You know, I am just beginning to become conscious of something. Hillary Clinton might not be able to do anything to make me forgive her for her war tiangulating. It might just be that she can’t regain my trust no matter what she does. I might just see that kind of political juggling with other people’s lives as a few steps outside of any decent restraint and control. But it might not matter. I might wind up defending Hillary Clinton because the centrist pundits on my tee-vee treat her with such unfairness and contempt that it drives me to defend her honor.
Take Andrew Sullivan, for example, from the Chris Matthews Show:
SULLIVAN: I think she’s been a very sensible senator. I think—find it hard to disagree with her on the war. But when I see her again, all me—all the cootie-vibes resurrect themselves. I’m sorry—
PANEL: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
HOWARD FINEMAN: That’s a technical term!
SULLIVAN: I must represent a lot of people. I actually find her positions appealing in many ways. I just can’t stand her.
It’s pretty clear that David Broder can’t stand Hillary either, but that is okay with Joe Klein because David Broder is the hardest working turtle look-alike in journalism.
I know it’s become common practice to slag David Broder in the blogosphere. But let me say this in David’s defense: he is not an armchair pundit. Even now, at the age of 236, or thereabouts, he goes out and really does his homework, riding the buses and hitting the living rooms of voters in the crucial states. If you’ve ever wondered why people like me revere Broder, it’s his work ethic–and not just his kindness, civility, judiciousness and institutional memory.
And given Broder’s civility, it is really noteworthy when he hauls off and delivers a column like this about Hillary Clinton.
It is significant that David Broder crossed the lines of civility to praise John McCain at Hillary’s expense? No…it’s not. What’s significant is that left-leaning (supposedly) columnists like David Broder and Joe Klein, and a right-centrist like Andrew Sullivan, all can’t stand Hillary Clinton. She isn’t centrist enough? She isn’t hawkish enough? She isn’t pro-corporate enough? Or is it still about the smell of Arkansas stinking up the Georgetown parlors?
Hillary is really in for a squeeze. She’s polling at 4% over at Daily Kos (with a sample size of 22,000). The centrist media can’t stand her. The right thinks she is the bride of Satan. It’s amazing she is polling better than McCain, Guiliani, or any other potential GOP cannon fodder.
I don’t hate Hillary Clinton. I think she represents the right-wing of the Democratic Party. I don’t think she will stir up too much if she becomes President. She’s a safe choice in a time when ‘safe’ may be a luxury we can’t afford. I won’t support her candidacy in the primaries. But with enemies like Broder, Klein, and Sullivan, she can’t be all bad. She must be doing something right. At least, that’s what the polls tell me. I just don’t think John McCain is electable.
Choose your friends by their enemies.
And please, Booman…
Think for a minute.
I am SO sick of this reflexive Hillary bashing!!!
Face it. She is as good as it is going to get this time around here in The United States of Spamerica.
Do you want a candidate or executive who is more correct in terms of international policy? I certainly do.
Then move to Cuba or Venezuela or Bolivia. I am serious here, and I am NOT being in any way facetious or hostile. Castro has been right on the money for 40 years, as are his admirers.
The way the game is set up here, what you and I want is simply NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
We are living in the seat of an empire. Empires are big, clumsy systems that live by compromise. There are too many incredibly powerful forces working for position to allow any other process to work, and it is the politician who can form a coalition that gets the office.
Stop dreaming, here.
There is not even a HINT of someone else running for the Dem nomination that can unseat Hillary Clinton. Gore? Ain’t happening. Too late already. Clark? Be careful what you wish for. Edwards? A lightweight in lawyer’s clothing. Be glad that she is in a good enough position to begin the arduous task of reinforcing her left flank while still maintaining her ties across the center to disaffected Ratpublicans.
Or…go where it’s simpler. Go to the only area on earth that is mounting a new approach to democracy and socialism without serious interference from regressive, rigid, old-line fundamentalist religious forces.
Cuba’s very nice this time of year…
Venezuela, too.
I hear tell they have some oil in Venezuela, as well.
LOTS of it.
Later…
AG
what’s with the pro-castro crap?
What’s with the anti-Castro crap?
Are you so blinded by the corporate media that you think he has been some sort of vicious demagogue seeking only power and wealth?
LOOK at Cuba now and Cuba before the revolution. A whorehouse/gambling den for the Mafia transformed into the most progressive state in South/Central/Caribbean America. With better universal healthcare than the U.S. A better educational system, too, when you cut past all the rote memorization/multiple answer bullshit that passes for “education” in America. All the while suffering under a U.S. boycott and constant Intel attempts to destabilize the country.
Would you rather it resembled say Nicaragua or Panama?
Or perhaps a nice, sex-tour-for-Americans combination of Thailand and Las Vegas.
“SEE the Donkey-Boy and his Negress harem!!!”
Because without Castro and his revolution, that’s what it would be now.
Please.
Yes, he played power politics.
His little country has been at war with the United States Empire for over 40 years!!!
I have seen first-hand the anti-Castroites of South Florida and New Jersey. Up close and personal, when they were partying and didn’t think that anybody was looking. They are regressive scum, most of them.
The really active ones, for SURE.
Man…(shakes head sadly)…
Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying.
AG
Heh.
It’s kind of hard to compare a country that has universal health care and affirm that it is better than the universal health care that does not exist in the other country (America).
Yes, America shouldn’t be proud of the way it essentially colonized Cuba in the pre-Castro era. But to say that life is much better under his regime? Let’s get a grip here. Castro was not elected democratically, he jails dissidents, and a state-planned economy is just bad economics – and it does nothing to help the lower classes much, either. There’s a reason you have people fleeing to Florida on anything that floats.
But that is sheer bullshit.
Media hypnosis at its finest.
There are about 11.5 million people in Cuba.
There were roughly 125,000 Marielitos. There are about 1 million Cuban exiles living in the U. S. That means roughly 875,000 people (1 million minus the 125,000 criminals…8% of the population of Cuba…left just before or after Castro took power.
Why?
Because they opposed the redistribution of wealth, most of them.
THEIR wealth.
Which was even more grossly lopsided compared to the rest of the people who lived there than even the situation in the U.S.
Go to the Caribbean and see for yourself. Get off your fucking resort beaches and go among the people. In the Dominican Republic. Jamaica. Panama. Go look.
Small enclaves of wealth surrounded by GIGANTIC slums and a poverty-stricken countryside.
I’m tellin’ ya, PsiFighter37…if the U.S. could get rid of an equivalent number of career criminals (our Marielito equivalents) and upper middle-class/ruling class twits we would IMMEDIATELY be better off. Even if they DID take their money.
Lemme see…the U.S. population is 300 million. About 26 times the population of Cuba.
If we exported 3.25 million habitual lowlife criminal types and 22.8 million middle management/billionaire parasites/right wing assholes, we’d be in good shape, too.
Would you have the U.S. government imprison or deport opposition forces that are allied with BushCo and other regressive interests so busily ruining this society and much of the rest of the world as well ?
I would.
In a HEARTBEAT.
Why is this not happening?
Because of soft, bought-off, media-hypnotized middle class lefty overseers, among other reasons..
“Ohhhh!!! He IMPRISONED people!!!”
Yes, you are damned right he did.
I would LOVE to see that happen to the entire present executive branch of our government right now as well as every goddamned crooked lawyer, politician, war criminal thief and corporate hustler who ever blew a dollar into a dime in an effort to hide it in his fucking drawers.
Wake up!!!
This country is is presently a kleptocracy, a criminal enterprise run for profit.
Pre-Castro Cuba all swollen up to Empire size.
What the fuck do YOU think must happen in order to change things?
Pass LAWS!!!???
Please.
We are not enforcing the ones that are on the books now!!!
Unbelievable.
Some of you people are absolutely unbelievable.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
All I can say..is democracy for Cuba. If you have ever visited with or represented people for Cuba it is no paradiso.
I hope that Hillary firmly believes that she can raise a half billion dollars for her general election, because she’s going to need it. The national Democratic Party had better realize that they aren’t going to able to go to the internet well with the same return rate that they’ve seen in recent years too. If you put up a true DLC candidate, don’t expect the real net roots to dig deep and volunteer their time unabashedly. Hillary’s gonna have to buy her support.
Reflexive Hillary-bashing? That’s what the right does, they bash Hillary because she is the poster child for everything they hate about Democrats. She’s a woman, she’s smart, she’s strong, and she’s married to the Clenis.
The progressive base wanted to love her. They looked forward to her becoming senator. They waited for her to lead. She didn’t. She had a zillion opportunities, and what did she do with them? She supported the war in Iraq, and little else.
It’s not reflexive. It’s based on her actions.
I don’t think she has a chance in hell.
I’ll second that.
It’s funny you mention this because lately I’ve started to wonder if maybe Hillary has a potential super weapon in her arsenal. With just about everybody going bonkers and attacking her all the time, if she just keeps on smiling and doesn’t attack back then she looks pretty darn good. It’s like a reflexive anti-anti-Hillary thing going on, like people will rise to her defense when they see everyone constantly picking on her and being mean.
I wouldn’t count her out, that’s for sure. And November 2008 is a LONG way away. There’s plenty of turns and twists ahead in the road.
Pax
Yup.
She’s a pro.
Look presidential and keep your real agendas as private as possible until elected.
Why does she scare the right?
Because they know damned well that she is after their asses, and that she is the ONLY Dem candidate who will be able to manage to pin them if elected.
Watch.
AG
I mean, the woman can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Can’t have that in the White House, now can we?
Sheesh. There are any number of reasons why Hillary is not my first choice, or my second, or my third. She’s down the list there with Joe Biden and Generic Democrat. But good grief. I am getting really tired of all the talking heads who seem to think she makes such a nice punching bag.
I don’t have cable, so I usually don’t watch Hardball, but I got a chance to tune in last night.
Is Tweety sick? he didn’t look so good: his face was all sunken, his cheeks were flapping around like an 80-year old man’s and he looked rail-thin.
He looked horrible: like one foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel horrible.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that the worst Democratic candidate will be better for the country than the best Republican one.
So instead of bashing a Dem, offer reasons why your favorite(s) should be considered. We don’t need to give the swiftboaters more ammunition.
Sorry Boo but your off track with this one. Let her defend herself. If all she can do is dredge up faint-hearted support among people who espouse affection for her then she needs to fix something.
I try hard to not pay attention to the blitherings of talking heads otherwise.
If the public positions and character of a politician can’t withstand the slings and arrows of outragious pontificators then that character has a problem. Politicians have to take the shit or get off the pot.
My concerns with Hillary go far deeper than the electro-static on the cable news networks.
In Hillary’s Iowa speech she proudly touted the tired authoritarian ‘more cops, more cops’ solution to the crime problems in America. This is the same policy that gave Democrats the ignoble legacy of presiding over the U.S. world record prison population. A prison population of mostly poverty oppressed urban minorities. A legacy that drove me out of the Democratic Party.
Here is the letter that I contributed to her new blog.
hillary
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/firstpost/?sc=a209
“The international drug control regime, which criminalizes narcotics, does not reduce drug use, but it does produce huge profits for criminals and the armed groups and corrupt officials who protect them. Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.” Afghanistan expert and New York University Professor Barnett Rubin, Sept. 21, 2006 testimony before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Dr. Rubin concluded: “If it were not illegal, it would be worth hardly anything. It’s only its illegality that makes it so valuable.”
“Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.”
The $ 144 billion retail U.S. black market for illicit drugs exists because of the drug war policy. That money entices entire industries to seek new ways to circumvent our best border security. That same money entices poverty oppressed, under-educated and under-employed young people into drugs and crime. And that same money supplies our terrorist enemies with operating cash, international smuggling routes into America and Europe and the asymmetric weapon of heroin that bin Laden is using to destabilize western culture as he believes we are attacking his culture.
The drug war is the greatest threat to the national security and public safety of America that I have seen since the days of Mutually Assured Destruction. Effectively, when you support the drug war you are supporting bin Laden. Terrorism against America. And ever increasing crime and addiction on the streets of America.
You support the Drug War and this is why I do not support you.
Thus far, Dennis Kucinich is the only Democratic presidential candidate who articulates anything other than a right-wing authoritarian status-quo solution to the crime and terrorism problems in our society.