People talk about how smart President Bill Clinton is, but not so much about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Part of the reason is that the former president wraps his intelligence in an affable almost good-old-boy demeanor. But what about Hillary?
She was certainly her husband’s equal if not moreso. An article in The Huffington Post asked whether she was “too smart” to win the presidential election. Can you imagine anyone asking that about a male candidate? The answer would be a resounding “no.” We need intelligent leaders to mange this great multi-system democratic experiment. But the former secretary did lack something.
And that was charisma. It is doubtful that any presidential candidate could win without it in our culture, and it is part of why Donald Trump did win. But we should cash in on the wealth that Hillary Clinton brings to us from decades of brilliant experience in the political world. For instance, what does she think about the filibuster?
The Atlantic tweeted:
‘.@HillaryClinton tells @JenSeniorNY that she supports abolishing the filibuster because she believes Democrats are dealing with an opposing party that “does not respect the rule of law, does not even respect the process unless it works for them.’
.@HillaryClinton tells @JenSeniorNY that she supports abolishing the filibuster because she believes Democrats are dealing with an opposing party that “does not respect the rule of law, does not even respect the process unless it works for them.” #TAF21 https://t.co/wTofUZ5K09 pic.twitter.com/SHyKrNxRbr
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) September 30, 2021
During an interview at The Atlantic Festival’s Ideas Stage, the reporter asked her whether she should would kill the filibuster. Without a pause, Clinton said “absolutely.” Her first example came with Senator Mitch Grim Reaper McConnell (R-KY) stealing the current U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court nearly a year before Trump was elected. The former senator said:
‘Keeping the filibuster now, when you’re dealing with a political party that does not respect the rule of law, does not even respect the process unless it works for them, you know, witness what they did to Merrick Garland when President Obama had every right to appoint a Supreme Court justice.’
In her direct way, Clinton pointed out that we have been living “in the middle of a constitutional crisis:”
‘People are still arguing about stuff that is important but not as fundamental as whether or not our democracy will be broken, and then taken over and minority rule will be what we live under.’
Some of the Democratic lawmakers still appear to believe in the filibuster, such as Senator Joe Manchin, one of the least favorite senators among senators right now for refusing to work with the rest of the party. The filibuster became the appendix of our government’s body when it outgrew its usefulness, to limit spending. So much for that.
Unfortunately, Grim McConnell has been using it as a cudgel to beat the Democrats. In effect, the Kentucky senator has been leading the country with a 41-vote minority. This happened, because Dems do not have the 60 votes necessary to break a filibuster from the other party. The margin has been so thin that with legislation requiring 51-50 votes and Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker, McConnell regularly filibusters the bills.
Republicans are against the filibuster, but changed the rule to suit their needs when they have been in the majority. McConnell dropped it like a hot rock to change Supreme Court nominee votes.
Republican have been carving out voting rights at the state level to rig elections, and the Dems cannot stop them with legal voting restrictions on the Hill due to the filibuster. Should America loose her majority, we will no longer be a democracy, and Dictator Trump will waltz back into the White House.
Clinton recently appeared at a voting rights fundraiser for “trying to overcome the legislative obstacles that are being put in the way of casting your vote:”
‘But that’s not the new part. Having your vote counted because they want to replace independent people, like we saw with the Republican secretary of state in Georgia who stood up to tremendous pressure. Now they want to throw elections if they can either to state legislatures or, if necessary, to the House of Representatives where the way the vote is counted is by state.’
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery. Find her here on Facebook.
