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• Wednesday, February 20, 2008 01:47 AM

  @ Anonymous With A PhD

  I teach college English and I'm a freelance writer. I support Hillary Clinton. Does that make me a depressing part of the past and the old guard? There is some implication in your post that Clinton and her supporters are somehow responsible for the great mess our country is in. That may not be what you mean, but it is implied.

  Second, I do resent being equated with "failed policies" of the past when I spent 20 years in Washington, D.C. working for the very progressive goals that Democrats stand for: child care, family leave, job opportunities for low-income women, equal pay and pay equity for women, the promise of unions for working people, lgbt rights, among others.

  Finally, I appreciate and applaud that young people see a reason to get involved in our democracy. As a professor I see that young people are the future of our country and do anything and everything to help them achieve their dreams and be responsible, reasoning, active citizens.

  But it is very disrespectful to me and others like me who post on Salon and elsewhere to equate "us" (Clinton supporters) as part of a failed government, or failed policies, or business- as-usual. People like me helped build the Democratic Party. We are LOYAL Democrats who have given the greater part of our adult lives to progressive ideals and goals.

  Now you might not like or support Hillary Clinton. And it is most certainly your right to equate her with failed policies or failed government. I worked in D.C. when she was First Lady. I know what she accomplished then (through work I did -- as part of a progressive coalition to develop the FMLA and job training programs for low-income women). I don't consider these "failed" in any way. If anything, these programs have established the floor upon which others, like Sen. Obama, have built his campaign.

  To dismiss Hillary Clinton and her work as irrelevant and useless -- as many Obama followers do -- is insulting. And it does not stand with the progressive ideals that most Democrats believe in and support.

  Words and what they imply can and do cut both ways.

  —ljwalker53 Read ljwalker53's other letters
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