George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Charles Rangel, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Barney Frank, Barbara Mikulksi, Gavin Newsome are NOT progressives? Thanks for clearing that up! But Ben Nelson, Brad Henry and Bobby Casey, Jr are. Wow!

this diary is such utter crap it's unbelievable. Clinton "comes from money?" Um, no. I don't think you want to invite a poverty test for the presidency if you are advocating for Hawaii, Hyde Park, private schools & Harvard schooled O!.

Which is not to bedgrudge his successes in life, which I applaud, but merely to show your argument is completely ridiculous on its face on more levels than I would waste my progressive time pointing out.

the group of true believers will continue to get smaller and purer, until eventually there will only be two on them left, each deeply suspicious of the other's dedication.

is a fine example of the exclusion of Moderate Democrats. That's OK for you to do...There's just one problem with this attitude; Like it or not, the United States is moderate not liberal. That's why Obama can't win, IMO.

"You have not assimilated according to the plan I am receiving from my lop-sided information stream so you are excommunicated! But not before I school you in the belief system I've developed around that lop-sided info-stream."

Aptly named, anyway...

This Lieberman?

I'm adding a snark tag to your diary, because you forgot it!

like Obama is doing.

lol - so someone else gets to define progressive to make their argument.  One can be a progressive and still vote for someone who isn't as progressive - heck, I've been doing it for 24 years.

Clinton is not Lieberman (hey, didn't Obama give out snaps and support for ol' Joe not too long ago - lol).  Hillary is not a neo-con, republican-lite, etc, etc.

She is a solid democratic member of the Democratic party.  My god, how a little tiff in the primary makes some people go rabid with their accusations and forget all the things she did work on, support and promote.

blech to this diary

oh, and I call BS on the diarist for even putting up this piece of swill

What the $@#(#$&$^(# does this have to do with being progressive? Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Jay Rockefeller all have enormous bucks. Are they not progressive? And there are people who are dirt poor who are conservative. Is there any logic at all in this diary?

and so do a lot more.  You should have seen the party in Scranton on tuesday night. It was almost all progressives.

I also went to war protests.  It was NOT clear that we were invading Iraq.  What was clear was that Bush could do what he wanted no matter how the vote went.  Clinton's vote was to stop him and if they could not stop him with inspections, to get a world coalition.
She also, like the rest of us, could not believe he would be as dishonest as he was.

You were not in congress, neither was Obama, but Obama said he would have voted the same as Clinton and you know that is exactly what he would have done.

Ps... the man has never done one single job before running for the next.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Real progressives and real Democrats and the blue-collar backbone of this country support Hillary.

A new breed of libertarian progressives support Obama.

All you have to do is look at their plans for health care and the foredlosure crisis to see who the real progressive is.  As Elizabeth Edwards recently said, "A health plan without a mandate is only half a plan."

Diary and its whole concept is trollish.  Members point out time & time again the illogical so-called "arguments" to the diarist and they still deny reality and live in their own fairytale bubble.

this diary needs a troll tag.

"Come from Money?" I could have sworn he did. Guess he wasn'ta  progressive.

I am a progressive and support Hillary Clinton.

One person, one vote.

I AM a Progressive! I am a liberal! I am a Democrat!

Always have been and always will be!

I am quite a radical, and would like to support Clinton.  I just wish that, in domestic policy, she would break with her husband's rather dismal legacy (NAFTA, huge increase in economic inequality, etc.) and, in foreign policy, break with AIPAC and the Likudnik neocons (bombing Iran, etc.).  She is not doing this-why, I do not know.  This country is less conservative than is generally thought, and it is only the constant neglect of working-class issues in favor of group causes that keeps getting in the way.    

Clinton's legacy with respect to economic equality was quite good. He moved us back toward progressive taxation, pushed for increased minimu wages, created Americorps, increased funding for Pell grants and Head Start.

I consider myself a progressive though the exact content of the label is ambiguous.  But your premise that a progressive, however one might define the term, cannot support Sen. Clinton is false, I believe.

Let me put it this way: I have never had the opportunity to vote for a presidential candidate that closely maps to all my most important issues; every single one of them has been far the right of my views on almost all issues.  Voting for Sen. Obama, should that come to pass for the GE, will merely extend the steak.

Because we are a diverse party, I may never have that opportunity.  As a grown up I recognize that my views, however well reasoned I might think them to be, are just that, my views, no doubt in some cases shared by others, but by no means embraced by all 'progressives', let alone the entire party.  My goal is to help push the party further to the left without destroying our electoral chances along the way.  It is a long term strategy.

So why Clinton?

Because I think Obama's far more sensible sounding foreign policy views are not likely how he intends to govern and if that is how he intends to govern he will be stymied by political realities.  Foreign policy does not flow from the mind and lips and single individuals; it reflects core institutional structures and until those are changed, there are serious limits to how significant changes in that arena can be (which is not to say that there are no differences or that they should be entirely discounted).

So I turn my lonely eyes to domestic policy and economic justice, where Clinton, in my view, largely runs circles around Sen. Obama.  There are a range of issues and bully pulpit factors but the overriding one is that I think socialized heath care of some variety (I'll take Canada but prefer Norway) is the most important single stepping stone to a more just and egalitarian - not to mention healthy - society and citizenry.

When Obama's own adviser suggests his health care plan will fail to provide sufficient subsidies to cover every one and when he attacks not only the policy but the intellectual rationale for mandated universal coverage with what sound like to my ears to be close to GOPer talking points I become very concerned.  The first argument we must win to get where I think we should be is the philosophical argument about putting every last one of us into the system.  You can't control costs without it.  You can't reach universal care without it.  You can't build toward squeezing out insurance companies without it.

The second major rationale for my support of Clinton is that I subscribe to a world view that just societies protect as a first principle the young, the old, and the veterans.  That sums up Clinton's whole legislative career right there.

The third reason this progressive is supporting Clinton is that I believe achieving lasting and meaningful progressive changes requires beating - not accommodating - the various forces that stand in our way.  Understanding this reality is what made Edwards appealing to me and why I prefer Clinton to Obama.  By dint of experience and philosophy she is a fighter and that is what I want in a president.

And Clinton is just not with me on the issues that matter.  In fact, she (and her husband) actively oppose the measures that I support.

FRIKKIN NUKES?  You think I'm going to vote for a stupid Middle East Treaty Organization as a pretext to nuke Iran?  You gotta be kidding me!

No... I do not plan to vote for Clinton OR McCain.  Ever.  Under any circumstances.  Should she get the nomination (God forbid!), I'll show up and vote Democrat down the ticket, but my presidential slot will be blank.

McCain, Clinton... whatever.  War is war, no matter which jingositic a-hole starts it.  either one is gonna get me healthcare, neither one is gonna do squat about anything important to me.  It would offend my conscience to vote for either.

Jeez, guys! The diarist has defined "progressive" as "a person who supports Obama," so, obviously, there can be no progressives who support Clinton. You people who insist otherwise just don't get the beauty of the diarist's logic.

<snark> In case that wasn't obvious.

this diary is really funny!  unfortunately there are some shades of truth in it - but isnt it ironic?  HRC's positions (domestically) are actually more to the left of BO yet the 'progressives' are basing their candidate choice on 1 vote!  sad.

than only conservatives voted for John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, TWO senators who voted for the war, before they were against it.

Yeah, your points are dead on. It is amazing that people who think they are progressive, think Hillary is progressive.  I don't know who is fooling who more.

I only know 2 Hillary supporters, and they are both people who think they are progressive.  The funny thing is they both are among the most conservative people I know when it comes to gay rights, economic policy, housing policy, welfare policy, civil rights , animal rights, womens rights...the list goes on.

Here is the thing, you don't just become a progressive by calling yourself one. There are specific things that define being progressive, and they are not really negotiable as they are sort of, well, definitions.

You can't support unjust wars and call yourself a progressive.

You especially can't get away without apologizing for that support, and making excuses instead of apologizing, that is the worst of all.

You can't get credit being in favor of and opposed to free trade agreements.

You can't support only the gay rights that you think might actually be popular enough not to piss people off.

You can't say you fight for better race relations and then pull the kind of crap we have seen from this campaign...especially inventing an issue against a black pastor for the exact same rhetoric that white pastors get a pass for every day.

You can't be utterly silent on animal rights.

You can't support Fox News. Period.

You can't gleefully accept right wing shock jocks boosting your campaign.

You can't publicly support progressive activists and privately bash them.

Oh and my favorite and most recent one, you can't let other progressive candidates be attacked by race baiting republican attack ads and let them hang out to dry just because you happen to agree with them. See my diary about this at:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/24/2244 0/7800

I could go on, but why. She is no progressive.  The rare occasions that she sounds like one are when she thinks she is "speaking to the choir" The very next week she sounds like a gun toting, duck shooting, whiskey drinker.  You can change your act but it is still clear you are an actor Senator Clinton.