Friday, December 28, 2007

Hillary and Hardball

Hillary is starting to sound like President Bush. She's using the same scaremongering, political hardball tactics we’ve heard so much for seven years. This summary of Hillary’s new campaign speech comes from the commentary of Mike Madden in Salon magazine:

The fun is over, and now it's time to get serious. The world is a scary place; the economy feels as though it's ready to collapse, healthcare bills keep going up and up, the country is mired in wars, and the government just doesn't seem to work right. And that's only the trouble we knew about Wednesday -- as Benazir Bhutto's assassination on Thursday made starkly clear, unexpected crises cross the president's desk every day.


Evidently Hillary has chosen the well trod path of the Republican Party to try and get elected. She has often stated that only she is tough enough to withstand the Republican smear machine, and has unwittingly or deliberately chosen the same path. The gutter politics being played out by her campaign remind me very much of “business as usual” the way the Clinton and Bush dynasties have played if for 15 years! Hillary plays the experience card as though she was a co-president with her husband. She accuses her opponents of “politicizing” world crises for their own political gain.

Friends, I know Hillary is a Democrat, and a lot of her policies are favorable to progressives and we are at least on the same page politically. These tactics and the nature of her campaign statements raise a very important issue for us however. She is showing us an authoritarian style that is eerily similar to what we’ve grown used to for seven years. We know the political climate has been dramatically altered by the rise and success of the right-wing media. We know that the bloody partisanship of the current administration has played into the hands of of the religious right, the Neoconservatives, and the loyal subjects of the Republican rulers. We know that any Republican-run campaign will be filled with fear-mongering, xenophobic policy, and authoritarian machismo. Hillary’s choosing to fight fire with fire, dragging the political process to a new, even lower level of muckraking and partisanship.

The more I read about the campaign and the tactics and the methods used by various candidates, I’m not surprised by the surges of Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards. These guys are talking to us like politicians that actually respect the process and view government as a part of the solution to the problems we face. The issues we hold dear (this week’s editorial from The Nation, subscription required) are coming to the fore:

The leading candidates share positions that were considered political suicide as recently as 2004, and topics once shunted aside, like global warming, are of central importance. Withdrawal from Iraq, which John Kerry couldn't bring himself to call for, is embraced by all the current candidates, albeit on varying timetables. Unfettered free trade, a hallmark of the Clinton Administration, is now viewed by most Democrats as an untenable position. Healthcare for all, an idea that many thought would doom Hillary Clinton's candidacy, is a mainstream proposition. And it is not just these issues that have taken center stage but the core progressive values they represent: diplomacy over militarism, workers' rights, the responsibility of government to see that social needs are met.


These issues will win the day without the scaremongering from the Clinton Camp. With the Republicans all marching around spitting and cussing and showing us what “Men” they are why do we need our own candidates to join that game? Again from The Nation:

Meanwhile, the Republican campaign has seemingly taken place in an alternate reality, with GOP candidates competing to win the title of Most Likely to Nuke Iran and Most Xenophobic.


We don’t need Hillary Clinton to simply scare us into voting for her and we don’t need another four years of this type of authoritarianism. She’s showing us that she can play political hardball with the “big boys” but this approach will cost her my vote. I’d rather be talked to than talked down to, I’d rather have my candidate for President tell me how they will correct the course of this ship of state and convince me that their ideas and policies are the best. Give it a rest Hillary and just talk to us!

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