As I've said repeatedly, and as is flagrantly obvious, Hillary Clinton will seek to overcome her heavy personal and political baggage with a simple identity-based message to America's female-majority electorate: It's high time we elect our
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Clinton: "Probably predictable for me to say this but there's a lot we can learn from Latin America's success in electing women presidents"
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) November 30, 2015Let's examine a few of the recent "success" stories from which Americans can learn:
Brazil - Over to you, Washington Post...
Brazil’s economy is tanking — and it’s not just China, its principal trade partner, that is to blame. South America’s biggest economy fell into recession in August and is expected to shrink by 2 to 3 percent this year. Inflation is pushing 10 percent, its highest since 2003, unemployment has climbed to over 8 percent, and the Brazilian real has lost about a third of its value against the dollar this year. Just a few years ago, Brazil was a favorite of investors — one of the “BRICS” group of emerging markets named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its economy grew more than 7 percent in 2010. Yet last week, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s reduced Brazil’s credit rating from investment grade to junk. In a rare front-page editorial Sunday, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reacted by attacking President Dilma Rousseff, who was narrowly reelected in October, for the “generalized irresponsibility” of recent years, during which public spending soared.
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Brazil's tanking economy comes amid a huge spike in government spending under Brazil's left-wing government, which has been consumed by a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal. The country's credit rating has been downgraded to junk status. Presiding over all of this is President Dilma Rousseff, whose approval rating has slumped to eight percent.
Argentina - The era of Cristina is over. The left-wing president's hand-picked successor lost to a conservative opponent last month, ending an period marked by longstanding corruption, economic malaise, and multiple credit defaults. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner leaves office with another dark cloud hanging over her head: She's been dogged by serious allegations that her government was actively complicit in covering-up an Iranian terrorist attack against an Argentinian Jewish center in 1994. In January, the chief federal prosecutor who'd investigated the case for a decade was found dead, literally the day before he was set to brief Congress on the evidence he'd compiled. The New York Times: "Mr. Nisman, 51, leveled explosive accusations that top Argentine officials, including President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had conspired with Iran to cover up responsibility for the bombing as part of a deal that would supply Iranian oil to Argentina. Now, the mystery has deepened with the discovery of Mr. Nisman’s body on Sunday — the day before he was to testify before lawmakers about those accusations." Cristina's administration declared the death a suicide, but
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Ms Fernández has hoarded power and suppressed dissent. She has bent the central bank to her will, muzzled the government’s statistics institute and bullied the media. She has tried, less successfully, to suborn the independence of the judiciary. She leaves an economy in even worse shape than it looks.
Costa Rica - Via Bloomberg, last year: "Costa Rica’s presidential race is in a statistical tie with a third of voters undecided after corruption scandals and historically high unemployment undermined President Laura Chinchilla. Unemployment averaging 10 percent the past two years and a series of resignations tied to accusations of corruption pushed Chinchilla’s approval rating to 9 percent, the lowest among 17 Latin American leaders, according to a 2013 survey by Mexico City-based pollster Consulta Mitofsky." Chinchilla, a center-Left economic moderate and social conservative, was replaced by a member of a different Chilean left-leaning party.
Chile - Via The Guardian, this spring:
Amid a series of political corruption scandals which have upended the Chilean political establishment and delivered a critical blow to her popularity, President Michelle Bachelet on Wednesday dismissed rumours that she is considering resigning...Public opinion polls in March showed the president’s approval ratings fell to 31%, down drastically from the 84% with which she finished her first term in 2010. Over the past year the percentage of Chileans expressing disapproval with Bachelet’s leadership jumped from 20% to 61%. Long a champion of Chile’s poor, Bachelet is now battling to maintain her ambitious social reform agenda amid massive public criticism. “There is an important crisis of confidence,” the president said...Over the past 12 months, Bachelet has had multiple legislative victories, including an increase in corporate tax rate to finance free or heavily discounted higher education for tens of thousands of students. The president, a pediatrician, is also pushing to build thousands of free day care centers throughout Chile.
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A more recent public opinion poll measures a further deterioration of the left-wing president's approval rating, which now stands at (24/72). Between the failed leftism, the endemic corruption, and the flagging approval ratings, perhaps Hillary Clinton is right: There is a lot American voters can learn from these examples. I'll leave you with two more instances of First! Woman! President! identity fetishism. Eleven more months of this, friends:
Hillary Clinton will be joined by 13 of the 14 Democratic women of the U.S. Senate at a fundraiser Monday night... https://t.co/t73w2dAeMW
— QkTip (@QkTipcom) November 30, 2015New Clinton campaign video: "44 boys is too many!" Little girls write letters to Hillary Clinton https://t.co/apSsGxxIbK
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) December 1, 2015
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