The Case Against Hillary Clinton

Or more specifically why Barack is the better candidate in the general election

I think it important to disclose a few things: I want a Democrat to win the White House in 2008, that my preferred candidate is no longer in the race, that I gave money to two candidates--neither of whom was named Clinton and most significantly that I don't care much for either of the Clintons, though that would not preclude me from voting for her as a lessor of two evils.

Let's start with the last declaration. I don't have a real issue with Hillary or Bill. I just think they are on the conservative side of the Democratic spectrum and I think her legislative record in the Senate does not tell us much. In a larger context, I'm not comfortable with everything Bill Clinton did as President including his gifts to the banking industry, his so-called welfare reform, NAFTA and of course not keeping his zipper zipped. In a way I hold him partially responsible for the past eight years. Fair? Perhaps not. Still I think he bears some responsibility. And more importantly, I think his recent behavior on the campaign trail has really forced people to re-evaluate him and not for the good.

I also think it fair to say if her last name was not Clinton, she would not be in this race. Think about it: a center right women who supported the disaster in Iraq running for President at this point in time. If her name was Smith, I don't think she would be here. As much as some women may understandably look to her, the fact is she would not be there without Bill. She is trading on the Clinton name and if that is the way women want to secure the White House, so be it. But I find that a pyrrhic victory at best.

Still I voted for him twice as the proverbial lessor of two evils. And I was sympathetic to them both during the Lewinsky contretemps because for me it was more of a personal matter between the two of them than a public or professional one. Unlike neo-conservatives I think lying about oral sex is a lot less problematic than, let's say, lying for war as did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and the other trolls.

After eight disastrous years under the frat-boy-in-chief and his minions, there's a lot to be done for the US to reclaim any moral and political authority in the world. The best political party to do that is the Democrats who have a slightly more sophisticated view of the world and our place in it.

Personally I think John Edwards is the best candidate that the Democrats could muster. He was the first (with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich) candidate to speak truth to power. He was THE first to come out with a health care proposal and he spoke forcefully and passionately for the poor when virtually no once else--except Kucinich again--did.

But Edwards is unfortunately out of the race, leaving only two candidates.

The Clinton and Obama campaigns have each been making arguments about which candidate would be better in the general election campaign against John McCain. She argues her experience matters, that she is ready to get to work on day one and that she is the solutions candidate. Obama counters that she is yesterday's news, that the country wants real change and that another President named Clinton does not offer anything new.

Since I so desperately want a Democrat to win, choosing Obama over Clinton ended up being a no brainer. Obama is by far the better candidate against any Republican but especially against a hypocrite like John McCain.

For me, the case for Barack and against Hillary starts and stops with two significants votes she made in the US Senate.

The Iraq Resolution:

On the resolution to go to war with Iraq, the junior senator from New York just flat got it wrong. Barack Obama, who was not in the Senate at the time, was on record vociferously opposing the war.

In 2003, Hillary Clinton along with most other members of the House and Senate, mindlessly green lighted the resolution allowing Bush to go to war with Iraq. Many thoughtful Senators have backtracked from that vote, arguing that they were misled by a disingenuous Bush Administration and its minions who cherry picked intelligence to suit their political purposes.

Hillary Clinton is not among them. Her vote on Iraq was wrong. But she still stubbornly insists that she was right and that she would vote that way again, all the while slagging the Bush Administration for its handling of the Iraq war, not for the very idea of it in the first place. So she erred, then compounded that mistake by erring again. In effect she is wrong twice and in my view that immediately eliminates her from any serious consideration. Being stupid or stubborn (or both) should immediately disqualify anyone for the Presidency. If we have learned nothing from the moron Bush, we should have learned that.

I'm not certain why Hillary persists in arguing the indefensible. I can only think that she and her advisors made the cold, calculated decision to support the military action so she would appear not to be weak in her upcoming Presidential bid. Rather than act out of real principle, she embraced the dark side and supported the neo con hawks. Five years later she has refused to admit a mistake though others like John Edwards and John Kerry have both retreated from their positions. Her refusal to acknowledge this blunder or back down from that untenable position suggests to me that her fear of appearing weak transcends her interest in doing what is right. So in my view, Clinton has some of the blood of almost 4000 American dead, tens of thousands of US wounded and perhaps a million Iraqis dead or wounded on her hands while she shows us what a tough leader she could be. That's pathetic and tragic.

It is one thing to get it wrong. It is another to keep insisting that you got it right in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. Her position is inexplicable, untenable and unforgivable.

The Kyl-Lieberman amendment:

She compounded that mistake when Senators Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., filed an amendment to the 2008 Defense Reauthorization bill proclaims "that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

The Senate, therefore, should "support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described ... with respect to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

It is non-binding, but it is a "sense of the Senate" amendment basically saying the Senate views Iran as a danger to our war in Iraq, and that it is permissible for the president to use everything at his fingertips to oppose Iran, including military options, which means bombing and war.

Sound familiar? It is the Iraq war resolution all over again. And she voted for it. Why? I have no idea except that it suggests the she possesses the cajones to go to war. Unfortunately I'd prefer her to use her brain instead.

So for me there's no need for any further consideration. When confronted with perhaps the two most important votes of her Senate career, Hillary Clinton got them both wrong. So much for experience and so much for solutions.

Iraq as a campaign issue:

The truth is the Clinton machine does not want to talk much about Iraq and when it does, she usually lambasts President Bush for getting it wrong.

Bush is without a doubt one of the worst president this country has ever seen (he's neck and neck with Warren Harding) and a moron to boot. So are the neo-cons who stand behind him, nudging him towards the abyss. But Hillary Clinton is the enabler. So she and her campaign advisors are trying to nuance her message, hoping to find one that will resonate. On Iraq, they will not find one. Polls show approximately 70 per cent of Americans are unhappy with the Iraq War. It and the economy stand to be the two great issues of the 2008 campaign, unless of course you have bought into the whole immigration misdirect which I think is an attempt by the Bushies and neo cons to focus attention away from the national disaster that we know as Iraq.

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of a Clinton candidacy is that Iraq will be virtually off the table. The politics of McCain and Clinton are a lot closer on Iraq than McCain and Obama. With Clinton, McCain will be able to triangulate and obfuscate on Iraq, arguing that she too voted for the resolution and that the only blunders were with the way the war was run which has now been corrected. With Obama, McCain has no chance of waging such a ridiculous argument.

The Experience Argument:

For most of the campaign, the Clinton campaign has touted her experience--ready to lead from day one--while directly or indirectly questioning Obama's resume.

The problem for Hillary is that she glosses over her own resume. Absent from it is her corporate legal work for Wal-mart which is telling while her eight years spent in the White House as first lady are featured.

Personally I'm not sure the White House years are a strong selling point because it reminds voters of the marital problems between the two Clintons which led to Bill's infidelities and impeachment and also the debacle of her handling of the health care initiative. And if being first lady qualifies as job experience then perhaps Laura Bush should be running for President, not John McCain.

To be fair Hillary has four more years of Senate experience than Obama but since the Senate is rarely a path to the White House, the significance of those years is hard to quantify. Clearly if elected she would return much of the Clinton team to Washington.

Unfortunately for her, change seems to be the keyword of this campaign. His lack of Washington experience may actually be an asset to his campaign. Obama worked as a union organizer, was elected to the Illinois Senate and then was elected to the US Senate in 2004. What he may lack in experience will be more than made up for by his intellect and his ability to draw the best and the brightest to Washington.

Furthermore, if Clinton is right and experience is indeed the key, how can one explain how Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell et al. got it so wrong. They all have years of government service in the Reagan and first Bush presidencies. Yet for all of that experience, they completely bungled American foreign policy, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. There's no point in debating the neo con strategy here. It is an utter and complete failure. Experience or the lack there of had no impact on the arrogance and hubris of the neo cons who naively thought they would bring western principles of democracy to the Middle East. Bush had his axis of evil; we have our own axis of assholes who promoted a war they did not understand in a place they have never visited.

So, to answer Hillary, being ready to lead on day one means nothing if you get it wrong.

One more point on experience: the Clintons are political animals. We have heard much about the vaunted Clinton machine, which has been through two Presidential and two Senate campaigns, delivering votes and states to Hillary. They seemed to have had a strategy that included a coronation on February 4. Oops! Something happened on the way to Super Tuesday. The Clintons were out maneuvered, out planned, out worked and simply outclassed. And now they are scrambling to survive and nothing is out of bounds.

This very experienced political team led by some seriously connected political operatives has paled in comparison to Obama's campaign. The much less experienced Obama has run a magnificent campaign, out organizing Hillary Clinton on the state level and more recently out fundraising her especially among smaller donors. That is no small feat and speaks volumes for the brain trust behind the Obama campaign and its message which is clearly resonating with voters, particularly young ones. Oh yes, the message...

The Message:

Clinton argues she is the stronger candidate, offering inevitability, then experience and now solutions.

Obama offers change. And hope.

She offers numbers, is a policy wonk and is fully briefed.

He offers inspiration. And substance.

After all the pundits and columnists weighed in and the voters actually started caucusing or actually voting, Obama had it right. The voters are looking for a change. They are tired of the scorched earth partisan politics of the recent past. They want more things done and less bickering. Obama and John Edwards were the only ones offering that message.

Edwards is gone but Obama remains. And his comment decrying the bickering of red states versus blue states resonated with audiences who are looking for some sense of hope, some sense of bipartisan collaboration to end some of the very real problems we now face.

I'm still not certain what her argument is here. Experience? Expertise? An ability to govern? Obama is a relative unknown which concerns some people. After eight years of Bush that is indeed understandable.

But what we don't know may be an asset. There is less of a record to go after which means the Republicans will have to go after his ideas. Call me crazy but I think the Republicans are responsible for the current political climate. They can not win a battle of ideas because theirs are wrong and obviously not working. But with Hillary, they will simply make her the issue. And it could work.

Recently Hillary and her surrogates have gone after Obama and his message. Clinton supporters tell us while he offers words, she offers solutions. When Obama supporters reminded the Clintons that "I have a dream" were just words, the flame throwers changed targets. So now her campaign manager is trying to make an issue of Obama's innocent use of a few Deval Patrick phrases. Unfortunately for her campaign there was blowback. Many people simply don't care, recognizing the innocuousness of the event. But the charge has boomeranged right back at her, with pundits noting that her much publicized book "It Takes A Village" had an uncredited ghost writer. And that Bill lifted some comments in his first inaugural address without crediting the author.

The Numbers Game:

What we do know is that the Democrats and Republicans roughly split 80 per cent of the voting public with the remaining 20 percent of independents and others who generally decide the national elections.

We know Hillary Clinton is pretty much despised by about 40 per cent or more of the voters. We also know she is not popular with many independents. And lastly we know that her candidacy will energize the rabid right wing, the neo cons and the evangelicals to come out and vote against her, despite what the wing nut talk show loonies have to say about it.

We know the lunatic fringe dominating the airwaves is upset that they are wielding no power or little influence in this election cycle, hence the anger. While they are threatening to boycott the election or "work for Hillary", the truth is it will be a cold day in hell before they pass up on the opportunity to bring down a Clinton.

This scenario, along with Clinton fatigue, spells big problems for Hillary in a general election. Obama on the other hand does not energize the evangelical or lunatic base. In fact I suspect his style of speaking with its heavy religious intonations offers them some comfort. More importantly he draws voters from the liberal to moderate wing of the Republican party. And he attracts independents who are voting for him in record numbers. In short, the numbers favor him over Hillary quite handily.

Collateral Damage:

Another potential problem of a Clinton candidacy is the coat tail effect. She won't have one. If she is fortunate to prevail in the general election, she will not bring fellow Democratic candidates in the House and Senate with her, thus throwing into question Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

Any Democratic President is going to need control of both houses to push through his or her agenda. With Hillary that will simply not happen. With Obama it could.

In a Clinton candidacy, my guess is Republicans will control one or both houses, thus thwarting virtually anything she wants to do. We only have to remember back to 1994 when the Republicans took control of both houses and then started the national six year nightmare starring Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr and others. Bill Clinton when he waxes poetic about the good times of the 1990s and how Obama wasn't part of it must have forgotten.

Hillary could spend her entire four year term revisiting or re-fighting old wars from the 1990s. It could be complete chaos.

Then there's Bill:

Bill Clinton left office a very popular president, despite the right wing witch hunt. An since he left office he has conducted himself reasonably well, promoting solutions to health related issues in Africa among others.

But in the last few months we have started to see a different side of Bill and Hillary. It started in December with some disquieting details from Bill Shaheen, a campaign staffer who is married to the former New Hampshire governor, suggesting there was more to Obama's admitted drug experimentation as a teenager. The Clinton campaign quickly denied responsibility and then fired him but only after the story had carried for three or four news cycles. Shortly thereafter came some discreet rumblings about Obama's experience from some of the Clinton surrogates. Then the nefarious drug charges resurfaced via BET Chairman Robert Johnson. These were followed by reports of Obamas's association with the indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko which was later followed by the none-to-discreet race baiting in South Carolina which was followed by some extremely patronizing remarks comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign.

On top of this the Clintons have moved forward with a plan to try to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations. The DNC refused to sanction either primary after both states moved up their primary dates to try to influence the process. Last year all candidates agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama was not even on the ballot in Michigan. Still all of this did not stop Clinton from going to Florida and proclaiming victory which was really sad. Even worse, she is fully prepared to go back on her word because it may be the only path to victory.

None of these events were accidents. The Clintons have obviously learned a thing or two from the Karl Rove playbook. These attacks were planned and executed by the Clintons and their surrogates. They are playing hardball. One wonders if the tactics will come back to bite them both in the ass. This is an electorate which wants change--change from this very kind of heavy handed politics.

The Rezko kerfuffle only reminds us that Clinton and McCain have their own axes to bear, some more than others.

Hillary was closely associated with fundraiser Norman Hsu--the recently convicted Norman Hsu. Hillary and Bill also had some form of a relationship with Rezko as well, however innocent. And who can forget John McCain, the so-called maverick and straight shooter who rolled over on torture in the Senate, was a charter member of the Keating Five.

Bill and Hillary obviously want to win and if they need to rely on Rovian electoral methods including throwing over some loyal staffers, then so be it.

The only good news about all of this sordid stealth campaigning is that it has brought the issue of Bill Clinton presence to the fore. Clearly he will not be a co-president. No longer are we hearing, "With Hill, you get Bill". He has had his eight years and, as recent behavior shows, it is time for him to move on to another chapter in his life. With a little luck he will return to Chappaqua, never to be seen again in a political race.

Crazed Feminists:

Some women have been circulating a Robin Morgan piece which elaborates on some of our collective shortcomings when it comes women. As I understand it Morgan's point is that since she is a woman, she will vote for one. So do these feminists actually look at the political positions of their chosen candidate? Does that mean Robin Morgan would vote for Ann Coulter?

Equally bizarre, on Jan 28, the New York chapter responded to Senator Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Obama with this press release:

Senator Kennedy Betrays Women by Not Standing
For Hillary Clinton for President

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard...

And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one).

So what matters here is gender, not the measure of the person, their political point of view or their character?

Could cooler heads not prevail? How absurd is this? This kind of knee jerk thinking is what I expect from the evangelicals, not progressive women. And we can now expect more Fem Nazi comments from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

If you ask me, that position puts women's rights even further back.