About her letter to Circuit City.  Maybe you should read this David Sirota blurb from ACTBLUE.  Hillary and the Unions:

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/20 07/03/hillary-clintons-union-doublespeak .php

Barring any glaring examples of bad judgement in the upcoming year I think it's idiotic to judge the candidates on what they say and do on a day to day basis this year. These candidates are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. How can you judge them on 18 months? The 'horserace' aspect of political campaigns is too often an attempt by consultants to make a thoroughbred out of a jackass. If you don't have a pretty good idea of who you want to vote for at this point you're just guessing.

I pick a President by A) imaginging who the 100 people they will bring to DC with them and B) imagining what the candidate will fight for when forced to take half a loaf.

Of the big three I have the best idea about Edwards (good people, focus on poverty) and the most hope for Obama (??? people, transform the dream of the Declaration into reality). Hillary Clinton is easy to peg (the same 100 people that Bill brought, 8 years older and much wealthier and continue the occupation of Iraq).

Who are the 100 people Obama will bring to DC if he wins? Edwards? Clinton? I'd like to see more on that.

I am a (D)emocrat, so if Hillary gets the nomination, she gets my vote in the general.  Who the hell else would I vote for?  The Republican?

But I am also a (d)emocrat, and therefore inclined to hope that HRC does not get the nomination.  Out of about 200 million constitutionally eligible persons, our (d)emocracy ought to be able to come up with a President who is NOT related to a former President, once in a while.

My antidynastic inclination is not merely a mushy sort of aesthetic objection.  It has a practical aspect, and that has to do with BILL Clinton.  Like Poppy vis a vis Dubya, Bill will NOT be able to give President Hillary dispassionate advice.  These people are human beings, after all.  There's a reason doctors don't treat their own family members.  President Obama, President Edwards, maybe even President Richardson, Biden, or Dodd could ask for, and get, valuable back-channel advice from Bill, and decide to take or reject it without intra-family baggage entering into consideration.  I'm not saying Bill Clinton knows everything, any more than Poppy Bush does.  But a President who is NOT his wife is more likely to benefit from whatever wisdom he does have to offer.

-- TP

There's no fucking way that Hillary is going to be anything different than Bill was (or the rest of the establishment of both parties, for that matter) on economic issues.  No way, no how, not ever.  I don't care what she says now.  Bill Clinton sold out the country just like the GOPers do and did when it comes to "free trade."  I hate that term, "free trade."  Everyone can be for "free trade" if it's on an equal playing field and the other side actually practices trade FAIRLY.

Why do I know she will be just like her husband was on this issue?  Because it's almost like a religion to these people.  They can compromise on any issue, but the moment anyone dares to drift from the "free-trade" dogma, the concern-trolls and chicken-littles act as if the world will end if we don't "stay the course" on our current trade policy, Chinese and Indian labor and pollution standards be damned.  When you hear some of them talk, they view ANY deviation from the "free-trade" orthodoxy as more apocalyptic than climate change.  It's extremism.  It's scary, really.  And shows how beholden to greedy corporations that the establishment of both parties truly are.  Reasonable people can be for truly free and fair trade if both sides are forced to play by the same rules.

Hillary is part of this religion.  Thus, she's part of the problem.  I was once rabidly for her presidential campaign.  Now I am not.  I have woken up.  When will others do the same?

DLC + GOP = One Party Rule

Reading the virulent anti-Clinton commentary throughout the posts proves to those of us more rational just how far off the deep end the netrooters have gone.

They have taken one of the most progressive figures of the twerntieth century, a crusader since her days as a star graduate of Wellesley in 1969, and made her into the enemy.

They have bought into all the negativity long promulgated on the Clintons by all manner of reactionary.  It is not surprising to us who strongly support her that her negatives are high.

However, the smugness of the established media who have so long hated and fought all things Clinton, in believing that Republican nominees in trial match-ups tend to best her now, indicates their own unreality.

For one, why does Giuliani, the so-called "America's Mayor," lose to Senator Clinton by wide margins in the state of New York--and indeed in New York City in particular?  What is it that New Yorkers, who know him better than the rest of the country, not trust in Giuliani?  

Only in the established media mindset is it not obviously a ridiculous irony that their crowned "America's mayor" cannot win in his own city or state--losing badly to Senator Clinton, whom that same media loves to hate.

Then there is their dismissal of all the bizarre and irrational behavior recently exhibited by their vaulted "maverick" John McCain.  He will be seventy-two in the year 2008, and, as one comedian recently commented, "I would be careful putting him up as a neighborhood traffic guard, much less as a United States president."  Retiring him early to the status of a disoriented old codger is increasingly a good idea.

Finally, we have in the case of Fred Thompson, yet another ridiculously false film and television star the GOP loves to promulgate when all else fails them.  Of course he is wholly unqualified, much as Ronald Reagan was, but at least the latter was a governor from a formidable state, whereas Thompson looks like yesterday's news even in his native Tennessee.

Of course Misters Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson currently best Senator Clinton.  What shouldn't they?  They've lived largely a soft focus life through the media prism, whereas the Clintons have been accused of everything from theft to murder to all manner of deviance.

This is what has lead the Clintons to pursue prohibitive campaign coffers.  That money will be utilized to redfine her opposition, as they have long deserved to be redfined.  

The established media will be there to hurl the invective on the Clintons without cease.

But by way of a huge campaign chest, the Clintons will be able to give back as good as they've long received.  Giuliani's bizarre personal and professional life will put him in the public toilet soon enough.  McCain's senility won't be a secret to anybody anymore.  And Thompson's bigotry and pedestrian attitude will look as antiquated as a buried tribal custom.

So let the established media, the GOP pundits, and the always disgruntled netrooters go on hating all things Clinton.  Let them go on believing Senator Clinton can't be elected.

And then just watch her stuff.  I believe she will steamroller over any Republican candidate, and the media which has long propped them up.

When one has survived a decade of Ken Starr investigations and Impeachment, what the current media throws the Clintons' way is just so much kids' stuff.

Then, having fired back, Senator Clinton can quickly discard Misters Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson--not any of whom has a tenth of her fortitude and perseverance.

Even the disgruntled netrooters, who will still be hating the Clintons, will have to be impressed by just how decisively one can give back as good as one as got.

just how far off the deep end the netrooters have gone Now that's funny.  It isn't the DLC, HRC, Republicans, Dems, MSM that have gone off the deep (right) end, it's us.  It is OUR fault that this country, aided and abetted by the Clintons and the DLC, turned into capitalists/capitalism run amok under the smokey cover of god, guns and gays.   The netrooters are, for a large part, middle America that finally got a voice thanks to the internet.  

George W. Bush is.

The netrooters are definitely off the deep end.

And indeed they have a lot of growing up to do.

It is not surprising that they cannot understand why Senator Obama, for all his gifts, needs something more than two years in the Senate under his belt to successfully serve as President.

The same passionate anti-Clinton arguments were made in 2000.

Vice-president Gore believed that all he had to do was distance himself from Bill Clinton.  Even though Clinton chose Gore to lead both with him and in his absence, whereas Gore, for all his otherwise fine intellect, chose Joseph Lieberman to follow him in turn.

And the darling of what would have been the netrooters then was the very self-serving Ralph Nader, who certainly achieved nothing more than hastening candidate George W. Bush to certain victory.

And those ardently in favor of George W. Bush then dismissed his lack of national experience (outside of being the former President's son) as being a good thing.  After all, he had other experiences--in the oil business and baseball team management (although not very successful either way)--which seemed to them just as cogent.  

Indeed, like many now supporting Senator Obama, those arguing for then Texas Governor George Walker Bush believed his being, apparently, anti-Washington "insider," and anti-Clinton, was quite enough.

Six years later, America is dying a slow death, mired in debt and its former longstanding world alliances shattered.  The nation is now impotent to act on a world stage, because nobody else save the 29% or so of inveterate, ever blind, Bush  supporters, can take him seriously on anything.

National experience truly matters.  And the Clinton years left America financially sound and its alliances strong and steadfast.

Today, the anti-Clinton forces, fearing their return to power, are more vocal than ever.

However we who are their supporters know that this time round, with the nation in shambles, those very loud anti-Clinton forces will be ultimately as impotent as the country that wrongly turned away from their leadership is today.

Against Misters Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson, and bizarre netrooters, Senator Clinton will look very polished and mature indeed.

The problem I have with her letter is the precedent it would set if these employees are welcomed back at the "new and improved" salary level. If Circuit City gets away with this, all of the other CEO's are watching, and this will become the norm, rather than the headline.

After 10 weeks they can re-apply for their jobs? And if they don't take the job back is it possible their unemployment benefits will be terminated?

I say they should picket and I say we should boycott. All of these employees will find, eventually, jobs with similar pay. Once Circuit City closes the executives will find it much harder to replace their incomes.

To my mind, until, and unless Circuit City re-hires and apologizes to their employees and their customers they do not exist to me.

I encourage ALL of their employees to run like hell to find other jobs and give Circuit City the same notice they gave their best employees.

God Bless all of you who are hurting. I am really sorry this happened. It will get better.

Jeff

But Clinton is a function of the Democratic machine, and the others need to make that case by distinguishing themselves and figuring out ways to make this criticism.  The prime sin of the Democratic Party has been the silence of its members and leaders in the face of betrayal by bad decision-makers at the top.  It's what led us into Iraq and fed many of our other sins over the last thirty years.

The Bush and Blair administrations led America into Iraq.  It was not the Democratic machine or the lack of criticism of it, for God's sake.

It was Bush and Blair.

They ignored the U.N. Security Council.  They shut down the U.N. inspections. They launched the invasion.

I'm glad most of us can agree we can't appreciate the idea of HRC for President.  What we need to do is take this to our families and people we know.  Explain to them why HRC is not the best choice by far, why it's important to vote, and who the best candidate for them is.  I'm hoping expectations and the turnout of the First Quarter PAC Fundraising Reports will shift the momentum away from her.  

Goodluck
(I'm for Obama/Richardson in '08)

Whether or not Clinton is progressive enough for my tastes, she has a good shot at being the Democratic candidate - and if she is, I'll vote for her.  

However, we can target Mark Penn.  HRC should feel pressure from labor and its allies to sever the ties between the union-busters and the Democratic Party.  

What about a petition to get her to dump Penn?  It may not work, but it will still raise it as an issue for all candidates to respond to - especially with the fate of the EFCA tied so closely to a Democratic win in 2008.  

My problem with Hillary is not that she is a Clinton. It's that she adopts the policy perspective of the DLC. It undermines the Progressive policy agenda to give economic and health security to all Americans and a sustainable environment for us to live in. If you can't advocate a clear progressive position on war and peace, on protection of the environment, on trade, on worker safety, on social security without triangulating with Republican positions and their corporate sponsors, then you damage the progressive cause. Hillary says we might, maybe, get to universal health care, but only in her 2nd term, and only if we compromise enough with Republicans. Hillary says she will end the war in Iraq but maintain military occupation indefinitely, and maintain U.S. military bases throughout the world in order to continue an aggressive interventionist foreign policy. She's not a progressive. Period.

Lambros makes the same arguments against Clinton critics that Bush supporters made to me that if I was against Bush's policies, I must hate him.

The experience argument was made against JFK in 1960 from both Nixon and Johnson. Thank god it didn't work.

Hillary is the establishment and a vote for her is for the status quo.

However she is un-electable. Her vote ceiling is 45-46%. She only wins if a 3rd party candidate like Bloomberg comes into the race. Nader will run and get 5-6% BECAUSE OF THE WAR. iF NOT FOR THE WAR HE WOULD BE NEGLIGBLE.

If she can't beat Guiliani and McCain today with a president at 33% approval and a republican party in dis-array, then she is indeed a weak candidate.

Clinton isn't the issue, huh? Please keep telling yourself that.  Are you telling me, you'd rather have a Republican in office than a Democrat that supports a Democratic Platform (DLC)?  You've got to be kidding me.  I'd rather get hit by a car, then have another dumb ass Republican in the White House.  What puzzles me is, every time I ask a Clinton hater to articulate why they hate her, they say:

1) She's calculating

2. Its her war vote
   
3. Its Bill
   
4. Its NAFTA
   
5. She's cold
   
6. She refuses to apologize for the war vote
   
7. She's money hungry
   
8. She's for Corporations

Give me a break. This is simply ridiculous. Does every Democrat agree on everything?  I don't think so. We are all individual thinkers and that's a good thing. Some Dems believe in abortion, some don't. Some believe in "free trade", some don't. Some believe in the death penalty, some don't. Some believe in the right to bear arms, some don't. Some support the war, some don't.

Hillary is a DEMOCRAT, you may not agree with her on everything, but she is a DEMOCRAT. She's for "Universal Health Care" for God's sake. How liberal of an agenda is that?  Spare me with this shit, "Clinton isn't the issue." I would have more respect for you, if you said, "I just don't like her." Be honest for the love of God.

Hillary 2008 (Bill, First Man)

Edwards and Obama are talking about a strategy justifiable entirely through the rubric of Iraqi security. Iraq will be more secure if we pull out the vast majority of our troops, and more secure if we leave a fair amount of trainers and some support for special operations.

What I have a problem with is Hillary's language on the subject, which you call a more honest version of the same thing the others are suggesting. I have a problem with the notion that we will still have "military interests" there. No. Wrong. Imperialism. Bad.

But what's wrong with leaving 20,000 troops around, mostly hidden from view and working with Iraqi security forces to train and support?

I do not expect anything from myopic bloggers but anti-Clinton hate.  We who support the Clintons have lived with that hatred a very long time.

In 1992, few in the mainstream media thought that Bill Clinton had a prayer in hell of becoming President.  Republicans were gleeful of his candidacy, believing polls and pundits that he was unelectable.

It is true that Ross Perot's candidacy split an otherwise conservative voting electorate.  It is not right, however, to assume that had Perot not entered the race that year, that President Bush 41 would have prevailed.  Even if you were to ascribe just a fraction of the Perot vote to Clinton, he would have still triumphed.

In 1996, establishment pundits and many in the GOP assumed that the elder veteran then Senator Bob Dole could best the sitting President Clinton, because all the many tall tales on the Clintons abounded throughout the land.

Of course, the negativity, in spite of peace and prosperity, kept Clinton under the 50% vote mark that year.

But what is astonishing is that in spite of Impeachment, and a virulent anti-Clinton Republican Congress in full character assassination mode, both Clintons emerged, battle scarred and the wiser for it, with very positive ratings after those eight years.

Vice-president Al Gore, otherwise an extraordinary gentleman, believed in 2000 that he would do better to distance himself from the Clintons.

Thus, he chose Senator Lieberman as his running-mate, in part because Lieberman had already chastised Bill Clinton's behavior.

And Ralph Nader ran to appease the purists who also deplored all things Clinton, thinking he too would teach those Clinton power elites a thing or two.

The collective result of that myopia was to help bring to fruition the worst presidential administration in United States history.  

The nation now is indeed in shambles both fiscally and in terms of its status on the world stage.

Those of you who read these posts not so caught up in the anti-Clinton rhetoric may wonder why the simple fact that one suggests that Senator Obama is yet unlikely ready to assume the presidency elicits conniption fits by so many bloggers.

They counter Senator Obama's lack of preparedness by suggesting that then Senator John F. Kennedy was accused of being unprepared in 1960.

But they are sadly ignorant of political history as well.  Senator John F. Kennedy had had experiences on both a national and world stage many years before assuming the presidency.

Like much of his generation who saw heroic action in World War II, he had already lived several lifetimes simply commandeering an ultimately torpedoed PT Boat.

He had already penned the narrative "Why England Slept," reflecting on Great Britain's lack of preparedness while his multimillionaire father was yet an ambassador to Great Britain.

JFK's credentials were well-documented, in part because his father had high influence over much of the media at the time.

His own prepardness for the presidency was anticipated by the World War II generation he had already represented.  Still, without his father and the influence of his capital and connections, JFK could not have assumed the presidency in 1960.

And there are still those who maintain that perhaps he hadn't really assumed the presidency.

Contrast this with Bill Clinton, the second youngest elected president at 46 years in 1992.  From the monent Clinton shook the hand of JFK at Boys State in 1963, and likely much before, he was already running for the presidency.

In his three terms as governor of Arkansas, and his leadership of the Governor's Association, he was well-positioned as a figure in national politics.

But unlike JFK, Clinton had neither his pedigree, nor anything resembling Kennedy money.

Indeed, Clinton was the ultimate unlikely candidate as the media presumed in 1992.  The GOP establishment believed that in spite of the rough economic times, President Bush 41 would have little trouble dispatching him.  And that, even with Perot in the running.

Thus the famous scene of President Bush 41 looking at his watch in the three-way debate that year was more telling than simply lethal to his own cause.  The establishment then, and now (of which the Clintons are clearly not, though many of the bloggers will ever believe otherwise) just assumed Clinton would be an easy election match.

And the same arguments then are just as relevant today.  GOP strategists, Ralph Nader sympathisers, virulent anti-Clinton bloggers, are all gleefully convinced that now Senator Hillary Clinton simply cannot win.

And they are oblivious to how a blank slate like Senator Obama can be easily recast by veteran GOP hands.

But they are wrong.  It is their mastery of the political process that makes the Clinton tandem the best prepared today.

And the current general election poll match-ups are no more salient than they were when Bill Clinton first ran in 1992.

Senator Clinton will dispath Misters Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson, because she will have the ability, and the money necessary, to redfine them as they ought to be.  Whereas she alone among the current candidates is the ultimate survivor, for whom the personal negatives were long ago considered.

The so-called progressive bloggers loathe her, and they think they know why.  That is precisely how well the Clinton haters have inculcated their false imagery.

Still, up against a trio of political clowns--and that is what Misters Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson truly are--she'll have no problem.

The bloggers will go on having conniptions.  But by then enough reasoned voters will have ended the fiasco of America living under the umbrella of the anti-Clinton forces--which produced the idiocy of the administration of George Walker Bush.

The bloggers will grow up too, after all, someday.

Clinton isn't the issue.  Rudy Giuliani is the issue.  By the time you Hillary bashers figure it out, Iran will no longer exist.

Clinton isn't the issue.  Rudy Giuliani is the issue.  By the time you Hillary bashers figure it out, Iran will no longer exist.

"I tend to criticize Hillary Clinton a lot, but it's not because I'm particularly opposed to her as a person."

"I do not expect anything from myopic bloggers but anti-Clinton hate."

Really, who sounds unhinged?

To the point of the post.  We may be at an important turning point in this country.  A point where people are finally ready to reject the establishment babble and media blather and insist on policy-centered politics and people-centered policies. It is the right moment for Democrats to nominate a true[r] populist candidate to test that possibility. That's why Clinton isn't the issue.

http://www.counterbias.com/561.html

THE DLC IS THE ISSUE ( Clinton is their leader )
How Beltway Democrats Sank Howard Dean

Anyway, Dean made up for it; he did a wonderful job helping us get back the majority.

And Hillary is a pretty effective Senator by most accounts.

Apparently, at least compared to Republicans, Democrats don't demonstrate the Peter Principle. Political consultants notwithstanding.

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