Hillary Clinton is running for President:
(My commentary on the declaration of her candidacy is below the fold)
Six years after making history by winning a United States Senate seat as first lady, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this morning that she was taking the first formal step to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, a journey that would break yet more political barriers in her extraordinary and controversial career.
“I’m in,” she says in a statement on her new campaign Web site. “And I’m in to win.”
Mrs. Clinton, 59, called for “bold but practical changes” in foreign, domestic, and national security policy and said that she would focus on finding “a right end” to the Iraq war, expanding health insurance, pursuing greater energy independence and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.
Good for her. However, she’s going to have to explain what her “bold but practical changes” mean other than as a catchy slogan or sound bite. And what the hell is “a right end” to the Iraq war? That’s just fence straddling hoo-hah as far as I’m concerned. It can mean anything anyone imagines it means.
Hillary Clinton is my Senator, and frankly I can’t point to a lot that she has done to help the State of New York or the country in the time she has been in the Senate. Holding that office has always been merely a stepping stone to this moment, when she could announce she was running for President and use her well known name and her political power as a member of the Senate to advance her candidacy. She has been the quintessential “triangulator” in office, never out in front on any issue, never one to lead the way in pushing any part of the progressive agenda, not even her original pet issue of health care.
She has a lot to do to earn my vote. Like Barack Obama, she sells papers, so we will hear a great deal about her in the media. But, as with Obama, we won’t hear much about where she stands, what she would really do if she became President, unless the statement in question has been pre-vetted and deemed “safe” by her entourage of consultants and DLC cronies.
I know where John Edwards and Wes Clark stand on the War and on other issues. I even know where Obama stands on the war (it’s the one issue where he has clearly allied himself with the progressive movement in the Democratic Party). I have no clue what Hillary would do, however. Her corporate connections run deep, though you will see scant coverage of them by the major media outlets.
In 2000, there was a candidate who mouthed platitudes, enjoyed favorable media coverage of his campaign and who had many, many connections to prominent corporations and their executives. A man who claimed he was one thing when he was really something completely different. That candidate was George W. Bush.
I’d like to think that Hillary would advance progressive causes should she ever be elected President. I’d like to believe that, but I won’t. Not now. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Right now, count me among those who will oppose her nomination as the Democratic candidate for president in 2008.
I voted for her with enthusiasm six years ago but that enthusiasm has waned.
Part of the NYT story on her announcement:
Perhaps if this private side came out in public I could get excited about her candidacy.
You’re also correct re BO. Birds of a feather.
We need a candidate who’s willing to say: “Fuck the focus groups, this is what I believe”.
If she ran the country like her husband I think we would all breath a breathe of fresh air, but we can do a lot better. I consider it our job to defeat any DLC candidate. They are going to have a fight on their hands.
She’s gonna be so, sooooo disappointed. If she’s nominated, she won’t win. You read it here first.
Imho, she’s ego driven…trying to play catch up to Obama and Edwards, deflate the love-in. But
The hate for anything Clinton has not diminished. Even Bush’s failures are Bill Clinton’s fault. She’ll split the party. Lots of yellow dog Dems and voter-leaning Dems including moi will campaign against her.
Anyone but Billary.
no more dynasties. It’s a time for healing.
The trouble is, once Finegold dropped we were left with nothing but dlc candidates.
I am not investing any hope in the Presidency unless one of them actively distances themself as Dean did. I am concerned about Congress and the Senate.
Obama’s hat toss forced her hand.
Neither him nor her, imho. They’re paper tigers.
He’s gotta stop being a ‘rock star’ and get down to real business. Let’s see him heading the ticket in 2012 or as veep (prez in training) in 2008.
And I thought I would really go for a woman who ran as president…but not this woman.
I will support the Democratic nominee for President..because I like John Edwards..and if he doesn’t win. we’ll is still vote for a democratic, but I sure hope it is not Sen.Clinton.
A horrid first statement, expressing nothing but the values of political careerism.
I don’t doubt she is privately funny and sarcastic. Too bad that is kept in her “zone of privacy.”
I’d love to see a really sarcastic candidate, and really now couldn’t be a better time. The wealth of material alone.
Amen, someone took note of, the “I’m In and I’m in to win”
Well, Gawd we should hope she expects to win, not lose.
Hillary, we owe you nothing, you address us as if we’ve been on Pluto these many years.
“I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine,” Mrs. Clinton said on the Web site. “After nearly $70 million spent against my campaigns in New York and two landslide wins, I can say I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate, and how to beat them.”
Just laughable. I’ve a floating iceberg in the Atlantic for sale.
Maybe in New York, you got an easy ride as your opponent imploded. I the rest of the country, it’ll be brutal? 2008 will be on substance. Real substance. The wars, the economy and the green revolution. On all pilars, you’ll be found lacking.
‘The republican machine’…I guess that’s why she got chummy with Rupert Murdock..she faced down the repubs by becoming one..and anyone who doesn’t come out for a single payer health care system can take my vote and shove it..she’ll ‘expand’ healthcare?…sorry that won’t do it.
Yeah. “expanding health insurance”: now there’s a clarion call to get the heart apounding. She starts with the most flaccid compromise position and then waffles from there instead of starting with the ideal and then settling for the currently possible after a go-for-broke fight. But better that than scare off the big money, right? If you don’t say anything at all there are no soundbites to bite you in the ass.
Bold but practical? This is like some comic-page parody of the florid politician with nothing to offer but spinning like crazy to make it sound like something without getting anybody pissed. And I think that is the core of the problem: Hillary is hopelessly trapped in the salesman ideal of saying anything to make the deal — the deal is all that matters, not the truth, not the good. She has felt the sting of the GOP propaganda swarm so now she’s never going to go out into the real world again, but will instead lock herself into the stifling room where what passes for ideas is mere pandering and cowering until the polls produce a sure catchphrase for her to mindlessly parrot.
That said, she does perhaps deserve some sympathy for the hard row she’s gonna have to hoe. Just this morning some idiot female NPR “reporter” informed us that “some in her party” feared for her chances because she is “seen as too partisan”. How do you campaign when the MSM has morphed into a low-rent cover of Comedy Central?
“ive never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in”
what, on goddess’ earth, do you believe in? aha, if we don’t know, we can’t fault you for not standing up!
The first thing I think about when Hillary’s name comes up is the healthcare debacle she oversaw. I’m still not convinced that she (and Bill) really wanted it to happen, that it wasn’t just more posturing. With all the political marketing consultants feeding at their trough, how could they have been so blindsided by some silly little ads put out by insurance companies? Any fool could have predicted something like that, but with all their political manipulators, they didn’t. If Hillary was really trying to get this thing through, her political incompetence approaches that of Bush. If it was all just a cynical show, who needs her?
It’s really painful and unthinkable that here is finally a woman making a serious run for prez and instead of it being a historic celebratory moment it’s just depressing. I still can’t believe it.
My prediction: If she manages to get nominated, her only chance of winning will be if 1) her opponent has enough negatives to be effectively exploited and 2) high turnout is not crucial to her victory. If the GOP candidate can sell himself as a “moderate” and distance himself from Bush, we’ll see the “Reagan Dem” phenomenon all over again.