Fear and Fawning In Hillaryland

"I should tell you that Hillary did try to warn me," confesses Jennifer Palmieri in the latest memoir about the ill-fated Clinton campaign. "On March 23, 2015, my first day on the campaign staff, Hillary sat me and communications director Kristina Schake down and basically vomited up what it was like to have been her for the past twenty-five years."

Even if you've grown tired of the nauseating "everybody is to blame but Hillary" literary genre, you still have to give Palmieri's "Dear Madam President" props for at least graphically feeling our pain while she goes to great gut-wrenching lengths to blame everybody but Hillary for losing: particularly, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Former FBI Director James Comey, Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, and Donald Trump; and more generally, millions of anonymous sexist men. And of course, Palmieri also beats herself up on almost every other page. Masochism does have its rewards:

Friends, #DearMadamPresident is a NYT bestseller!!! I may faint. So grateful to all who bought the book & see their own story reflected in it. Please continue to tell your family & friends. Word of mouth & belief in your own power is how this happened. So grateful 🙏 ❤️ pic.twitter.com/bQf211J…

2 hours ago · Twitter

The money quote in the book comes early:

"We (Hillary's campaign staff) failed. It was on us to save America and we let her blow up." 

(I think Palmieri is referring to the country, and not to her candidate. I can only surmise that the publishing deadline must have gotten in the way of the editing.)

Palmieri is the campaign communications director who, just one day after the election, helped set in motion the Russiagate propaganda franchise and the beginnings of Cold War 2.0. So it's telling that she readily admits in her memoir that she was not living in a reality-based community in the days and months following the election.

 "This campaign is going to have to go all the way to December 19 and win the electoral college. Another five grueling weeks of campaigning in overtime. Then we'll look back on this bleak Wednesday when we get a glimpse of what life would be like in the dark, parallel universe where Donald Trump actually won, and we'll laugh "'Remember how unfathomably awful that Wednesday morning felt?'"

Do we ever, especially as the Cold War turns into a Warm War, threatening to blow us up. And given the unfathomable campaign that is Russiagate and the interminable sore-loser war being waged by Hillary herself, it's the booby prize that keeps on giving.

But this isn't about you, the "people", and it never was. "And now she suffers this," Palmieri laments, claiming that Hillary had this "cosmic foreboding of disaster" even before she had to be "convinced" by the Democratic Party to enter the race in the first place.

The memoir, which purports to be an extended inspirational pep talk to some mystery woman who will one day become the president of the United States, actually comes across like a discouraging dud. To be fair, Palmieri admits she hastily cobbled her slim tome together only after the "Game Change 3.0" movie she was working on with accused sexual harasser Mark Halperin fell apart. The #MeToo movement is what she says then "empowered" her to tell her own story.

"Brace yourself," she chides her hypothetical Madam President. "Nothing draws fire like a woman moving forward." 

You have to keep in mind when reading this memoir that it's the job description of a political communications pro to spit words out in quick, easily digestible, sloganeering soundbites. If you're a centrist Democrat, it's also smart to emulate Facebook COO and bestselling author Sheryl "Lean In" Sandberg, who is currently missing in action.

 You don't even have to worry about always writing the absolute truth, as in Palmieri's preposterous claim in Chapter One that Hillary was the first woman to run for the Senate. I think she probably meant she was the first First Lady ever to run for the Senate. What happened to her pal Dianne Feinstein, to name just one? The longest-serving woman, Margaret Chase Smith, must be rolling in her grave and choking on her cigar.

"Before I delve into all that happened in the campaign, I want to be clear that while misogyny and sexism were a problem on the campaign trail, I don't believe that everyone who voted against Hillary did so for sexist reasons," Palmieri allows, before glibly double-talking it with "But I do think we encountered an unconscious but pervasive gender bias that held Hillary back in many ways."

One of Hillary's biggest problems, Palmieri writes with an apparent straight face, was that she wasn't self-centered enough. She was too invested in "helping others." If only people didn't praise her all the time for "serving" as a male president's Secretary of State instead of for her actual alleged accomplishments in that and other posts! According to the author, public service as it's applied to women politicians is too uncomfortably close to the stereotype of women as caregivers.

More tidbits, all presented as concerned warnings for any future "Madam President":

-Hillary's private email server was an issue "we just couldn't put to bed." It was unfair that people demanded that Hillary apologize for something that hurt her, and only her. "The American people weren't the injured party here," Palmieri sniffs. "They didn't want her to apologize. They wanted her to confess to a crime." Harrumph.

-It is absolutely necessary to keep reliving and rehashing the Hillary Clinton campaign in order to clear the path for the next woman president, who will be inundated by haters as Proxy Hillary. The Clintonites have to keep complaining and blame-gaming to try to altruistically "sort everything out" for the sole benefit of the future female candidate.

-Jennifer Palmieri, as a self-proclaimed member of the permanent political establishment, is not ashamed to name-drop early and name-drop often. She's been in the "world's most powerful rooms" -- the Oval Office, the prime minister's inner sanctum at No. 10 Downing Street, the German Chancellor's office in Berlin, the Blue House in Seoul, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo... even The Kremlin! This memo to a future Madam President obviously doubles as her C.V. and job application. As Obama's deputy communications director, for example, she was a member of the Boys' Club and she knew when to "lean forward". This was easy, mainly because Obama was so adept at relieving the stress she chronically felt over the gossip rag stories in Politico. Obama sounds like Valium in a suit with a Zen chaser.

  -Hillary's female campaign staffers, on the other hand, were way too "zipped-up and agreeable" - and stoic. If only Palmieri had cried more, she might not have landed in the hospital in August 2016 due to an unspecified illness whose after-effects still bother her. Hillary was actually nice enough to send her a get-well OMG!! email in ALL CAPS. And then Hillary came down with pneumonia. Neither of them took care of themselves, and that is a very toxic thing that women do to themselves. "Let's nod less and cry more... crying isn't a sign of weakness, it's the ultimate female power play!" she writes. And you'll pleasantly discover that whenever the fawning media cover your meltdown, they're apt to say trite things like "she was visibly moved" or "she got all choked up." So accepting defeat graciously with a stony face is just so yesterday.

-When the Obamacare Marketplace website crashed in 2013, it was kind of a "silly crisis" and despite the media hype nowhere near as bad as the Ebola outbreak. There was no time for crying then, though, because there was too much positive spinning to be done. Palmieri stoically found a few people who had successfully signed up for health insurance, and then she put them right on TV. Zen Master Obama, though, wisely cautioned her that the story wasn't going away until they got the website working. What a stress-reliever he was! So all they had to do was sell a story that "the work was being done" and set up a few photo ops of nerds tinkering with the computers, and it all worked out so well in the end.

-After James Comey reopened the email investigation right before the election, Hillary bought a tearful Huma Abedin and Jennifer ice cream sundaes to cheer them up, and everybody acted very stoical and pretended not to care.

- Jennifer Palmieri's facial wrinkles tell a story she wants the world to see. "Embrace your battle scars," she says to her Madam President. "They will show us all what you endured in your life and in this job."

-Palmieri and other operatives thought Hillary Clinton's biography wasn't all that compelling. Hillary hadn't had enough struggles in her life. But that's our fault, too, for not appreciating her innate value "in real time." Still, Palmieri has to agree that Hillary does have a grating voice. To which criticism Hillary responded, "What would really help Hillary is if they could tell you the name of a woman on the world stage who does it exactly right."

(Oh, I don't know... Oprah?)

-Hillary's Blame Game Tour has been so worth it. "She keeps going, and eventually her story was heard. In the end, much of the press ended up applauding her candor during her book tour," Palmieri writes approvingly.

 What end? As far as Hillary is concerned, it's always the cosmic and candid and authentic beginning. Again and again and again. She might even think that Palmieri's book is an encouraging paeon to her, Hillary 3.0. And she probably wouldn't be wrong.

Democratic Party's Golf Cart of Doom

If Hillary Clinton is still wondering why she lost, she should look no further than the Washington Post op-ed recently penned by former aide Jennifer Palmieri.  This sermon is what the establishment wing of the Democratic Party believes will help to inspire the millions of struggling Americans who desperately seek some relief in their short, brutish, and nasty lives:

 At the Democratic convention in Philadelphia last summer, Jake Sullivan and I took to our golf carts one afternoon to make the rounds of the television networks’ tents in the parking lot of the Wells Fargo Center. It is standard for presidential campaign staffers to brief networks on what to expect during that night’s session. But on this day, we were on a mission to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

There are three things in this gripping lead paragraph guaranteed to make the reader stop and grip the nearest bottle of antacids:

1. Rather than trudge a few hundred yards around the parking lot like mere sweating mortals, Hillary's minions drove around in golf carts.

2. The reader is needlessly reminded that the Democrats held their closed convention in a venue owned and named for one of the most corrupt, bailed-out financial institutions ever created to be too big to fail and too big to jail. Why even bring up Wells Fargo, which has such a nasty history of ripping off the very same Americans whom the Democratic Party is ostensibly trying to woo back into the tent? (Hint: they love and need Wells Fargo more than they need average voters.)

3. Palmieri oafishly admits that she was trying to dictate the news and plant a story. She makes no attempt to hide the collusion which normally exists within the media-political complex. She complains that the rightly distrusted mainstream media fell down on its job to disseminate propaganda in the corporate Clintonoid interest.  It's all the media's fault that they didn't come through for Hillary back when it counted, despite lack of evidence of any actual Russian "hack."

Hillary Clinton's communications director didn't think it was in her job description to ride her golf cart around to the network booths in order to talk about such policy ideas as health care and free state college tuition. She was in such a bubble that she assumed that the anxious viewers at home would be more in tune with palace intrigue than with how her Anointed One planned to solve problems in their own everyday lives.

And thus does Jennifer Palmieri proceed to cast some of the blame for her party's loss on the millions of struggling people who were far too distracted by their own problems and not focused enough on Hillary's. Her op-ed blathers on:

 Voters didn’t seem worried. Earlier that week, our campaign manager, Robby Mook, was mocked for telling CNN that the leak of stolen emails before our convention was an indication that Russia was trying to help Trump. We did not know, as FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress this past week, that the bureau had already opened an investigation into Russian interference — and into possible links between Trump’s associates and the Russian government, including whether they worked together on his behalf.

Thanks a lot, Obama. Thanks a lot, Comey. Thanks a lot, Deplorables.

But it's never too late to start World War III with Russia, voters! As Palmieri admonished us earlier this year, we mustn't let the Resistance to Trump be sucked up by such mundane concerns as a living wage and universal health care. The resistance is all about defending ourselves against Russian invaders and vindicating Hillary Clinton, just lately re-emerged from her Brothers Grimm part of the forest.

Now that Trump is president, though, the stakes are higher, because the Russian plot succeeded. The lessons we campaign officials learned in trying to turn the Russia story against Trump can help other Democrats  (and all Americans) figure out how to treat this interference no longer as a matter of electoral politics but as the threat to the republic that it really is.

No, the normally reliable mainstream media tented up in the Wells Fargo parking lot didn't pay enough attention to Golf Cart Jen when they still could have saved the Republic. And now, as a direct result of that failure, Trump is president. But who's to say that other corporate Democrats can't cash in on the manufactured hysteria? Since identity politics and attacks against deplorable Trump voters didn't elevate Democratic fortunes, perhaps the relentless fomenting of fear and panic will do the trick.

As someone who worked in the pathologically secretive Obama administration, Palmieri purports to be pleasantly shocked at how swiftly some normally close-mouthed security state types have been willing to go public with the anti-Russia party narrative. Former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, for instance, actually went on TV to sound the public alarm during the campaign. Palmieri fails to mention in her op-ed that Morell was also in line to become Clinton's CIA director, and openly advocated for all-out war in Syria.

I remember my jaw dropping as I sat in our Brooklyn campaign headquarters and read the op-ed Morell submitted to the New York Times in early August, in which he shared his view that Russia had probably undertaken an effort to “recruit” Trump and that the Republican nominee had become an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

Whether her jaw dropped at the evidence-free charges, or whether it dropped because the CIA normally hides its political motivations as it orchestrates coups  and meddles in foreign elections, Jennifer Palmieri does not say. But it was so totally awesome that everybody else was as slack-jawed with wonder as she was.

Were it not for the spectacle of Hillary dredging up an old insult that Trump had aimed at a former Miss Universe, we the people would have paid more attention to RussiaGate. Besides, everybody thought Hillary would win.

So poor Jennifer Palmieri says she was stuck in a Catch-22 situation. How on earth to make the stupid voters take a paranoid and contrived narrative like RussiaGate as seriously as she did? Like Milo Minderbinder in the Joseph Heller novel, perhaps she "could see more things than most people, but could see none of them too distinctly."

We didn’t want her to talk too much about Russia because it wasn’t what voters were telling us they cared about — and, frankly, it sounded kind of wacky. At the same time, we understood the issue would never rise to the front of voters’ minds if we weren’t driving attention to it. It was already pretty clear they weren’t going to hear much about it in the press.

Thanks a lot, Comey. Thanks a lot, Obama. Thanks a lot, press. You left Hillary and Golf Cart Jen twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.

And even now, millions and millions of dumb Americans are not paying sufficient attention to the Russian takeover of their government. Trump's mundane outrages -- like the attempted destruction of the Environmental Protection Agency and the stuffing of the White House with some of the same financial institutions as Clinton and Obama -- are taking valuable attention away from what really matters: starting a war with Russia. Therefore, Jennifer Palmieri is going to work her heart out to convince dumb Americans to develop the acceptable and preferred kind of fear and dread that not only has always made our nation exceptional, but also has the potential to sweep more Democrats in to office in the midterms and beyond.

In another era, Americans would have been able to count on both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to stand up to this kind of threat. A lot of Democrats like to play the “If we were Republicans” game. I usually hate it; I don’t want to behave like the Republicans do. But it’s useful here. If Clinton had won with the help of the Russians, the Republicans would have impeachment proceedings underway for treason. No doubt. Instead, dealing with Russia falls nearly solely on Democrats’ shoulders.

It is very painful to be a liberal who has to come clean on one's own greed and bloodthirstiness and brutality. But that is what sometimes has to happen in the topsy-turvy world of the Duopoly. Even communications experts like Jennifer Palmieri occasionally have to communicate the distasteful truth that her prime allegiance is to the oligarchic war machine. Donald Trump simply cannot be allowed to grab more than his fair share of the booty.

What more can a liberal communications guru do but morph into Joseph Goebbels and tell a major major major lie often enough so that eventually, every last one of those dumb Americans will come to believe it?

But Democrats can break out of the Catch-22 of the campaign: If we make plain that what Russia has done is nothing less than an attack on our republic, the public will be with us. And the more we talk about it, the more they’ll be with us.

That was actually a pretty stupid thing for such a savvy PR flack to admit. This op-ed could be a case study in how not to subtly manufacture public consent. She very publicly discloses the neoliberal strategy designed to literally hound us into a state of abject submission. She very liberally promises that Democratic Party functionaries will talk about nothing but Russia in every one of their TV appearances. Russia is more important than a living wage, Medicare for All, restoration of Glass-Steagall and a tax on high speed trades, stopping the obscene control wielded by a few billionaires over both major political parties, and most of all, the amelioration of man-made pollution and climate change.

The detritus of a dwindling middle class, extreme wealth inequality, outsourced jobs, plummeting wages, rising homelessness and the worst drug catastrophe in American history is not the fault of the bipartisan, privatization-happy Neoliberal Thought Collective. Golf Cart Jen would lose her ride if she ever admitted such a thing. 

Her manufactured message is this: If you think that your life sucks and you feel too helpless and apathetic and unpatriotic to vote for the self-dealing corporate Democrats, then it is obviously all Russia's fault. Must.Resist.Putin.

The worst part about our lackluster collective response to Russia’s interference is that it represents exactly what the Russians were hoping to produce: apathy. Their goal, in addition to installing a president sympathetic to their views, was to undermine Americans’ belief in our democracy. For Americans to think that none of this really matters, that it’s all a game. That’s how they truly erode U.S. moral authority and strength over the long term. It’s what they have sought to do to European adversaries for many years, and now they have brought this seed of destruction here.

And thus does Golf Cart Jen end her screed, with all the inspirational garbage at her disposal.

 "The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa.” -- Joseph Heller, Catch-22.

Democrats' Recipe For Success: Boycott Nordstrom

 Updated below.

Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for the Hillary Clinton campaign, has communicated her prescription for a revitalized Democratic Party like this:

 Overcome your fear of Donald Trump, all you crowds of protesters out there. But more important, don't use this mass protesting occasion to demand a few extra bucks an hour. Economic justice is simply not what Resistance, Inc. is all about.  Whatever you do, don't, don't, don't move further left into Bernie Sanders territory!

 Overcome your incipient extremism in more pleasant ways than selfishly demanding a raise and some medical care. Why not show your solidarity with the immigrant you hire at below-minimum wage by boycotting a few high-end department stores like Nordstrom's and Nieman Marcus? Why not give a poor person an occasional ride to the doctor? Why not spend a morning hanging around a job site to keep your eye out for Trump's immigration goons?

Now that President Obama is no longer around, deporting record numbers of migrants and refugees, even members of Jennifer Palmieri's own family are finally discovering just how edgy and political they can be. And therefore, so can you.

Best of all, you will be simply amazed at how empowered you feel by boldly refusing to shop at any emporium suspected of dealing overpriced Ivanka and Melania Trump bling.

"Don't get hung up on Ben Carson's nomination," Palmieri lectured any wavering voters who might be feeling a tad guilty about their Democratic senator further immiserating the homeless, the evicted, and the victims of private equity landlords. "Get out in the country.  And don't assume that everybody in those huge crowds wants $15 an hour. Don't assume we have to move to the left. It's all about identity on our side now. Tap into that identity energy!" 

Don't worry about whether the Democratic Party might hijack this protest movement, added Chuck Todd. Worry instead that the movement might hijack The Party. And then the Party might end up being so, so over. Without your identity, they have no identity.

It doesn't do to rail against the white-sheeted racists of the Republican Party and think you can overcome your fear, insinuated Palmieri.  Because according to her, it is not anger at social and economic injustice that consumes protesters.  It's the obsessive fear of Donald Trump grabbing at your crotches, and disgust at Nordstrom selling cheap Ivanka merchandise. Therefore, you must protect your identities as upper middle class (mainly white) women with all the 300 thread count fibers of your beings!

Schmoozing on MSNBC with her good friend Chuck Todd, Jennifer Palmieri in just eight magical minutes inadvertently communicated some reasons why progressives must rip off the tattered Democratic Party band-aid and throw it away once and for all. The party can no longer hide beneath its protective Obama brand cult of personality. 

Last fall's WikiLeaks trove of Clinton campaign director John Podesta's emails reveal that Todd and his wife, a Democratic Party consultant, threw a private intraparty dinner party in late 2015 for Palmieri at their Washington home as plans were being finalized for Hillary Clinton's second run for the presidency.

The leaks also reveal that Chuck Todd was Palmieri's go-to shoulder to bitch on whenever the Clinton campaign thought that NBC was treating Hillary unfairly -- as in, questioning her about the Clinton Foundation and its foreign government donors.

So here's a P.S. to the liberal freedom-fighters of the upper middle class --  don't forget to also protest Party Crasher Vladimir Putin while you prepare for the revolution by purchasing your pink designer cashmere pussy hats at Saks Fifth Avenue. (I have a feeling that Jennifer Palmieri would be mightily offended if the mob suddenly went into full sans culottes peasant mode, bearing pikes in place of acceptable Gucci bags.)

Meantime, while people are out on the streets demonstrating against The Donald and his juvenile Tweets, I am pleased to report that despite his best relentless efforts, Trump still hasn't been able to corner the market on petty vindictiveness. The Twittersphere is absolutely chock-full of alt-activism in the world of bourgeois retail, via such feeds as #GrabYourWallet.

Update 2/10: After Jennifer Palmieri appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday, Donald Trump took to Twitter and complained about Nordstrom caving to consumer outrage by dropping Ivanka's line. So, according to the Twitter campaign, it is now not only O.K., but patriotically incumbent upon you, to open up your fat wallets and let those retail profits fly again in a sort of reverse protest. It's how the Democratic Party wants you to think about citizen activism.

There is apparently no place for anti-Trump protesters who never could afford to shop at Nordstrom in the first place, due to The Party never taking a stand on a living wage bill.