My Thoughts On Hillary
Last weekend Hillary Clinton announced she’s running for president. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson also announced. Senator Sam Brownback announced for the Republican side.
Barack Obama jumped in last week. Senator Biden and Senator Dodd and Senator McCain got in weeks ago.
But about Hillary:
Although the hatred of Hillary in the South is often visceral, it’s also usually irrational and baseless. Like “Why do you hate Hillary?” “She’s a liberal!” “What’s that mean? John F. Kennedy said he was a liberal.” “I don’t know, I just hate her.” This senseless vitriol against Hillary should be shelved. It’s sound and fury signifying nothing. But we’ll see plenty of it for the next two years. Ugh.
But I’m not big on Hillary either. For the very different reason that I see little difference between her and the corporate Borg army taking over America.
And as I watched her video announcement the deepest core of my soul cringed as she recited the 
same tired talking points we’ve heard over and over and over and over and over and over and over for 20 years and I just wanted to choke myself with the mouse cord. For ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, SAY SOMETHING REAL! My G-d, make a mistake, have an extreme emotion, dropkick a staffer, do SOMETHING, anything, to show me you’re a real person and not a plastic airbrushed, animatronic creation from Disney World.
Hillary, Bill, Kerry, Gephardt, Bayh, etc. are all in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the corporatist wing of the Democratic party. They are in lockstep with a pro-corporate agenda (hence, corporate Borg army) and will never rock the corporate gravy boat. The fight between the corporate wing of the Democratic party and “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party” (i.e. the People party vs. Money party) is ongoing, and I predict will be front and center this primary season.
Please, please Hillary, I beg you: prove me wrong…
This just seems like more of the same. The country is in a mess. In this bizarre, psychedelic haze of a superpower that can’t build a levee, this non-stop festival of perfect innocence and perfect corruption, this America that no longer knows what it is, a politician giving us more of the same is like some sick joke. How can she act all poised and rehearsed when Rome is burning? We can’t afford more of the same.
We’re spending $200 million a day playing policemen in a sectarian bloodbath in Iraq while 1 in 6 American children grow up in poverty. If Hillary wants to atone for the last eight years of nodding and clapping for the corporate machine, and gain “street cred” among real liberals like me, she’ll go live in the Lower Ninth Ward for six months without her staff and blow-drier, and learn what reality in America really is. Or at least offer an aggressive plan to end poverty and rebuild our crumbling nation (this will probably come later). But the feeling of hopelessness that she would ever do ANY major status quo-shattering moves like these is why her announcement has been met with lukewarm to outright hostile responses on liberal web sites (they see her as not much different from Bush).
Barack Obama is so exciting because he is talking about real
things in a new way. He engenders hope in whoever he talks to, because he wants to break through old barriers, breaking away from coloring within the lines and giving us talking points and spin. He’s not more of the same.
While I’m not commited to any candidate this insanely early in the process, I’m excited to hear what Obama has to say. I’ll also be closely monitoring all candidates and blogging about them here. Maybe Hillary will veer off and make it her mission to crush the status quo, and she’ll win me over. We’ll see.
Nick