Letters to the Editor
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Nonsense
So go waste your time on Kucinich or Obama, if that makes you feel more moral and self-righteous than moi.
And if McCain becomes our next president because we run those weaklings against him, I will know who to thank.
And no one has paid me a penny to say that!
Like many others, I will quietly sneak into the voting booth and vote for Hillary Clinton. Get ready for the Big Surprise!
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Hattie I hope you are right
Otherwise we should start getting used to President Huckabee.
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The Wit & Wisdom of the Hillarybots
I'm voting for a grownup. I'm voting for Hillary Clinton.
That reminds me of another clever little ditty: The grownups are in charge. Remember that one from the early days of GWB's ascension? Ahhh, good times.
Of course, grownups thoroughly enjoy the company of other grownups, which must be why HRC and her fellow Senators provided such courageous leadership to bravely assist The Unitary Executive in ushering thousands of Americans to their deaths (who cares? they're all volunteers!) - to say nothing of the Iraqi casualties who had the audacity to live and work and raise their families in the cross hairs of the American Empire. Unfortunate, yes, but it's all so very understandable. They had good intentions, and Hillary's were the purest of 'em. Blood for careerism? What a vulgar suggestion. She should get a prize just for the countless improvements she's helped to bring about for all those secular, educated women of Iraq - even if they are working in Syria and Jordan and elsewhere as prositutes now. Hey, who knew? Freedom and democracy, George W. Bush style!
And that's not even counting what she's done for the home team. Her admirable diligence in thwarting the surveillance state. Saving the nation from predatory lenders. Things of that nature.
Yeah, she's a real humanitarian, that Hillary Clinton. And one hell of a grownup.
Be real proud when you cast that vote. And wash your hands when you get home. Good luck getting the spot out.
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@Hattie
I'm throwing my hat in the ring with Hattie!
Spot-on, Hattie!
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@my feelings exactly (or whatever you said, I'm not educated enough to remember)
with her strongest showing among unsophisticated, less educated Democratic voters,
Oh? And, pray tell, out of which hole did you pull this "fact?"
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...and what evidence of grown-up behaviour have we seen from Hillary Clinton?
It's the usual argument: "vote for our horrible candidate because theirs is even worse."
Despicable. We have a year to go. There are plenty of chances to select a candidate we might actually like. Even John Edwards looks a heck of a lot more "grown-up" than "more money for the military" Clinton.
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Republican History
In September 2002, George Bush urged Congress to pass the Iraq resolution: "I am sending suggested language for a resolution. I want -- I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace."
The bill was sold as a way to give the US negotiating power so we could avoid going to war. Democrats have from the beginning been portrayed as "voting for the war." They did not. I recommend reading Kerry's speech on the Senate floor before the vote -- he was voting to give the US diplomatic leverage, and he sternly warned that Bush might misuse the resolution. This distortion of the vote as a vote in favor of the Iraq war is simply a Republican spin on the actual events, and we should not let it stand.
I'm a big fan, TT, (and not a big fan of HRC), but I think we need to avoid feeding the Republican Hillary narrative.
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hillary is elected, the democratic party is dead
hubby moved the party to the middle after 96, making Gore and Bush seem pretty much like the same thing. hillary started moving to the middle before she even fooled the Democrats once.
hillary is elected, the Democratic party is dead.
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the ambiguity of the times?
Come on, leo777: There was no ambiguity whatsoever. I'm not talking about whether Iraq had any weapons; I'm talking about whether the continental United States of America was under imminent physical threat from said weapons. NOBODY thought that, except for the sheep who consume right-wing media exclusively. At the time there was all kinds of talk about "preemptive war," an expression that was exposed as a misnomer (also at the time) b/c that would suggest that we were about to be attacked, which it was clear was not true.
Hillary made a political calculation to sign the (outrageously timed) bill because she figured a war was going to happen anyway, that it was going to be won handily, and that for a future run for Presidency she needed to be seen as both "patriotic" and tough on defense, two perceptions that would suffer if she could be laughingly pointed at as the small-minded politician who resisted the "free and democratic US ally that Iraq is now." That outcome didn't happen of course.
There are two glaring flaws with her seemingly expedient choice that we need to decide how much to hold her accountable for:
1. Her judgment, which turned out to be wrong. (I mean about the aftermath of the war, which she misjudged as badly as Bush. There are too many people on record with perfectly accurate predictions of the chaos; Barak Obama and Ted Kennedy come to mind, but there are many others.) Nobody gets everything right, of course, so this one's up for grabs. If you can get beyond the morality of it to begin with (I can't), then you need only focus on whether or not she should have foreseen the messy aftermath.
2. Her triangulation (pandering, selling out, whatever you want to call the thing that pols do when they say what they don't believe just to get elected.)
My husband, among others, doesn't have as much of a problem with No. 2 as I do, b/c he thinks she is a compromiser the way any business or political leader must be. I tend to prefer honesty above all else, which is why I admire Kucinich, Ron Paul, even Pat Buchanan: At least you know where they stand and you trust them to tell you who they are. My husband would say they can afford that kind of honesty b/c they have nothing to lose and as soon as they become viable they will begin to triangulate with the best of them. We'll see how Obama does with this. I still mostly believe what he says.
Let's not pretend that her Iraq vote wasn't a political calculation. Her more recent vote about Iran is more of the same. She knows that she needs to seem like a military hard-ass to overcome the Woman and Democrat labels. I'm not saying don't vote for her; I'm saying, let's figure out if she has so thoroughly sold out that she will actually adopt these principles if elected. It's like the whole "suppress the media" thing she has going on now: NPR's ON THE MEDIA reported that she withholds future access to herself or interviews with Bill if she doesn't like the press she's getting from a particular outlet; that looks a lot like the Bush approach. Her previous persecution explains her paranoia, but we need a secret sign that she's going to be completely transparent with the public--and stop all the triangulating and media tyranny--the minute she's elected.