She's the Man now, Dawg
I'll start with something that is obvious to a number of Bernie's supporters, but was shouted down. "She's the Establishment!" Yes, she fucking was. You don't get to be Secretary of State and not be a card-carrying member of the establishment. She's navigated the halls of power for decade, and held amazing responsibility in our government.And done it all with a certain amount of skill and grace.
She is the Establishment. Her partisans have declared that a woman can never be a member of the Old Boy's Club of Power, so she couldn't have been. They feel that the establishment is so old and entrenched, the only thing they know how to do with a woman is use the club on her.
They aren't wrong. There's always two levels of operation, the mechanics of a situation and the Meta. Hillary is a veteran hand at the mechanics, but the Meta is still a regressive, angry alpha male. That part of the Establishment is the country club, the old hands at power. They don't like a woman being so close, and have made her feel it.
So she knows power, and has felt its use against her.
She's a Corporatist
This is probably my biggest reservation about her. She came onto the national stage as part of the great retreat of liberals into the halls of big money, and by remaining in politics, has turned herself into one of the biggest targets for the backlash against this by a growing wave against it.
It's possibly not fair to judge for this reason, but her daughter is married to a hedge fund banker. The family being that comfortable in the halls of Mammon, it triggers something visceral in me that I need to come to terms with.
Sadly, some of this coming to terms is being delivered by an orange spoon. If the Clintons have made themselves welcome in the church of Mammon, then Donald Trump is an elder of this unholy church.
She Changes her Position to Follow the Polls
This is something that has never been one of my great complaints about politicians. I'll go geeky here for a second and explain my thoughts:
A politician has a limited number of actions points that they can spend in a given political season. How many points each law, reform, or change you try to pass costs is determined by how popular a given action is. If there's two things that a politico would like to do, they'll choose the change that more people are for because it costs them less. And if they want to do a certain thing, but two ways of doing it? That seems an even easier choice.
Now, I'm aware that this is overly simplistic. Politicians choose to do things in unpopular ways all the time, or can't get popular things done. Space could be devoted to gaming out how said system could be better represented, factoring in opposition energy and interest parties, but it does come down to some things are an easier lift.
And Hillary has shifted, at least in her public positions, over the course of this primary. And that is the biggest factor for why I am looking forward to voting for her. Because she's embodying an old principal that brought some of the biggest laws of the last century, "I support you. Now make me do it."
It got Civil Rights passed, public action making it so that a politician could make a move that would really change things. Politicians are public servants at their best, and Hillary's ability to listen to the energy of the liberal voices of her party and let it move her makes me interested in seeing her as president.
It will mean that the fight is never going to stop. But let's be honest, it never did. We just tagged out when we got tired of the fight.
