Letters to the Editor
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doc I will wait for part two
before defending myself, my post below was written before you began. So I will get some more coffee.
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Okay. I'll try.
1. " it still boils down to he said/she said."
By "it" I mean NAFTA-gate in general not Clinton's part in it. Leaked memos. Rumors. Obama's camp denies that the memo correctly characterized their position. I wasn't saying that Clinton played a part--but why did the Canadians leak that she did? Why did Brodie play a role? The whole thing seems pointless to me, but I didn't mean that Clinton was "guilty" but I don't think Obama did something wrong either. Maybe you think he did something wrong?
2. "I would have thought that she would have expressed more sympathy for the poor who were forced off of welfare,"
This was in specific reference to "Living History." I was trying to create her personal frame of reference, and was not referring to her record in its 35 year entirety. Both Obama and Clinton have a record of public service in working with the poor. But some feel that Bill Clinton stabbed progressive values in the back by signing welfare reform without adequate nets for those without childcare....those going to work but still living below the poverty line. This was a specific criticism, and not a general one as you are making it. I referenced her memoir as a way of showing that I think she lacked self-awareness to how poor people might have been hurt by Welfare Reform. If her commitment is more unquestionable to you, I understand. But I don't see why it is "unfair" to question someone though on the way they have presented themselves in their own words.
3. "Similarly, I think she might have made a remark or two about NAFTA, but hardly strong regret. Perhaps I'm remembering this wrong."
I'm again referring only to her memoir. I felt that she wrote that book to show where she stood on many issues, and her view on trade did not stand out to me. If you would like to show me where in her memoir it was important to her, then I would be willing to admit I might have remembered wrong. But as for being against NAFTA I looked at her record in the senate and Obama's and they both have supported "free trade" albeit with some concessions for labor. But I don't see a hardline against trade there either.
And you don't state exactly how Obama lied. You mean by saying that it is part of her "experience" in the white house? It is part of her experience in the white house. I'm not saying that he was being above the fray in politics by pointing this out, but it was not a lie that as an important member of her husband's team she bears some responsibility for it going through.
4. "But the more important issue of the day is this: Do Clinton's supporters realize that in trying to knee-cap Obama that she may damage the party more than any Republican ever could?"
Deloresflower, this is unworthy of you, as are your following remarks. No one is "kneecapping" Mr. Obama, and thank you for your concern about the party but only one candidate has made his entire campaign one which overtly REJECTS a sense of party loyalty in favor of a "movement" "cutting across party lines" and "creating a new bipartisanship."
Obama is running a national campaign right now in the primaries...that is what the movement he is talking about refers to. I don't see how voting for obama must be to reject party loyalty. Some members of the Democratic Party are more loyal to the values and the issues than to any single candidate or person. I hope that you and I are both some of those Democrats. Did you ever read Senator Wellstone's book Conscience of a Liberal? It's not the best writing and he wasn't perfect, but he was more a true Democrat and a populist than either Clinton or Obama.
Finally, you write "You know, there aren't any blue states or red states? Well, there are. As a true Democrat I will support my party's nominee. This, after your gang has slimed Mrs. Clinton for a year now, and continue to do so....."
Doc, I think maybe you will be too disgusted and mad at me to write a part two. I think you are conflating fair of critcism with Clinton with unfair criticism of Clinton, and criticism of Clinton with criticism of the party. And I have not seen Obama "slime" Clinton. Have you? I have seen some posters do it--and I was wrong this morning to use a reference to Nero's mother so I've already sacked myself from Obama's team--but to be fair I've also seen clinton supporters like cythera45 slime Obama with such venom and hate--"I'm going to dance on his grave" being one line that stood out. There have been so many Rezko whispers/shouts..."race-baiting" (against Obama) charges leveled and defended even by otherwise lovely and rational human beings who I won't mention here by name...I hope you don't seriously think that both candidates have not been slimed? Not by you. I have not seen you slime Obama.
So I'm sorry. I was wrong for my unnecessarily incindiary remarks this morning. But I still believe that Clinton could hurt the party by leveling false allegations against Obama that sink in with the general electorate--and do not do anything to help her get elected either in November or in four years. I believe that this could hurt "us" meaning those with progressive values--not "us" meaning team Obama v. Team Clinton. I suppose we disagree?
I will vote for a Democrat in November. But I want that Democrat, be it either of them, to win.
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deloresflower, take two...
I see you've posted another letter, coyly saying you'd be fired for the Aggripina remark. You wouldn't be. You'd be praised and quoted. That's the kind of noble quest your people run nowadays, and the country is becoming aware of it.
PART TWO.
5."If she uses her clout to act in an Agrippina II way (yes I'm using that term deliberately to be obnoxious--sorry) to make statements similar to what she made this week... to pound Obama into a bloody pulp...[Rush Limbaugh crap here]...basically trying to discredit him in every posssible way as dishonest or more than the same old politics...would she win in a general election after this? Could she? I wonder."
(No, I don't accept the cutesy apology for such a nasty slur, re Aggripina Minor. You clearly buy into the entire right-wing narrative about Mrs. Clinton and Rush himself could hardly do better than to call her an infamous murderer and manipulator. Not cute at all; talk about "kneecapping!")
What purple prose! Bloody pulp indeed; is your guy so weak and feckless that such political attacks reduce him to that? Surely neither of us believe he's THAT fragile. But you seem to be saying that any tough criticism of the GOOD candidate is wrong and will result in disaster, and we aren't supposed to touch him. Maybe you could give us all some rules of behavior, and then stand up and insist your side follow them too. You consistently diminish the importance or even existence of truly awful things said about Mrs. Clinton, and that includes charges and personal attacks by Mr. Obama himself. Bloody pulp, indeed. Now it's true that Obama's campaign hasn't yet called Mrs. Clinton a lesbian, but they never speak out against such outrages, and they continue to feed off the old and false narratives of all sorts, created by the enemy. My view is that your candidate and Axelrod and Plouffe and Burton are every bit as divisive as you say the Clinton group is.
6. I didn't think Mrs. Clinton's comment about who was ready to be C-in-C was right to make, either. But for you and everyone in the other camp to go into paroxsyms of horror and anger about it is silly. It's as if you think the Republicans aren't already all nicely set to point out Obama's actual and imagined weaknesses. And the constant daily attacks by the now panicky Obama campaign which plug into the "records" and "secrets" and "funds from overseas" crap is ALSO playing into the Republicans' hands. Your concern is so markedly only on one side because you just cannot imagine Mrs. Clinton will be our nominee. Therefore, since Obama is so certain to be crowned, things said against HIM are deadly to "our" cause, but things said equally bad or worse about HER are unfortunate but not worth worrying about since she won't be in the general election campaign representing us.
But, she might be. And when she is, every one of the cheap shots your side is making against her will be just as damaging to the party's cause as anything said about Obama. That's what you still refuse to see.
7. Your Rush Limbaugh note was absurd; you surely don't take his comments on face value, do you? He sows mischief and you fall for it, sounds like to me. And surely you were either typing faster than you were thinking or you needed yet more coffee--John Kerry introducing Obama at a Clinton rally, as a Muslim?? HUH?? Kerry is a rabid supporter of Mr. Obama to begin with, and the rest is stranger yet. "Siccing the press on him?" What?? You mean pointing out that they have given him a virtual pass for three years now? While they have "vetted"--read slimed--her for 16 years? Oh, poor baby.
8. "Clinton when confronted about whether comparing Obama to Ken Starr was any different than Power referring to her as a "monster" seemed "taken back" according to reporters, and then answered "no because one is a historical reference and it is true."
Well, not really. First, she did not compare Obama to Ken Starr; her campaign manager compared Obama's TACTICS of demanding hundreds of thousands of documents and records because there might be something, somewhere to nail her on, as similar to Ken Starr's tactics. And, like it or not, they are. That IS a historical record; he spent 60 million dollars trying to do precisely what Axelrod is trying to do; it didn't work then, and it won't work this time. To be affronted that Hillary felt being called a "monster who stoops to anything," along with a whole added paragraph of personal insults the famous scholar thought fit to provide a foreign newspaper was worse than the Starr tactics charge is not at all surprising to me; you and I both, in more rational times, would nod our heads in assent. You make it anoother dastardly act of the perfidious Clinton monster. Unfair, and your wording is untrue.
9. "I think Clinton's most loyal supporters can't see the writing on the wall, that she is misstepping and the damage may not be so much to Obama as to the Democrats. If she cannot win either the nomination or the election, than the two fronted war she is forcing Obama to fight...if it damages him enough to make him and/or the Democrats lose in November--she will hurt all of us."
What I think:
"I think Obama's most loyal supporters can't see the writing on the wall, that he is misstepping and the damage may not be so much to Clinton as to the Democrats. If he cannot win either the nomination or the election, then the two fronted war he is forcing Clinton to fight...if it damages her enough to make her and/or the Democrats lose in November--he will hurt all of us."
again:
"O wud some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"