On behalf of Hillary Clinton

[mtnsnake]

First of all, I'm not trying to rally some campaign on her behalf, but in all fairness to her, considering what I think is sometimes an unfair pasting she takes around here....

1) Hillary was one of the ONLY democrats I've seen in recent year to stand up to the right wing hate media and spell it out to the country just how malicious and ill-intentioned they are. She's the only Democrat I know of who had Rush Limbaugh in tears when she confronted him face to face a few years ago over his comments he was making about Chelsea at the time. She nailed him but good. Does anyone remember who it was that got up in front of MSM and stuck up more for Bill Clinton than anyone else? Yeah, it was Hillary.

2) Hillary isn't necessarily my first choice, although I would be more than happy if she were to run, and I'd have more confidence in her right now than anyone else with possibly the exception of Clark. Like Clark, she seems like a winner...maybe even more so when it comes to the game of politics. She's arguably just as personable, and she's even more high-profile. I saw what she could do when she campaigned in my area through northern NY. People were attracted to her like magnets, and that included ALL Democrats as well as quite a few repukes who couldn’t stand her husband (believe it or not, there are some open-minded repukes). Middle class people in my area simply loved her, and her signs were planted in the yards of Democrats and Republicans alike, something I‘ve never seen before in my area. Women were unanimous about her.

3) Have you ever REALLY gotten to know her? Listen to a few choice speeches of hers sometime. If you get a chance, attend a speech of hers in person. This is a smart lady and a clever politician.

4) Have you based your fears and assumptions about her according to how much right wing media hates her? Screw them. I'm sick and tired of letting the right wing hate media push us around and scaring us out of running people THEY are afraid of. Maybe hate media is so afraid of her because they know how many of their own people she would win over.

5) Is there something so terrible about her if she's a little more toward the center than you are? Hey, she wants to win. She's playing the game, and were she to become president, I have no doubt she'd satisfy everyone's needs in here. Her core values are good ones, despite her voting for the war because of Bush's lies about the reasons for going there. I admit I don’t like her voting to go ahead with the war, but to write her off for that could be a big mistake. She's not some war monger.

Anyway, feel free to lay it on!

[Name removed]

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[Democrat 4 Ever]

7. They used that argument 15 - 20 years ago. If not now, when? 2025? 2100?

I like Hillary because she is smart, committed, talented and understands the whole spectrum of political life. She has a history of fighting for Democratic ideals long before she hooked up with Bill. Read her book and not buy into the theory everyone hates her because of the health care initiative or she stood by Bill or she killed people in Arkansas or whatever other hair brain nonsense the repugs dredge up to smear her. Don't ever think that the repugs don't fear her, they wouldn't spend so much time belittling her if they didn't. In the middle of the whole Monica scandal, the aftermath of impeachment, right after the Clintons' left the White House - her poll figures stayed extremely high - and the repugs know it. And they are still high to this day - not everyone hates Hillary but many fear her.

I know it is important to put forth a candidate that stands a reasonable chance of getting elected but when do we stop readjusting our candidates to repug sound bites and get into their face with a strong, smart, viable person? It is not our job to force our candidate to fit some mold, it is our job to convince the voters that our candidate is the best person for the job, period, no matter the gender.

We are not ever going to find a "perfect" candidate - the repugs will make sure of that. Jesus himself could come to earth and declare he was running as the Democratic candidate and there is a whole repug political machine revving up ready to tell you that Jesus as president would send us all to hell in a hand basket. To the repugs it is not about the man, woman, ideals, ability, patriotism or what is best for this country it is all about the party and we need to quit defining candidates using the myopic views of the repugs.

If that is Hillary, fine. If not, I just want a candidate that will fight like hell to save this country from the repugs, the crazy Christians, corporate businesses and the stupid media - no matter the gender, color, or any other superficial yardstick. It is 2005 for Pete's sake!

[mtnsnake]

10. Well said

when do we stop readjusting our candidates to repug sound bites and get into their face with a strong, smart, viable person?

I couldn't agree more, and your Jesus analogy is dead on, too.

[autorank]

2. Many good points. She & Schumer have the same problem.

They're accepting the assumptions of the game: let's do Iraq right, blablabla. It was an incalculable error, one that every thinking person involved should have anticipated. Accepting the assumptions of the game means going along with the presumed rational choice theory. There are two sides to this issue. Well, for some issues there are the proponents and then there should be the people who say "the proponents of this action are insane." She didn't do that. She's trying to position herself. The VRWC will have no more pity on her than they do on any non-Republican. They will destroy her. Two bad judgments -- supporting Iraq and assuming she can "deal" with the CM (corporate media) and it's rulers. Sorry, glad she's a Democrat but I can't trust her judgment (just like Boxer can't trust Condi's judgment)

[hippiechick]

3. Very nice essay. I have 2 comments:

Overall, I like Hillary. She's got more balls than most of the men in DC. However, I don't trust her motives, and don't particularly want her to run for President.

Here are my comments:

1. This is what disturbs me about Hillary ... "Hey, she wants to win. She's playing the game..."

Which means she'll probably say whatever she thinks will get her the most votes, rather than sticking to her core principles and letting the votes fall where they may. I don't respect that type of behavior in ANY politican.


2. "... despite her voting for the war because of Bush's lies ..."

She had just spent 8 years as First Lady and probably Big Dog's closest advisor. If ANYONE knew there were no WMD's and that Bush was full of shit, it would have been her. Yet she still voted Yes.
Very bothersome.

Thanks !

[justiceischeap]

6. What she knew about Iraq

2. "... despite her voting for the war because of Bush's lies ..."

She had just spent 8 years as First Lady and probably Big Dog's closest advisor. If ANYONE knew there were no WMD's and that Bush was full of shit, it would have been her. Yet she still voted Yes.
Very bothersome.

Maybe I'm looking at this incorrectly, sometimes I'm accused of being too optimistic but... If after 9/11 and being a Senator from NY, she didn't act with the President, imagine the shit storm she would have received from her constituents. All the Senators but a handful voted for the war in Iraq and I genuinly feel they were just as deceived as the American people. Back to my original point, I don't see how she could have NOT voted for the war in Iraq. I disagree with the war in Iraq and felt from the outset it was a sham but I just don't think she had a choice.

Okay, spank me... :spank:

[GreenArrow]

8. she could have abstained

citing a lack of clear, compelling evidence. She knew what she was doing, and it didn't involve being fooled.

[Name removed]

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[BrklynLiberal]

4. I don't want to hear her compromise one inch on women's reproductive

health rights, environmental initiatives and civil rights whether they are based on ethnicity, gender or sexual preference.
Those are issues on which I feel there is absolutely no room for compromise, and if she can find wiggle room on those issues, then I cannot support her, and I voted for her for Senator, and was a very big supporter.
I am not happy with her stand on the Iraqi war and her dismal performance on Jan 6th.
While I am willing to keep an open mind and see where she comes down on these issues in the next couple of years, I do not see her with the same enthusiasm I once did.

ON EDIT: The other thing I am wary of about is her purported negativity toward Howard Dean. I think that she should support anyone who could bring energy and success back to the Democratic Party.
If we do not win back Congressional seats in the midterm election, it does not matter who we run in 2008, we will not win!!!

[papau]

5. We agree on Hillary - and Clark is still of interest. Kerry is not my

choice in 08.

[GregD]

9. She has injured our fight against paperless e-voting

Out of the several bills to respond to paperless e-voting that were submitted in the past 2 years to the Senate, she introduced one of the worst of them. S.1986 was simply awful, in that it featured loopholes and wiggle room that would return us right back into the frying pan. Her bill was simply unsupportable:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=940

Worse yet, when Clinton/Boxer/Graham combined their bills into the RECORD Act S.2313, she incorporated language that essentially eviscerated the requirement to have a paper trail in place in time for 2004. Because of her, the bill also contained language that could have driven a stake through the heart of precinct-based optical scan systems and ballot marking devices.

So, if you want to consider someone you are willing to fight for, I suggest you select someone that has fought for you at the depths of democracy. And that, based on her poor performance regarding our right to have our votes counted in an auditable manner, is absolutely NOT Hillary.

[Gyre]

11. You just keep running her up the flagpole, and

we'll keep shooting her down. It's a fair assumption that she's using her accolytes to gauge her acceptance in the activist wing of the dem party.

AFAIK, she's a non-starter in ANY of the red states by a wide margin. I'm sure she's a "nice person", but she's got two strikes against her, with all republicans and many dems, as somebody who personifies the Clinton admin., and somebody who doesn't directly engage the enemy.

The red states viscerally will hate her as Clinton's spouse (either past or present), and many of us on the left view her as a Lieberman with a better haircut. Just my opinion.

Gyre

[mtnsnake]

12. What's wrong with personifying the Clinton administration?

We sure as hell got a lot more southern votes then than we did this time, and the Clinton times just happened to be GOOD timeS. People remember that.

As far as her being a "non-starter in ANY of the red states by a wide margin", I'm curious as to any information that backs that up.

[ScreamingMeemie]

14. Sorry, I don't buy into it. She's more of the same. She voted for the war,

knowing full well what would happen and is now taking the "how could I possibly have known" stance. She's part of the problem and definitely not a solution in my opinion. I'd go actively third party if she were to run.

[robbedvoter]

15. Her faith based advocacy is so dumb, I am not even trusting her

competence anymore. Forget principles (she did that long ago), but why encourage W's pocketing your taxes as campaign slush money to knuckledraggers? Everyone knows only fundies get those - does Hillary think she has a base there? Then she's as deluded as Joementum.

[Rowdyboy]

16. No problem with Hillary running....I disagree with her on a few issues

but I rarely agree with anyone 100%. I don't think she would win the nomination, however, if she did, she would lose nationwide short of another Great Depression.

I like Hillary, but the right was very sucessful in their efforts to stereotype her negatively and, now that the left has joined in the fun, she's even less likely to suceed.

[saltpoint]

17. I don't dispute her strengths and she may surprise us all --

-- and get the nomination.

But I don't believe she can outflank Mark Warner or John Edwards, just for starters.

If Dean becomes our party's Chair, the Clinton folks may find themselves with a steeper slope.

I need to sense more fire from her, more passion.