The left’s absurd Hillary hate: Why this ridiculous anti-Clinton crusade needs to stop (HRC GROUP) [View all]

[OKNancy]

Written by a Sanders supporter


http://www.salon.com/2015/12/05/the_ridiculous_left_wing_crusade_against_hillary_clinton_needs_to_stop/

The media coverage of Hillary Clinton is a lesson in paradox: She’s the “most admired woman” in America, but no one is “excited” about her presidential campaign. She’s inevitable, but she can’t win an election. And even when she wins a debate, she still lost it.

This might seem like an indication of what we already know — that the former secretary of state is an extremely polarizing candidate, whose very name is treated as a curse word or a reason to break out the Holy Water during the Republican presidential debates. The New York Times’ Mark Leibovitch wrote earlier this year that “divisive” has become almost associated with her very name: “Clinton has worn the polarizing badge more than any other politician since the word came into its unfortunate vogue.” But as Leibovitch argued, Hillary’s status as a divider is less a product of her politics than our own.

Leibovitch compared the phenomenon to “Bush derangement syndrome,” a term coined by Charles Krauthammer to describe “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay —t he very existence of George W. Bush.” But while the adverse reaction to Bush often bordered on hysteria, Krauthammer’s phrase comes from 2003 — when America was becoming deeply entrenched in a costly war that it became clear was founded on a myth. If Saddam Hussein was not involved in September 11, as Bush later admitted, the opposition to Dubya was less derangement than a deep sense of betrayal.

The biggest difference here is that before Krauthammer labeled Bush’s critics deranged, George W. already had three years of policies behind him. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, hasn’t been in the Oval Office a single day, and her presidency is already being treated by some as an unmitigated disaster. What’s more, even members of her own party are getting in on the action. In a recent column for Salon, self-avowed millennial progressive Walter Bragman suggests that Clinton isn’t just a bad candidate — she’s a threat to the future of the Democratic party itself — and compares her to the second coming of Reagan, a corrosive force that will destroy the foundation’s of American progressivism.

We’ve clearly moved past derangement. This is the time of full-on Hillary hysteria.

Much more at the link... much of which I'm sure readers will be familiar