I woke up this morning thinking about my post from last night called Hillary Will Be the Next Muskie. Why, I wondered, am I so hostile to the idea of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee in 2008?
The answer, I think, is that I have spent every day of the last two years, almost without exception, reading all the political news that I can get my eyes on. I have been totally immersed in the battle against Bushism. And I have a very keenly honed sense of who my allies are and who has been on my right flank, who has been on my left flank, and who has been waiting in reserve. And Hillary Clinton has been AWOL. She has not shown up. In fact, some of her most important allies…people like James Carville and Paul Begala…have been running interference.
The netroots movement emerged precisely because the most powerful elements in the Democratic Party and the ‘liberal’ press were not opposed to invading Iraq on the President’s whim and did nothing to support those that knew this war would be a costly and demoralizing disaster. Howard Dean captured the spirit of the people that had actual predictive capabilities and a moral compass. Meanwhile, ostensibly liberal columnists like Tom Friedman and Richard Cohen thought invading Iraq would bring democracy to the Middle East and peace to Israel.
We couldn’t rely on our ‘friends’ in the press and we couldn’t rely on our representatives in Congress. I know who my allies have been. We’ve had no greater ally in the Senate than Russ Feingold. In the House, we’ve had allies in John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Henry Waxman and a couple dozen others.
Pro-war candidates like Harold Ford Jr., Joe Lieberman, Rick Santorum, George Allen, Mike DeWine, Conrad Burns, J.D. Hayworth have been punished. Pro-war journalists like William Safire and Judith Miller are no longer employed. But, in all this time and throughout this long battle, Hillary and her agents have been nowhere to be seen along the lines of battle.
It is way too late for her to find religion.
When Paul Begala says stuff like the following, I take it as a personal affront from Hillary (fair or not fair):
Yes, [Dean’s] in trouble, in that campaign managers, candidates, are really angry with him. He has raised $74 million and spent $64 million. He says it’s a long-term strategy. But what he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose. That’s not how you build a party. You win elections. That’s how you build a party.”
– Paul Begala on Howard Dean and the DNC’s 50 State Strategy.
“Look,” [Begala] said, “When we started there were only about 15 competitive races, but Rahm made the field over 35 by the end and that had nothing to do with the 50-state strategy.” I told him we never would have had so many competitive districts if not for the DNC investing staffers and resources into those states early on and expanding the playing field. “So you have people out there, what are they doing there though?” he questioned. ” I told him they were building a long term infrastructure for the Democratic Party, and we had people all over America knocking on doors and spreading the Democratic message. “So what do they say when they knock on the doors then?” he asked me. I told him they had a succinct 6 point plan for a “new direction” that they were discussing, a cohesive message that we haven’t had in the past. “Anyway,” Begala continued… “I don’t need some a**hole from Vermont telling me what to do.”
I don’t need to be insulted by Hillary’s campaign. It’s one thing not to fight…to leave all the fighting to our soldiers in Iraq and left-wing bloggers here at home. It’s quite another to go around calling us all ineffectual a**holes and giving all the credit for the midterms to Rahm Emanuel. If you want to know why I don’t want Hillary, it’s because she runs a gang of thugs that think we are the enemy and she hasn’t been fighting for us. Why would I ever trust her to fight for us once she’s back in the White House? I’m looking for alternatives.
