I will not support Hillary Clinton for president

[cornermouse]

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304

Molly Ivins

...Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes...

Read the whole thing. I would apply it to all the democrats who are playing at making nice, but once again, Molly says it all.

[bowens43]

1. I agree completely.

a ticket with Hillary would be difficult for me to support.

[acmavm]

2. A ticket with Hillary on it would put me in the biggest political quandry

of my life. And I ain't no spring chicken. She is NOT presidential material.

[ClintonTyree]

3. I'd have a tough time too.......

but of course if she won the nomination and we were faced with the prospect of another neo-con, corporate whore I'd have to consider her. Of course this is the scenario that the DLC wants, another right leaning "centrist" that will take the party where THEY want it to go, not where it should be.

:dilemma: I hope it doesn't come to this. I couldn't "rally round the Hill" with a clear conscience.

[papau]

4. I love Molly - Enough triangulation, calculation!-but she is wrong on Hill

"Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo" true but this means what?

"not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning" - wrong -the "bill" killed the movement to a consitutional amendment - Clinton was effective and wise, IMO

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. She makes some thought-provoking points

and I don't think Hillary is a shoo-in as the nominee. Not with this early griping already.

[Larkspur]

6. I'm with Molly. I won't support Hillary for Prez too.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. I won't support her for nomination, but I'll vote for her as candidate

If Hilary wins the Democratic nomination, any Dems who then refuse to vote for her will be repeating the unforgivable mistake of 1968 and 1980, when Dems who sat out the election or voted for a third party gave us the vile Nixon and the despicable Reagan.

[silverweb]

22. Exactly.

I will not vote for her in the primary. But we must unite and support whichever Democratic candidate wins the nomination.

[Dudley_DUright]

8. Molly is as sick of the pink tutu (TM - Bartcop) democrats

as most of us at DU are. It is way past time to start acting like an opposition party and OPPOSE (and they could start with filibustering scAlito).

[RandomKoolzip]

13. Bartcop supports Hillary now. n/t

[PhilipDC]

9. Hillary

I'd vote for her in the general election, but not a primary.

[donheld]

11. Welcome to DU PhilipDC

:hi:

[daydreamer]

24. Welcome

I am with you on this. I will vote for Hillary or any Democrat in general election. I personally like Hillary but I don't know if she could win for us.

[Demeter]

10. Amen Molly!

There is no time like the present, and no peace or prosperity in appeasement.

[Az_lefty]

12. I won't either. Barbara Boxer for me...

she has more courage than anyone else I've heard from in Washington, except maybe Conyers. Perhaps that should be the next ticket.

Boxer/Conyers

[centristo]

14. i thought hilary's stance was pretty clear

she is for the war in iraq. isn't this well known? i don't think she's thrilled with the execution of it, but she was and is for it. why is molly ivins saying she's a fence straddler?

[yurbud]

23. she is for the war in fact but tries to equivocate with left

[K-W]

15. I can vote for hear if I have to, but she doesnt speak for me.

She is not representative of me, so I could never in good concience support her to represent me.

[Briar]

16. More!

"Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines)."

[TalkingDog]

17. No Hill for me either....I'm tired of the two family system...oh did I say

2 family???

I meant 2 Party..Yeah, the 2 Party system.

[Emillereid]

18. Molly Ivins for President!

[yellowdoginGA]

19. she only cares about power now

i would vote for the hillary of 20 years ago in a heartbeat. but i will not now

[Australian]

20. Even outsiders would have to concede

As an Australian and on the other side of our planet to the United States, even I would have to concede that you have some valid points, and one very important one.

The great Americans have been people like Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; the Clintons did and no doubt would again succeed in modeling themselves after John Kennedy who gave wonderful speeches and is credited for 'starting' many wonderful things that were later done by others. The United States does not need another care-taker President driven by the same fears and world vision as his predecessor; Kennedy was driven by an exaggerated fear of the Soviet Union & communism, and Clinton was driven by the neo-conservative theory that if you take care of the money side, everything else will magically drop into place.

Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were not fast to go to war, but they knew when morality required it even if US public were opposed as in WW-1. The US and the world were improved by the war against colonial ambitions. The great leaders are the ones who do say what no-one else has yet had the bravery to say:
"No right anywhere exist to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property in a game”
- Woodrow Wilson, Washington, 11th Feb 1918

Yet John Kennedy in 1962 did force the Netherlands to trade West Papua's sovereignty to Indonesia to buy their promise to only accept monies and donations for their military from the United States tax payers instead of both the US and Moscow. That awful trade is still costing the freedom & lives of a wonderful people who Allied themselves with the US against Japanese colonial ambitions, their men literally carrying many wounded American soldiers from the battle lines; only to be sold by the US to 40 years of Indonesian colonial occupation and genocide so far.

Of course Kennedy did not know that the CIA & US corporate advise about Indonesia was corrupted by a cartel now known as the US Indonesia Society, a cartel which had discovered the world's richest gold deposit in West Papua in 1936 and kept it secret while arranging for a pro-US business colonial power to be created & seize control of this Australian continental island people. But IF Kennedy had listen to Wilson or Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech, he would not have sold West Papua to Indonesia;
the US Indonesia Society would not have funded the Bush family campaigns, and the neo-colonial corporations who have hijacked the Republican party would not be pulling the strings of George Bush today nor would have had Nixon dancing their tunes in 1969.

[Left Below]

21. Three reasons NOT to support her -

Ms. Clinton STILL supports the war on Iraq.

She was on the Board of Directors of Halliburton.

Likewise Wal-Mart.

She cannot win a Red State.

She has no charisma.

The "Rove" of 2008 will have her Swift-outed as a militant lesbian...