own prehistoric state. We modern liberals know very few things, but we know them amazingly well.

It's at this point in the first Clinton's book that he turns to the Pentecostals. “Not long afterward, I saw white Christians have similar experiences,” he writes, “when my finance officer...invited me to the annual summer camp meeting of the Pentecostals in Redfield, about thirty miles south of Little Rock.”

Clinton describes a life-long interest that grew from that first experience. “I made that summer camp meeting every summer but one between 1977 and 1992,” he writes. “Every year I witnessed some amazing new manifestations of the Pentecostals’ faith.”

For the record, we have no religious beliefs ourselves. Beyond that, this first Clinton isn't a Pentecostal.

Still and all, he took great interest in what he saw at those annual retreats. Did we mention the fact that this winning candidate was able to express affection and admiration for—was able to be fascinated by—People Who Weren't Just Like Him?

For Clinton, it wasn’t the ecstatic experiences of these white Pentecostals that mattered the most. In the following passage, we'd say this first Clinton reveals the breadth of spirit and curiosity that help explain how he got to the White House.

We'll highlight the main idea:
CLINTON (page 251): Far more important than what I saw the Pentecostals do were the friendships I made among them. I liked and admired them because they lived their faith. They are strictly anti-abortion, but unlike some others, they will make sure that any unwanted baby, regardless of race or disability, has a loving home. They disagreed with me on abortion and gay rights, but they still followed Christ’s admonition to love their neighbors.
They disagreed with that first Candidate Clinton on abortion and gay rights; they didn't vote for him much. But that first Clinton was able to "like and admire" Those People because of the ways he saw them living their faith.

“Besides being true to their faith, the Pentecostals I knew were good citizens,” he writes. “They thought it was a sin not to vote.” After describing a compromise he reached with Pentecostal ministers about the licensing of church-run child-care centers, Clinton concludes the rumination that began with that trip to Haiti:
CLINTON (page 252): Knowing the Pentecostals has enriched and changed my life. Whatever your religious views, or lack of them, seeing people live their faith in a spirit of love toward all people, not just your own, is beautiful to behold. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pentecostal service, don’t miss it.
Say what? This first Clinton was able to say that Those People enriched his life!

They didn't vote for this first Clinton much, but he said they'd enriched his life. He didn't tell us how they answered that GSS survey question.

Bill Clinton was portrayed as The Man From Hope. Whatever his shortcomings may have been, he knew how to see the good in Those People, The Others.

He said we didn't have a single one of Those People to waste. He didn't estimate the number of people who were on their way straight to Hell.

Not many years later, a markedly different attitude has seeped through the liberal world.

The second Candidate Clinton was forced to run against twenty-four years of demonization. Those demonizations had worked quite well, in large part because the Chaits, the Maddows, the Marshalls, the Dionnes had persistently let them stand.

She ran and hid in 2012, when they came after Susan Rice and invented the Benghazi narrative. She ran and hid in 2016, when Comey the God unsheathed his terrible swift sword and hardened the email narrative.

We're speaking here of Cable Star Maddow, not of Candidate Clinton. But along the way, the admiring attitude of that first Clinton had given way to the ugly strain in which our tribe turns to cable every night eager to gulp down the tribal gruel in which we're encouraged to dream—Yay yay yay yay!—that They'll all end up jail.

In which we're told that half of Them are headed for Hell. In which we're told it's been proven!

Bill Clinton was advertised as The Man from Hope. Seven years earlier, Geraldine Page had won an Oscar for taking The Trip to Bountiful.

In the years since 1992, we've been on a journey away from that place. We've been trained in a tribal mandate, in which we're required to loathe.

Tomorrow, we'll return to that damning question, the one on the GSS.

Tomorrow: Black and white together!

51 comments:

  1. Pentecostals are not deplorables. There is no equivalency.

    Why is Somerby cutely refusing to include Bill Clinton's first name? Why does he coyly refer to him as the First Clinton, as if Hillary is Second. It raises the implications of being second, second class, second rate, second in stature, second in ability, and so on. If that is deliberate, it is rhetorically ugly.

    Trump sparked outrage when he refused to condemn the alt-Right in Charlottesville. Clinton condemned the alt-Right during the campaign but Somerby thinks she did wrong, because she was "judgmental." Somerby is wrong-headed on this.

    The more I read Somerby, the more I dislike him. I don't know how much more of this I can stomach.

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    1. Please don't leave, dear. Who else would tell us the first name of the first candidate Clinton?

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    2. Does anyone doubt that Bill and Hillary ran together in all of Bill's elections and that she was an active participant in governing?

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    3. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953379_1953494_1953674,00.html

      Bob, Voodoo is a Satanic practice, and the Democrats are a Demonic party according to some of our holiest evangelical leaders. Evangelicals were never going to vote for Hillary. These posts are a waste.

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    4. Hillary Clinton is second in ability. That's clear.

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  2. "They disagreed with that first Candidate Clinton on abortion and gay rights; they didn't vote for him much. But that first Clinton was able to "like and admire" Those People because of the ways he saw them living their faith."

    How did we get from that educated, accepting liberal point of view to today's ignorant and rage filled pussy hat progressives?

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    1. "How did we get from that educated, accepting liberal point of view to today's ignorant and rage filled pussy hat progressives?"

      Social media ruined everything. Plus, it sounds like consultants and ghost writers were much better 30 years ago.

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    2. Bill Clinton never meet a person he didn't like. It is a major part of his charm.

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    3. Bill Clinton is the Huell Howser of American politics. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to emulate him. His gift for relating to people is likely inborn and not something that can be learned, despite his own attributions in his memoir.

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    4. Oh, puh-leez. As his own consultants used to say: it's the economy, stupid.

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    5. You do know that the economy was different in 1992? His consultants didn't say this, James Carville did. It hung as a campaign slogan in Clinton headquarters.

      All the indicators were up in 2016. Clinton did run on the economy. And she addressed the pockets where there was not increased prosperity. This idea that she didn't is stupid. It comes from Bernie and lately from Biden, who was Clinton's main surrogate addressing the economy as he criss-crossed the Midwest during the campaign.

      It is easier to run on the economy when it is in trouble and your predecessor has instituted new taxes, than when it is doing well for most people.

      Bernie's ability to create discontent about economic issues (such as trade treaties) relied largely on ignorance among his followers. Most economic analysts agree that NAFTA (for example) has been good for American businesses and employees, on balance. How many people know that?

      In 2016 it was difficult to overcome the flood of ignorant misinformation coming on all sides. It used to be Somerby railed about that ignorance and the failure of the media to address it. Now he has decided it is liberal hatred that is sabotaging us. I think it is him that is the problem.

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    6. 113 wittingly or unwittingly, you create a straw man here. No one is saying that she didn't run on the economy in 2016, the point is is that she ran on the economy and people didn't believe her. People thought she was full of s***.

      Rightly or wrongly, I think a lot of people that she counted on for votes thought she was just paying lip service when she ran on the economy. They didn't think she was really going to help them. Actually, many of them thought she was lying. As you know she was one of the most unpopular candidates in modern political history. And as you know the middle and lower class didn't do well under Obama's eight years compared to the people at the top. So you figure it out.

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    7. Clinton won in 1992 because of Ross Perot.

      The economy has been horrible in the last couple of decades. Neo-liberal globalists (both 'parties', but mostly Ds) ruined it, financialized and de-industrialized the country. It all started, in all seriousness, in 1993, with NAFTA.

      This is (for the most part) why Mr Trump won in 2016. And this is why he will, most likely, win again in 2020, provided he'll manage to kill NAFTA and other neoliberal atrocities.

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    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    11. "...provided he'll manage to kill NAFTA and other neoliberal atrocities."

      Too late. He's already handed the economy to Wall Street. And his supporters (who aren't at all turned-on by bigotry, by the way) cheered him along.

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    12. Sorry for the comical series of false starts above. My admittedly ancient phone was having Blogger issues.

      But 12:39 frames the crux very well.

      And many of the other comments here, willfully or otherwise, at once miss Somerby's point and make clear that there is little liberal interest in returning to President Bill Clinton's approach, which, unlike many that have followed, proved itself a repeatedly winning one, even if people naturally prefer to just call people they see as deplorable and irredeemable deplorable and irredeemable. I am still in awe that Hillary said those (politically-speaking) monstrously self-defeating words, not to mention that she appears drawn by denial to double down on them now. As the election results show, more than enough people were more than happy to return her judgmental favor.

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    13. Unknown,
      Only Democrats have to be politically correct in order to win elections. Why is that?

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    14. It all started, in all seriousness, in 1981, with Ronald Reagan.

      Fixed it for you.

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    15. Neoliberal globalization started in the 90s, during the Clinton/Rubin regime.

      The domestic version (indeed, often called 'reaganomics') started already in the late 70s.

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    16. It's well known that Republicans have always supported big business, global corporations, and the rich, with all the attendant legislative frameworks: anti-union, cheap labor (including illegal labor), tax cuts for the wealthy, globalist treaties like NAFTA (negotiated by Bush Sr), "trickle down" economics, destruction of Medicare/Social Security. They feigned support for the "common man " to expand their vote tallies.
      When someone says "Liberals" are the globalists, well, talk to Bernie and his supporters.
      I can't figure out what the Trump wing wants...but he sure hasn't governed as a populist. His cabinet acts like the court of Louis XIV. The "rich businessman as populist" is just another bullshit act.

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    17. Bush signed the NAFTA treaty. If he had beaten Clinton, he obviously would have signed the bill from Congress approving the treaty, just like Clinton did. (Perot opposed it) The bills to approve the treaty passed the House by a 234-200 vote. Republicans voted 132-42 in favor; democrats, 102 for, 156 against. The Senate passed it 61-38. Republicans Y-34, N-10; Democrats Y-27, N-28. The overwhelming consensus of economists, apparently, is that overall, NAFTA has been a plus for the US. (Someone once characterized economics as the 'dismal science' which I agree with except for the part about it being a science). NAFTA has helped some and hurt some in the US. NAFTA only affects trade with Mexico and Canada, not the rest of the world. Apparently, Mao believes that neo-Liberal globalization is mostly the Democrats fault - I doubt that. Question I have is whether this philosophy (Breitbart style?) doing away with free trade will be a panacea - I doubt it.

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    18. AC/MA, I’m confused. You had an interesting wealth of information on this subject, but some sources state that Clinton did sign the treaty, whereas Bush only signed the initial version of the treaty before it was submitted to Congress.

      It may seem a minor point in the context of this argument, but it seems that Clinton did sign it into law.

      Leroy

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    19. Never mind AC/MA, I didn't read your post carefully enough.

      Leroy

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    20. "Clinton won in 1992 because of Ross Perot."

      When an incumbent President running for re-election gets 37% of the vote he/she has no one to blame but themself.

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  3. Somerby's theme is that the right hates immigrants and minorities while the left hates the right. I don't think this is true.

    I don't see a well-funded leftwing industry flooding media with false information about individuals on the right. I saw Hillary (and Obama before her) largely focusing on issues while being ruthlessly attacked on a personal level. I realize that there is a kind of observer bias inherent to such judgments, but objective analyses confirm my impression about this. The left doesn't match the right when it comes to hating.

    Contrary to Somerby's accusations, I believe that is because the left holds different values than the right. I don't think hating is fun for us and I don't recall ever turning to the internet thinking yay yay yay more dirt on Republicans today! I turn to the internet each morning with trepidation not glee.

    I don't understand why Somerby has become such a self-hating liberal. Maybe he is just having a late-stage identity crisis about human nature, but it is upsetting to be accused of something you haven't done. And I don't think the left deserves this continual excoriation.

    I suggest that Somerby needs to go on a retreat, maybe to Walden Pond, and come back a changed man with a less bitter perspective on the left.

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    1. Somerby reads and listens to Right-wing stereotypes (lies) about the Left, and believes them.
      In the past, he used to call out Right-wing bullshit.

      Reminds me of the line from the Clash song "Death or Glory".
      "I believe in this, and it's been proven by research, that he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

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  4. Sorry. I have no interest in people who choose to be uninformed and refuse to perform their basic responsibilities required in a democray. If America falls apart, its no fault but our own.

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  5. The left doesn't match the right when it comes to hating.

    Hahaha! Anyone who doesn't vigorously cheer on the practice of giving hormones to prepubescent children is labeled a vile hater by this modern left.

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    1. "...giving hormones to prepubescent children..."

      It's called "corporate farming".

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  6. I will point out that liberals have been called atheists, traitors, communists, terrorists by conservative politicians and media FOR DECADES, but we mustn't say mean stuff to them, cause they're the "real America" or some such self-fellating bullshit.

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  7. "We've been trained in a tribal mandate, in which we're required to loathe."

    Sorry Bob, but religious people like Jerry Falwell told me that the Clintons are MURDERERS. And talk radio told me Democratic leaders are DEMONcrats. So I had no choice but to vote to elect President Pussygrabber along with 81% of my fellow evangelicals.

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    1. I confess, I do loathe Trump. Does that make me bad? Can you point me to the nearest Pentecostal church so I can atone, preferably with snakes.

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    2. It's ok to loathe Trump, nobody's perfect. But just make sure you vote against the DEMONIC Democrats, from the party captured by Satan. This is what our great evangelical leaders have been telling us to do from decades. Perhaps Bob can call up Bill Clinton and get you a list of Pentecostal churches in your area.

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  8. In 1974 Bill Clinton lost as the Democratic nominee running for the U.S. House seat from Arkansas's 3rd district. Subsequently, Clinton won his first elected office as Arkansas's Attorney General in 1976.

    [LINK] (audio autoplays)

    Jon Wiener ["host and producer of 'Start Making Sense,' The Nation’s weekly podcast"]: [12:22] Now we want to talk about Hillary in Haiti. It's a long term relationship and a revealing one. For that we turn to Amy Wilentz, she's an award winning journalist, novelist, and writer.

    Her book Farewell, Fred Voodo: A Letter From Haiti won the National Book Critic's Circle Award for 2014. She also wrote The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier. Her other work has received the Whiting Writer's Award, the PEN Martha Albrand Non-Fiction Award, and The American Academy's Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award. She publishes widely and she's a long time contributing editor at The Nation. Amy Wilentz, welcome back.

    Amy Wilentz: Glad to be here John.

    Wiener: Hillary and Bill say that Haiti has a special place in their hearts and has had for more than thirty years. Why is that?

    Wilentz: Yeah, they got there even before I did...

    Wiener: [laughs]

    Wilentz: ...they went for their honeymoon in 1975, and their host was an executive with CitiBank. CitiBank has a long record in Haiti dating from the days where it was called the National City Bank and was a primary reason why the American occupation began and that was a nineteen year, no, a twenty-nine year occupation of Haiti, a [U.S.] Marine occupation. [CMike- It was a nineteen year occupation, 1915 to 1934.]

    So this is a big player on the Haitian scene, and so when Bill and Hillary went they met all sorts of people who had done business with National City and CitiBank there and those were their original roots in Haiti. And of course, they were seduced by Haiti, because it is a very seductive country.

    Wiener: I just find it astounding that for their honeymoon they were guests of CitiBank....

    Nothing to see here citizens. Move along.

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    1. The connections here are so loose it is hard to know where to start. This is weirder than anything David in CA or Mao write. This is "Obama is in the CIA" weird. It is Illuminati weird. You are not living on the same planet as normal people and if you believe this stuff, it is no wonder you are chanting "lock her up" along with the Trumpies. And you clearly don't belong here spewing this kind of idiocy. I don't know where the Bros hang out these days, but they will really appreciate your insights, guaranteed.

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    2. You know Bernie honeymooned in Russia, right? Who does that make him connected with? Inquiring minds want to know.

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    3. 1:01 AM you write:

      You are not living on the same planet as normal people and if you believe this stuff...

      Believe what stuff, what Wilentz reported? Looks to me like her credentials are solid.

      1:03 AM,

      Does this fairly describe the unusual circumstances of the then forty-six year old Bernie Sanders' honeymoon for his second marriage? (If yes, what's your point?) (LINK):

      [QUOTE] The trip took place while Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vt., from 1981 to 1989. Toward the end of his mayoral tenure, the small city on Lake Champlain launched a sister-city program with Yaroslavl, located 160 miles northeast of Moscow.

      The program, which is still operating today, has facilitated exchanges between the two cities involving "mayors, business people, firefighters, jazz musicians, youth orchestras, mural painters, high school students, medical students, nurses, librarians and the (Yaroslavl) ice-hockey team," according to its website.

      Along with sister-city relationships with Bethlehem in the West Bank and Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, the Yaroslavl program was part of Sanders’ unorthodox attempt to take on international issues from a small city in New England. Sanders also actively pursued his agenda outside of the country, writing letters to world leaders and even traveling to Cuba to meet with the mayor of Havana.

      "Burlington had a foreign policy," he wrote in his 1997 book Outsider in the House, "because, as progressives, we understood that we all live in one world."

      The bond between Burlington and Yaroslavl solidified when Sanders and his wife, as members of a 12-person delegation from Burlington, paid their Soviet counterparts a visit in 1988.

      The timing of the trip was unusual. Bernie and Jane were married May 28, 1988. The delegation left Burlington the next day.

      "Trust me," Sanders writes in the book. "It was a very strange honeymoon."

      When reached for comment, Sanders’ campaign said that the dates for the trip had already been set, and the couple "set their wedding date to coincide with that trip because they didn't want to take more time off."

      In a 2007 interview, Jane Sanders also recalled the peculiar timing: "The day after we got married, we marched in a Memorial Day parade, and then we took off in a plane to start the sister city project with Yaroslavl with 10 other people on my honeymoon."

      ...the Soviet Union was barely intact at the time of the trip.

      Negotiations had opened up between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a few years earlier. "It was at the beginning of perestroika," said Michael Briggs, a spokesman for the Sanders campaign, referring to the restructuring policy Gorbachev instituted in the mid 1980s.

      Gulags still existed and political prisoners were still held in 1988, said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. But a watershed moment came when Gorbachev allowed physicist Andrei Sakharov to return from internal exile two years earlier.

      "The power of the Communist Party was being questioned and the confrontation with the West was winding down through negotiations," Cohen said. [END QUOTE]

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    4. Nothing to see here citizens. Move along.

      We're so fortunate to have such an intrepid "progressive" Bernie Bro reporter here to help us see past the entire lifetime achievements of the Clintons, to help us understand it was all an act when in reality they went into public service to help Citibank in gratitude for their honeymoon. Don't be fooled by all the good they have done for the most needy in our country all those years. Just remember this ambiguous story about their honeymoon more than 40 years ago. Thanks, CMike, you jackass.

      Were you even alive in 1992?
      Were you working then, trying to raise a family, pay a mortgage, improve your life?

      You have any idea how wonderful it was back then going into 12 years of Reagan/Bush rule? Let me tell you son, it was real peachy.

      You remind me of the Swiftboat attacks on Secretary Kerry when they attacked his Vietnam service record as all a phony act as part of an elaborate long term plan to someday run for president. Christ.

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    5. Mm,

      You seem to think by calling me "son" and asking me if I was alive in 1992 you are establishing yourself as some sort of an authority in the context of this discussion. Yet, in a previous thread it was established that I have a clearer recollection than you do of the politics surrounding the Vietnam War, so what you actually are establishing is that you don't pay attention to what's being said in the conversations you participate in and/or that your powers of recollection are weak.

      I have grown up and lived as a member of the middle or working class all of my life. I find it odd that a financier (like, say, Edwin Edwards LINK) would invite a young married couple to join him in Hatii as his guests, a young married couple whose careers up until that time had consisted largely of their being stellar students,* and who were not contemplating careers in finance, and who as a couple were, most certainly, at that time committed to one another as monogamists. As an aside, what the Clintons had shown an interest in back then was working in and around the field of politics.

      Mm, what's the most generous thing a passing acquaintance ever did for you since you became an adult? I'm curious because what Edwards did for the Clintons back in 1975 is completely beyond my experience as a middle class person.
      ________________
      * The Clintons were married in 1975. Hillary Clinton graduated from Yale Law School in 1972, Bill Clinton graduated from there in 1973.

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    6. Bill Clinton worked on Fulbright's campaigns from his high school days. Further, they were law students which could have provided access to a variety of people. Hillary's background was upper middle class.

      But what exactly is being alleged as a quid pro quo?

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    7. There is no quid pro quo, that's the genius of the system. There's a ruling class which is generous to up and comers from outside its own class but who are deemed likely to be able to serve the interests of the ruling class when these bright prospects find themselves in positions of public service.

      Looks to me like most positions as members of the boards of directors for major corporations are filled with people who bring no particular business expertise to their positions, who do not scrutinize the practices or the accounts of the companies they oversee, but who are paid tidy sums of money to attend infrequent board meetings which, wonderfully, are sometimes held at destination resorts.

      There are lots of examples of people who serve in powerful government positions when the party they are affiliated with are in office who, subsequently, find themselves serving in one or more of these board positions at a time when their party is out of power.

      David Halberstam chronicled several head-scratching examples of this phenomenon in his book War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals. LINK

      Barack Obama is on the lecture circuit these days where there is no quo in sight, just mountains of quid.

      It leaves me with the sense that was summarized best by the late George Carlin, "It's a big club, and you ain't in it." LINK

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    8. OK, so you're just mad about the way life works. So you want to mess things up fir whoever is successful. Because if they succeed they're part if the non-losersclub. Noted, but you still owe Hillary an apology because she has spent so muxh of her life helping others when she didn't have to.

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    9. I'm mad about how life works for some public servants. If some capable person wants to get rich and live the high life, they should go into business, or into a highly remunerative field in the arts or technology or one of the professions (including corporate law), not into politics or into the non-profit sector.

      If Hillary did spend much of her life selflessly helping others, getting nothing in return for her efforts in the way of wealth and celebrity, there would be no reason for me to apologize to her. What are you talking about 11:03 PM?

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    10. But you're willing to set your scruples aside when it is a matter of Bernie buying his 3rd house. Because he calls himself a socialist?

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    11. CMike, I really don't know what your game is here. I'm just going to tell you that in my considerable experience and observation, it really does matter which party wins. This is obvious on it's face.

      It mattered in 1960, and it mattered in 1980 and it mattered in 2000 and it sure as fuck mattered in 2016 to the working class.

      The republicans stole a supreme court justice and now owns a 5/4 majority because the Democratic candidate lost. As a result, the SC has already let it be known that they will not interfere with the State of Texas ongoing voter suppression tactics. I guess you just don't give a fuck about that.

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    12. I think CMike is a troll. He rarely states any opinion at all, most quotes lengthy stuff from publications and attacks Hillary. I haven't seen him even attack any of the other so-called corporatist Democrats. In CA, these would include Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris (our bright star) not just Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi (the women the left loves to hate, for some reason). In CA, we understand that business and industry are essential to our viability and we try to nurture them while also protecting the people of the state via humane and progressive laws. We are a good model for the nation, in my opinion. We don't follow any of Bernie's precepts and Bernie was successful largely in Berkeley and on campuses and much less so anywhere else. My Bernie-supporting friends acknowledged that his programs were unrealistic -- because CA is a realistic state living in the real world. And we couldn't enact single-payer because we couldn't figure out how to pay for it. CMike would be majorly out-of-step anywhere but Berkeley and might find considerable frustration there too, since they are not idiots. If the progressive revolution isn't happening here, it isn't going to happen anywhere else, except maybe on a commune in Vermont.

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  9. Same old social-liberal rubbish from Corporatist Bob. Zzzzzzzzzzzz......

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  10. Bob seems to have a problem here coming right out and deploring Hillary for "deplorables." Wonder why!
    Anyway, this is useful and better than Bob often does these days.

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  11. I attended a right wing church when I was younger (in the late 70's and early 80's) and those people have changed radically. They used to actually believe and live by what they preach. They would have never voted for a thrice married, draft dodger, who literally cheated every person who was foolish enough to trust him enough to do business with him. 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump and a group of people who two years ago believed that a leader who had a messy personal life was unfit, now say who cares. They are total hypocrites and that isn't Hillary's fault.

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