“but what has Hillary ACCOMPLISHED?”

Comments Off on “but what has Hillary ACCOMPLISHED?”

bicatperson:

Yeah, okay, I’m gonna do one more of these.

Because it’s an ugly sexist myth that Hillary Clinton has never gotten anything done, and Donald keeps saying it anyway, because he knows his supporters will never bother to look it up. (Also to distract from his own record of bankruptcies and lawsuits and not getting an Emmy.)

And even on the left, you get people saying “how can we trust Clinton, even if her positions sound good, how can we know if she’ll follow through?”

Gee, I dunno, maybe we can look at her forty-year track record and extrapolate from there.

(Buckle up, this one’s gonna get long.)

In fact, let’s go back farther, let’s look at Hillary Rodham the Wellesley undergrad, 1965-1969:

And then let’s talk about Hillary the law student, lawyer, and professor, with some First Lady of Arkansas thrown in:

Let’s talk about First Lady Clinton, 1993-2001:

HRC followed that by immediately getting elected Senator from New York, and then re-elected by an even wider margin, so she served from 2001-2009.

I’m just gonna focus on the 77 bills Senator Clinton sponsored or cosponsored that that became law (although she introduced more than 2000, so imagine what could’ve happened with a Democratic majority):

At this point she was also running for President, but in swept Barack Obama and charmed the hearts of America, so Clinton ended up serving as his Secretary of State from 2009-2013.

There’s no Big Flashy Showpiece you can point to from Secretary Clinton’s tenure. A lot of her diplomatic work was straight-up post-Bush-administration repair work and maintenance. A lot of it was, frankly, unsexy. No one writes breathless headlines about statistically-supported initiatives to distribute lifesaving low-pollution stoves.

Also, she didn’t singlehandedly bring peace to the Middle East. So, y’know, missed opportunity there.

But she was obviously doing something right, because Hillary Clinton had a 69% approval rating when she left the State Department in 2013.

A quick roundup of some things Secretary Clinton pulled off just fine:

People keep talking about how Clinton is, historically, one of the most unpopular presidential candidates. Those people usually don’t mention how, three years ago, she was the most popular politician in the United States.

And, look: no one is saying she’s only done good things. You can’t work this long in politics and expect to make only the right choices – follow only the strongest intelligence – back only the best policies. Reasonable people can find plenty to disagree with in her record. Plenty to criticize.

But when people try to claim she’s done nothing?

Or that she doesn’t have any consistent beliefs or principles – that her record doesn’t have constant themes that she’s been reliably standing for since the 1970s?

Hillary Clinton has made real, substantial progress for women’s rights.

Real, substantial progress for people with disabilities.

Real, substantial progress for the rights and protections of children.

Anyone tries to tell you otherwise, you laugh in their faces and start listing things. I bet you anything they run out of patience before you run out of list.