No, Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Strategy Isn’t Bad for America
good read
The newest meme in the 2016 campaign is the idea that Hillary Clinton is running a “narrower,” more partisan campaign than her husband did, thereby endangering her ability to govern if she wins, and possibly endangering her campaign itself. To call an idea a meme has certain insulting connotations — it implies that it spreads from person to person on the basis of its cosmetic appeal, without having any analytic heft to support it. In this case, the insulting connotation is fair.
The main basis for the meme is a mostly good front-page news analysis from Sunday’s New York Times, by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, which contrasts Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy with her husband’s 1992 version. Centrist pundits like Ron Fournier and David Brooks have loaded Martin and Haberman’s analysis with moral connotations, producing columns that excoriate Clinton as divisive, partisan, liberal, and bad for America. The meme is powerful because it appeals to deep-seated emotions that animate centrists like Fournier and Brooks. But it is based on a series of misapprehensions about American politics piled atop each other, producing a conclusion that is bizarre and incoherent.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/clintons-strategy-isnt-bad-for-america.html?mid=facebook_nymag
