"Hillary Clinton: A Progressive who can win, and govern"

I just sent "The Nation" a nasty email about their latest issue. I said that instead of providing a subscriber with research and information, they just did a he said/she said on all the candidates, giving each of them space for an ad.

Here is a link to their ad for Hillary.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071126/chesler

How much of it is true? I consider Hillary to be not nearly progressive enough. Is Chesler right when she calls Hillary a progressive? I must admit, I do not remember Hillary's "impassioned opposition to Alito and Roberts".

because SOME PEOPLE say that she is. Who has the facts on their side? That is the question. Is Chesler wrong or disingenuous when she touts the positives of Hillary?

:shrug:

and it did not stop me from supporting Kerry, even though I much prefered Dean, Clark, Edwards, or Gephardt. Those people probably have their flaws too, I remember a good contingent on DU who called Dean a DLCer, but they do not seem as Liebermanesque as Hillary, a person who will actively undermine a progressive message and also refuse to take a stand on so many issues.

a quote about Hillary, not a quote from Hillary

here is her statement on Alito. It's pretty good, actually.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=250765

She voted against Roberts too, I guess, but her statement against him seems kinda lukewarm.
http://www.senate.gov/~clinton/news/statements/details.cfm?id=246324

and there was no fillibuster for his nomination either in spite of his glaring lack of qualifications. (How the heck should he get that job ahead of Kennedy?)

It does not look very "impassioned" though. None of her fiery speeches, if she made any, made the national news.

her office got bombarded with phone calls and she came out and said she'd support the filibuster. But she wouldn't go on broadcast programs to fight for that filibuster and explain to the American people why it was necessary. And her initial arguments against filibuster in caucus along with Schumer's gave cover to those Democrats who were on the fence and could have been convinced.

Even when she spoke on the floor during the filibuster she only brought up reproduction rights and said nothing about Alito's pro-fascist, antiworker record.

Those are exactly the kind of details that can get swept into the memory hole and what I expect "The Nation" to bring to my attention.

because spin is much more lucrative for them.

only 6% of voters in any election - primary or general - although primary may be as high as 10% - vote based on positions -

Folks vote "gut feelings" as in can they win and do I want that face on TV for the next 4 years.

So whatever the position, the gut has to say to you that they will hold that position despite changed polls - and only change with new information.

The GOP will use "position changes with polling" against any Dem - so it is not just a Hillary problem

Edwards is closer to my positions (he is more to the left/more progressive) but Hillary is a fine progressive (DK is even closer to where I am except he doesn't pass the "can he win" test).

Obama and the rest are also fine progressives, but they all need to pass that "gut feeling test".

although admittedly, I never liked Bill and thought Hillary's run for the Senate in New York was bogus. I still think I am more of a New Yorker than she is, even though my only connection is that my mom was born there and my grandparents lived there. Hillary was just hand-picked by some party elite to be Senator, because a) she is a celebrity, and b) she has connections to big money donors.

Still, my dislike of Clinton was not based on my gut, it was my dislike of the things he said. He sounded like a Republican to me with all his talk of economic growth. Like Lieberman, he was always going on TV and giving support to Republican talking points. It makes it very difficult to oppose Republican policies when the media can say, "Even Democrats agree ..." (for examples)

a. Saddam is a threat
b. tax increases are bad
c. (big) government is bad
d. $100,000 a year income is 'middle class'
e. deficits are bad

How can you walk the walk, if you cannot even talk the talk?

Which position papers are you referring to? I have critiqued a few of her policies. It does not seem very progressive to me, for example, to oppose a tax increase for those making over $100,000 (although Edwards wimped out on that too). It also does not seem progressive to propose more tax breaks for families in the $40,000 - 100,000 range.

:rofl:

DLC detests progressives.

"These DLC leaders castigate progressive elements within the Democratic party as being "a modern-day version of the old McGovern wing of the party, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home." The Republicans are fortunate indeed to have such brave soldiers fighting their war at the middle line." http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0710-02.htm

"For three decades, advocates of "centrism" have used their money to monopolize the Democratic message and leave the progressive base out in the cold, not spoken to. Since its founding in 1985, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been leading this effort." http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/rockridge/the-trouble-with-the-dlc

where I asked, why do HRC supporters claim she is a progressive when they are contemptuous to progressives.

The only thing she is progressive about is raising corporate money--progressively more of it.

The Trouble with the DLC
Posted August 13, 2007 | 01:14 PM (EST)


Why are Harold Ford and others from the more paternalistic and condescending quarters of the Democratic Party so keen on discrediting the rising progressive movement? What have been the consequences of their obsession with "the middle"? Most importantly, how have the Tory Democrats managed to bury the expression of deep progressive values, and what should the progressive movement do about it?

For three decades, advocates of "centrism" have used their money to monopolize the Democratic message and leave the progressive base out in the cold, not spoken to. Since its founding in 1985, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been leading this effort. How did they pull this off? Before we get into that, let's call them what they are. "Centrist" implies conciliation, moderation, compromise. It reinforces the mistaken idea that our political life falls along a neat, linear scale from left to right. That metaphor makes the center a pretty good and safe place to be. And that it certainly is not.

The plutocratic Democrats should be referred to not as centrists, but as industrial authoritarians. Their movement was born after the Nixon re-election in 1972. They blamed that landslide on Democratic Party rules changes that audaciously sought to include Americans formerly excluded from the back rooms of power. They fronted for older corporate interests -- oil and gas, finance, insurance. The are really 19th-Century paternalists who would save us from ourselves by keeping us far from the plantation's Big House.

-snip

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-w-smith/the-trouble-with-the-dlc_b_60210.html

The Democrats 2008 Choice: Sell Out & Lose, Or Stand Up & Win
Posted July 26, 2005 | 03:42 PM (EST)




The 2008 Democratic presidential candidates this week are busy genuflecting at Corporate America's altar -- otherwise known as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Now, it's true -- the DLC is really just a group of Beltway-insulated corporate-funded hacks who have spent the better part of the last decade trying to undermine the Democratic Party's traditional working class base -- a base that had kept Democrats in power for 40 years and now, thanks to the DLC, has been forfeited to the Republicans. Even so, the fact that these presidential candidates feel the need to bow down to the DLC is a troubling sign about whether the Democratic Party is really serious about regaining power in America.

Let's just look at the cold, hard facts about the DLC and its record. The DLC has pushed, among other things, the war in Iraq and "free" trade policies, using bags of corporate money to buy enough Democratic votes to help Republicans make those policies a reality. They have chastised anyone who has opposed those policies as either unpatriotic or anti-business -- even as a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, oppose the DLC's business-written trade deals, and are sick of watching America's economy sold out to the highest corporate bidder. Additionally, in brazenly Orwellian fashion, the DLC has also called its extremist agenda "centrist," even though polls show the American public opposes most of their agenda, and supports much of the progressive agenda.

Now, you could make a credible argument that the DLC's corporatization/Republicanization of the Democratic Party was justified, had it led to electoral success for Democrats. Few would argue that today's split-the-difference Democratic Party hasn't followed the DLC's policy direction over the last 10 years. That means the last 10 years of elections really have been a referendum on whether the DLC's model -- regardless of any moral judgements about it -- actually wins at the polls.

And that's when we get to the real problem with the DLC -- its policies are BOTH morally bankrupt, and politically disastrous. The rise of the DLC within the Democratic Party has coincided almost perfectly with the decline of the Democratic Party's power in American politics -- a decline that took Democrats from seemingly permanent majority status to permanent minority status. In this last election, just think of Democrats' troubles in Ohio as a perfect example of this. Here was a state ravaged by massive job loss due to corporate-written "free" trade deals -- yet Democrats were unable to capitalize on that issue and thus couldn't win the state because the DLC had long ago made sure the party helped pass the very trade policies (NAFTA, China PNTR) that sold out those jobs.

-SNIP

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/the-democrats-2008-choice_b_4729.html

Now ... let's read what Ellen said eight years ago ...

but the fact that she has always liked Hillary does not necessarily invalidate her POV.

"It will be important for Hillary Clinton to challenge the view that she is complicit in the abandonment by her husband's Administration of the welfare safety net that New Yorkers first wrote into the New Deal. She can point to the many ways she has worked in private and public to replace what had become a deeply flawed system of pitifully inadequate handouts with better integrated programs of economic subsidy and social support--programs that aim to help lift families out of poverty and to restore hope and opportunity where there was once dependency and despair."

That sounds like a Republican talking point - helping people creates dependency. Is she going to claim that the welfare reform passed by the Republican Congress and vetoed twice by Clinton (after he had campaigned on 'welfare reform') was progressive and has actually helped the poor and working class?

Also the 'no agenda to her Senate campaign' seems kinda naive. Most people knew that Hillary ran for the Senate in New York as a springboard to a run for the Presidency. As far as 'making possible what appears to be impossible'. Right now, it appears to be impossible to have a Democratic party that is more progressive.

to hamper Gore in 2000 and keep Bush supported on the biggest issues of the 2004 election, his decisions on terrorism and Iraq war.

And they also needed Terry McAuliffe to ignore the election fraud of the RNC that was exposed during the hearings on 2000's theft. No one questions WHY and HOW election fraud worsened in 2002 and 2004?

Think anyone will address those elephants in the room?

Clinton is barely qualified to call herself a "centrist".

then again, I do not have alot of progressive cred on this board :blush: :dunce:

but that was long ago and far away, and I am so much better informed today.

The current head of the DLC is Harold Ford who BILL Clinton called 'the walking, living embodiment of what a Democrat should be' or something like that. I cannot find the exact quote.

Maybe she is from the progressive wing of the DLC. The Clintons have always been socially progressive - pro choice, pro GLBT, pro women's rights.

Of course, that does not appeal to me, because I might be a tiny bit socially conservative.

But of course those from the right always just point to the social divisive issues as the divide between progressive and "centrist".

I call bullshit. Progressives don't really put a great amount of weight to these social divisive issue stances of candidates.

In addition to the social divisive issues, Progressives put more weight on whether the candidate will sell out the American public to the lobbyists. Progressives don't want to keep killing and torturing in foreign countries. Progressives care about social safety net issues.

Clinton cares about her lobbyists friends and her best buddy Penn whose firm works for very shady characters.

Clinton can barely call herself a centrist and she does so using your litmus test of divisive social issues. Get her talking about any other very important issue and she dithers because she has to keep from angering her cash cow lobbyists.

I am taking a class in Progressive Ideology. Now on week 3 we are discussing identity politics. It seems to me that many liberal groups such as PFAW or ACLU, lead with those social issues, and they seem to be central on DU as well. There are more threads on evolution than there are on working class issues. Of course, GD does tend to follow the M$M's issue du jour and since the M$M never talks about poverty or the working class, neither does GD, Gd it!

The social issues divide even Progressives therefore they are debated at DU.

The lobbyist issues, the Class War, poverty, corruption, our war machine, etc. are all issues in which many here agree. Not much to debate about.

If there is a debate, it is often me (or OMC) vs. DU. Alot of other 'debaters' end up eating pizza.

Hillary a progressive. I think the corporatist label fits her much better.

That's the next logical step to move the country further right.

-Hoot

"all options are on the table for Iran" quote from hillary/cheney

Progressives unapologetically believed the worst president in history regarding the Middle East with lives at stake?

Progressives schmooze with Reaganite media moguls?

Not the last time I checked.

until we establish fiscal responsibility and form a bipartisan commission?

:eyes:

If you base your support on a label, you'll get what you deserve. Unfortunately, so will we.

it seems to me, is one of perception. Progressives see her has a centrist DLC apologist, conservatives see her has Chairman Mao. Regardless of which side, if any, is right; it will be tough for her to get much enthusiasm from the left in a general election and even tougher to avoid enthusiast opposition from the right.