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Bad Advice For Hillary Clinton By Charles P. Pierce
I don't worry about whether or not she can stand up against the DFH's in her party. I worry that there won't be anyone forcing her to choose on it, one way or another.Bad Advice For Hillary Clinton
By Charles P. Pierce on February 7, 2014
I don't want to write about 2016, or about Hillary Clinton, before, say, November 1, 2015, but I can't let Matt Bai's advice pass without comment.
Should she ultimately run again, Clinton might actually do herself a greater service by holding her ground. When we talked about Clinton, David Axelrod, the strategist who spent a career running campaigns against the establishment before guiding Obama to the White House, told me: "The quickest way to authenticate yourself, and the hardest thing to do, is to be willing to put yourself at risk by standing up for things you believe, even if it means taking positions every once in a while that people don't see as the smart political move." Which could mean that the real way to prove you're not just a projection of the status quo isn't necessarily to mouth tired condemnations of the establishment, but rather to speak hard truth to the partisans who indict it.
There is so much hair on this set of bromides that you could use it for a rug. The only real surprise is the fact that the name "Sister Souljah" doesn't appear anywhere in Bai's list of suggestions. If Axelrod really believes what he's saying, he should be kept out of Democratic strategy sessions at gunpoint. The Democratic "populism" people so seem to fear is about two years old -- a but longer, if you date it from the rise of the Occupy movement -- and it hasn't shown yet that it is generally ready to exert power within Democratic politics. But its power is building, and its popularity is increasing, and if Clinton gets convinced that the way to go is to "stand firm" against it, proving to God alone knows who that she is a serious Leader with Leadership, a genuine political reaction to the depredations of the private banking sector will pass a'glimmering. That not only will be bad for Democrats, it will be extremely bad for the country. It will pitch the Democrats back into the position whereby the really smart people congratulate the Democrats for standing firm against anything that might result in a political advantage.
The bigger problem is that there isn't a real candidate out there that will force Clinton to make the choice that Bai advocates. Elizabeth Warren is not...going...to..run. The closest thing to it, Montana's Brian Schweitzer, will have to square economic populism with his outspoken support for a multinational Canadian corporation, which is stealing land from ranchers like himself for the purpose of its dangerously stupid pipeline. (Sorry, Ed -- and, great swinging gonads of Baldur, stop driving the nails into your palms over this.) I don't worry about whether or not she can stand up against the DFH's in her party. I worry that there won't be anyone forcing her to choose on it, one way or another.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/matt-bai-bad-advice-for-hillary-clinton-020714
