Hillary does:
COLUMBUS – U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton took a shot at Secretary of State Ken Blackwell of Cincinnati, the Republican candidate for governor, Monday during her third visit to Ohio this year.
Speaking to more than 3,000 people at a national conference of ACORN – the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – Clinton prompted whoops and hollers by saying, “Let’s make sure that we count every vote in our elections.” […]
Referring to presidential races, Clinton said, “This country deserves to have an electoral system that has integrity. I know there’s been a problem here in Ohio, and I hope everybody from Ohio is watching this election like a hawk. Don’t let them pull anything over your eyes again.”
Without naming Blackwell, Clinton said, “One of the people running for high office is actually running the election. That should not be permitted. It’s a conflict of interest. … We’ve got to take back our democracy.”
Many of you know I’m not a Hillary for President fan, but I do believe in praising someone when they take a stand on an issue that’s vital to our democracy. So thank you Senator Clinton. My hat (if I wore one) would be off to you.
And please — keep speaking out on this issue. Our best hope of gaining traction for election reform can only happen when those who have the biggest megaphones use them to point out how seriously flawed our elections have become.
Hillary is a shallow opportunist but she’s right about this and I’m glad she mentioned it. Elections are a moot point if this serious problem is not remedied.
Yep, shallow as they come, but I will take any support (and pr) for this issue I can get. And let’s face it when HC speaks the media generally takes notice.
Also posted at Daily Kos
This is good news
This is headed towards being a real mind twister in ’08.
Hillary is the only candidate with a halfway decent position on voting rights. Hillary is not just being an opportunist on this, because Hillary was one of the few US Senators that stood to defend Barbara Boxer the day Sen. Boxer contested the Ohio election results.
Brad from Brad Blog had an interview over lunch with Sen. Feingold and asked Feingold about voting rights, and Feingold ran … not walked… ran away from taking a position on voting rights in that interview.
Nothing from Edwards either.
Since Ohio, I’ve almost become a single issue voter. Fixing the voting process has to come first. I’m in a real bind here, because if a more progressive candidate doesn’t get a spine and take a position on voting rights, I will vote for Hillary even if she’s wrong on most other issues. Fixing the voting process has to come first.
Please… don’t make me vote for Hillary to get the voting process fixed. I will if that’s the only choice on the ballot, though.
“Since Ohio, I’ve almost become a single issue voter. Fixing the voting process has to come first. I’m in a real bind here, because if a more progressive candidate doesn’t get a spine and take a position on voting rights, I will vote for Hillary even if she’s wrong on most other issues. Fixing the voting process has to come first.”
This is the ONLY thing that matters to me. I don’t hear anyone else yappin’ about it.
Folks, if this country can’t get it arms around election fraud/corporate whores/government we may as well bail now. This county is done for. Hell, it will takes years before the world will have an ounce of respect for this county since the rape of this republic via the cabal even after a fair/real election.
Further, I find it alarming that the biggest leftie blog on the net (the orange one) refuses to even allow discussion on the subject….??? Be very afraid.
on supporting the Democratic winner in the Connecticut primary, and now this, I may have to take a closer look at HRC.
If she’d only come correct and say the Iraq “War” was a mistake, and stop trying to out-Right the Right with flag-burning nonsense…I’ll have to see where my deal-breaker is…
Hillary Clinton is not shallow. She is a deep politics politician. Something of a political genius. On the evidence. And these statements about vote fraud should come as no surprise
Now I do not agree with her tactics at present, but then…I am not a political genius. Also on the evidence. I am a political OBSERVER, because my views are too far out to ever win an election. I’m OK with that, too. I just attended a little fundraiser for a dKos-approved style “New Dem”, and what I saw there turned my stomach. I have little to no patience for upper middle class twits, no matter WHAT their supposed politics, and the room was FULL of them. There was another “New Dem” politician there who claimed to be a musician. I had my doubts, just on his handshake and smile. (Count Basie-“I don’t need to audition people anymore. I can tell how they play by the way they carry their case.” Yup.) I went to his website, and sure enough, he can’t even sing in tune. Another faker. So it goes. A bar FULL of fakers, mostly. (Except for my friend “R”, if he is looking in here. And the bartender, who was doing a a REAL job.)
That’s what makes politics…
My current observation regarding Hillary is that she may have painted herself into a centrist corner (now THERE’S an image right out of M.C. Escher) from which she may never recover, but she has had a very clear view of what is up with the right wing of this country for about 40 years.
And by hook or by crook, she has ACTED upon that view.
I quote:
Pretty damned avant-garde statement for a major Democrat eight years ago.
Pretty damned avant-garde for a major Democrat even now.
More?
Sure.
Substitute Butch for Nixon, the NSA trolling thing for Watergate, and Iraq for Vietnam and you have something that no major figure in the Democratic Party except possibly Russ Feingold would DARE to say publicly today.
Including Hillary Clinton.
She has made her centrist bed in an attempt to gain enough power to DO something about what is happening here in America, and one of the problems with making a successful big time political bed is that you are then forced to lie in it. And I DO mean “lie”. The poker of politics EMPHASIZES the bluff. I still think that she is about a 4 to 1 favorite to win the Democratic nomination…not least because she tacks with the shifting winds of popular opinion in a MOST amazingly graceful manner (Witness her handling of the Lieberman brouhaha so far. Remember…Connecticut is right across the street from her own NY power base. Dangerous. Like a great defensive fighter, she is there/not there almost simultaneously.)
And I think it is pick ’em between Hillary and McCain as far as the Presidential election is concerned. Neck and neck, and polls be damned. (McCain being the Hillary of the right. He’s tacked with the shifting winds over there and as a result has been given the keys to the mainstream Ratpub bank. Money buys nominations. In BOTH parties.)
If I were FORCED to pick between them, to put my money where my mouth is, I would lay it down for Hillary. Not because I am a leftist, but because the giant albatross of the Butch administration’s eight years of mistakes can and will be exploited by any really savvy, courageous politician in an open electoral process.
Which terms…savvy, courageous…apply pretty much exclusively to Hillary Clinton as far as the current likely field of Dem Presidential candidates is concerned.
I would only aim them at two other major Dems…Feingold and Dean. Neither of whom has much of a chance. Dean blew his chance already, and Feingold is too radical AND a Jew. Also John Conyers, who is too old to run. And probably too smart, as well.
Gore? He is a piece of lead, and I believe he knows it. GOOD lead, but not ready for prime time as a candidate. Never was; never will be. His silver spoon weighs too heavily upon his tongue.
The rest? Edwards, Warner, Biden, Clark? Also rans. Bet on it.
So Hillary believes in election fraud?
What a SURPRISE!!! She watched as Bill was railroaded into political impotence by media fraud and what had all the earmarks of an intel honeytrap. She of ALL people knows to what lengths the right will go to stay in power.
Once again, in case y’all missed it.
She didn’t say that the vast right-wing conspiracy was STARTED to go after Bill. I am quite sure that she does not think that it has been defeated, either.
And what are the vote fraud efforts that have managed to give us the most evil administration in the entire history of this nation?
Part of that vast right-wing conspiracy.
Duh.
So where is the surprise, here?
There should BE none.
I said above:”…the giant albatross of the Butch administration’s eight years of mistakes can and will be exploited by any really savvy, courageous politician in an open electoral process.”
The kicker in that statement?
The words “open electoral process.”
Hillary knows this.
Thus we hear this part of her emerging platform.
Watch her.
She’s the real deal.
AG
Hillary co-sponsored an election reform bill early in this session of Congress that wasn’t great, but wasn’t bad. She’s not a newcomer to this issue. But she’s also not a leader on it, and that’s unfortunate, because she has star power going to waste. People do listen when she speaks. That may not be the case come February of next year. She has the ear of the world for the next few months, as the Democratic “heir apparent”. Once she loses a primary or several, no one will care.
Maybe we should consider writing her and asking her to use some of her star power while it can actually have an effect? She could do more for this country by speaking out now than she’d be able to do in the White House if still saddled with a Republican House and Senate.