Hillarious

It keeps getting uglier. Now the Clintons are amping up their charges that Obama's been inconsistent in his opposisition to the Iraq war, and Obama's people are calling it swift-boating.

Meanwhile, on the "positive side," Hillary's hired an advertising man for Wal-Mart to re-brand her.

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, and Al Gore doesn't lead a third party ticket, I'll vote for her. I learned my lesson on election night in 1968, watching Nixon eke out a narrow win over Humphrey. I'd had my heart broken when my candidate was assassinated, and my party sent police to beat up my contemporaries. I filled out an absentee ballot and voted for Robert Kennedy anyway, although I'm not sure I even mailed it.

But not voting in that election was a mistake. Hubert was a jerk by then, but Nixon was a liar to even himself. I doubt we would have still been in Vietnam for another 6 years if Humphrey had been President, and that's the most important outcome.

So I'll grit my teeth and cast my ballot to hire her, and then I'll turn my back on the whole thing. I'd have no hope for the future whatsoever, beyond some repair of the immense damage done by eight years of Smirk. Her campaign is already stinking up the joint, and it's putting more distance between me and respect for both Clintons every day.

Her staff is weighted towards arrogant thugs. Her supporters are divisive, attacking others for sexism while defending or engaging in racial politics. Now she's accusing "the Obama campaign" of keeping alive the controversy over her remarks about Martin Luther King and LBJ. Yet it is her own words that haunt her. One of her supporters cries that the New York Times and other media are misquoting her, lifting her remark out of context. That does happen to be a nasty habit of our arrogant, theme-driven, cliche-making media. But here is the full quote as he produces it:

"I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished."

So this is supposed to make it better. Actually, I grasped the point she was trying to make the first time--it may take a village but in the end it takes a President, and in a narrow framework, I agree. That's why we need a President who will lead on the Climate Crisis in particular, but also many other issues.

It's a metaphor for a legitimate if insulting point, which is-- Obama (King): poet, dreamer, who can't get things done. Hillary (LBJ): no poetry but ready to execute. There's no real evidence this is so, but it does state an assertion of why she should get the nomination.

People are upset because she disses Dr. King, who did a lot more than make speeches, when and where even making speeches was pretty courageous and important. They are upset by the implication that black people are dreamers who aren't competent executives, and that black people always need white people to do the heavy lifting. Maybe that's unfair, and I'd like to believe she didn't mean it that way. But considering some of the people around her, I can't really be sure.

But what really gets me about this "in context" quote is " when he [LBJ] was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do..." Recall the context of this statement--the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary was accusing Obama of inspiring "false hopes." Hope is great, but you want action. So every time she used the word "hope" it sounds suspiciously like code. And here we have another dreamer apparently, President Kennedy, who--let's straighten out her grammar for her--hoped to pass Civil Rights legislation, but apparently he failed. It took experienced pro LBJ to do it.

Well, it's true that JFK proposed the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act. But I wouldn't exactly call it a failure of leadership. It was more along the lines of somebody killed him.

So for my money, her expanded quote not only insults Martin Luther King, Jr., it insults John F. Kennedy.

Meanwhile her "surrogates" continue the "experience" drone. Gloria Steinem repurposes this as a feminist issue, insisting that a woman with as little experience as Obama would never be considered for President. Only a man.

Which apparently means that this society hates the idea of a woman President so much that it would even rather have an unqualified black man. Think about that for a minute.

Another underlying assumption is that because Hillary has so much experience, not even this male chauvanist power structure can deny her.

Shades of the vitriolic wing of womens lib in the 70s. Steinem ignores the uncomfortable fact that most of Hillary's "experience" is of being what she was so caustic about in the past: a wife. Hillary was the wife of the President of the United States, after being the wife of a Governor. She can claim all she wants to claim about what she did there, but on the face of it, this is the qualification for President of Laura Bush.

Hillary was never elected to anything until the year 2000. Before that, she had accomplishments on various issues, as did Barack Obama. Obama was elected to the state legislature in 1997. Hillary has roughly four more years than he does in the U.S. Senate, while he has roughly three more years as an elected public servant.

On the other side, you have a guy in the White House who failed at everything until he became Governor, and 6 years later ran for President, with no foreign policy experience and a well-earned reputation as a dim bulb. If the inexperienced G.W. Bush hadn't gotten anything done, this country would be a far better place.

Hillary knows about raising false hopes. As the designated Clinton in charge of the plan, she hoped to bring universal health care to the U.S. in 1993 when it was a very popular idea, and she failed. I don't think it was all her fault, but the fact is, the Clintons raised hopes, and those remain failed hopes, and people like me are affected by that failure.

It's not easy being a woman seeking power. They're damned for being too masculine and too feminine. But Hillary has shown the ability to play manipulative gender games when she feels she has to. That New Hampshire debate when she said the charge that she wasn't likeable hurt her feelings--did you see her body language? She was going all girlish. At first it seemed like she was making fun of the question, and clearly Obama thought the question was unworthy when he said, "Hillary, you're likeable enough." Some women took that as insulting. But I watched Hillary's body language--she acted like a high school girl who had just been complimented. And I do mean acted.

What Hillary has the most experience at is being attacked. That's clear from her defensiveness, her scattershot attacks, and from the kind of people she has around her to protect her by attacking and demeaning her opponents. Nixon had that kind of experience as well. It's not in and of itself much of a qualification.

I didn't see Hillary's Meet the Press performance today but I gather from several stories she spent most of the time attacking Obama. I don't doubt that the Obama campaign is guilty of some sub rosa guff, and their adoption of the "Yes, We Can" slogan in Nevada is something close to code for Latinos (In Spanish, it was the chant during the demonstrations against the Bush policies on immigration and illegals.) But I'm ready to endorse this statement by Obama, made in a conference call to reporters responding to Hillary's TV show:

"I have to say that she started this campaign saying that she wanted to make history and lately she has been spending a lot of time rewriting it. I know that in Washington it is acceptable to say or do anything it takes to get elected but I really don’t think that is the kind of politics that is good for our party and I don’t think it is good for our country and I think that the American people will reject it in this election."