Over the past couple of days, I’ve been seeing a lot of supportive I’m With Her posts on my newsfeed. Mostly, I think, in reaction to the utterly disgusting and frightening comments Trump has made, both at the debates and in his personal life. It’s been nice to see those posts popping up.
This has been a rough year for some of us who have, indeed, been with her. For a while there, during the primaries, being a Hillary supporter was practically a mortal sin. Here in Portland, it would probably require going to confession 😉 I know I mostly remained quiet about it on social media, as I didn’t want to get my head bitten off by Bernie supporters. I also didn’t want to lose good friendships–not worth it over a crazy election year. And I know for a fact of other Facebook friends who supported Hillary–they told me so in person–but didn’t post very much about it either.
Now, I can completely understand people disagreeing with Hillary’s policies. I can even understand people not voting for her in November and will not lecture anyone about that choice. I do believe in people voting their conscience. If that means voting for a third party this election, so be it. But during primary season, things went a little farther than that. Hillary was more than just an opposing candidate. She was evil. She was a fascist. She was Satan. She would mean a nuclear war and the end of the world. As opposed to Bernie, whose little bird was a divine sign of approval from God or Mother Earth. No wonder that voting for Hillary made me feel like I should put on my devil horns and mount the seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse before filling out my ballot.
Why am I saying all of this now? Sure, there’s some small amount of satisfaction in seeing more open support of Hillary lately. Even more so since I think she will make a much better President than people give her credit for. But mostly, this is an apology to myself. There’s no pride in being a coward and keeping silent about what you believe. Especially when I consider myself a “political blogger” unafraid to “express my opinions” and all this other bullshit. You’re supposed to do that precisely when it’s difficult and unpopular, not when it’s easy. Maybe when the next election comes around, I’ll be a little bit braver. For now, go Hillary!
eurobrat 
10/13/2016 at 2:28 pm
I think there a lot of us out there. Hillary supporters are, I pray, the new silent majority. I’d love to put a Clinton/Kaine sign in my yard, but I fear what might happen to my home. I’d gladly place an “I’m with her” bumper sticker on my car, but I know I’d be asking for vandalism. And my Madame President tshirt? It is hanging in my closet next to my Obama sweatshirt from 2008. It never got to travel outside my closet, either.
10/13/2016 at 6:42 pm
Yikes! Thanks for reminding me that I’m relatively lucky. I would have no problem wearing an Obama shirt around here.
10/13/2016 at 3:17 pm
I was with HIllary back in 2008, so I had a little practice in being unpopular on social media. Of course, I dried my tears and enthusiastically backed Obama then and 4 years later. This time around, I have been loud and proud in my support for Hillary. In fact, when voting early in the primary this year, my sister and I were like Cagney & Lacey when some Sniffy McSniffypants supporters tried to intimidate us. It’s not because I am particularly brave (but my sister is!). Instead, I am just old enough not to give a shit what someone else might say and too pissed off at the stupidity, racism, misogyny, intolerance, etc., etc. that has reared its ugly head.
Don’t kick yourself, eurobrat. You don’t have to be loud to be proud. Sometimes, you just wait for the right moment, when people are done licking their wounds and are ready to listen to reason again.
10/13/2016 at 6:44 pm
That is so awesome! I am going to let you and your sister inspire me. I agree that perhaps waiting for all the feels to die down before expressing this may have been smarter. But it’s also true that the older I get, the less of a crap I give.
10/13/2016 at 6:55 pm
We need some kind of Bat-signal (maybe a silhouette of Hillary) so her supporters can come to the aid of like-minded sane people who are being harassed by Trumpelthinskin cult members.
10/13/2016 at 7:48 pm
That sounds like a great idea. Maybe just a giant H.
10/13/2016 at 7:55 pm
I like it! It has to have the arrow, too, of course.
10/14/2016 at 5:53 pm
Naturally 🙂
10/13/2016 at 6:38 pm
Being too timid to speak up more forcefully can be somewhat problematic but to some degree understandable. Those who acknowledge someone’s lack of qualifications and ability but do not denounce the person lack any integrity. These people I describe as self serving cowards.
10/13/2016 at 6:44 pm
Did you mean “Trump followers”? 😉
10/13/2016 at 10:46 pm
No, I meant the likes of a Paul Ryan who in the end places party above convictions.
10/14/2016 at 5:52 pm
Okay, so GOP politicians trying to defend Trump…I agree that I don’t have much respect for that, either.
12/05/2016 at 12:52 pm
Yes, I know hindsight is 20/20. But I’d have responded this way…if my Webpipes up & running at the time. And since this might be my only chance to say “I told you so”…
This has been a rough year for some of us who have, indeed, been with her.
Now there’s a mild understatement! First, it’s actually been 2 years, not one (But it felt like at least 8.) Second, it’s been a rough year politically for both her fans…and most of those opposed to her. Democrats who were not “with her” in the Primaries, but then reluctantly went “with her”, got to lose painfully twice! AND feel like they sold their soul in the process. Those folks didn’t even get the “At least I stuck to my principles” booby prize. And some (like me) saw it coming for the better part of a year and tried in futility to warn folks what might happen…only to see the nightmare scenario come true.
As the DNC e-mail hacks have proven (as if they were needed) the entire system was rigged in favour of Hillary’s “can’t lose” candidacy. And yet she barely managed to win the Primaries against a grumpy old man few people had ever even heard of. Dude didn’t even comb his hair when he made his announcement for President! Imagine if he wasn’t a total nobody living on the political margins, or if the system wasn’t totally stacked against him. Imagine if he was a household name with megabucks and a party establishment working to get him elected. But why imagine when that actually happened in the general election? Who cares if Trump was the most hated candidate to ever run for the office? Hillary & her crew would find a way to lose to him….and they did, idiots that the Democratic “brain-trust” are.
Not to blame her personally (only some of it’s her fault & some perceptions of her are inaccurate/overblown), but Hillary Clinton was the poster-child for EVERYTHING wrong with the Democratic Party for the last 25 years. A few examples:
1) The drift to the right & the selling out of principles for power. Over the last 25 years, Democrats have become Honorary Republicans. Policy wise, most Democrats are where Republicans were 15-20 years earlier. But what has it got them? In a 2 party system, they’ve won almost 50% of the time! . Somehow, that “power” never really seems to materialize. Even when they win, the Pussycrats still manage to find a way to lose. (See Obama’s 2 years with double Congressional majorities fizzling away with little to show for it.)
Despite giving $250,000 speeches to Gold Mansacks where she tells them she shares their vision, Hillary still failed to win a “sure thing”…twice now. Last time, she lost to a black man…in America!!! This time, she lost to a blithering orangutan. But even if she won, she’d have accomplished next to nothing other than 8 more years of gridlock. Nobody can say otherwise with a straight face. Shit, “More of the same” was her slogan for a while.
2) The abandonment of “the base”. Republicans keep winning battles they logically have NO business winning just because they keep drooling imbeciles who vote against their own best interests happy. The Democrats do the exact opposite. They promote this Utopian fantasy of economic globalism & Free Trade, driven by technology and filled with unicorns farting gold coins on them from above. (aka Golden Shower) However, the reality is that this vision has only helped natural born Republicans, while leaving their traditional working class base fighting over dumpster scraps for decades. So, guess who wasn’t “with her” in the ONLY states that mattered in 2016, the Rust Belt and the place full of Rust Belt refugees (aka Florida)?
3) The package Hillary is an adult in a Peanuts cartoon. “Waw-wahh. Waw-wa-waaahhhh” Like a rerun of an 80’s family sitcom, you’ve heard it for decades and it wasn’t that great the 1st time around. She’s knowledgeable & experienced, but patronizing, bland and not very believable. Unless you’re a 40+ year old woman who watches One Day at A Time with her 7 cats every night, Hillary was about as inspiring as 3 day old toast. Toast with some baggage, both personal & political. And speaking of 3 day old toast, her VP pick made Al Gore look awash in charisma.
That e-mail server shit only solidified every bad impression of her. Something that should have been a simple, “Yeah. I fucked up. Hopefully, Anthony Wiener’s diseased machine didn’t have a virus that hacked into my private server” turned into a year long reminder that her 1st instinct is to lie about everything…even relatively unimportant shit that would blow over after a few weeks. Now, imagine what she’d do with important shit she didn’t want the public to know about.
“Say one thing in public, do something else in private.” does NOT match up well against “I’ll say whatever the fuck I want and let you decide if you like it.” You NEVER win a fight with a revved up pig in a pile of slop. But that didn’t stop her “geniuses” from tossing her into the mud with him. Morons! If they wanted a brawler, they should have picked the scrappy Jew with fans in the Rust Belt.
4) Oh, and her stupid fucking logo…a Hospital H in Democratic blue perfectly symbolized the sickly shape Democratic values are in…punctuated by a Republican Red arrow pointing towards the right. No, no symbolism there! But not one of her army of overpaid “experts” who analyze what every burrito topping “communicates to the voter” could see the obvious symbolism…in the 2 years it was on every podium during every speech!
No wonder she lost. And while she lives on to give $250,000 speeches to Wall Street douches, everyone else on this fading planet will pay the price for her loss.
12/05/2016 at 7:42 pm
Agreed that this has been a difficult experience for both the Bernie and the Hillary supporters. This post was my way of finally venting about how rough it was to be a Hillary supporter during the primaries, when everyone was so gung ho for the Bern — and my regret that I didn’t speak up more strongly for her at the time. There really were many inaccurate/overblown perceptions of her, and when you don’t speak up, you only allow perceptions like that to grow. But hindsight is 20/20 *shrug*
A silver lining to the situation–I recently went to my local Democrats meeting and the place was filled to the brim with lines out the door and record attendance. You will be happy to hear that the participants talked about working to re-make the party in Bernie’s image. As you and I have previously discussed, I have some qualms about Bernie’s agenda, but I will wait and see what this ends up looking like.
I was indeed disappointed by Hillary’s VP pick. I was hoping she would pick someone younger and more personable. She already had the moderates like me on lockdown, so it wouldn’t have hurt to pick more of a leftie than herself.
Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge now, and the thing to focus on is surviving the Trump years. I’m guessing that with Republicans controlling all three branches, most of the work of resistance will have to be done locally, and since I’ve been volunteering in local politics for a bit now, I’ll just roll up my sleeves and continue doing that.
I did find Hillary’s run to be inspiring, but then again I am one of those 40something women, minus the cats and soap opera. The election did not treat her kindly, but I’d still like to meet her in person and thank her someday…and maybe if things go well for me, I will 😉
12/14/2016 at 12:14 pm
This post was…about how rough it was to be a Hillary supporter during the primaries…and my regret that I didn’t speak up more strongly for her at the time.
You suffered by backing the Primary winner? Aw, let me call you a waaambulance. 🙂 For Christ’s sake woman, you live in Portlandia!!! What else do you expect??? Being a Hillary supporter there is like being a socialist working on Wall Street and complaining “I’m surrounded by capitalists.” The main difference is that your horse actually won (by photo-finish) a Primary race she couldn’t possibly have lost. So, suck it up, Buttercup. 😉
Sure, you backed the wrong horse. However, you have nothing to regret, or feel guilty for (aside from poor judgment). However, the reality is there was absolutely NOTHING you could have done . Oregon was completely irrelevant in both the Primaries and the general election. Truth is, only about 6 states mattered at all in the general election. Five of which had been taking it up the ass for the last 25 years, thanks to shitty trade policies “Her” favoured, Bernie consistently opposed and Trump decided to oppose retroactively, in order to stand a chance of beating Hillary. (Which should been a massive Spoiler Alert!, but somehow wasn’t.) Now if you lived in the Rust Belt, it might be another story. Your opinion might actually have mattered. The sad reality is your impact on the Presidential election was about as irrelevant as mine, a Canuck not even allowed to vote.
Besides, speaking up for “Goliath” is totally unnecessary. Goliath is supposed to win handily and doesn’t need your help…especially when the entire Democratic establishment was (as America’s new fearless leader would say) “rigging the system”. Knowing the system is rigged hardly inspires the (Larry) David fans to spend hours in line to vote for Goliath in Her next battle.
And don’t think, “If only I did more on-line…” The Webpipes is a giant echo chamber where non-identically-minded people only get together to throw feces on each other like the damn dirty apes we are. Trump proved beyond a reasonable doubt how utterly useless things like “facts”, “logic” & “basic human decency” are in the post-Interweb world. You’re better off talking to one of your cats, or to a roll of toilet paper, than trying to convince anyone of anything anymore. Unfortunately, this is our culture now.
Just like the (original) Planet of The Apes series, the Apocalypse has occurred and an Orangutan has taken charge.
12/14/2016 at 5:30 pm
I guess it makes me feel slightly better to know that speaking out more would not have made much of a difference anyway.
12/16/2016 at 7:39 am
None whatsoever! 😉
This is something the Mad Men/pre-Mad Men eras understood FAR better than those of us trapped in today. Sex, religion and politics just weren’t talked about because doing so was considered “impolite”. (Polite? Wat dat again?) And unless your goal was to start a fight and make enemies, such discussions were pointless.
And the Interwebs has proven them right. Even though I type this during work hours, it’s a safe bet that, right now, 50% of North America is using technology to throw feces on each other because of some religious/political difference…and the other 50% is masturbating to porn.
In this toxic mental environment, talking sense & being reasonable is pointless. You do it purely for the love of writing. It’s the only reason I returned to the Webpipes (Or was it the porn? Can’t remember.)
12/18/2016 at 12:32 pm
At least I do have the love of writing, and that is something 🙂
12/14/2016 at 12:17 pm
“I was indeed disappointed by Hillary’s VP pick. I was hoping she would pick someone younger and more personable.”
See what “hope” gets ya? Disappointment, that’s what.
It’s not like Joe Biden wasn’t available. He’s certainly experienced. He also conveys the best possible version of “more of the same”. And almost everybody likes the goofy, ol’, geezer. (Who probably should have run himself.) But again, the “geniuses” in the Democrat party somehow found a way to make an already uninspiring ticket even less inspiring.
A (Bill) Clinton/Obama leftover selecting a “bargain-bin Biden” is not exactly “Yes we can!” It’s more like, “Yeah, whatever.”
“I did find Hillary’s run to be inspiring, but then again I am one of those 40something women, minus the cats and soap opera”
Oh, right! You weren’t in America at the time. While the title sounds like one, One Day At A Time wasn’t a soap opera. It was a 70’s sitcom from the great Norman Lear. It was one of several “feminist comedies” of the 70’s (Maude, Alice). It had a virtually all-female cast. Women drove the plot. The male lead was there to provide “comic relief”. Despite being a silly sitcom, topics were often pretty serious; divorce, single parenthood, sexual harassment, etc.
I chose the show on purpose, as I have no doubt fans of it were universally “with Her”. I also wanted to use a “dated reference” to drive home the point that Hillary’s “ability to inspire” outside that specific demographic has passed its Best Before Date.
See, back in le fromage that was the 70’s, you could have TV shows that were about something meaningful, political even. (and unashamedly Leftie). Back then, Lefties weren’t the French Surrender Monkeys they are now, just trying to sprinkle sugar on the shit sandwich corporate, right wing, America keeps force feeding them. They fought to change things. (Hell, Bernie fit right in with Northern Democrats back then.)
And it generally worked…until the 80’s, when American politics & culture got redirected towards the toilet, where it’s been heading faster & faster ever since. Not so coincidentally, that’s also when Trump 1st hit people’s radar screens.
But that’s a bygone era. Today, we’re supposed to walk around accepting whatever gruel that gets put in our bowl by the 1% and not ask for more. If we do, a lovable, seasonably appropriate, musical number will break out…and then we’ll all have to turn to crime to survive. (See: Oliver)
As you say, today has been reduced to a struggle for survival in the terrifying Hellscape that is our culture, politics & economy….If only we had a way to fight back…If only we didn’t stop fighting in the 1st place.
12/14/2016 at 5:41 pm
Aha, okay…the soap opera I was thinking of is One Life To Live. This, on the other hand, sounds like a show I would actually enjoy watching. I miss the time when TV shows used to handle social and political issues….
12/16/2016 at 8:21 am
One Life to Live + Days Of Our Lives = One Day At a Time….Really easy mistake, especially for somebody who was being forced to move anvils in a Gdansk shipyard at the time.
While NBC’s The Carmichael Show is a definite throwback to the era, the “most important” topics on today’s shows are “I want the latest consumer product” & “Who said what about who on Loserbook/The Twit Zone”. Mindless, consumerist, drivel designed to permanently turn off your brain. While great, Seinfeld (aka the show about nothing) put the final nail in the coffin of shows about something. (Comedies for sure.)
I watched One Day At A Time as a little Red Diaper Baby. Didn’t know what divorce was yet, but I knew the woman leaving the house for good & jumping for joy “wasn’t supposed to happen”. A woman living without a man…and surviving? While mostly silly comedies, women (& overall society) owe these kind of shows a lot. (The Mary Tyler Moore Show is probably the easiest one to find on TV.)
And thanks to my TV Trivia OCD, I can’t get that damn theme song out of my head!!! Arrrrgh! Thanks again, Internet. You can “kiss my grits”. (Note: Alice reference.)
12/18/2016 at 12:34 pm
I’ve been wanting to look for those shows for a while now, on Youtube or elsewhere. Would be interesting to see the different perspective of those times. And while I do think Seinfeld is funny, I always found it a little disturbing that it was the show about nothing…there is way too much of “something” going on out there in the world.
12/23/2016 at 10:55 am
Jesus, 4 months off-line and just a couple weeks back and I’ve jumped in the TV nostalgia/trivia quicksand. Sorry about the length.
Now remember, while often “about something”, they were still sitcoms out to get ratings. Masterpiece Theatre they were NOT! Most 70’s sitcoms relied on silly catch phrases (Dy-no-mite!, Kiss my grits, I’m comin’ Elizabeth!, etc) and were eager to create lucrative “spin-off” shows. For most of these “shows about something”, the longer they were on the air, the less they were “about something” and the more they were just another sitcom.
And 2016 viewers, (even ones watching them at the time), probably won’t see them as remotely edgy. But they absolutely were! Back in the 70’s, TV was still EXTREMELY conservative by today’s standards, even by 70’s standards. For example, Star Trek (’67) broke the rules with TV’s first interracial kiss, allowed only because the characters were “forced against their will”. All In The Family kicked off a literal shit-storm by…flushing a toilet! Standards & Practices forbade toilets. But they got around it by making it an off-stage sound effect not in the script. Delta House (aka Animal House: The TV Show) was strangled to death by its own network censors. Not just because of the ban on swearing, nudity and even making references to drugs, but because 2 unmarried, opposite sex, characters couldn’t eventouch a bed at the same time…And that was after the rules were “relaxed”. I Love Lucy was prevented from showing 2 married characters (also married in real life) just HAVE a double bed in their bedroom. Nor could they say the word “pregnant”, even though Lucy’s real life pregnancy was part of the show. Anyway, I digress….
Many of these sitcoms were edgy purely because of the premise, few of which are “edgy” today. For example, One Day At A Time was about…divorce!!! Even though a lot of people did it in the 70’s, it was considered a shameful thing, not something that makes you jump for joy. (ie the original theme) Okay, now a quick list of 70’s “shows about something” off the top of my head.
The Grandpappy of em all: All In The Family was the funniest, longest running, most popular and most political of them all. It’s probably the easiest show from the era to find.
BET Bill Cosby broke the colour barrier for leading actors in the late 60’s with I Spy. By the 70’s, his success allowed for experiments with all-black casts, which was particularly shocking in the barely post-segregation South. But even into the 80’s, the entertainment industry generally confined blacks to (as Public Enemy’s “Burn Hollywood Burn” famously rapped) “butlers & maids, slaves & ho’s”…and above all, criminals. Decades of networks airing 2+ hours a night of blacks getting arrested created fertile ground for “tough on
Negroescrime” politicians.The below shows have regularly been on BET since it started and were popular enough to be syndicated/released on video/etc.
Good Times was about a struggling black family in the projects. Previously unimaginable! Even more unimaginable was The Jeffersons. They were a black family whose “slave name” intentionally shared the name of a Founding Father. The Jeffersons were “Movin’ on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky” which mirrored the real-life rise of a black middle class thanks to decades of hard political struggles. VERY culturally influential show which also featured a (previously no-go) mixed-race couple. The “black man with an uppity black servant” was an ongoing, ironic, joke. Sanford & Son was another all minority cast. Beyond that, it wasn’t political…aside from political activist, Dick Gregory, being a regular.
Benson actually was about politics. It was a spin-off of the campy & controversial soap opera parody, Soap That show handled everything with a sledge hammer, including making the smartest character the servant, Benson. He was so smart, he got his own show where he was the butler in the Governor’s mansion. He worked his way up the ladder. In the final episode, ran against his boss for Governor. (Since it was cancelled, we’ll never know if he won.) Ironically, Jerry Seinfeld made a few appearances on possibly the last sitcom that was “about something”.
Up The Women While not butlers, they were certainly routinely portrayed as maids, slaves & ho’s (aka “housewives”) well into the 70’s. Working outside the home as anything other than teachers, nurses, or secretaries was still a “new concept”, even more so on TV. The Mary Tyler Moore Show 70-77 was the first show about an unmarried, career, woman. It literally “liberated” women (on TV anyway.)
Alice & One Day At A Time were both nearly all-female casts dealing single motherhood; the daily struggle to survive & become persons in their own right, not dependant on a man. (Whaa?) Maude was the Queen Bitch of it’s class. Like The Jeffersons, it was a spin-off of All In The Family (Good Times was a spin-off of Maude.) Maude was the first and most political “feminist comedy”. Maude was an outspoken Lefty Democrat/feminist and had the 1st (and last?) abortion on TV.
Other than The Mary Tyler Moore Show these “feminist” sitcoms are probably much harder to find than the others. Especially Maude, which is still “too controversial”. Because of the Southern influence, Alice was a staple on TNN, back when it existed, but I haven’t seen it since.
However, there is good news on the availability front for ALL these shows. Thanks to digital aerial TV, some TV stations now piggyback multiple signals on their broadcast frequency (ie Channel 13 also has 13B&C) Some stations are using this to broadcast cheap-to-get old shows to air to small audiences of folks like me who “kick it old school”, analog hipsters with record players & antenna TVs and the segment of The Poors who are smart enough to realize they can’t afford anything more modern. The most famous “national sub-channel” is Antenna TV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_TV From what I understand, it has shown virtually every episode of ALL of the above shows.
Aside from that…I’m sure you can find certain episodes of the above on the Web-pipes. However, if you want to compile even just one season in order, you’ll probably waste months of your life skulking around the Interwebs. Hell, it might even be worth paying for. (Used VHS tapes at the very least).
12/25/2016 at 12:25 pm
I am familiar with some of these shows. When I first moved to the States, I spent a lot of time watching old reruns on network TV. For the first couple in months in America, I watched The Jeffersons every night. I thought George Jefferson was hilarious, although I’m pretty sure a lot of the issues of race and class in the show went right over my head. I’ve seen a few episodes of All In The Family as well–and hey, that one featured a “Polack” character!
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my all-time fave American TV show when I was growing up in Europe was the Cosby spin-off A Different World. Even though that was an 80s show, it touched on some interesting issues as well, seeing as it was set at a historically African-American college. And again, since I didn’t live in America at the time, I didn’t necessarily understand all of the implications of what happened on the show. It’s certainly interesting to re-watch some of these episodes again now.
The good news is that I will likely be quitting my cable TV soon–way too much money for too many channels I don’t watch, and now that Trump is in office I’ve lost interest in the news. I’ll probably be going back to network TV with a digital converter, which means I’ll have several of these oldies channels. We’ll see how exciting all this nostalgia will turn out to be…if nothing else, it’ll be for a great price!