Re: [Marxism] Doug Henwood Dispatches Hillary and Her New Book to Remainder Bin of History | Washington Babylon

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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On 9/25/17 11:56 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Marxism wrote:

But the last year has seen the US political establishment turn aside those 
attacks and force the Trump administration to pursue the neolib and neocon 
policies - as HRC would have done. In that sense, she won. —CGE



Carl, you are the mirror image of the people who signed the Progressives 
for Obama open letter in 2007 except in this instance you seem to be 
making the case ex post facto for "Progressives for Trump". I can see 
the names already on that statement: Diana Johnstone, Boris Kagarlitsky, 
Mike Whitney and Slavoj Zizek. I'd come up with other names but more 
important work beckons.

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Re: [Marxism] Doug Henwood Dispatches Hillary and Her New Book to Remainder Bin of History | Washington Babylon

[Carl G. Estabrook via Marxism]

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Clinton was surely a bad candidate, but Trump was the first major party 
candidate in 40 years to attack the neoconservative and neoliberal policies 
(more war and more inequality, respectively) followed by all recent 
administrations, notably Obama's.

But the last year has seen the US political establishment turn aside those 
attacks and force the Trump administration to pursue the neolib and neocon 
policies - as HRC would have done. In that sense, she won. —CGE


> On Sep 25, 2017, at 10:19 AM, Andrew Stewart via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
> http://washingtonbabylon.com/3128-2/
> 
> Doug Henwood Dispatches Hillary and Her New Book to Remainder Bin of History
> Doug Henwood
> September 25, 2017
> I’m late getting to this review. It’s partly because, unlike most reviewers, 
> I didn’t have a free pre-publication copy of Hillary’s awful book and had to 
> pay good money for it myself. [Editor’s note: We’ll pay for it, but it could 
> reduce your fee by a negligible amount. If anyone wants to pay for Doug’s 
> book let him or me know.] And when I read it, I was overcome with boredom and 
> despair and couldn’t imagine writing a standard review. But since I wrote a 
> Harper’s cover story that turned into a book on Hillary I felt like I had to 
> do it. But I’m not sure I can.
> 
> Were I to write a standard review, I might recall some of my history with 
> HRC. When I started doing research for the Harper’s article in the summer of 
> 2015, I was on a secret email list for liberal pundits called the Cabalist. I 
> was recruited as an ideological diversity hire. Never a good fit from the 
> first, relations between me and the Cabalisters deteriorated as I shared my 
> feelings about their favored candidate. I said, ideology aside, she was a 
> terrible candidate—a bad and widely un-liked politician, one whose poll 
> numbers usually fell with increased exposure, with a million scandals just 
> waiting to blow up at any minute. Add to that her miserable ideology—she 
> believed in nothing but tweaking the status quo in profoundly tedious 
> ways—and they might come to regret signing on to her still-unannounced 
> campaign.
> 
> Saying this provoked intense fury. I was accused of enabling Ted Cruz (Trump 
> was still a gleam in his own eye). When I asked them to convince me 
> otherwise, they reacted with fury, but no answers. If these Democrats—mostly 
> liberals, whatever it means to be a liberal today—whose business was making 
> and analyzing political argument, including one who wrote a book about 
> Hillary (or, more precisely, about her feelings about Hillary) couldn’t make 
> a case for her, then who could?
> 
> I was right, of course. As was everything I subsequently wrote about her—the 
> emptiness of her campaign, her shittiness as a politician, her fealty to 
> convention, all of which contributed to her disgraceful loss to the 
> abominable Trump.
> 
> Were I to write a real review, I might also point to Jonathan Allen and Amie 
> Parnes’ Shattered, the story of her dismal, meandering campaign and its 
> hilarious depictions of her staff desperately trying to invent reasons for 
> her running and coming up empty. That, and their neglect of traditional 
> campaigning strategies like polling in crucial states and knocking on 
> people’s doors and reliance instead on preposterous statistical models that 
> turned out to be fantastically wrong.
> 
> Hillary raises some of these issues in What Happened only to deny them. She 
> did have a reason for running, she assures us: because she loves to help 
> people, particularly women and children. And she did have a viable campaign 
> strategy—it’s just that no one noticed it and it proved unviable. She 
> concedes she’s deeply unpopular and untrustworthy, but just can’t understand 
> why. Several times she takes responsibility for the campaign’s mistakes—not 
> an easy thing for her to do, as anyone past the intro level of Hillary 
> Studies knows—but never for more than a sentence or three, as she quickly 
> moves from the confessional mode to blaming Comey, the Russians, the emails, 
> and misogyny. Nothing is ever really her fault; decks are always stacked 
> against her.
> 
> A few words on the misogyny question: there’s no doubt that Hillary has 
> suffered from loads of vile, sexist attacks over the decades. It’s hideous 
> stuff. But she and her acolytes have used this to deflect any legitimate 
> criticisms of her politics or personality. And her habit of making herself 
> into the rightful heir of the long and admirable line of American feminist 
> struggle since Seneca Falls is annoying and deceptive. 

[Marxism] Doug Henwood Dispatches Hillary and Her New Book to Remainder Bin of History | Washington Babylon

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

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http://washingtonbabylon.com/3128-2/

Doug Henwood Dispatches Hillary and Her New Book to Remainder Bin of History
Doug Henwood
September 25, 2017
I’m late getting to this review. It’s partly because, unlike most reviewers, I 
didn’t have a free pre-publication copy of Hillary’s awful book and had to pay 
good money for it myself. [Editor’s note: We’ll pay for it, but it could reduce 
your fee by a negligible amount. If anyone wants to pay for Doug’s book let him 
or me know.] And when I read it, I was overcome with boredom and despair and 
couldn’t imagine writing a standard review. But since I wrote a Harper’s cover 
story that turned into a book on Hillary I felt like I had to do it. But I’m 
not sure I can.

Were I to write a standard review, I might recall some of my history with HRC. 
When I started doing research for the Harper’s article in the summer of 2015, I 
was on a secret email list for liberal pundits called the Cabalist. I was 
recruited as an ideological diversity hire. Never a good fit from the first, 
relations between me and the Cabalisters deteriorated as I shared my feelings 
about their favored candidate. I said, ideology aside, she was a terrible 
candidate—a bad and widely un-liked politician, one whose poll numbers usually 
fell with increased exposure, with a million scandals just waiting to blow up 
at any minute. Add to that her miserable ideology—she believed in nothing but 
tweaking the status quo in profoundly tedious ways—and they might come to 
regret signing on to her still-unannounced campaign.

Saying this provoked intense fury. I was accused of enabling Ted Cruz (Trump 
was still a gleam in his own eye). When I asked them to convince me otherwise, 
they reacted with fury, but no answers. If these Democrats—mostly liberals, 
whatever it means to be a liberal today—whose business was making and analyzing 
political argument, including one who wrote a book about Hillary (or, more 
precisely, about her feelings about Hillary) couldn’t make a case for her, then 
who could?

I was right, of course. As was everything I subsequently wrote about her—the 
emptiness of her campaign, her shittiness as a politician, her fealty to 
convention, all of which contributed to her disgraceful loss to the abominable 
Trump.

Were I to write a real review, I might also point to Jonathan Allen and Amie 
Parnes’ Shattered, the story of her dismal, meandering campaign and its 
hilarious depictions of her staff desperately trying to invent reasons for her 
running and coming up empty. That, and their neglect of traditional campaigning 
strategies like polling in crucial states and knocking on people’s doors and 
reliance instead on preposterous statistical models that turned out to be 
fantastically wrong.

Hillary raises some of these issues in What Happened only to deny them. She did 
have a reason for running, she assures us: because she loves to help people, 
particularly women and children. And she did have a viable campaign 
strategy—it’s just that no one noticed it and it proved unviable. She concedes 
she’s deeply unpopular and untrustworthy, but just can’t understand why. 
Several times she takes responsibility for the campaign’s mistakes—not an easy 
thing for her to do, as anyone past the intro level of Hillary Studies 
knows—but never for more than a sentence or three, as she quickly moves from 
the confessional mode to blaming Comey, the Russians, the emails, and misogyny. 
Nothing is ever really her fault; decks are always stacked against her.

A few words on the misogyny question: there’s no doubt that Hillary has 
suffered from loads of vile, sexist attacks over the decades. It’s hideous 
stuff. But she and her acolytes have used this to deflect any legitimate 
criticisms of her politics or personality. And her habit of making herself into 
the rightful heir of the long and admirable line of American feminist struggle 
since Seneca Falls is annoying and deceptive. There’s nothing feminist about 
having supported welfare reform, mass incarceration, and every episode of 
imperial war in modern American history.

Were I to write a real review, I could devote hundreds, even thousands of words 
to these matters, and countless others I haven’t even touched on. One could 
spend a paragraph or two analyzing a sentence like this: “I started calling 
policy experts, reading thick binders of memos, and making lists of problems 
that needed more thought.” I could make fun of the fact that she nicknamed her 
campaign van “Scooby.” Or mock her claim that she wrote this lifeless tome at 
her kitchen table.

But I don’t want to do that. What I want to do is draw attention to