My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack's transformational appeal.
For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.
It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.
At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew that she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the Sixties. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an anti-war force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.
But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.
Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.
To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.
To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the Sixties. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?" She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents. [75] Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Truehaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. [all citations from Carl Bernstein's sympathetic biography, A Woman in Charge, 2007, pp. 67,69,70,75, 83]
All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the Sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whom Hillary attacks today represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?
It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American Right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.
It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with Fox News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic super-delegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House whether or not she is the nominee.
Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.
http://www.tomhayden.com
After forty years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden still is a leading voice for ending the war in Iraq, erasing sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through greater citizen participation.
Currently he is writing and advocating for US Congressional hearings on exiting Iraq.
A more comprehensive bio, going back to the sixties, when he co-founded SDS and protested in the deep south
Calling this well-documented and insightful piece a gratuitous attack that makes no point, and then failing to argue why that would be the case looks like a classical, clinical, case of projection. While I knew Bill did not inhale, I had no idea before this article that Senator Clinton was deeply involved in the anti-war, civil rights, and fledgling environmental movement of the sixties and early seventies. This was a time when black activists were being systematically murdered by the F.B.I., students were being shot down on campuses, and the Democratic National Convention was guarded by tanks and machine gun nests. Hillary Clinton's presence at the center of these events, courageously allied even with fellow travelers, speaks volumes about the heroism and idealism with which she started her political career.
But to compare that great woman with the Senator who now uses Obama's much less direct ties to much less radical people to smear him, when he has the Democratic nomination already in hand, is a sad indictment of the results of unrestrained ambition. Now, to know that Senator Obama had such a well sourced opportunity to counterpunch on similar grounds, but refused to do so, places him in a new and revealing light.
No, this is far from a gratuitous attack. This article gets right to the essence of who these two people are at this moment in history. One, once great in deed and thought, now distorted beyond recognition by ambition: the other perhaps a bit naive, but true to his word and ideals.
I can only add that as far as objectivity, I see hope in neither party and none of their candidates.
by
W.M.L. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 276 comments)
on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 8:03:27 PM
I can totally relate to your wife. Every time I see HRC move her lying lips, I want to go on a rant too. Instead, I just turn the channel or turn off the TV.
I belong to that older white woman demographic but HRC is not the woman for the job.
by
Bonnie Niebruegge (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 15 comments)
on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 12:11:11 PM
I don't think I've ever seen Hillary Rodham Clinton's name initialized before.
Took me a couple of seconds to realize what HRC stands for, and another couple of seconds to morph it into a very unflatering if not scandalous sobriquet.
Thanks for the memory; it will be hard to forget.
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Sandy Sand (131 articles, 0 quicklinks, 166 diaries, 1236 comments)
on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 1:38:07 PM
'If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama.'
Bu they do prefer McCain and they work for him. That's the whole point. And no, there will be no millions of voters. There are millions of dollars!
With all respect, tell your wife to stop screaming at TV. TV is innocent. Hillary Rodham Clinton plays the political game she had learned a hard way. When she wanted to install healthcare reform in 1993 we, the public ridiculed her good effort, laughed our asses off and let her hang out dry. Here is a payback- she sells us to the wolves. Yes, she is a monster. But we made her one. Eat your checkers.
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Mark Sashine (46 articles, 19 quicklinks, 235 diaries, 3358 comments)
on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 2:39:38 PM
You scream, I scream, we all scream, when we get reamed
Though far from my choice for the nomination, I was at least willing to consider her when it looked as if she was going to get it (prior to the primiries even beginning). Things have since changed drastically for me. Considering that the only real way for her to gain the nomination now is by methods that would subvert the popular vote and the process itself (unless of course you consider the superdelegate wildcard component part of the process), I do not think that I could possibly reward her (or the Democratic party itself) for fielding such a mediocre (and unethical) candidate.
It's as if the Dems like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. This primary race is this season's butterfly ballot; meant to ensure that the most desirable outcome is kneecapped. Thanks DLC/DNC!
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LanceThruster (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 3:33:37 PM
I would have to go to Wikipedia and find out how many wifes Tom Hayden has conquered in the name of his virtuouos assault on capitalism. I do know Jane Fonda exercised her buns off to support his many ventures in political gambits. Before he dumped her...but that's another story.
More importantly, Hayden never misses an opportunity for some press coverage. Hillary started out believing and has since grown up knowing it isn't as simple as idealogues' finger paintings suggest.
Life is very complicated and severly curtailed by reality. She moved to the center, as all rational adults tend to do. She is, as I like to define her, a pragmatic idealist. If that's too right-brain for some, it is just right for others. That's why we have run-offs called elections. And it would be nice if the campaigns would subscribe to rules and regulations. Wouldn't that be novel?
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Marilyn Frith (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 191 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 11:56:45 AM
"Which wife # is this, Tom?" (what an inane observation - imho) Maybe divorce is preferable to cheating. Ask the Hildabeast to ask Bill, "which conquest # is this that we'll both have to lie about?"
As far as I'm concerned, Tom Hayden established his bona fides when he called out the Israel Lobby. Add some sugar to your sour grapes and they may taste better.
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LanceThruster (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 6:08:18 PM
