Rebooting Hillary

Polls show increasing numbers of voters dislike and distrust her. She’s losing ground to Sanders and bested by Donald Trump.

Voters rate her poorly on honesty, trustworthiness and transparency. When asked to describe her, “liar” is the word most often mentioned – then “dishonest,” untrustworthy,” and “criminal.”

She can’t convince people she’s not hiding something. Her sordid past perhaps caught up with her. Polls show Joe Biden is most favored against Republicans – maybe enough to convince him to declare his candidacy.

Clinton campaign aides say she’s rebooting, aiming to reinvent herself as kinder, gentler. She’ll find it hard to erase her sordid past or change her image in voter minds once fixed.

In a field of deplorable presidential aspirants without a worthy one in the bunch, she stands out as especially loathsome and dangerous – a war goddess most likely to confront Russia and perhaps China belligerently, a prescription for WW III. Smiles and feigned affability can’t disguise pure evil.

The New York Times explained her new campaign strategy headlining “Hillary Clinton to Show More Humor and Heart, Aides Say.”

From now on she’ll refrain from “flip jokes about her private email server (and) rope lines to wall off crowds…And there will be new efforts to bring spontaneity to a candidacy that sometimes seems wooden and overly cautious,” said The Times.

A record of being on the right side of major issues and character matter most. Clinton fails on both counts – a shameless self-promoter, an unabashedly hawkish supporter of endless wars, fundamentally against world peace and stability, a nuclear weapons use proponent.

Her earlier attempts to fake a softer side fell flat. Her demeanor shows she’s not genuine. Her record as US senator and secretary of state belies her disingenuous claim about “want(ing) to be the president who addresses the problems in the headlines and the ones that keep you up at night.”

Her agenda is polar opposite her duplicitous rhetoric. Democrat pollster Anna Greenberg was right calling her an “establishment candidate,” without explaining she supports dirty business as usual – in her case much dirtier.

Last April, Politico headlined “Hillary is new and improved! Take as directed,” saying she “invented herself almost as many times as Edison tried to invent the light bulb.”

If she stood for what matters most for most people, reinvention wouldn’t be an issue. Portraying herself as a populist champion is polar opposite her real persona and agenda.

On September 8, the Wall Street Journal picked up on the Politico theme headlining “Hillary, New and Improved,” saying:

She’ll try shedding her “scriptedness.” Political campaigning is choreographed kabuki theater – candidates pretending to be something they’re not, illusion papering over ugly reality.

For eight years as first lady, she partnered in husband Bill’s crimes. She shamelessly self-promoted throughout her Washington years and since leaving government.

Her public service record as senator and secretary of state was scandalous – militantly pro-war, contemptuous of rule of law principles, scornful of democracy, backer of Israel’s worst crimes, anti-populist while pretending to be otherwise, dismissive of human suffering, and supporter of police state legislation.

She represents the worst of America’s dark side, a monument to wrong over right, militantly anti-Russian, a major threat to world peace.

She stands for everything activists for peace, equity and justice oppose. It’s hard imagining a worse choice for president – or any other public service office.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”. www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html Visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.