As you know, I much prefer John Edwards. In fact, I prefer Obama and Biden and Richardson and Kucinich. Still, the reaction to this piece is fascinating. Apparently, there are two reasons why we cannot have Hillary Clinton as the nominee:
1. She'll energize the Republicans, who hate her more than they hate anyone else on earth.
2. She's really just another Republican.
Am I the only one who sees the conflict between Reason 2 and Reason 1?
The jerks in the second crowd remind me of those purists who, back in 1992, insisted that Bill Clinton's administration would be no different from Poppy's. (And you're the kind of idiot who still sees no difference, don't expect your commentary to show up in these here parts.) Republicans really do view Hillary Clinton as Castro-in-a-skirt, and their hysteria warms me to her. Anyone so hated by people I hate must be doing something right.
Edwards is still the guy with the right stances and the greatest ability to defeat the Republican nominee. Forget current polls showing Hillary beating Giuliani: The swift boat ain't on the river yet. The only real reason to consider supporting her right now is to piss off the people who spell her name with a hammer-n-sickle replacing the C.
9 comments:
Joe,
Put it this way: if Hillary is a Republican, then why on Earth did the Republicans (together with the MSM) spend so much time and effort to destroy her and her husband during the 1990s?
(Hell, it still continuing as we speak!)
The same thing applies to her healthcare imbroliglio. The Purists howl that it was a giveaway to the insurance companies, but it was those same insurance companies that helped _torpedo_ the plan with the "Harry and Louise" ads.
Of course Hillary isn't perfect, but - surprise! - NO POLITICIAN IS PERFECT. I disagree with her on a couple of issues, but to be honest, if she was the nominee, I will vote for her. I would vote for any Democrat right now over the current crop of Republican candidates (who would put Vlad the Impaler to shame - and that includes Ron Paul).
Why do I have the awful feeling that we may be watching a replay of the idiotic "there's no difference" mess from 2000? Why the hell can't the Purists bring themselves to see just how disastrous that was?
I'm not sure these views are necessarily in conflict. They are, after all, held by two quite different groups of people.
My guess is that Republicans hate Hillary and Bill because they are effective politicians and get elected thus diminishing Republican power. The attacks on her as "socialist", etc., are completely bizarre and without any foundation in fact - not really a problem for the right wing apparently. I do worry that the Republican attacks and the MSM pre-election anointing are not an indication she is doing something right but that they would prefer her to be the nominee.
The 2nd view is held generally by the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. The Clintons have generally espoused center-right positions on the issues, reflective of the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the party, and they feel the nation needs to move much further to the left.
If Hillary is the nominee, rationale #1 will cause the base of the Republican Party to come out in droves to insure that the evil, baby-killing socialist is not elected. Rationale #2 will cause the base of the Democratic Party to stay home because they view her (rightly or wrongly) as someone who will not turn the nation in the direction they desire.
I agree with you about Edwards and the coming swift boat, and thankfully it's still early in the process.
Cannonfire, I would argue that Hillary is a NeoCon. She and Leiberman and Guilliani and even Obama are all cut from the same cloth. There is really not a dime's worth of difference in Republican and Democrat anyway but NeoCons stand out from the crowd by a long shot. America should purge all NeoCons..... immediately
I allowed the first anonymous comment to stand because it is such a classic example of its kind. Which is the nicest thing I can say about it.
I agree with what both marc and DL have to say here.
I'd like to mention something about the great health care imbroglio which occurred during the BC era: You're right -- one of the big problems is that the bill ran into strong purist opposition, as well as incessant and misleading GOP opposition.
The purists decided that the only acceptable choice was full-on socialized health care, and nothing short of this deserved a yea vote. Sure, lots of people would die needlessly while we all waited for the New Jerusalem to open its gates. But hey -- what's a few hundred thousand extra deaths?
PURITY! Only PURITY is important!
The imbroglio had one little-known follow-up: A much more purist-friendly version of universal health care appeared on the ballot in California in 1996. California is a blue state, of course. The progressives could not have hoped for more friendly territory.
Yet this proposal garnered, as I recall, about 26% of the vote.
Purists need to learn two lessons:
1. The rest of America does not agree with them. GET OUT OF THE PROGRESSIVE GHETTO.
2. As Keynes said, "In the long run, we are all dead."
If the Clinton plan had passed in 1994, I'd be able to see a doctor right now for my own recurrent problems.
But hey, purists -- why should you give a damn about my ailments? I mean, what are MY piffling aches and pains in comparison to YOUR over-arching need for purity?
So when people ask why I despise the purists so much, I'll tell 'em that I have very personal reasons.
It's often the case that sleeping positions bring on low back pain and its radiation. Sore triceps you don't notice could be a culprit. Try pressing or pinching hard one of your triceps, especially closer to the top of your arm, and see if it hurts there more than from the pinching pressure itself. Also see if that pressure point momentarily relieves somewhat the major pain (although the reach and stretch of one arm across to the other itself might momentarily reduce the major pain).
DL makes sense, no? Seems like Hillary can be seen as not-left-enough for peepee while being Stalin's demon lovechild for Rush & Sean?
I mean once the Swiftboats go out [cough cough! parking meters] won't someone start bringing up [cough cough! Vince Foster] some of the stories that may or may not be true? I know you say its not in Webb's book and i believe you (heck i read it in '98 and lent it to someone before Y2K melted our computers and the planes fell from the sky) but i don't believe that will stop a few monkeys with Avid and a digicam from selling it to the people...
And Joe I know my country's system is not perfect --really Sicko makes it look amazing, and most Canadians are happy with it (we just made Tommy Douglas the Most Popular Canadian of All Time- he's the pol who gave us universal health care) but it ain't perfect, and puritans can find many problems with it, but still-- my mom's got Sciatica and i wish you could get the patches that she gets. She beat her Myeloma with a mix of alopathic and alternatives, but for the sciatica (chemo side effect) they give her morphine patches. And often she can still be in pain through the patch. But at least she can walk around and drive and stuff... Joe i wish you could get the same free crappy medical treatment and free drugs. I really do.
Too bad there wasn't a purple way to sell it...
The issue of the Clintons' positions being Republican can be settled by quoting Bill Clinton's comment to his assembled cabinet and senior staff: "I hope you realize we are all Eisenhower Republicans now."
He didn't like saying that, but that was his own expert conclusion about where the policy mix he ended up at sits in the spectrum of political positions. Note, not the current radical Republican mainstream, but the older version of Rockefeller or Eisenhower Republicanism. It is fair to consider Hillary's politics to be in a continuum with Bill's, and therefore, it is no stretch to say HER policies are Republican as well (in the sense I've described).
As to Joe's blaming the progressive purists for defeating Hillary care, that is absurd. Much of the messy truth about who did what to the plan is that the Establishment Democratic Party, as represented by its committee chairmen and most senior member, Robert Byrd, none of them progressive purists, were the culprits on the Democratic side most responsible. (Now, when NIXON'S national health care plan was defeated, there is a better case to be made that liberals defeated it, but mainstream liberals, not progressive purists, even in that case).
How the Democrats helped stall out Clinton's health care plan had to do with the hubris and pride of the committee chairmen like Pat Moynihan, who knew nothing about the subject (self-admittedly), but insisted that he and his committee handle the legislative plan. Other committee chairmen and subcommittee chairmen asserted their perogatives to also deal with the bill, making an unmanageable hash of things with too many cooks in the kitchen. Finally, as the final nail in the coffin burying the Clinton health care plan, Robert Byrd refused to allow the final vote to come before the floor on a filibuster-proof reconciliation vote (no filibusters are allowed on reconciliation bill votes, so, unusually, a mere 51 votes wins in the Senate), because the allowed debate time of one hour offended his sense of decorum. Byrd is a institutionalist purist, not a progressive purist.
Clearly, none of the above institutional reasons the Democrats blew the health care passage have a thing to do with progressive purists. None of the parties mentioned above were advocating for single payer at all, let alone single payer or nothing. (Yes, there was an 80 plus coalition in the House advocating for single payer, the largest co-sponsorship for any bill, but show me any of them that swung the vote to the nay side because they wanted their own purist ways. Didn't happen-- then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole led a filibuster, was how it actually went down to defeat).
And then, there was the additional factor of the medium and smallish insurance companies joining their resources to pour fully $800 million dollars, more than spent by both parties in the very expensive '96 presidential election, into attack ads featuring the infamous Harry and Louise.
Perhaps the key attack piece of them all was the 'No Exit' piece by Elizabeth McCaughy (sp?), published as a cover story by The New Republic. TNR's reputation is not one of progressive purism, as their publishing of the lies of McCaughy, from the radical right of the Manhattan Institute, should make clear enough.
Let me be clear that as I see it, Eisenhower Republicanism is fine with me, especially given the radical right's alternative. Most of the prior Republicans of history, including Nixon and Ford, look quite attractive policy-wise, compared to the GOP crew we see these days.
However, let's be honest. Mainstream former GOP positions were NOT Democratic Party positions, which were significantly left or more liberal still than those more moderate Republicans were. Why is it even a point of debate when we contrast the Clinton style position with the orthodox historical Democatic Party positions and say they are not congruent, when the whole point of the DLC types (Clinton, a co-founder of the DLC) was precisely to ditch much of the Democratic Party's historical liberal catechism to be more Republican, or business-friendly?
...sofla
sof, you raise some very good points.
I'd say a few things about that "Eisenhower Republican" remark. First, it was delivered in the context of economics -- specifically, the question of how to bring down the deficit and eradicate the economic doldrums in the first term. Clinton had promised a public works program, and FDR-type solution, but was talked out of it.
Well, the trick did work.
Second, you are right: By today's standards, Ike would be seen as a liberal. He'd probably be a Democrat right now. The Republican Party has been taken over by the kinds of crazies who, in Ike's day, considered him a knowing member of Communist Party.
You are correct to remind us that there were many factors leading to the demise of the Clinton health care plan. But I maintain that a major factor was the utter lack of enthusiasm for the thing in the progressive media.
None of the "progressive" rags that I read then -- The Nation, In These Times, Z Magazine, yadda yadda -- had a single good thing to say about Clinton or his ideas on health care. They all argued that if progs banded together to shoot the thing down, then within the next year or two we'd have socialized medicine and the Day of the Lord would dawn.
Didn't quite work out that way, did it?
Maybe if lefty scribblers had supported Clinton -- maybe if they had tried to start a movement around the plan, they way they started a movement around Jesse Jackson's candidacy -- the mainstream Dems would have gotten on board.
Boy, you brought memories flooding back! Jeez, it was just the 1990s, but somehow it feels both like yesterday and like a million years ago.
At any rate, I think Byrd was persuadable -- if the bill were popular. Which writers and speakers on the left did anything to make it popular?
And afterward, there were Democrats who said "Clinton didn't even TRY on health care." Not kidding. People I know on the left mouthed those exact words. THAT I remember vividly. Unreal!
Joe, you're going to hate me for this, but I gotta say it. Both statements 1 and 2 carry a lot of truth to them. As Whitman said, do I contradict myself? Therefore, I contradict myself. Or words to that effect. When Bill was president, he got passed many of the republican's programs, even while he had a democratic congress. I believe that is when they started really hating him because he was stealing their goodies and calling them democratic goodies. A lot of respectable people (and I'll toss myself into that pile) thought then and think now, that he is really a republican in democratic wool. Or, put another way, he (and by marital osmosis) Hillary, are very right-leaning democrats. Put that way, there is barely one degree of separation from them and the traditional republicans like Eisenhower, i.e., not the wing-nuts of today. And as for the latter (the wing-nuts), No. 1 describes them. They really hate any woman with power who refuses to defer to their stupidity. Their visceral hatred of all democratic women is evident in the way they talk about not just Hillary, but Pelosi, Boxer, Lee, et al.
And it's not that there is NO difference, of course there is. However, for those of us who remember the old-time republicans of the past, Clinton (Bill or Hill) are much closer to traditional republicanism than to the Roosevelt/Kennedy/Johnson democrats. The differences can be seen in the appointments to SCOTUS, e.g. The similarities in the rapid approval of NAFTA and GATT with a democratic congress, all the while supposedly vilifying the previous (republican) administration. Is there not more difference between Clinton and Kucinich than between Clinton and Guiliani? (Aside from the fact that Guiliani is a total a$$hole.) People have no trouble identifying Lieberman as a republican in democratic wool, but forget that Hillary supported Lieberman's reelection. At least until forced to support the democratic nominee (I wonder why???).
The MSM loves her, or at least accepts her as the putative nominee, because she is a known quantity and therefore can be counted upon not to upset the apple cart, which would be very bad for their business. (That is, not the business of the media, but the business of those who OWN the media.)
Another point that could be made here is the personality differences. Purists are by nature zealots and are more likely to be active and loud and disruptive for their cause. Pragmatists wait and see what happens then make up their mind. Being somewhat pragmatic myself, my choice would be Kucinich in a purist sense, but pragmatically I believe that Edwards is the only one who could win. I also think that he is the one most feared by the establishment folks.
So, yes, if Hillary is the nominee, I'll vote for her because to do otherwise would be to commit americacide. But I can understand why certain democrats, who perhaps don't spend too much time in contemplation, could reach another conclusion.
fallinglady
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