Late Saturday night, 2016, an uncommonly long leap year, came to an end. People the world over did what they always do: gathered, partied, and welcomed the new year. There was one horrendous attack on the celebrations. The miracle may be that there weren’t more. Maybe people the world over are getting better at sniffing out and preventing these attacks. Or maybe cities across the globe all got lucky except for poor Istanbul.
When we last left Hillary Clinton, late Saturday night, she had been named Person of the Year in an elegant, eloquent treatise by a woman in a Nigerian paper which some have chosen to write off as unimportant because the paper is Nigerian to which I have to ask: “WTF????” One respondent likened it to “fake news.” Really? All those trips to Africa that Hillary made as secretary of state, all those MOUs, and you consider an African paper akin to “fake news?” Shame on you, sir!
Morning of the first day of the first month of the new year saw two major stories circulating on TV and the internet. One story involved the minority PEOTUS’s choice for press-sec saying Hillary Clinton should be “punished” for what he said were her attempts to “influence the election.” The other story centered on a former Obama White House staffer saying “the Clinton days are over.”
You did not need to have drunk yourself into oblivion the night before to have developed a major headache from these two stories.
Hillary Clinton ran an honest, enthusiastic, issue-driven campaign. We know this because so many of us here were involved in the grassroots efforts. If “influencing” an election entails campaigning around the country, recruiting volunteers for a massive ground game, and tirelessly incorporating issues brought to your attention by rally-goers on rope lines, yes indeed she did! That is what campaigning is all about. It is not about setting oneself up as the sole possible fixer of all that needs fixing and much that is not broken and requires no repair. Hillary’s campaign was about addressing the fault lines and fine tuning what works well in bridging them. Her platform was intricately intersectional and brilliant. She was the Hillary of 2008 but even better. She knew her stuff backwards and forwards, and she preached it – indefatigably.
On the morning of the first day of the first month of the year after Hillary was resoundingly defeated by an outdated body that preferred to give its votes to yet another white male, a demographic from which we have drawn 43 past presidents and now a 44th, a member of her own party sat before cameras and declared her – and us – “over.”
Wait just a pussy-grabbing minute there! Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, in case that escaped notice somehow. She built an enormous coalition and grabbed almost 66 million votes – 2.1% more than her “elected,” pussy-grabbing, minority opponent. What is so “over” about that?
We are still here, and we are not going away! Both of these men are wrong.
No candidate who campaigned honestly and made her plans and personal details public should be charged with “criminal influence,” especially when her opponent has not released his own personal files and in fact invited a foreign power to hack into her files. That is the stuff of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.
As the new year launched, the media persisted in denying charges of sexism and misogyny in covering Hillary’s campaign. Silly, when all you needed to see were two men from opposite ends of the political spectrum attacking her weeks after the deed was done.
These men are very sure of themselves. What a sad morning in America. What a sad start for a new year. What a sad commentary on democracy in this country. However jubilant and hopeful your New Year’s Eve may have been, the morning gloom set in early.
So now it’s back to work. The holidays are over. “Twin Peaks” is returning (on Showtime) in 2017, and it’s time to make the donuts!
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and her daughter Chelsea (R), place an order at a Dunkin Donuts in Nashua, New Hampshire February 9, 2016, the day of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
I am not saying she will or should ever again make this run. But a campaign is different from a run. Hillary has her issues clearly laid out based on our input. She has gathered an army of us – 66 million this time – roughly four times her 2008 brigade. We are organized. Campaigns are based on issues, and do not necessarily target a run for office. Neither do they necessarily center on an individual. Both Bernie and Trump liked to call their campaigns “movements.” Hillary never did that, but I think we are a movement and have been one for many years. 2016 may be over, and the race for the Oval Office may be over, but we, Hillary, and our movement are not. We have gathered numbers over those years. Let’s make that count! #Resist!
#Resist privatizing social programs.
#Resist abridging women’s rights.
#Resist breaking unions.
#Resist voucherizing the public school system.
#Resist disenfranchising American voters.
#Resist banning refugees from war-torn states,
#Resist deportation of productive parents of minor American citizens and of young people brought here as minors.
#Resist discrimination by race, creed, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identification.
#Resist building capital for the wealthy on the backs of the poor and working class.
#Resist the creation of an oligarchy in the United States of America.
#Resist marginalization (and worse) of the investigative press.
#Resist illegal sales of public lands.
#Resist drilling for and transportation of dangerous fossil fuels in, near, and through residential regions, aquifers, and our shores.
#Resist efforts to breach our treaties with other nations.
#Resist one-party rule.
#Resist one-man rule.
#Resist ____________ . (Add your own issue.)
Let’s not allow this one weak, thin-skinned, self-centered, predatory creep be the end of our great American experiment. Americans are not of a race or religion. We are not of any single human thread. We are of an idea. It unites us. E pluribus unum — “Out of many, one.” We are a voice. One voice. Let’s make noise. Let’s be loud. Let’s be heard.
Adding the link to this article by Minyon Moore. Hillary Clinton Is Not Done Making History Yet
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