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Today’s edition of Hillary News & Views has been hijacked by me! I hope I can bring you a few more updates on the campaign as our superstar regular writer Lysis is on Holiday Hiatus. Lysis will return on Monday, January 4, 2016.
I want to open with the moving story of Hannah Tandy’s question to Clinton at a Town Hall in Keota, Iowa.
CNN reports:
"What are you going to do about bullying?" the 10-year-old Hannah asked, standing in the front row of Clinton's event.
Clinton responded, "Can you tell me a little bit more about why that's on your mind?"
"I have asthma and occasionally I hear people talking behind my back," said Hannah, a fifth-grader eliciting "awws" and applause from the audience and a long hug from the former first lady.
Clinton went on to give a very thoughtful explanation of bullying in today’s socially connected world. In the end she tied it to a larger lesson about the Presidential race, to great applause.
Bullying has always been around but it seems to have gotten somehow easier and more widespread because of social media and the Internet
People can say something about somebody without having to look them in the eye or see them walk by, and so I think we all need to be aware of the pain and the real anguish that bullying can cause.
I really do think we need more love and kindness in our country. I think we are not treating each other with the respect and the care that we should show toward each other.
And that’s why it is important to stand up to bullies wherever they are. And why we shouldn’t let anybody bully his way into the Presidency.
The Town Hall and the story of how Clinton found herself in the tiny town of Keota was blogged in much more detail in a wonderful diary by Gaius Septimus.
Denise brings us a wonderful Tweet of the event organizers and their shirts.
xThese are the three girls who brought @HillaryClinton to Keota, Iowa. They specially made a shirt for HRC. #IACaucuspic.twitter.com/czpnQmWXAB
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) December 22, 2015Hillary also wrote a lengthy answer to a question on Quora about the prospects for a Cure to Alzheimer’s.
Based on the conversations I’ve had with the nation’s leading Alzheimer’s researchers, I firmly believe that with the right investments and leadership, we can prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease by 2025—and we can even make a cure possible by that time. That’s why I’ve proposed rapidly ramping up our investment in Alzheimer’s research to $2 billion per year—the level that leading researchers have determined is needed to prevent and treat the disease and make a cure possible in 10 years. This investment will also help us address a range of other neurodegenerative illnesses, like Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and it will help us understand the link between Alzheimer’s and other conditions like Down syndrome.Other answers noted partial progress and said that tremendous challenges remain, but only Clinton is credibly able to suggest that resources can be found to advance research rapidly if combating the disease gets the national priority it deserves.
Even politicians on the other side of our great partisan divide praised her vision.
xI often disagree with @HillaryClinton but on #Alzheimers she is moving in the right direction. https://t.co/OFCw89xlZz
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) December 22, 2015The Republican front-runner Donald Trump continued to deliver outrageous rhetoric, and Clinton is pushing hard to explain the real consequences on the global stage.
From the Keota event, reported by Talking Points Memo:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton doubled down on her assertion that real estate mogul Donald Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric is playing into terrorists' hands Tuesday at a town hall in Keota, Iowa.
"If you go on Arabic television as we have and you look at what is being blasted out with video of Mr. Trump being translated into Arabic—no Muslims coming the U.S., other kinds of derogatory, defamatory statements—it is playing into the hands of the violent jihadists," Clinton said during her speech.
The campaign is deliberately not responding to other outrageous Trump rhetoric that made news yesterday.
xWe are not responding to Trump but everyone who understands the humiliation this degrading language inflicts on all women should. #imwithher
— Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) December 22, 2015Blogger Sady Doyle wrote a tremendous piece laying out the all-too-familiar contradictions of running for the powerful position of US President as a woman. I picked this up from a comment yesterday, and it was also featured on yesterday’s Daily Kos Radio with Greg Dworkin and Armando.
I also realized that, unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clinton’s “likability” is doomed to be inaccurate, in some way. She might even be very easy to dislike, if you weren’t looking at those narratives, or if you underestimated their severity. But, in my experience, trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary-Hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass. As long as you refuse to deal with the container, the actual substance tends to stay permanently out of reach.
For example: Female politicians are stereotyped as “soft” and incompetent when it comes to foreign policy and national security. It’s a basic, entrenched form of sexism: Only boys know how to fight, or play with guns. So, in order to be taken seriously, Hillary has to prove that she’s as tough as any man, or tougher. But she can’t actually be as tough as any man, or tougher; that plays into the stereotype that women are fonts of petty malevolence, prone to irresponsibly starting conflicts for no reason. (Here’s a joke I first heard from my father, and heard from many men throughout my lifetime: “Why can’t you elect a female President? Because, when she gets her period, she’ll launch the nukes.”) She has to look either “soft” and passive, or “hard” and aggressive. Either one is bad for her.
And some bonus Tweets for you:
xThere are 700 people at this event at Keota High School, standing room only now. The population is only about 1000. #IACaucus
— Danny Freeman (@DannyEFreeman) December 22, 2015 xEvery child deserves a loving family. We must fight discrimination against LGBT parents trying to adopt.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 22, 2015 xI just interviewed our next president @hillaryclinton on @theconversation with @amandadecadenet xoxo -GloZell pic.twitter.com/6ULMae60VG
— GloZell Green (@GloZell) December 21, 2015 xWe can prevent, effectively treat, and make a cure possible for Alzheimer’s by 2025. -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) December 22, 2015This has been a tremendous amount of work to put together, even more than I had anticipated. It makes me admire Lysis even more for managing to take on this task regularly.
Happy Holidays to all!