Letters to the Editor
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Changed back?
Nearly 40 years later, the roles are reversed.
To be fair to Clinton, she didn't expect any of this. (Nor, indeed, did she appear to plan for it at first, which is maybe why she is where she is now.)
She was supposed to be the leading Democratic contender, passing the traditional party yardsticks (lopsided results in the early primaries and caucuses, Joe Biden conceding, etc) and gathering momentum for a drag-out tussle with whomever the Republicans chose.
Had things gone that way it probably would have been interminably boring.
And frankly, if they had, Clinton also probably wouldn't have become quite so much of a blue collar icon. She's chosen the path she has because it's the best way of beating Obama, pure and simple. There are plenty of Democrats for whom, fair reasons or foul, Barack Obama does not hold much appeal, and it's natural that she should court them as a way of holding on in the race.
So it's not clear that Clinton has "changed back" because of 2008. She's fighting to win, and if nothing else will provide Obama with much-needed practice in defeating an opponent who goes after him where he's weak.
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1968 Changed a Lot Of Us...
for the better. We actually did things for civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights and the environment, in addition to fighting against the Vietnam War.
Hillary Clinton was part of that change, as was Bobby Kennedy. And I find it more than noteworthy that RFK's kids and Dolores Huerta (the mother of the UFW) support Hillary Clinton for president. These endorsements mean far more to those of us who grew up and became politically active during the 60s and 70s than endorsements for Obama by the other Kennedys.
Quite simply, Obama has done nothing for women, for minorities, for workers, or the environment. But he sure does talk a good line. His community organizing days are, at best, a hugely mixed bag and start to crumble when you look closely: the housing projects run by Antoin Rezko (and supported by Obama) that had no heat, no air conditioning, and were infested with insects and rodents; O's unwillingness to address with the Maytag CEO who supports his campaign the impact of shutting down a Maytag plant in his district.
These actions are those of an opportunist.
No wonder Obama sees the world as "post [fill in the blank]". He will never be held to account for what he didn't do when he had the chance.
These aren't liberal values. They're values of "Me First" and to hell with the consequences.
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Excuse me, Mr. McC
Your accounting of Hillary Clinton's political evolution was pretty evenhanded until the last sentence, to wit:
"But her best chance at winning the nomination may lie in shaking loose some extra delegates -- working the levers of the party machinery behind closed doors, just the way Mayor Daley might have done it long ago."
Here you portray Sen. Clinton as a potential dirty dealer out to "steal the nomination", as so many highly partisan salon readers have already characterized her. When Obama twists arm behind closed doors, however, he is invariably characterized as a skilled politician who simply knows how to run a winning campaign. In view of your conflation of Clinton with Mayor Daley of Chicago (the city where Obama himself learned the ropes) would you care to tell us how the senator from Illinois stacks up next to the senator from New York in terms of a propensity for back room political machinations?
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The Last Three Paragraphs Ruin It
This was a fine article until the author could hold back his bias no more and exposed it in all its ugliness in the last paragraph which was unsupported, clumsy, ill considered and partisan. It's like the effect of a mere teaspoon of raw sewage on a glass of sweet iced tea. But good try.
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Hillary Has Become Very Rich in the Last Seven Years and Older
Applauding Lyndon Johnson at the expense of Martin Luther King, Jr. was a telltale act for Hillary. McClelland refers to this in his article.
Money affects the head and can dull the heart. In the old days she went with her heart. Today and in recent years she has become much more calculating.
The Iraq War vote was calculating. Not reading the 2002 NIE was an expression of her thought. Repeating a false story of resoluteness under sniper fire in Bosnia was calculating. Keeping Mark Penn as chief strategist after his dealings with Countrywide Financial and Blackwater was calculating. Saying recently that Florida and Michigan primary votes should count after saying the opposite in December 2007 was calculating.
Also, Hillary is no longer young at age 60. Recently she mentioned how long it takes her to get made up before appearances. Could aging and large sums of money affect Hillary's judgment?
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I can follow this article...
...because I am old enough to have been there in 1968.
But younger Americans will not get it, because the politics were so much different from today. Here's the background: In 1968, the biggest wigs in both parties supported the Vietnam War, and Liberals in both parties opposed it.
Liberals could go to either party, but most of them went to the Democrats, because the Democrats were in power, and the Liberals could fight the war more effectively by opposing their own Democratic leaders. They had success within the party. Humbert Humphrey (anti-war) got the nomination, but then he lost the election to Nixon.
This was the real beginning of our current split between Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans. It may be impossible for young Americans to imagine a time when both parties emcompassed the whole political spectrum. It was a better system, though. It kept extremists out of power. Then again, the people who got power (L.B. Johnson and Nixon) did not really do us proud. It was a different, more naive age, though. Very hard to explain.
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you couldn't resist?
This was an interesting article and seemed fairly even handed until the last couple of paragraphs.
I knew all of this before having done a lot of research on the candidates. I had chosen to back Barack Obama initially but the more my research continued, and the more his campaign became uncomfortable to me with some very passive aggressive and manipulative dirty tricks the more I realized that I just couldn't continue supporting him.
A case in point is the perfect example you mentioned above. The MLK and LBJ incident was clearly the race card being played... again... by Axelrod and the Obama campaign. Just as his surrogates came out like gangbusters with feigned outrage against Bill Clinton's supposed racist statements so to did they deliberately misinterpret Senator Clinton's comment. This was so cynical I was actually sickened.
I had already been disturbed by his use of neocon code words about HRC, his refusing to say if he would support her if she won the nomination (something he refused to do again last week.)When the ferraro flap went down that was it. One time could be a misunderstanding combined with a certain sensitivity. Two times could be an over-reaction due to over sensitivity. Three times is a pattern. On top of that you can find a clip on youtube with Tim Russert asking O about his campaigns issuing 4 pages of talking points about how Bill's comments were racist, how they should be explained as racist etc with Obama doing his candid look you in the eye schtick and admit it.
His supporters on the blogs were not a deciding factor but they had made the campaign so ugly and hateful with their venom and malice I just didn't want to be a part of something that inspires that kind of vituperative rhetoric and neocon lies/rumor mongering.
The media has been incredibly biased and working against Clinton... and no amount of non partisan watch dog studies on ethics in media or election coverage by media showing the huge discrepancy will dissuade Obama supporters from attacking anyone who utters this truth.Even when links are posted!The fact that it was so blatant a comedy show made fun of it is pathetic.
There could be so much to point out as examples of the collusion between the media and the Obama campaign... unconscious I am sure but there just the same. Ill just cite Olbermann tonight bringing up the hospital story, spitting out his ridicule and self righteousness even after it turns out the story is ummmm, true. Will he put himself on his worst person in the world segment? Somehow I doubt it.
After distancing myself from the Obama phenomenon I decided I had to be neutral for my sanity. Until a few days ago when I put together all the research I had done, looked into all the ridiculous lies propagated first by the neocons and then parroted by the Obamacons, listend to all her speeches I could find, some more than once and made my decision to support her. I don't care if she isn't winning. I cannot justify supporting Barack Obama. Far from being a uniter he has actually sidelined and marginalized many people who started off enthusiastically supporting him.
Supporters reflect who they support. Why then would someone choose to allign themselves with someone who inspires such hatefulness.