Tipsheet

Hillary Clinton’s Sad Campaign To Polish Her Image

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  December 22, 2017 2:40 PM

Women’s magazines are an area that the conservative movement often overlooks. They’ve become political. And for many young, college-educated women in urban areas it’s their source of news. And yes, it’s entirely liberal. Cosmopolitan issued endorsements in the 2014 midterms, where they announced that they would only support liberal, pro-choice candidates. Even if a candidate was pro-minimum wage hike, pro-universal health care, and pro-gay marriage, if they were pro-life—they’re out. Yes, par for the course, but these magazines are some of the most widely circulated in the country. Glenn Reynolds, (AKA Instapundit) wrote in 2012, about the need to conservatives to get into this market. I bring this issue up because Hillary Clinton used this medium to try and rehabilitate her image by guest editing the December issue of Teen Vogue, with stories entirely about herself. Now, I don’t read Teen Vogue of course, but The Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Kay Mechior gave a rundown and asked what the hell happened here:

Hillary Clinton expanded her already impressive résumé by guest-editing the issue that hit newsstands Dec. 5. It was a theme issue, with 36 pages devoted to a single subject: Hillary Clinton. That’s more than the 31 pages of ads in the 97-page magazine.

Mrs. Clinton commissioned several articles about herself. Staff writer Lauren Duca proclaims that “zooming out on Hillary’s 2016 loss reveals the broader contours of women’s oppression,” while Gloria Steinem says that when a woman is elected president, “she will be climbing steps that were carved out by Hillary.” The issue also features contributions from Chelsea Clinton and Betsy Ebeling, identified as Mrs. Clinton’s “BFF.”

There’s a two-page spread of “Love Letters to Hill.” Readers are assured they are “personal notes” selected from more than 100,000 post-election missives Mrs. Clinton received from young women, including singer Miley Cyrus and actresses Chloë Grace Moretz and Lena Dunham. The magazine helpfully advises: “Read with tissues in hand!”

Then there’s Mrs. Clinton’s own love letter to Mrs. Clinton—or rather, to Miss Rodham. Framed as advice to her 18-year-old self, it includes such tips as “when president-elect Barack Obama says he wants to talk to you about a job opportunity in his cabinet, hear him out.”                                             

[…]

Mrs. Clinton’s guest-editorship is emblematic of Teen Vogue’s recent politicization. Last April, Condé Nast appointed 30-year-old Elaine Welteroth as editor in chief. She has presided over a magazine fixated on identity politics. Ms. Welteroth seeks to “empower” her young readers by urging them to organize, protest and vote in support of progressive causes.

[…]

Teen Vogue has billed its editorial shift as activism, but the obsessive focus on Mrs. Clinton seems more like perseverative cognition. And in the era of #MeToo, the heavy-handed promotion of Mrs. Clinton—who blamed her husband’s sexual misconduct on a “vast right-wing conspiracy”—is downright regressive.

And liberals ask why are Republicans continuing to attack Hillary Clinton; it’s because she’s still lingering around. She lost an election, a very winnable election. And now she’s trying to explain to people why she’s not president, as if that deserves a book to explain why. She had no economic message, she campaigned in all the wrong places, and she’s unlikable. She has zero political skill, but she doesn’t know that. Even after a year since the election, people still thinks she’s awful. Her Gallup favorable ratings hit their lowest marks ever this year at 36 percent. Bill Clinton wasn’t much better at 45 percent. Guest editing a women’s magazine for readers who probably already like her, and buy into her nonsense that sexism, the FBI, the Media, Russia, James Comey and the DNC cost her the election. She could take a page out of George W. Bush’s retirement book, in which the former president retired from public life and up until recently, stayed out of political ring. Now, almost 60 percent of Americans view Dubya favorably.  But that’s not going to happen. Hillary has started a super PAC aimed at helping 2018 candidates and supporting organizations and causes that are against the Trump agenda. She’s also mulling how she will play a role in the 2018 midterms. Is this a campaign to show she still has it? That she can be like a phoenix in politics; I might not have won the presidential, but I can help scalp the GOP in the midterms and stop Trump. Is she aiming to deliver one last blow to Trump before bowing out? Is this a move to try and get Democrats to think of her not as the lady who blew it? Whatever the case, she’s a two-time loser. She’ll never be president. And as for a majority of people starting to like her again, that’s never going to happen. Or maybe it could if she would just—you know—go away.