The stupid, it hurts. David Brooks:
In the beginning of August, liberal bloggers met at the YearlyKos convention while centrist Democrats met at the Democratic Leadership Council’s National Conversation. Almost every Democratic presidential candidate attended YearlyKos, and none visited the D.L.C.
At the time, that seemed a sign that the left was gaining the upper hand in its perpetual struggle with the center over the soul of the Democratic Party. But now it’s clear that was only cosmetic.
Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the “netroots.” You can learn most of what you need to know by paying attention to two different groups — high school educated women in the Midwest, and the old Clinton establishment in Washington.
Andrew Sullivan responds:
The conservative Washington Establishment is swooning for Hillary for a reason. The reason is an accommodation with what they see as the next source of power (surprise!); and the desire to see George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq legitimated and extended by a Democratic president (genuine surprise). Hillary is Bush’s ticket to posterity. On Iraq, she will be his legacy. They are not that dissimilar after all: both come from royal families, who have divvied up the White House for the past couple of decades. They may oppose one another; but they respect each other as equals in the neo-monarchy that is the current presidency. And so elite conservatives are falling over themselves to embrace a new Queen Hillary, with an empire reaching across Mesopotamia, a recently deposed court just waiting to return to the salons of DC, a consort happy to be co-president for another four years, and a back-channel to the other royal family. She’ll even have more powers than Clinton I, because Cheney has given her back various royal prerogatives: arrests without charges, torture, wire-tapping, and spy-ware on your Expedia account. Only the coronation awaits.
Yup.
Scary.
and true.
Hillary has been acting like a hawk for a while now, but is there anything other than the deductive logic (she says things that Republicans ought to like, ergo they ought to like her) to suggest she has ingratiated herself with elite conservatives? Any, you know, evidence? Because it sure seems like there has been a lot of venom on the right toward the Clintons, and it would not be easily neutralized.
follow the money: here, and here.
they like what they see…BushCo™ lite.
lTMF’sA
From the Bloomberg article it sounded like Obama was getting about as much love as Hillary. Could it not be that they feel which way the wind is blowing and want to have the ear of the eventual winner?
likely true, but not particularly palatable. the logical conclusion is that she, and to some extent obama, have indeed, ingratiated themselves to the elite conservatives.
given her track record, and obama’s tendency to hollow oration, l do not see this as a positive sign, nor is it indicative of any substantial changes should one, or both, be on the ballot come nov 08.
for what it’s worth, l highly recommend josh green’s article in the atlantic, nov 2006 issue: Take Two: How Hillary Clinton turned herself into the consummate Washington player. it’s rather long, but quite interesting. especially in light of this recent revelation re: her campaigns’ rather heavy handed use of quid pro quo.
just my2¢…but then, l’m not particularly enamored of either of them.
lTMF’sA
“Unless, of course, the coronation is happening just a little too soon.”
l certainly hope so.
knowing how you feel about Gore, boo, l found this Slate post by christopher hitchens, in one of his more lucid moments, interesting:
who knows what the chances of that happening are?…certainly not me. but this is not going down in, what l would consider to be, ‘normal times’.
we shall see
it ain’t over ’til it’s over
lTMF’sA
you know, built into our two-party system there is supposed to be a kind of a wink and a nod between the elites that, on the really important shit, there’s no difference between the parties. Think U.S.-Saudi relations, for example.
Bush broke that. And that is why even a Clinton restoration will bring a somewhat radical change. But not enough of a change. Would Gore?
I think he would at least try.
Dynasty: I’ve been saying it for years now. It’s disgusting and a blight on the legacy of Mr. Clinton. After all, he IS involved.
Bush-Clinton: a whole generation who doesn’t know that that someone outside these two families can become president.
If Mrs. Clinton gets eight years, they will have ruled (‘govern’ is no longer applicable) for 28 years: a whole generation run by a pluto-oligarchy.
Now that the Ahmadenijad circus and the arrogant, pompous U.S. guffawing will inevitably subside, we are faced with the same grim reality, which is, of course, in no way his fault: Iraq, war with Iran, all the lies and obfuscations of the Cheney administration and on and on and on…cowardly Democrats…and on and on and on. The last can be repeated until the November 2008 election. The Democratic Party offers no perspective or outlook. Better than the repugnants, anyway?
It will be 36 years that someone named Bush or Clinton was in the White House if she wins in both 2008 and 2012.
At that point 70% of my life will have been lived with a Bush or Clinton in the White House. That’s not the country I was born in or learned about in school.
And no, there isn’t a precedent. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were separated by almost a quarter century. Ditto for Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, AND they were distant cousins.
the first. The Clintons knew that they were going to come out on top once more. Why? They had loaded the dice with the same bankrupt values that the Dems are going forth on right now.
Gore isn’t like he was in 2000, and Kerry was a spineless wanker in 2004. None of them possessed the cojones and the long roll of contributors to match. They were bound to fail, and among their failures was refusing to support the black voters just as much as they supported them.
I truly don’t want to see the Clintons back. Truly. And if black voters are threatened once again in 2008, what are they going to do then?
Back to square one, isn’t that what this election is all about? How strange a perspective when both Gore and Kerry lost (or won) by a hair. Is it really necessary to appease the right wing and the evangelicals to win the Whitehouse?
I remember Nixon cautioning Republicans: run to the right to win the primaries, run to the center to win the general election. So here we have Hillary running RIGHT OF CENTER ahead of the primaries, and is pulling away in the polls. ?????
I think it’s because of the media. They’re predisposed to trash her, but if she goes sufficiently far to the right, they’ll restrain themselves, as they are doing now. Of course, that would end if and when she wins the nomination.
Also, there’s wealthy donors. If she gets far ahead of other Dem candidates in funding, that will give the corporate media one more reason to say she has a lock on the nomination.
In other words, I don’t think that this is about appeasing right wing or evangelical voters.
Since Hillary’s appeasement of the right has now gone as far as to retain corporate interests in any universal health care system she might propose, it is possible that you are correct: it is all about political contributions.
15% of national health care costs is quite a large sum, and bait to put out there, but it also signals that Hillary is prepared to give up the Left in return for campaign contributions.
I am so sick of being told who my Presidential choices will be.
Hillary will be a disaster on foreign policy.
Yes, a DISASTER!
I regularly send letters to Senator Clinton, as she is my senator. I repeatedly state my opposition to any military involvement in Iran, and I get back these carefully worded letters about how she thinks Iran is a threat to the United States. Might as well be locked up in an institution with a bunch of paranoids, that’s the way she reads to me when I get her office’s reply, 3 months later.
Hillary is a foreign policy disaster!!
VOTE KUCINICH IN THE PRIMARY!!! Take a chance, you have nothing to loose, OBAMA=CLINTON=EDWARDS.
You don’t have to vote for the winner, it’s just the primary folks!!!!!
I’m a high school educated, midwestern woman….and Hillary isn’t my choice. But no one asked me.
The country asks you for your votes and opinions. I ask you.
I just saw some new posters up informing me that Ms. Clinton is coming to town on Sunday. I’m thinking, if I go to the event with a large protest sign, will she have me arrested? How about this one: “Hillary, how many people will you kill?”
I’m kind of surprised she’s coming here, but then again, Obama has been seen round these parts several times already.
Is it really possible I’m agreeing with Andrew Sullivan? Well, give credit for the truth where it’s due!
Hillary is just a cross-dressed Bush.