Disclosure: I'm am a strong Barack Obama supporter.
And among the reasons why: Hillary dissembles in calling herself "more experienced" than her rivals.
Yes, this is controversial, and some will say sexist. It's not. It's a legitimate issue to discuss and a legitimate point to make. And I'm open to being proven wrong and admitting it. But anyone arguing the point who wants to persuade me or others better prove it and not make unfounded assumptions or empty assertions. And if Hillary is the nominee you better really be able to argue the point, because the Republicans will attack her claim of "experience" furiously, plausibly, and with more voters than we'd like, successfully.
More below the jump.
Hillary's campaign web site talks about her resume as first lady. Without bothering to go through the items on it, it suffices to say she was an advocate for a variety of causes and held one of America's big megaphones. Secondarily she was an author.
Anything wrong with that? Nope, not at all.
But does that make her substantially different in any way from Barack Obama or John Edwards? NO. Compare their life stories, and resumes, and there is no clear distinction that one can be called "more experienced" than the others.
Going even further, Hillary is constantly talking about "35 years" of making change happen. That is beyond laughable if she thinks what she actually did in her past 35 years even marginally, let alone clearly, distinguishes her from her rivals in either party.
Public advocacy is vital to a democracy. And we applaud all who engage in it.
But you're not "more experienced" than other candidates because as the spouse of an elected official you advocated for this or that cause and got a book published containing your thoughts on how society is/should be organized.
The only "experience" Hillary has that average voters consider valuable is that of her years as an actual public official, which in its entirety is simply 7 years as a U.S. Senator.
That might be enough to get her the nomination, and she has no worse than a 50-50 shot at beating any of the Rethugs except McCain--and it's at worst only slightly less than 50-50 even against him.
But if she tries to argue "experience" against Rethugs with a long history of serving as actual public officials, especially McCain, she's going to get killed.
This is why Hillary vs. McCain is our worst match-up. Hillary asserts "experience" and "strength" and "actions over words," but she's clearly and unquestionably inferior to McCain on all those things. And to a lesser extent also the other Rethugs can trump her on those things.
We cannot win in November with serial exaggeration of our nominee's resume. Hillary already is extremely hated by an extremely large minority of voters--certainly more than 40%--partly because they view her as dishonest.
A message of "change" is the only message that can work against any Rethug this year, even one like Romney or Huckabee who try to exploit that message in Rethug primaries.
And Hillary is the worst of our choices to carry that message this year.