Letters to the Editor
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Hillary offers a lot of divisiveness along with those solutions
The NY Times has a piece in Thursday's paper by Adam Nagourney, that says that >i
"With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules."
"Mrs. Clinton won more votes than Mr. Obama in both states, though both candidates technically abided by pledges not to campaign actively there."
"Mr. Obama’s aides reiterated their opposition to allowing Mrs. Clinton to claim a proportional share of the delegates from the voting in those states. The prospect of a fight over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations has already exposed deep divisions within the party."
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If she's willing to tear the party apart over this, it seems likely that her time in office will be as fraught with messiness as the first, Clinton presidency was. If elected, Hillary won't be able to lead effectively if she leaves the party in tatters.
One of the lessons, she hasn't learned from Bill's time in office, was that she will need a united Democratic party to get her legislation through. It wasn't just the Republicans who didn't like Clinton, the Dems weren't very happy with them either.
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and the empty suit award goes to...
I give Clinton full credit for her frontal assualt. However, there's little substance to most of her claims. She says:
"Now, over the years, you've heard plenty of promises from plenty of people in plenty of speeches. And some of those speeches were probably pretty good. But speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night," Clinton said. She continued:
I'm tempted to think of the speeches her husband gave, that sold out workers who lost their jobs due to NAFTA or to welfare reform without proper provisions for the poor. She also voted in favor of many trade agreements while in the senate that may have helped to the loss of jobs and general decrease in wages and benefits.
That's the difference between me and my Democratic opponent. My opponent gives speeches, I offer solutions. It's one thing to get people excited; I want to empower you to live your dreams so we can all go forward together.
Sounds good to me...
There's a lot of talk in this campaign about what kind of change we'll bring. Well, change is going to happen whether we want it or not. The question is who will make progress.
A fair question.
My opponent says that he'll take on the special interests. Well, he told people he stood up to the nuclear industry and passed a bill against them. But he actually let the nuclear industry water down his bill -- the bill never actually passed. On top of that, the same company that watered down that bill lobbied for Dick Cheney's energy bill. And my opponent voted for the energy bill, with its billions of dollars of breaks for the oil industry. I voted against it.
Does she not expect voters to read opensecrets.org which state the millions that she is receiving from special interests? As for the Exelon story--this has been gone into before. Clinton supporters take her side of it. Obama supporters think it's mud throwing, and certainly no worse than many of her own concessions to special interests.
My opponent says he'll stand up for workers. He often talks about the plight of Maytag workers in his home state. But the union at that plant supports me because when 1,600 jobs were being lost, they say he didn't do a thing to help.
She lost me. Which legislation was it that she supported and he did not? How did she help the Maytag workers?
My opponent says he will cut healthcare costs more aggressively than I do. But as an independent analysis from the Commonwealth Fund shows, the most effective way to lower costs is to truly cover everyone. His healthcare plan doesn't. Mine does.
But cynics say it doesn't matter if Clinton can't get her health care passed. Obama supporters think he can pass his legislation. That's one difference. Also, she receives more money from insurance lobbyists than anyone in either party, which makes many people nervous about her plans to cut costs.
I was, however, glad to see that yesterday, my opponent adopted the goal of 5 million green-collar jobs -- months after I announced I would create 5 million green-collar jobs. I was also glad to see that he modeled his $60 billion infrastructure bank on a bill I cosponsored last summer to create a $60 billion infrastructure bank. Now, if only he would just copy my healthcare plan and provide coverage for every single American!
I hope he does too, to be honest with you.
So there's the difference between us -- speeches versus solutions. Talk versus action.
What action? Again? The only "action" I can find in this speech is a possible vote against an energy bill. And a health care plan that is only a plan so therefore doesn't constitute an action yet.
In all seriousness, while some may think that words are change -- I know that it takes work. You can't just talk about the special interests -- you have to take them on. I always have, and I always will ... That's how I measure my life -- not by applause or headlines -- but by whether I'm helping people.
But if your goal is not applause, Hillary, then why are you insisting on seating the Florida and Michigan delegates in order to add to your tally, however many Democratic party rules this violates? Why does this election matter to you so much? Does anyone here honestly believe that you need to be president in order to help people? If so a lot of doctors and nurses must be feeling pretty terrible about themselves, and no wonder our politicians walk around looking so smug.
A big speech and two differences between them: a vote on an energy bill and a health care plan. I'm afraid that Hillary is the one in an empty rhetorical pantsuit at this point.
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@AKA Smith
Of course I don't expect Hillary to address anything on these boards. The intent of my post was to point out that these questions are still unanswered.
Everything else you said is between me and my imaginary rabbit.
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Clinton's attack on Obama re: energy policy
"My opponent says that he'll take on the special interests. Well, he told people he stood up to the nuclear industry and passed a bill against them. But he actually let the nuclear industry water down his bill -- the bill never actually passed. On top of that, the same company that watered down that bill lobbied for Dick Cheney's energy bill. And my opponent voted for the energy bill, with its billions of dollars of breaks for the oil industry. I voted against it."
The first problem with trying to rebut this charge is that Hillary does not give us the information needed to verify HER claims. For instance, we are told that Obama claims that he passed a bill that never actually passed. We are given no source for the Obama claim, nor are we told what bill she is referring to. So, unless one is particularly well-versed in the issue, an independent verification is impossible for a layperson who, in good faith, wants to find out whether there is substance to her charge or it is a distortion of what Obama actually said and/or did. Normally, when an accusation is made, the burden of proof lies with the accuser, not the target of the accusation. For my part, I'm inclined to believe that Obama wouldn't claim that a piece of legislation passed when it didn't, for the simple reason that this sort of claim would normally be pretty easy to refute.
Then Hillary Clinton said that Obama "let the nuclear industry water the bill down." Now, I'm sure Ms. Clinton knows that in the legislative process, there is a certain amount of give-and-take that means that the version of a bill that you go in with isn't the same as the version you come out with. And I imagine the result of the process is that the legislation typically gets "watered down" to a compromise version that is amenable to the various interested parties. Now, is she alleging that there was some impropriety on Obama's part? Or simply that he didn't fight the nuclear industry for a tougher bill?
Then she points out that the bill didn't pass. Now, aside from the question of whether Obama claimed a bill passed when it didn't, there's the question of WHY the bill didn't pass. In correlation with the last charge - that Obama watered it down for the nuclear industry's benefit - does it seem likely that the bill failed BECAUSE Obama supposedly watered down the bill for the benefit of special interests, or that the bill didn't pass because it wasn't watered down ENOUGH? (Given the fact that Cheney's energy bill passed by a pretty wide margin, it seems unlikely that Obama's bill failed because it was TOO industry-friendly.)
Then she says "On top of that, the same company that watered down that bill lobbied for Dick Cheney's energy bill." This is a clever way to make Obama into a Cheney bedfellow. Well, OF COURSE a corporation that is interested in influencing a nuclear energy bill is going to take a similar interest in Dick Cheney's energy bill. I'm going to venture a guess that the unnamed corporation in question (gee, it's sure hard to verify claims when you have to guess who or what the speaker is talking about) took an interest in EVERY SINGLE PIECE of relevant energy legislation that has gone through Congress. So there's less than meets the eye to this claim. In a way, her claim is actually a backhanded complement to the bill Obama proposed - because if the company lobbied to water it down, it meant that in its initial form, the legislation was not to their liking - unlike Cheney's energy bill, which they lobbied FOR because it was policy they had practically co-written.
Finally, we get the one immediately verifiable claim that Clinton makes - which is that she voted against Cheney's energy bill and Obama did not. This is true, as far as it goes. There were two votes for the Bill - in the first vote, Hillary Clinton actually voted for the Bill, but she did not vote for the final version. Now it would interesting and pertinent to know why she voted for the original version but not the final version. I think that's where she could make a meaningful contrast with Obama. What was the principle she stood up for that Obama didn't? (Fourteen Senators changed their vote from "yea" to "nay," so she was not alone in the switch - by the way, the objectionable tax breaks that Hillary Clinton specifically refers to in her indictment of Obama were in both versions of the bill, so presumably under other circumsances she favored these tax breaks as well).
Now, I'm sure there are all sorts of votes that Hillary Clinton has made that could be cast in a similarly unflattering light when the legislative context is stripped away. That's one of the reasons that Senators are bad presidential candidates: they constantly have to defend votes on legislation which is a compromise arising out of long and complicated process. It's much easier to use a Senator's votes to smear them than it is for them clarify why they voted as they did. Remember how John Kerry - if you were to listen to the Republicans - voted to gut our military?
BTW, I don't think it really helps the dialog to refer to call Obama supporters "Obamabots" or "Obamadroids." It's really juvenile, and makes it seem like you need to use insults to carry your arguments.