Today’s Hillary News & Views begins with Clinton’s powerful new essay that exemplifies her determination to use her own privileges in service of creating more opportunities for others.
Hillary Clinton writes for Medium:
It’s great to be back on the campaign trail. As you may know, I recently had a cough that turned out to be pneumonia. I tried to power through it, but even I had to admit that maybe a few days of rest would do me good.
I’m not great at taking it easy, even under ordinary circumstances, and sitting home was pretty much the last place I wanted to be with just two months until Election Day.
But having a few days to myself was actually a gift. I talked with some old friends and spent time with our very sweet dogs. And I did some thinking. The campaign trail doesn’t really encourage reflection, and it’s important to sit with your thoughts every now and then.
People like me — we’re lucky. When I’m under the weather, I can afford to take a few days off. Millions of Americans can’t. They either go to work sick, or they lose a paycheck.
Lots of Americans still don’t even have insurance — or they do, but it’s too expensive to actually use. So they toss back Tylenols, chug orange juice, and hope that cough or cold or virus goes away on its own.
And lots of working parents can’t afford childcare. It costs as much as college tuition in many states, so millions of moms and dads have no backup if they get sick — they’re on their own.
I’ve met so many people living on a razor’s edge — one illness away from losing their job, one paycheck away from losing their home.
Events like these are mere bumps in the road for some families — but for others, they are catastrophic. And that disparity goes against everything we stand for as Americans.
Some things shouldn’t come down to luck. Some things should be within reach for every American, no matter what — like financial security, affordable health care, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that if something goes wrong, your family will be okay.
That’s why I got into this race: to fight for everyone working hard, often against the odds, to support their families and contribute to our country. I want to tear down all the barriers standing in their way.
I’m running for the factory workers and food servers who on their feet all day — and the nurses looking after patients all night. I’m running for the young people who dream of changing our country and world for the better, and I’m running for all the parents and grandparents supporting those dreams by dedicating every dollar they can to their education.
I’m running for women like Janelle Turner. In May of last year, Janelle was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through nearly six months of very tough treatments. Last October, she brought her 8-year-old daughter to one of our campaign events in Iowa, and they made a huge sign that read, “Thirteenth chemo yesterday. Three more. Hear me roar!”
Janelle and I got to talking, and we’ve stayed in touch. She keeps promising me that she’ll see me at the inauguration. And I tell her that I’ll keep working to get there, but she better get there too. I’m running for her and all the mothers and fathers trying to get and stay healthy so they can be there for their kids. But perhaps most of all, I’m running for those kids.
Standing up for children has been the work of my life, as a lawyer with the Children’s Defense Fund, as first lady in Arkansas, and later in the White House. I’ve fought for kids housed in adult jails, kids who’ve been neglected and abused, kids who couldn’t get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, kids with disabilities that prevented them from going to school.
So when I meet a little girl in Nevada—terrified that her parents are going to be deported—it hits me right in the gut. When I meet a little boy in Flint, Michigan, who can’t drink the water at home or in school because it’s poisoned with lead, that gets me going. All I want to do is make things better for them.
This is why I care so much about national security, too — I want to give our kids a safer world. To me, that means a world with strong allies, more friends, fewer enemies, and fewer nuclear weapons. It also means leading the fight against climate change so we can leave our kids a healthy planet. My opponent in this race disagrees with me on every one of those fronts, which is just one of the reasons this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes.
I’ve been involved in politics in one way or another for many years. It’s not an easy business — it can get rough. I’ve built up some defenses, and when it comes to public service, I’m better at the “service” part than the “public” part. But this is why I do this. This is who I’m in it for and what this race has always been about for me.
And now, we’re in the final stretch. There are just 54 days left.
Here’s my promise to you. I’m going to close my campaign the way I began my career — and the way I will serve as your president, should you give me the honor: focused on opportunities for kids and fairness for families.
And from now until November 8, I’m going to keep talking about my ideas for our country everywhere I go. My campaign has rolled out detailed plans in 38 different policy areas — everything from reining in Wall Street to creating good-paying jobs to fighting Alzheimer’s, and supporting people with autism.
I sweat the details, whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the water in Flint, or the number of early voting days in North Carolina, or the precise interest rate on your student loans, right down to the decimal. Because it’s not a detail if it’s your kid and it’s not a detail if it’s your family. It’s a big deal, and it should be a big deal to your president.
So I’m asking Americans to hold me accountable for my ideas. And hold my opponent accountable for his.
We need a president who’s spent years fighting for these issues, and who has a plan to support all families, in all their configurations. And if I have the honor of serving as your president, no one will fight harder for your children and your families — because this is the work of my life, and I’m not stopping now.
The campaign has something to say about transparency:
There’s a lot of talk this year about transparency and disclosure. So what better way to compare the candidates than by stacking up the publicly available information about each, side-by-side.
We know more about Secretary Clinton than just about any candidate for president in recent history. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has refused to meet even the minimum standards that presidential candidates have been held to for decades.
Donald Trump could be President. And it’s time for him to be held to the same standard as Hillary Clinton and any other major party nominee.
Click through for their awesome chart comparing the two on this measure.
Clinton’s return to the public eye included a press conference.
ABC News reports:
While taking questions, Clinton admitted her campaign could have handled the news over the weekend better, “My campaign has said they could have been faster, and I agree with that. I certainly expect them to be as focused and quick as possible.”
Clinton argued though that she thought she was going to be fine, “I thought that there wasn't really any reason to make a big fuss about it. So I should have taken time off earlier.”
Clinton took shots at Donald Trump, specifically about his interview on "The Dr. Oz Show" that aired today in which he shared medical documents.
"Now I confess, I'll never been the showman -- my opponent is and that's okay with me,” Clinton said during her rally. “Just look at the show he put on with Dr. Oz today.”
During her press avail with reporters, she also defended a pastor that Trump called "a nervous wreck" following his visit to Flint, MI this week.
"His latest target is a pastor in Flint, Michigan who respectfully asked him not to use her pulpit for political attacks. He called her a nervous mess. That's not only insulting, it's dead wrong," Clinton said. "Reverend Faith Green Timmons is not a nervous mess, she is a rock for her community in trying times. She deserves better than that. And Flint deserves better. In fact, so does America."
Today’s best read comes courtesy of Essence: “Extending the Legacy of the Colored Girls in This Election.”
For the uninitiated, The Colored Girls are living legends in Democratic circles. In 1988, while staffers on the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, The Colored Girls—a group that includes Donna Brazile, Minyon Moore, Yolanda Caraway, Tina Flournoy, and of course Reverend Leah Daughtry—staged a protest after their office was moved, creating a power center on one floor and putting all of the people of color on another floor. The Colored Girls were not having any of it.
Knowing they needed to be as close as possible to that power center, they set up shop inside a conference room on the floor they had been told to move from and posted a sign on the door: “For Colored Girls Only, We Shall Not Be Moved.” And they did not.
The Colored Girls have always been in Hillary Clinton’s direct sphere of influence. They are her friends, allies, and champions. Now this same sisterhood is shepherding a new generation of Black women working to elect Hillary as the first woman president in history.
“It’s Hillary’s thoughtfulness combined with her humility and perseverance in the face of struggle, that has been an inspiration to me when I have met challenges or felt completely discouraged in this business,” New York Political Director Erin Stevens said.
“When I look around HQ and see all these amazing women of color in important roles, at the highest levels of this campaign,I know that it is something special, and it is a reflection of Hillary Clinton and her beliefs and what she is fighting for. Empowering women who have traditionally been disenfranchised.”
“My mother always said, ‘You may have many firsts in life, but make sure you’re not the last.’ The Colored Girls are an inspiration of what it means to put those words into action. The same is true of Hillary, who has spent her life trying to unlock opportunity for others, especially women and girls, and who I know will make that her mission as president,” Harris told me.
Related to the above, the following Politico article exemplifies the white male-centric point of view of the mainstream media, completely misreading what is newsworthy about Clinton’s approach to this campaign: She doesn’t believe she has to center the needs and concerns of white males to win the election. (Additionally, the relentless assumption that all things Clinton are about political calculation misses another crucial point: she’s running on what she believes in.)
Politico reports:
By squarely siding with civil rights activists who demand that racism be forcefully confronted, she’s making clear that she views her path to victory doesn’t run through the white working-class vote. Rather, she’s making a bet that the makeup of 21st century America allows her to do something no Democratic nominee, not even Barack Obama, has done before: win the White House without winking at white grievance.
Clinton is not completely writing off the entire white working class. She turned against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. She has gamely proposed an aid package for coal communities, despite her infinitesimal chances in West Virginia. Even in her “Basket of Deplorables” comments, she distinguished between the bigoted and those who “feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change.”
But what she doesn’t do is rationalize “white resentments,” as Obama did in 2008 and as many Democrats did before him, which certainly cuts off her ability to win votes from whites who carry racial resentments.
Democrats have been the party of civil rights ever since the 1964 Civil Rights Act scrambled partisan affiliations. Yet no Democrat has won the presidency without, in some fashion, bowing to racial grievances by whites. If Hillary Clinton does so for the first time, it will confirm a new kind of election math can work for the Democrats and forever change how American elections are won and lost.
Melissa McEwan captures the real life impact of the choice Clinton has made in one perfect Tweet:
Again I will note the basket of deplorables are deplorable TO people who are more likely to support Clinton. She's defending us; it matters.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) September 13, 2016
Finally, a timely reminder from Peter Daou, writing for Shareblue:
Garrison Keillor waxes eloquent about Hillary Clinton’s quest to break a 227-year barrier:
“Some day historians will get this right and look back at the steady pitter-pat of scandals that turned out to be nothing, nada, zero and ixnay and will conclude that, almost a century after women’s suffrage, almost 50 years after Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, a woman was required to run for office wearing concrete shoes. Check back fifty years from now and if I’m wrong, go ahead and dance on my grave.”
Keillor has the courage to say what far too many observers won’t: Pretending Hillary Clinton’s gender isn’t a monumental obstacle to her candidacy is denying a quarter millennium of institutional sexism.
This was never going to be a cakewalk, no matter who Hillary Clinton faced. It wasn’t going to be a cakewalk for any Democratic nominee. The rightwing attack apparatus would do its brutally efficient work on any candidate the Democrats nominated. The corporate media would do their part to enable the right’s attacks.
The real wonder is that Hillary Clinton, facing a double standard of colossal proportions, is still winning. It will be a tough slog every single day until November 8.