"Long-time Hillary Haters" [View All]

[KnaveRupe]

(This was posted as a reply in another thread, but I felt strongly enough about it to adapt it as an OP.)

Lately, I've seen DU regulars referred to as "Long-time Hillary-Haters", as if Obama supporters have all been founding members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Any expression of criticism toward Senator Clinton is dismissed as meaningless, because the critic, whoever it is, has ALWAYS hated Hillary! There has been this bizarre transference whereby the actual, honest-to-badness, long-time Clinton enemies, and anyone who CURRENTLY disagrees with or dislikes or even "hates" the Clintons are ALWAYS one and the same.

I, like most other people around here who are disgusted by the current Clinton campaign, spent the better part of the last 16 years defending the Clintons from the Freeper-types. We've gotten into arguments with republican relatives at family gatherings, with officemates in the workplace, and with right-wing blowhards on local talk radio. We carried water for Team Clinon, even when it was damned difficult. We believed Bill when he wagged his finger at us and said he had never had sexual relations with that woman. We looked stupid when it came out that he lied to us, and we STILL kept faith. We STILL argued to all those people in all those venues that impeachment wasn't warranted, and that the crime of perjury in a civil suit was not a "high crime or misdemeanor".

We cheered on Hillary's run for the Senate. Twice. Even though the RW tools were all screaming "carpetbagger!", we defended her run for a Senate seat in a state where she didn't reside because we BELIEVED she would be a damned good senator. And most of us believed, at the beginning, anyway, that she would use that Senate seat as a springboard to a damned successful presidency.

We were disappointed when she, like so many other Democrats voted for the IWR, but we forgave Kerry, and Edwards, and all the others who regretted that vote, and would have forgiven her as well, the minute she admitted it was a mistake. And even if she wasn't our FIRST choice for president this time around, most of us would have been, up until very recently, damned proud to vote for her in the General if she was our nominee.

So, excuse the hell out of me, but referring to us as "LONG-TIME Hillary-haters" is either totally disingenuous, or it's stupid on its face. And it really, really pisses me off to hear it from the Hillaroids around here. Please keep in mind, that the LONG-TIME Hillary haters aren't the rank and file DU members. Or Keith Olbermann. Or Randi Rhodes. Or Rachel Maddow. Or anyone else who's proved their progressive chops. Around here, the only LONG-TIME haters are either poo-slinging Freeper trolls (who are pretty easy to identify), or are "operation chaos" douche-bags who are pretending to support Hillary to keep the fight going 'cause it helps McSame.

All the Hillary hatred you see around here from the regulars - the people who you say you USED to respect - is recent, and, if we're being honest, has been well-earned by the current Clinton campaign.