Mol-ly, Mol-ly, Mol-ly (said in stadium-chant sort of way, with the word stretched out into two syllables). I'm with her on this one: Hillary should stop trying to be everything for everybody, and care enough to have the strength of her own convictions. Hillary is not very much to the left of Lieberman, and look how well his last presidential ran went.
Star-Telegram | 01/22/2006 | It's time for Democrats to put up or shut up
I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. The senator is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The distance between the Democratic Party, Democratic Party leadership, and actual voting citizens is growing larger, larger, and milquetoast politicians like Ms. Clinton don't see it.
What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing President Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich.The majority (77 percent) think we should do “whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) think big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
I listen to people like Rep. Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway (“First, you have to win elections”). Can't you even read the polls?
Here's a prize example by columnist Barry Casselman: “There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party now under way, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008.”
This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by “a string of bad news from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat from Iraq,” vs. those pragmatic folk like Rep. Steny Hoyer, Emmanuel and Sens. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.
Oh, come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war -- from the lies that led us into it to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.
You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine that you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.
Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, and so does everyone else who's ever studied this. Embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Own this issue or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.
Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were “German dogs.” They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The minute that someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means.
That, or you could just blow them off elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless “string of bad news.”
Do not sit there cowering and pretending that the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.
This is the only problem - if you subtract all the whiney losers and DLCers, what percentage is left?
