A commenter tried to justify her family and friend’s hatred of Secretary Hillary Clinton and that their views should be listened to because they are educated and have earned advanced degrees. I respond to the comment here since this post is too long to be allowed to be posted as a reply to the person’s post.
You provided anecdotes. However, if I am going to pick one person whose judgment I would trust to tell me what kind of character and ability Hillary Clinton has, it would be President Barack Obama. He had many choices he could have made for Secretary of State, especially after competing against her as a candidate, but he chose her. I will take his views on her over these people you are writing about. Of course, anecdotes are not data. If only people with advanced degrees voted, then Secretary Clinton would have won every single state. That’s a fact. These people are exceptions. These people enabled a completely inexperienced, self-centered, narcissistic and relatively uneducated bigot to become president. That’s not an intelligent or informed decision nor is it one that can be justified. Now, your advocacy of this viewpoint that she was a terrible person and a terrible candidate is based upon the education of the people you heard this viewpoint from. However, far, far more people with that education, with an advanced degree or more, voted for Hillary Clinton. Since education is the basis for your acceptance of the accuracy of their viewpoint, then the fact that the overwhelming majority of American voters with advanced degrees voted for her should convince you to either stop trying to advocate for those people using their education or alter your views. Secretary Clinton was a caring, empathetic, educated and experienced candidate. She was likely the most qualified nominee for president that we have ever had. She devoted her life to helping women, people of color, and the country.
You can’t begin to justify their hatred of Hillary Clinton. There are 331 million people who live in America. There are going to be exceptions like the ones in your post, but the overwhelming amount of people who voted who earned an advanced degree voted for Hillary Clinton. She literally would have won every single state had only people with an advanced degree voted. I strongly suspect the same is true for attorneys. She advocated for the rights of women everywhere. She is the reason why we have the children’s health insurance program. She was an incredibly accomplished woman. She graduated with honors from Wellesley and then earned her J.D. from Yale. She was the first woman to make partner at her law firm. Her work is regarded as the seminal work defending the rights of children legally. She provided free legal advice for the poor. She served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund. She fought to expand healthcare coverage. She won two elections as US Senator from New York and was instrumental in passing the Children’s Health Insurance Program. She served as Secretary of State under President Obama. She played a key role in the treaty with Iran. She spoke up for women and said that “women’s rights are human rights ! “ She won the nomination and was the first female nominee to be president of either major party. She won the popular vote by three million votes and only lost the electoral college by 77,000 votes over 3 states. She earned more votes than any white man ever. She was tied with President Obama for the second most votes comparing her 2016 vote total to his 2012 vote total. For somebody so unpopular, she sure did win an awful lot of votes, especially from educated people with advanced degrees like I have. Huge swaths of accomplished and well-educated people endorsed her. The following are only a small sample of the accomplished people who endorsed her.
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No real progressive would have helped Trump, a completely inexperienced, self-centered, minimally educated republican bigot, win. Whatever differences any progressive may have with Clinton pale in comparison to their differences with Trump.
Against her was a completely unqualified, completely self-centered bigot who barely graduated with an undergraduate degree and had literally zero elected experience. Any educated person will tell you that a president is likely to face some crisis during their term(s) in office. If Secretary Clinton had been in office, then we would have far fewer deaths and be in a much better position. The central hallmark of Trump's campaign was his blatant racism and bigotry. Empowering and knowingly helping a racist and a bigot win office is not something that a person who is not a bigot would do. They knew Trump was a bigot. This was plain for all to see. They helped somebody they knew to be a bigot win the presidency. Who does that ?
Was Secretary Clinton perfect ? Of course not, nobody is. She was attacked by republicans for 30 years. She was constantly under scrutiny and faced constant criticism. This made her inscrutable at times as she often was reluctant to display her emotions. She had them and she had a big heart which is why she did so much work advocating for children and the poor and advocated for marriage equality and gay rights in general. She accomplished so much. She will have paved the way for the first female president who will be a Democrat.
She participated in swimming and softball and earned numerous badges as a Brownie and a Girl Scout. There she was a National Merit Finalist and was voted "most likely to succeed." She graduated in 1965 in the top five percent of her class.[19]
By her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.[33] In early 1968 she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association, a position she held until early 1969.[31][34] Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty.
In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts,[37] with departmental honors in political science.[36] After some fellow seniors requested that the college administration allow a student speaker at commencement, she became the first student in Wellesley College history to speak at the event. Her address followed that of the commencement speaker, Senator Edward Brooke.[34][38] After her speech, she received a standing ovation that lasted seven minutes.
Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she was on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.[46] During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center,[47] learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973).[48][49] She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale–New Haven Hospital,[48] and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor.
In the spring of 1971, she began dating fellow law student Bill Clinton. During the summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. The firm was well known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members);[53] Rodham worked on child custody and other cases.[a]
Rodham began a year of postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.[60] In late 1973 her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review.[61] Discussing the new children's rights movement, the article stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals"[62] and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but instead that courts should presume competence on a case-by-case basis, except when there is evidence otherwise.[63] The article became frequently cited in the field.[64]
During her postgraduate studies, Rodham was staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[65] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[66] In 1974, she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., and advised the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.[67] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard W. Nussbaum,[48] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for it.[67] The committee's work culminated with the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.
working pro bono in child advocacy.Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[90] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[91] The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances and that in serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted. An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate."[63] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades"
In 1977, Rodham cofounded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund
Rodham became that state's first lady in January 1979. She would hold that title for twelve nonconsecutive years (1979–81, 1983–92). Clinton appointed his wife to be the chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[101] where she secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.[102]
In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner in Rose Law Firm.
She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984
Bill said that in electing him, the nation would "get two for the price of one", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume.
She was the first in this role to have a postgraduate degree and her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House
Unconvinced regarding the merits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), she privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority.[162][163] The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan. This was a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations.
Along with senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, Clinton was a force behind the passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997. This federal bill gave state support to children whose parents could not provide them health coverage. She conducted outreach efforts on behalf of enrolling children in the program once it became law.[171] She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood diseases and encouraged older women to get a mammogram for breast cancer screening, with coverage provided by Medicare.[172] She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.
Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.[60] In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as the first lady.[60][175] In 1999, she was instrumental in the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care.
In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in the People's Republic of China itself. She declared, "it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights".[187] Delegates from over 180 countries heard her say: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all.
In 2004 and 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.[268][276]
Clinton won the election on November 7, 2006, with 67 percent of the vote to Spencer's 31 percent,[281] carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties.[282].
By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763;[322] at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395,[323] with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner.[322] Clinton and Obama each received over 17 million votes during the nomination process[j] with both breaking the previous record.
In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as secretary of state in his administration.[327] She was initially quite reluctant, but on November 20 she told Obama she would accept the position.[328][329] On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for secretary of state.[330][331] Clinton said she did not want to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure
She became the first former first lady to be a member of the United States Cabinet.[338]
Clinton and Obama forged a good working relationship without power struggles; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside and was careful that neither she nor her husband would upstage the president.[352][353] Clinton formed an alliance with Secretary of Defense Gates as they shared similar strategic outlooks.[354] Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise.
In a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council in December 2011, Clinton said that, "Gay rights are human rights", and that the U.S. would advocate for gay rights and legal protections of gay people abroad.
Though Clinton lost the election by capturing only 232 electoral votes to Trump's 306, she won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes, or 2.1% of the voter base.[488][489] She is the fifth presidential candidate in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose the election.[o][490][491] She won the most votes of any candidate who did not take office and the third-most votes of any candidate in history,