"Dear Hillary, Do not run" - Tampa Editorial

http://www.tbo.com/news/opinion/editorials/MGBHY2DC3KE.html

Dear Hillary: Don't Run
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Published: Feb 25, 2006

Dear Hillary:

We'd like to welcome you to Tampa for your fundraiser today, and thank you for your long service to our country and your party.

We expect that after your re-election this fall as junior senator from New York, you will dedicate yourself to seeking a higher office. But you're a pragmatist, Hillary, so we urge you to be satisfied with the Senate.

If you run for president, chances are good that you'll secure your party's nomination. But realistically, how do you think you can win the White House? You are the most polarizing figure in the Democratic Party, and your negatives among likely voters are prohibitively high. Many people simply don't trust you. You may share your husband's name, but what people liked about him is not transferable to you.

You are not the person to help define a party that needs to convince voters it can govern from the vital center.

Even yellow dog Florida Democrats express profound reservations about your presidential ambitions. They worry that you cannot attract moderate and independent voters and that your presence will hurt the election chances of other Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

They fear, Hillary, that you would doom Democrats to impotence for decades. Republicans might relish that prospect, but on reflection, they would acknowledge the importance of a strong two-party political system. Should the Democratic Party be crippled, the Republican Party is likely to become complacent, uninspired and unaccountable.

Fair or not, you are identified with the far left, and you are not the person to convince voters that Democrats have ideas for keeping families safe and the country secure.

You are not the one who can assure Americans they will have a chance to get ahead.

You may be a champion for women's rights and a strong advocate for children, but you are too much the Washington insider to convince voters you would fix a political system that seems remote from everyday life.

If you run, you'll position yourself from the center, knowing full well that even if you alienate your base, they'll support you, because they have no one else to turn to.

But even if you moderate your positions, you do so at some political risk. When you suddenly support a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning, your changing position seems superficial and self-serving. Hillary the "moderate progressive" candidate would be a hard sell.

Although you apparently work well with your Senate colleagues, your candidacy would remind voters that you are not a consensus builder. Your health care plan failed during your husband's first term because you were largely tone-deaf. You shut people out, and when things went awry, you blamed the media.

By the time George Bush leaves office in 2009, this country will have had 20 years with either a Bush or Clinton at the helm. Citizens want a break from that White House tradition.

Think, Hillary, not about what you want, but what's best for your party and country.

Please, don't run.

Why should we expect anything else from their editorial desk?

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and this must be one of those times.

Hillary Clinton is unelectable.

dreams take me back to 1972, when we nominated McGovern, to centain defeat vs. Nixon.

What is so difficult about realizing that Hillary is unelectable.

#1 SHE (big clue, first word), IS A WOMAN This country has never elected a woman President, what makes anybody think that she could possibly think that she would be the 1st one?????

#2 She comes with too much baggage - her last name and history

#3 (This could work to her advantage) The Americans aren't desperate enough to vote for her.... That is what it would take for many to vote for Hillary, desperation. More likely, they just won't vote. On the other hand, if Bush does get worse (hard to imagine that he could get much worse), Americans just might run to the polls to vote for ABB.

Before you flame me, I believe that a woman should be elected President and I believe that Hillary is qualified and would probably be a good President. I would especially love to see Bill roaming the halls of the WH or even better yet, the halls of the WH and being the head of the UN.

Peception may be that she represents the far-left but in reality she represents the far-right of our party. The DLC.

If she wins the nomination I'll switch to a third-party that represents my liberal values and campaign for them.

Integrity trumpts Unity.

on a candidate who stands for my financial ruin, and that's exactly what the DLC represents to me.

Sorry guys, but "business as usual" has been killing your base for over three decades. It's time to find something your base can vote FOR, or you're going to lose us forever.

she wanted single payer national health but Bill did his "deal" with the insurers who promised to go along as long as there was no single payer national health - they lied - so even before her task force began, single payer was off the table.

I do see her as defense minded more than many at DU - but does that make her DLC?

From http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=137

Who's that second from left?

in that photo.

The law firms we worked through were Ellis and 3 others whose names escape me at the moment.


The DLC photo you posted has Hillary who is chair of the DLC's "American Dream Initiative, a one year project ending this fall, that Gov. Vilsack asked her to head. The idea I believe was to get the 15 points - or better - to give input for getting the 15 points - that will be announced as the Dem plan if given control of Congress in 06. So she is tasked with talking to political, business, labor, civic and intellectual leaders on such things as keeping our country safe, building an opportunity society, standing up for families and making sure our political and electoral systems work for all Americans, and thereby finding ideas/wording/policy/political victory that will leave our children a richer, safer and stronger land than we inherited from our parents..

The person you didn't asked about (2nd from right as you look at picture)is the evil Al From (founder of the DLC).

Are you suggesting the American Dream Initiative is a right wing idea that Hillary is pushing onto the party?

She's featured prominently on the DLC web page.

She's not only DLC, she's part of the LEADERSHIP.

What I'm suggesting (really stating as fact) that she's DLC.

I'll leave it up to everyone else to draw thier conclusions from that.

- and she does not have his positions on most things.

But everyone should decide for themselves if she is far enough to the left of McCain to justify voting for her in the General - if nominated, and to decide if she your choice in the primary.

for the same reasons

If its hillary, any clinton, any bush, or a couple of others, I won't change parties, just change my citizenship!
Have already wasted too many years of the same old crap leading up to and through today!
We need to look for a great miracle worker to take this nation back and on to the greater things without industrial "laundered" money.

to senate and house candidates instead.

I don't vote for Republicans or Democrats posing as Republicans.

will we have? And she will win the primary.

If getting kicked in the teeth by a big third party vote is what it takes to wake the party bosses up to the fact that they're WRONG, then let me help deliver it.

I'm not wasting my vote on conservatives. Never again.

We, supposedly, have no place to go. Anybody for a nice cup of Green tea?

expecting us to tow the line for the DLC candidates.

How about a Democrat that can speak for the ideals of our party and express our vision to move our country forward instead of to the middle or back wards?

The FORTUNE 500 thru thier mouthpiece the DLC says that we'll face certain defeat unless we pick one of thier blessed candidates.

We have the choice of voting or not voting for whomever we choose. I will neither support nor vote for Hillary.

Every left-wing blog that has had a poll has shown that Hillary has the least amount of support of any of the suspected nominees.

If there is a repeat of what happened in 2004 (the DLC Blackballs the people's candidate) then that's all I need to know about the Democratic party.

opinions as true polling centers. The poll I saw over the weekend on one of the Sunday shows had the following:

Hillary 40%
Edwards 16%
Kerry 15%
Biden 3%

I'd say Hillary is way out in front and as long as she maintains her positions it will be difficult for one of the other candidates to overtake her. There are a lot of democrats out there that don't share our level of passion but will still vote democrat. Hillary will win (the primary) if she runs.

The stop Hillary groups will form the minute she announces her run.

"Don't throw me into that briar patch!"

Puh-leeze.

Do not trust her DLC views.

As much as I get angry at the left for being so stubborn in their ideology, I equally get mad at the centrists for constantly avoiding their responsibility to stand up for the values of the left and phrase those values in a way that would appeal to the center. What are all these centrists doing to fight for the environment, women's rights, health care, civil rights, education. If we had to depend on the two Nelsons for progress, we'd have kids in coal mines, segregation and women in the kitchen in no time. What's best for the party and country is for these centrists to stop being such cowards and come up with some progressive solutions of their own.

Please, somebody provide me with an example of Hillary taking a far left, or even liberal stance on anything?



(crickets)

on taxes - and when National Health began - before the task force was formed - she was very left - wanting single payer national health - and getting shot down by the rest of the party.

Afraid I have had no contact at that level since 96, so I do not know where she is now - but you asked for an "example" - and the above two instances are ones I was personally involved in (albeit only in a "suggestion as to how to and what to lobby Clinton" mode for the mid and large insurance companies, with constant updates of what did we do today, and not as a player with access to the Whitehouse),

Her plan would have been an unprecedented giveaway to the health insurance industry, and bore little resemblance to the single payer plans that work so well in countries more civilized than ours.

How could she have been "to the left on taxes" in '96 when she held no public office and had no position papers out?

Even her husband kept most of the Reagan tax cuts in place and made only very minor increases on taxes for the wealthy, while increasing all kinds of fees for government services (read: regressive tax).

Even if they were to the left of what is called the "center" in the US (and they weren't), that would still place them far to the right of more sane countries, IMO. What is called the "center" in this country seems very hard right to me.

I was not on that side of the game (I was concern about taxes and international investments) but I was informed daily.

You are stating where Hillary was after Bill Clinton laid down the law that single payer had no chance of passage and that he wanted national health, even if it preserved the insurance company's profits. Her Task force began about 30 days later.

So you are correct that her task force never considered single payer national health.

But I thought the question was what was her position.

If they would have just expanded medicare to cover anyone who wanted it we'd have universal healthcare.

She wasn't brave enough to do that -- had to do it the pro-business way, which in the end wasn't pro-business enough.

pro-abortion rights, anti-CAFTA, pro-social security, pro-minimum wage, pro-expanded health care, pro gun control, the list goes on.

Pro-choice is not a left-right issue, it's a civil liberties issue.

Pro-minimum wage is centrist, not liberal - the left position would be a living wage pegged to inflation.

I was not aware that she opposed CAFTA, but that would be a departure since her husband signed the abominable NAFTA.

She also voted for an illegal, unjust and unnecessary attack on Iraq against the will of her own constituents, and is a shameless shill for silly causes like video game censorship along with her DLC pal Lieberman.

As for health care, I haven't heard her talk much about that since the 90's - is she still in favor of a plan that gives billions to the insurance industry?

And since when is "the left" unified on gun control issues? I favor it, but lots of lefties don't.

NAFTA was a rescue Mexico plan so as to not screw the economy of the US south and south west (check the peso in that time frame and see what was expected to happen).

No one voted for an attack on Iraq - the IWR gave Bush authority if all other avenues failed - and he tried no other avenues.

As to health care, I also do not know where she stands today - but in 93 she was the only Dem that wanted to fight the more conservative Dems and GOP and put single payer national health out as the Clinton Bill.

Indeed the chart of the complications of Hillary care via managed care that the media/GOP made fun of was itself a partial truth - as the then current setup was 10 times as complicated.

Indeed we ended up with a national managed care approach - we just did not end up with National Health Insurance.

Our country defines the center as having positions that would be right-wing in most countries.

You're also comparing her to the rest of the congress, which is pro-war, pro-establishment and pro-corporate.

But she is to the right of most democratic VOTERS, IMO.

pro-choice is a left-right issue as well as a civil liberties issue. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

Pro-minimum wage is the liberal position. The conservative position is that the market place should be allowed to determine the price of labor without legal intervention.

She voted no on CAFTA, so now you are aware. She also voted against the bankruptcy bill. As I said, the list goes on. As for gun control, being in favor of gun control is considered the liberal position. But of course the left isn't unified on it, we can't seem to be unified on any damn thing.

Voting against a raise in the paltry US min. wage would be ultra-right-wing in any nation but ours.

Pro-choice is not left-right. There are plenty of pro-choice repukes and anti-choice dems.

The things where she's taken the supposedly "left" position are things that would never even be considered in civilized countries. The US is a very far right-wing country, so I expect liberals to be ffar to the left of it's insane "center".

Nice to know about CAFTA, though.

Last, she is unabashedly pro-war, which is pretty much a deal-killer for me.

Not Bush or Clinton. Political royalty was looked at, determined to be a bad idea, and discarded. I do not relish the idea of having a Bush or Clinton potentially sitting in the White House in an unbroken stretch going back from 1988 all the way through to 2024 (that admittedly extreme scenario has Hillary winning in 2008 and 2012 and Jeb winning in 2016 and 2020). Not to mention that a Bush was Vice President between 1980 and 1988. The fact that the odds are against it actually working out that way only slightly softens the blow that George Sr. and Jr., Bill, Hillary, and Jeb all are either past or present Presidents or people who seriously get mentioned as possible future Presidents. American is becoming the first quasi Democracy to experiment with alternating Royal families.

By the time Jeb is through maybe Chelsea would like a crack at the job.

but she has too many negatives coming into the campaign--it's not that she is a far left winger.

if hillary is the nominee, the repugs will win again.

we need a fresh face- i hope to hell that the eventual nominee is someone whose name is not one of the usual suspects always showing up around here in 2008 preference polls- i'm not saying that i know or think who that 'fresh face' is- just that it's definitely needed.

like the cottage industry that came up because Bill Clinton was in office!

It would create millions of jobs for every nutjob who wanted to get 15 minutes of fame!

"Hey, I'll give you a hunnert bucks to say you slept with her. Come on, get out of your cardboard box and sober up for a minute! We'll clean you up, put you on Fox, and we'll give you all the ripple you want . . ."

they WOULD NEVER, and I mean never, vote for ???

WHY START IN THE HOLE ?????

:toast:

Not a reason to pick anyone - but a good reason to ignore Gallup.

"the Republican Party is likely to become complacent, uninspired and unaccountable"

Sheesh. Talk about no sense of irony.

At minimum, she needs another term in the Senate before she runs for the Presidency. A few reasons why:

- gives her more experience in the Senate (and more of a record of accomplishments... although a Senate voting record can often do as much harm as good when running for President). She needs to establish herself more as her own politician rather than "the First Lady who moved to NY to take an open Senate seat".
- gives her more distance from the various Clinton scandals. Far more people will long for the good old Clinton days in about 4-6 more years, when they realize how horrible our economy is. The vitriolic hate for Hillary will fade a little bit with more time.
- she has said repeatedly she plans to finish out her Senate term. She needs to do that, because they'll call her an opportunistic liar if she doesn't.
- I'm not sure if she is really ready for the job yet. (see point #1).
- I'm not sure America is ready to vote for a woman for President yet. I believe a lot of Americans would will need to see a female VP before they'll pull the lever for a female President.

I really, really hope she will not run for the 2008 election. Her time may come, but I honestly believe 2008 will not be that time.

The more it becomes clear to me how those "reasons" are just a front for the real issue.

The real issue is that she's a woman. Bottom line. People don't want to admit it, but I know that is what it really is all about.

whatsoever and find the reasoning faulty.

i subscribe to the tribune and i find their editorials increasingly strange. you'd really need quite an imagination to think hillary is a liberal.

hello, Iraq is not the only issue in the world. That doesn't define whether someone is a liberal or not. Hillary is a liberal because she takes the liberal stance more often than the conservative one.

Ya think those fine "political pundits" at that paper probably wrote the same editorial for Mario Cuomo in '92. Sheesh. What is it with people's obsession with an election where the full scope of both the issues and the candidates haven't been shaped. It's like predicting whose gonna be the medal winners at the 2010 Olympics before the '06 were concluded. Sure, you have players, you have likely situations, but who knows what happens in the interim that will define that election. Just look at how the Repugnicans have imploded in recent months. No one would have envisioned that 6 months ago and it's shaping up that even their corrupt nomination process in '08 isn't so clear. Of course the pundits need to spew, the spinners need to spin, the handlers need to prove their existance...but overall all this crap is base pandering or baiting and nothing else.

But then, if this is a wingnut paper, let's hope they become obsessed with the '08 election and even Hillary as they won't be wasting time spreading lies about the many other Democratic candidates who will be sweeping into office in that state and across the country in November.

With boooosh's approval at 35%...the Repugnicans have far bigger problems to deal with, and we ain't seen nothing yet...