To be fair, Britney Spears has a few times entered my white male psyche, but this is not that kind of site.

What Hal says he's doing and what he's actually doing are usually distinct.

Here he's only talking all about personalities, playing the gender and race card, not about issues. And it's to push the spin that Hillary played the gender and race cards - not to debate whether she did.

In short, it's simply a campaign tactic - worked with Bill's "fairy tale" comment *ABOUT OBAMA'S 2003 IRAQ SPEECH* which was transformed into a slur against his whole campaign for president, and thus against a black man running for president, and thus a racist comment. Wind that one back:

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, former President Bill Clinton criticized the media for not pressing Barack Obama more fully on Iraq, and accused the Illinois senator of shifting his position to reflect changing attitudes on the war.

“It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, ‘Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn’t know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war,” Clinton said at a campaign stop in Hanover, New Hampshire.

“And you took that speech you’re now running on off your Web site in 2004. And there’s no difference in your voting record and Hillary’s ever since.”

He added, “Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.”

Note - that's from an article *CRITICAL* of Bill. And that worked so successfully - she's "KNOWN" for racially divisive comments - Hal and others would like to play it one more time. The same thing was done with Susan Rice - she said the day of Benghazi something like "we think it started with a video protest but got commandeered by an armed militia/terrorist/Al Qaeda-like types, but we're still investigating". The Republicans turned it into "it started with a video protest" only, and then said she was lying and covered up Al Qaeda involvement. And a lie or framing repeated over and over takes legs, especially if jackoffs at the NY Times or WaPo or CNN repeat it or let someone repeat it without real-time correction. And then they extend it to HIllary and others. Watch the GOP debates, and they say outrageous things because they get away with it - that's how they win.

So back to Hillary's digs. First, it's a big deal that she didn't name Bernie - both because she's not demonizing him, and she's trying to make a more generalized point. Second, if Bernie fits in the criticism, well, maybe he should consider his stance. 

The "gender card" was about "stop shouting", which fell easily into a standard female complaint - that men shut down over the sound of their voices, whatever they're saying. It's not exactly what Bernie said, but the circumstances were close enough to bring up a well-known issue. Hal can write a big long piece about penises in bathrooms as an issue that needs to be dealt with "now", but women being able to speak in the public marketplace of ideas without being called bitchy, pushy, abrasive, divisive, cackling, droning on and on, hysterical, shouting, or countless other adjectives is "playing the gender card", not a critical gender issue that needs to be addressed "now".

The policy purists have also adopted some standard where it's most important who had a specific position first, that you don't change. Which is absurd when we have new technologies coming along, new realities coming along, new circumstances coming along faster and faster. If you said in 1995 we should take shoes off in airports, you'd be a loony. In 2002, it was accepted. Video taping all police encounters in 1995 didn't make economic sense nor was the rate of police killings and beatings nearly as high today, nor was there uncontrolled use of tasers or the funneling of Iraq/Afghanistan military equipment to police forces - in 2015, that's our daily bread. Hillary's HMO-based health care initiative seemed (for some) the best we could do at the time - by 2008, single payer/Medicare model looked much more attractive. Andrew Sullivan in 1989 was one of the first gays to publicly promote gay marriage - nearly every single person, gay or straight, evolved on that issue after 1989. Does it matter much whether you evolved in 1992 or 2001 or 2012, or is it as important what you do with that information, what legislation or guarantees or equivalent analogies you champion as you come to what are likely more enlightened views? is it best to stay consistently stuck in the past, right on some issues, forever wrong on others, but at least "consistent"? Is it best to rush to a new consensus, like HMOs in 1993, only to regret that corporate focus and then have to shift, or cling stubbornly to what wasn't ideal? Or then there's Dick Cheney, who pushes back on Bush Sr's contention that his wife and daughter made him an unlikeable conservative wingnut, relying on his normal self-assured self-sufficency that he became an asshole all by himself? But change is often good - but in scoring political points, change turns to bad. Sometimes. My head can't stop spinning.

Whatever Hillary advocated in the 90's, the situation of much heavier law enforcement, much decreased crime, understanding of the damage of mass incarceration of blacks, the rising number of horrid stories of police abuse, shooting of innocent blacks, survivalist & other disgruntled whites parading around with automatic weapons in public and frequently going into public schools and theaters and shooting them up completely changes the situation from 1995. She would be stupid to still be re-treading position papers and approaches that are 20 years old, from a very different era. And for the last 20 years, we've given white gun owners much benefit of the doubt, that they're responsible, want them for hunting or gun ranges or careful self-defense, that they're true patriots. Instead of wacko 1995 urban crack gangs, we have wacko white supremacists who are a threat to normal people and normal life. Yes, Bernie - gun owners may be safe enough in Vermont, but in much of the rest of the country they're a menace. Time to change. It's not about checking people's mental health - it's about getting rid of the guns.

Edit to note: Hal's also pushing mighty hard to make Bernie the better feminist. We've been down this road before - of course "In this race, Barack Obama is the true feminist. Hillary Clinton, unfortunately, still does not get it. " - except he wasn't, but who knew until after he was elected? Uh, like anyone with a brain. Note in that article, Obama's the better feminist because he acts graceful, while Hillary's the pushy conniving bitch. Nothing stereotypical about that, eh? Goofus, meet Gallant.