Thursday Reads: Agency and Communion in the 2016 Race for President
Posted: May 12, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Dan McAdams, Donald Trump, Erik Erikson, generativity, Hillary Clinton, life stories, love and kindness, narrative research, personality psychology 53 Comments
Good Morning!!
Hillary Clinton has been making “love and kindness” a theme of her campaign for President of the U.S. In my opinion, that is not only an inspiring message, but it is also an interesting and exciting one for a political campaign.
To me, this slogan is much more inspiring than “hope and change.” Love and kindness are about reaching out to others who are in distress and helping them. It signals caring about people and relationships. But I think “love and kindness” appeals more to women than men.
And why not? After all, we’ve had more than two centuries as a country led by male presidents. Isn’t it about time that the citizens who make up the majority of the electorate had the opportunity to vote for a woman to hold the highest office in the land?
I’ve mentioned before that my focus in graduate school was on language development and specifically on the development and function of narratives across the lifespan and how they affect personality. One of the approaches that my mentor emphasized was pioneered by Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology and presently chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University.
McAdams studied the life stories of men and women and found significant differences in the ways males and females view the world and their lives. He referred to this dichotomy as “agency and communion.” Males tend to be more focused on agency, “getting ahead” and Females tend to be more interested in communion, “getting along.” In other words women are more interested in relationships than in advancing themselves and dominating others.
Of course each individual personality contains both of these characteristics. Interestingly, communion tends to increase with age in males and older women often show more agency in their personalities. This is a generalization, but there is definitely a statistically significant difference in these personality characteristics in the life stories of men and women. Whether it’s based on nature or nurture–personality is a combination of both–females and males tend to see the world and their own lives in differing ways.
Historically, personality psychologists have tried to diagram personality traits using the “interpersonal circumplex” concept. Here’s a diagram using agency and communion:
The idea is to demonstrate the various personality trait combinations that make people unique and at the same time similar to each other according to other characteristics like gender and age.
McAdams also incorporated Erik Erikson’s personality theories into his work. If you took Psychology 101, you know about Erikson’s theory of lifespan development. He argued that as people go through life, they pass through eight stages. Here’s Erickson’s final diagram of the stages he observed in people he studied:
I won’t go into this too deeply, but the ages listed on the diagram are fluid. I don’t think 65 is really “old age” anymore. McAdams has focuses quite a bit of his research on Erikson’s concept of Generativity. He has found that even very young children can experience generativity. What we’re talking about here is basically empathy for the feelings of others and taking action to reach out to and help other people.
Hillary is currently in the Generativity stage. In terms of her personality and behavior, she is nowhere near old age. She demonstrates generativity in the way she obviously cares about others and wants to help them. She especially cares about children and young people. During the campaign, she has reached out to the mayor and the people of Flint, Michigan and to mothers of young black men who were murdered. When young people have derided her at town hall meetings, she has famously said to them (paraphrasing) “You don’t have to be for me, but I will be for you.” Can you imagine Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump being capable of that kind of selflessness?
My point is that we are seeing these basic personality differences based on psychological research being clearly demonstrated in the current presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are focused on themselves as leaders of “movements” that are all about them and what they want to do. Hillary Clinton also shows a great deal of agency, of course; but the focus of her campaign has been on what she wants to do for other people and for her country as a whole. I personally find this inspiring and it makes me feel very enthusiastic about voting for Hillary.
Unfortunately, many of the people in our terrible media think “love and kindness” and caring for others are stupid, corny ideas and they mostly discount what Hillary is saying and doing and project their own ideas about “the Clintons” onto her. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how often she speaks in such positive ways about the future of our country, the media in general doesn’t believe her or care a bit about her desire to do good.
So that’s where we are today. We always knew that electing a woman president would be hard–much harder than electing a black man. Goddess only knows how long it could take to elect a black woman. But we are making progress, and if Hillary wins the presidency, we will very likely see both gradual and sudden changes in our national consciousness.
Women and people of color have learned that progress is slow; change doesn’t happen overnight, as Bernie Sanders wishes it would. But Sanders is irrelevant now; we must focus on helping Hillary defeat Donald Trump. The possibility that this ignorant, dangerous man could become president should motivate both Democrats and Republicans to work as hard as they can to defeat him.
Women, people of color, and other marginalized citizens like LGBT and disabled people can understand Hillary’s message better than the the privileged white men who presently control most of the levers of power in our country. We are the ones who will help Hillary save the country from Donald Trump. Privileged white men have a choice: they can join us or they can remain irrelevant.
Now a few reads to check out:
This piece by Charlies Pierce made me very angry yesterday, but today I see Pierce in the context of many white male journalists who simply don’t understand that white males and what excites them will not decide the 2016 election. The election will be decided by women and people of color.
I Am Not Convinced Hillary Clinton Is the Right Candidate to Take on Trump.
Let us stipulate a few things at the start. Hillary Rodham Clinton is still odds-on to be the next president of the United States. Only George H.W. Bush among modern presidents had anything close to her CV, and he never was a senator from a major state. She has been the victim of incredible abuse and the subject of fantastical lies ever since she first stepped onto the public stage in Arkansas. She is as tough and durable a political figure as any we’ve seen with the possible exception of the guy she married and the guy that has the job now. Electing a woman to be president of the United States is a genuinely big honking historic deal. Electing this particular woman president of the United States is the only sane and plausible choice available….
I would also stipulate the following—as a presidential candidate, as a seeker of votes, as an applicant for the world’s most powerful temp position, for the second time in a row, she’s proving to be something of a mediocrity….
HRC is a plodder. There’s nothing wrong with that. Many great politicians have been plodders; it can be argued that—his ability to galvanize an audience aside—the current president is something of a plodder. What is what he memorably called “the hard, necessary work of self-government” in his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, if not an appeal for people to understand that progress does not come like thunderclaps and lightning. But the problem, as I see it, anyway, is the problem of horses-for-courses. A pure plodder is not the best candidate to put in a race against someone who is completely unmoored from consequence, who makes up policy positions on the fly, an improv act for whom the truth is whatever he decides to say next. Against this, HRC can look slow and stolid.
Read the rest at the link if you wish. In my opinion, what Charles Pierce thinks about Hillary is irrelevant. Older white men like him are not the voters who will elect her. I hope he decides to convince other men like him to support her too, but we can probably do without a lot of them. We are the future; they can join us or continue to be irrelevant.
Melissa McEwan at Blue Nation Review: When I Was a Little Girl I Memorized a List of Male Presidents.
When I was in fifth grade, I had to memorize the list of US presidents. At that time, there were 40 of them. To help me remember them, I looked at a series of their portraits contained in my parents’ set of encyclopedias, as I sat cross-legged on the orange shag carpeting of our living room while a re-run of “Barney Miller” played on the telly.
To this day, I can conjure the cross stare of Millard Fillmore and the Ichabodian visage of William Henry Harrison.
There was something about all those faces, first rendered in oil and then reprinted for my perusal, that made me ask my teacher how a person became president.
Something about the way I asked made her think I was asking what I might do if I wanted to be president someday. That was not what I was asking. I am criminally shy and despise being the center of attention; a position as visible as the presidency would be my worst nightmare. But I also wasn’t really asking what it took to become president, either.
I was asking, without saying it, what it would take—was it even possible—for a woman to be president.
Please read the rest–it’s great. I went through the same thing as a young girl–and I’m a lot older than McEwan. I wondered why women were rarely doctors or college professors or lawyers or much of anything other than schoolteachers, nurses, or secretaries. And even women who did those jobs were looked down on–they should have gotten married, had children, and spent their days cleaning house and cooking. Today we are on the cusp of electing a woman president!
Peter Daou at Blue Nation Review: Hillary’s Long Game Is Why Bernie and Trump Can’t Defeat Her. Daou says he observed Hillary’s campaign as similar to a game of chess.
From Hillary’s admirers we hear about Hillary’s discipline, resilience, compassion, experience and knowledge. From her detractors, we hear she is robotic, calculating, and dishonest.
What we rarely hear about from either side is her uncanny ability to play the long game, to see through the fog of news cycles, to hear through the cacophony of opinions, and to make decisions that are many steps ahead of her opponents.
Hillary understands that Bernie Sanders will win more races on his way to defeat, that Trump will keep attacking her marriage on his way to defeat, that the media will jump at the catnip, that pundits will make grave prognostications, that social media will light up with hourly trends.
What Hillary also knows is that her voters are profoundly invested in her campaign and that their support gives her the capacity to withstand intense attacks and weather the most turbulent news cycles.
She is playing the long game, knowing that media hype is just that: hype.
What seems like an earth-shattering issue today is a hazy memory tomorrow. What feels like a crushing defeat one night is forgotten the next. What seems like an insurmountable obstacle on the road ahead is quickly lost in the rear view mirror.
I loved that.
Finally, two pieces about Bernie Sanders that demonstrate where he falls on the agency-communion axis:
David Wade at Politico: Bernie Sanders, the Zombie Candidate. It’s already over, and now he’s just causing havoc. I’ve seen firsthand how much damage this kind of candidacy can do.
When he first decided to run for president, Bernie Sanders had a goal in mind: to start a political revolution by getting big money out of politics.
If he wants to do it—if Sanders wants to build a lasting movement to fight money’s outsize influence—he has to close one door to open another. The transition from contender to gracious supporter of the nominee isn’t easy for any presidential candidate, but he needs to make it, and soon.
We already know Sanders isn’t going to win the Democratic Party’s nomination; Hillary Clinton has amassed more than 92 percent of the delegates needed to secure the nomination, and she’ll easily pick up the rest. So right now, Sanders’ campaign is the walking dead: a zombie. And having worked for John Kerry during the slugfest of the 2004 primaries, I’ve seen up close how much damage this sort of prolonged “zombie” candidacy can inflict on the eventual nominee—and what’s ultimately at stake for the country.
I don’t claim that the dragged-out primary made the difference in November 2004; the race came down to the wire, and big forces—including post-9/11 anxiety and “Swift Boat” smears—loomed large. But in presidential campaigns, the one resource that’s never renewable is time. Zombie candidates can’t win the nomination, but they squander vast amounts of time and slowly chip away at the prohibitive front-runner. Some of the damage is obvious—the endless series of public dents in the candidate’s reputation; some are subtle, noticeable in ways that perhaps only political operatives can appreciate.
Read more at the link.
Jon Reinish at The Observer: Bernie Sanders Only Cares About Bernie Sanders.
Each election has what become its accepted narratives: themes that, over time, gel into what are considered reliable facts that are no longer vetted or questioned. As the Democratic campaign finally wraps up, it’s time to put two persistent ones to bed: Hillary Clinton is unpopular and limping to a finish, and Bernie Sanders is a progressive from way outside the system.
Neither could be farther from the truth….let’s look at the overall race and break it down by the numbers: Hillary Clinton is ahead of her primary opponent by over three million votes. In the Democratic primary, she’s still ahead by about 300 pledged delegates. America knows her. Which is probably in no small part why she’s so far ahead and why the country is saying a resounding yes to her in such massive numbers.
Call it what you want, but acknowledge she’s ahead.
It’s simply inaccurate to say that a campaign putting those kinds of numbers on the board is limping. They are sprinting. Yet the theme persists it’s one dead-cat bounce after another and she should be “doing better.” But what does that mean? That she should win every state? Even the best campaigns have good and bad days. That she should have sewn it up by now? Well, newsflash, she actually does have it sewn up by now. Every national campaign has certain good states and certain bad states. The Democratic Party, thank God, isn’t monolithic.
She’s unpopular? Well, first of all that’s sexist, as is the consistent devaluing and snide parsing of every success she has, which the media does. But tell me this: how is she unpopular? That she doesn’t draw 20,000 hipsters to a rally? Those are optics. And they don’t vote in the same number as Hillary Clinton’s core demographics (if I was running for office? I’d ignore the whole Flight of the Conchords crowd and focus on older voters, college educated whites, middle aged women, African Americans and rising new American communities including Latinos and Asians: they vote). How can somebody who, according to accepted wisdom is so unpopular, be winning by so much? Voters support their candidate because they want to. Not because they are forced to. And it’s clear by polls and votes that Hillary Clinton is vastly preferred.
Ergo, a winning candidate.
On Bernie:
As for being a progressive—other than saying how progressive he is ad nauseum—frankly, I just don’t see it. Senator, you’re no Ted Kennedy. There’s no solid legislative record of liberal lawmaking; and I don’t see him leading a single movement until he decided to run for President.
Bernie Sanders is a fighter for Bernie Sanders.
His record points to a career—with the exception of his mind boggling and shameful record on guns—as a reliable left-wing backbencher. Fair enough, and we need the votes and I hope he continues that trend when he’s back in the Senate next year. Congress is full, by the hundreds, in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle, of said rank-and-file backbenchers. But the idea that he has been a liberal crusader with an enviable quiver full of results is hogwash. Voters haven’t seen Mr. Sanders out in front on healthcare, on choice, on climate change and sustainability, in a meaningful way—backed up by the decades-long track record of results that, by the way, he should have by now if he’s a serious person—any more than they’ve seen him at the Met Gala in Alexander Wang. He occupied a vague niche in the mind of the American public until about ten political minutes ago.
This article is a must read!
Now that I’ve gone on for so long, I’ll turn the floor over to you. Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread. As always, this is an open thread.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
For JJ:
NPR: Congress Approves Arlington Cemetery Burials For Female WWII Pilots.
Finally! This is way overdue. I’m glad their service is now recognized.
Great news!
That’s what it takes, women getting together, and saying enough is enough, put your foot down and get the job DONE. Congrats!
I saw that BB, it is fucking about time.
Great job, BB, I can’t wait to dig into the Observer article.
Thanks.
This article hits the nail on the head! Thanks for the link BB! I wish it had talked more about how much money Bernie is raising and spending. I think Sanders has outspent both Clinton and Trump on his campaign. So much for money in politics.
Do not bother with the comments – it’s all diehard Bernie deadenders.
From The Guardian.
George Clooney: ‘There’s not going to be a President Donald Trump’
I love Hillary’s theme. It’s a wonderful response to the naked angry and hostility of every one else and by that I mean both on the Republican side and the Democrat who hangs around like a bad case of food poisoning.
I do too. I think it’s brilliant. I’m so sick of male journalists diminishing everything Hillary says and does. So she doesn’t act like a typical male candidate. Women are different from men and that’s a good thing–it’s why we need to work toward a balance between males and females in politics, journalism, economics, and so many other endeavors.
Yes. You can’t look at all she’s done for women and girls around the world and not see that she’s the revolutionary with results. It’s all soft power too.
The results of Hillary’s work will last for generations.
Watch Meryl Streep’s introduction of Hillary Clinton during the recent 2012 Women in the World conference
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/18/1248523/-You-won-t-see-Hillary-Clinton-in-the-same-light-ever-again
Please watch this.
That was amazing. Thanks, Dak.
Very,very good. Thank you.
I needed three Kleenex for this. And all we learn about Hillary vis a vis the American “press” is she’s a plodding bore blah blah fart.
I had not read any comments before I wrote my comment. I am in the process of gardening, you all know how I love doing that and sharing with everyone here in my neighborhood. So I am back, reading your comments, and I understand, like the rest of you the point that women’s rights are human rights, and we are the flames to fuel this revolution, here, and circling around the world. Dak you are speak the truth, much like Meryl Streep. We are devoted to the cause of love and peace around the world, our hearts shine for Hillary, because she has seen, has felt the physical deprivations, and the mental deprivations of all women around the world, and we know for a fact, it’s not easy. It’s just not easy, even though we empathize, it’s not easy. It’s like your fight against cancer Dak, it’s not easy, but you won.
Wow. Thank you.
oh wtf
Accused Planned Parenthood clinic gunman ruled mentally incompetent
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/05/11/planned-parenthood-gunman-mentally-incompetent/21375517/
It’s kind of ridiculous, since he planned his attack carefully and carried it out in an organized way.
Another one for you:
https://lasentinel.net/grim-sleeper-verdict.html
I saw that a couple of days ago. I’m glad he will finally be punished for murdering dozens, maybe as many as one hundred women.
Yes he did, thanks to Carly Fiorina, and Jeff Lord, and Marsha Blackburn.
I’m seeing on Twitter that James Clyburn had a few things to say about Bernie Sanders today–to the effect that Sanders hasn’t been a Dem very long and he can’t expect superdelegates to look at him in the same way they do Clinton.
Good for him. That needs to be said.
BB, thoughtful post. I wish I had more time this morning — some of those concepts call for more discussion — but must get back to work and defer more comment until later.
You are spot-on about Hillary’s message and how it resonates with all those of us who are not white mainstream male pundits.
I look forward to reading your reactions when you have time.
Excellent post BB…..Thank you!
Thanks!
Harry Reid is going nuclear on Mitch McConnell.
Reid: McConnell must also think women are ‘dogs’
I have mixed feelings about some of these matters. I am of course a white male, and I am a very strong supporter of Hillary, and was in 2008; and if a bona fide is needed, I’ve sent her a lot of money, although obviously not as much as really rich donors. And I lose sleep over the campaign, particularly with regard to the FBI taking months on a supposed email investigation; and then various polls which show Trump within range, in a race which if this country were rational, should be at least 75-25% in favor if Hillary, though of course this never happens. But you have a brilliant, knowledgeable and very competent candidate against someone who has not an iota of understanding of issues and governance. And any possibility that Trump could win, is a horrifying prospect for all of us.
So one thinks about the best way for Hillary to win, though obviously I would not presume to tell her what she should do. But of course I can share my thoughts, as we all do. I am not sure that “Love and Kindness” as a slogan, gets one too far. It is a lovely concept, and we need more of it. But if Hillary were elected, the first time she took on the right-wing Congress, you would hear from them and the media, “What happened to all the love and kindness?” And while I am very wary of generalizing about different ways that men and women might see things (I actually think that we are a lot closer than some of the social psychologists might want to claim), I do believe that men are likely more interested in hearing specific policy proposals, than in cultural themes. Now, of course Hillary has the most specific proposals of anyone. So I think it would greatly benefit us if we hear about these on a daily basis, and about how absolutely dangerous and frightening Trump’s ideas and purported plans are. So for me, “the woman card” controversy or battle cry, is less valuable as a campaign theme, than in warning and even scaring people as to what a Trump presidency might mean, as well as Hillary reassuring people that her ideas will indeed benefit them.
It is possible that Hillary could win with a very small percentage of the white male vote, and with a tremendous percentage of the female and minority male vote. I would not like risking it, though. And we do have those key Rust Belt states where a number of men, certainly not all of them racists or misogynists, are simply very scared about their financial future, with jobs disappearing and wages stagnant. Sanders played to them, and Trump is doing so as well. These people are not very economically sophisticated, obviously. They think that trade deals are the cause; and that massive change (a la Sanders or Trump) is needed. The real reason their jobs and wages declined is because of the pervasiveness of “trickle down economics,” and people like them who keep getting duped or deluded into voting for it. We need some of those votes. The most pernicious thing Sanders has done, is to cast Hillary in the role of coporatist, status quo economic candidate, which she absolutely is not. And Trump just jumps on that. Thus I hope that most of this campaign is run on nuts and bolts Democratic vs. Republican issues. And even if Hillary can win without most of these white male voters, there are always the midterms in two years; and white males, particularly right-wing ones, vote in higher percentages than various minority voters, which is why we lose 40-60 congressional seats in most of these midterms, which is utterly destructive. This race shouldn’t be close, but it probably will be close, as a Democrat hasn’t won by more than six points of so, since 1964, The larger the margin, the better chance there is in downticket races. A decent proportion of white males just need to be convinced as to why Hillary is a far better choice than Trump, if just for their and their family’s needs. The campaign should certainly not be directed just to them; but they should be a part of it.
Just to be clear, the work that I cited by Dan McAdams is not from social psychology, which is an entirely different field from mine. It is peer reviewed research in personality and development, based on empirical studies.
Of course men and women are alike in many ways–we are all human. We are also different in some ways.
Hillary is doing a great deal to call attention to Trump’s negative characteristics, and she will work hard to get as many votes from white men as possible. But white men tend to vote Republican–that’s just a fact. Democrats seldom win the men’s vote. Obama didn’t. The voters who will elect the first woman president will be women and people belonging to other “outsider” groups.
I’m sorry if any white man feels left out, but there’s a simple solution for that and you’ve already chosen it, William. We’ve had nothing but white male presidents in this country up until 2008. Now the time has come for a woman to lead the country, and the more white men who join with the majority of us the better.
The McAdams chart and comparison of agency and communion is very interesting. Thank you for presenting it to us. It seems to me that these traits are not necessarily fixed in either sex but that environment and circumstances can change and result in a person acquiring more of what they lacked or at least adjusting themselves on the spectrum. A female POTUS would be a powerful force in changing our country for the better because her tendency for communion would serve as an example and her leadership will show us how to change.
No, they aren’t fixed at all, but this is a way to understand gender and age differences. But many personality traits have been shown to be highly genetic. Most psychological characteristics are determined by a combination of genes and environment.
In some strange way, it is somehow Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, who are being blamed by some people for the struggling enconomy. Strange, because it was the Republicans who were in power when there was a major recession in ’91, and then when the economy almost collapsed in ’08. I know that people have short memories, but this reversal is hard to believe.
Of course, Sanders did much to further that ridiculous narrative, by deciding to blame “the Clintons” trade deals for people’s wage stagnation. So now I see two polls which find that by something like 59-34% Rust Belt voters think that Trump would do a better job with the economy than Hillary.This is something which I think can be diminished by a consistent focus on bread-and-butter issues which affect all Americans but the very wealthy. The economy has been the Democratic Party’s most favorable issue for a century. But now we have so many frustrated and politically alienated people, that they don’t seem to have too much regard for the mainstream Democratic economic message, and are searching for quacks and con men to assure them what the problem is, and how they will fix it. There is definitely work to do here. Obama probably would not have won the first time, except that the economy fell apart three months before the election. And last time, he might have lost had not Romney been taped talking about “the 98%.” I am hoping that Hillary can bring in an era where most working-class people trust the Democrats much more than the Republicans or “Independents” on the economy.
Remember, Mitt Romney was pretty much tied with Obama at the beginning of the 2012 campaign. Democrats will be able to do much more to show how incompetent Trump is. At least Romney had been a governor.
Trump is not even a very good businessman–he has gone bankrupt four times. For most of his career, his father had to cosign all of his loans. Later on, he had to be bailed out by the banks because he was “too big to fail.”
Hillary, Bill, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and other Democrats will make mincemeat of him.
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And he called Hillary a cunt.
Crickets.
I tried to read some of the Pierce crap but the quote you have up there pissed me off from the beginning. He starts out by acknowledging the abuse and misogyny Hillary has endured and then proceeds to apply his own heaping helping of sexism but since he acknowledged it first, he feels immune from being accused of it. Like I said in the previous post, “…and the horse he rode in on.”
yup
I read through your blog today, and BB, it was so timely. More than that it was perfectly Hillary, and the follow up articles was worth the read too. Just gender perfect!
Your story about being a young girl, and wondering what is it women will be, and how do they get there. It’s never to late to dream, and dreams do come true. I have had a few myself. The Metaconcepts Chart sure had me, and I circled myself around hope, and control as to how I can rejuvenate those earlier feelings/behaviors. Here I am in the circle with sky dancers, seeing the beauty and the kindness, and how you BB, have made it so pleasurable to read. I love that you drew a Big Old Circle for the most capable woman in our Country, so well equipped to circle the world with a revolution, we know that it only comes from wisdom, kindness and love.
This is the 2lst Century, this is an era, and this is an enormous opportunity for voters to not only make history, but to really be a part of actualizing changes (not just policies) to be a partner, to be accepted, and to lend your impact for generations to come. BB, you asked how long, for a black woman, a native American, or a Hispanic, or Asia, or a disabled woman, or gay woman, or transgender woman to become the POTUS. It’s not hard to answer, one million years.
After reading Charlie Pierce, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Trump has 6 months to figure out civics, and the constitution. Hillary knows it inside/out, with out the blink of eye she can spit it all out in minutes. Hillary Clinton has had organizations in most all states that have been in place for couple years, if not more. I was part of the Ready for Hillary team, many of you were. We came together to get ready, to raise funds, and put in place a strong support for Hillary Clinton, so that when she made her decision to run, she could hit the ground running. She decided to start her campaign on a one to one basis, and not do it for the media. And that pissed off more people in the mainstream media that ever before. Anderson Cooper is still pissed off about her turn her back on them, and going to the voters, so she could earn their respect. We know there is a big difference in the Primary and General Election. The later is all bout getting out the VOTE. So when Charlie mentioned her “hawkishness” I had a flashback to what I’ve always known about politicians, there is always a Hawk and a Dove. But in the case of Trump, I see a friggin’ vulture circling about. You know when he thinks blood is coming out of her, wherever. He’s a dirty blood sucker.
When Charlie says he can’t think of any one statement Hillary has made that stands out, he’s not wanting to let it stick. But I can tell him one thing, Grandma Hillary, she’s ain’t staying put, and shutting down, she’s on the line, she’s sick, like the rest of us, making sixty five cents on the damn dollar, and working harder than any man to prove she can do the job. She marching on down the lines, her message has always been about sisters who took the crap a hundred fifty years ago, and she intends to bring the entire family into focus. We sense the need, the power, and the will of the voters, regardless what the media says.
It’s always good news BB, when your message is about kindness and love, and when we can go back to the time and place of our youth, and see what we didn’t know was really happening, but clearly know how now how to rebuild, and to enter building 2016 on Pennsylvania Avenue.
A special nod to you.
Great comment, Fannie.
Thank you so much, Fannie.
Bravo Fannie
https://youtu.be/WxB4weCzqGE
I have been out all day and have just caught up with this magnificent post! The comments are truly heartwarming along with the tribute from Meryl Streep which was so touching.
Fannie and William you are indeed articulate in your responses. You are all such an inspiring bunch of people and just what I need when we watch how the press rips Hillary to shreds. Not fair since we know differently.
You guys move me. All of you. I think we will have a,good year as my Red Sox are doing so well. It is a “sign”.
Luv you too Pat.
I know. I can’t believe the Red Sox are looking good again!
Finally-
http://bluenationreview.com/bernie-i-absolutely-believe-hillary-can-beat-trump/
BB, you hit this one “outta the park.” Fascinating analyses. And as Fannie said, timely. Thank you!
Thank you.