2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Damning Hillary Clinton with Faint Praise [View all]Saviolo
(3,296 posts)Because, let's be honest, there is no such thing as a perfect candidate.
Hillary is a good candidate, to be sure. Eminently capable and qualified for the job, and will certainly continue the progress made by Obama's 8 years after 8 years of Bush's disaster.
But by the same token, I have always felt that it's important for progressives to always strive for more. Progressive policy doesn't have an end-point. There's no time when we'll be able to say, "Yay! We did it! We're all done progressing!" So, there should always be a call for more progress, regardless of the candidate. There are young progressives right now who will trickle up through the system and eventually become strong progressive candidates that will drag the Overton Window further to the left, but they're not the end result, either. They're another step.
I've never felt that, because we like a candidate or their policies, that they should be immune from criticism, so long as those criticisms are valid. Some of the criticism aimed at Hillary is entirely spurious, obviously. Benghazi, Vince Foster, her email server, blah blah blah, old tired GOP "gotchya" false memes.
But criticism isn't treasonous. That, too, is a good old GOP meme, if you remember people saying that if you don't support Bush during 9/11's aftermath and the Iraq invasion that you were a traitor. The advent of "free speech zones," etc... If there's a valid criticism, then let's deal with it, not push it aside.
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