Democratic Party

Can we stop wasting ink on Hillary 08?

Hillary R. Clinton, the great prevaricator, is at it again:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is supporting new legislation to criminalize desecration of the United States flag _ though she still opposes a constitutional ban on flag attacks.

Clinton, D-N.Y., has agreed to co-sponsor a measure by Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, which has been written in hopes of surviving any constitutional challenge following a 2003 Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

Man, my six-year old could figure out that pretty much every legislative decision and public statement Hillary makes is engineered to make her a "viable" candidate for 2008. And it's precisely that utterly heartless, indefatigably cagey strategy that makes her precisely wrong for 2008 (or any year, for that matter).

Hillary is like the Terminator. Not Arnold. The character. She has a mission, and, like an indestructible robot from the future, she will not stop until she has completed her task, and she will not let anything like morals or consistancy or the lives of American soldiers get in her way.

I'm to the left of most Democrats, so naturally I think having a woman president would be a hell of a lot better than having a man. I base that not only on the fact that women have proportionally larger brains than men, that they are physically more robust and live longer, but on the fact that they are mothers, life-bringers, nurturers. That they excel at talking to others, that they enjoy networking, that they thrive on compromise. Of course, I'm making generalizations. Anne Coulter doesn't fit this description. And neither, I'm afraid to say, does Hillary.

But it doesn't matter what an uber-leftie like me thinks. Look at any of the Daily Kos straw polls: Hillary is consistently ranked in the bottom three choices. And those are rank-and-file Dems. And then, of course, there are the millions of Americans who absolutely hate her. I mean hate. I've talked to a lot of these people. Some of them are my cousins. And, of course, their hatred is unjustified and based on a lot of hate-rhetoric from Limbaugh and Fox News and the GOP.

And now journalist and labor activist Jonathan Tasini is making a primary run for her seat in NY. He's not just running against Hillary. As he writes on the Huff Post:

It is also meant as a direct challenge to the entire Democratic Party, which has an opportunity to capture large swaths of the voting public -- if it has a spine, an authentic message and the courage to offer something besides an agenda that is Republican-lite. The growing numbers of people who oppose the war in Iraq and are calling for its end are Democrats, Republicans and Independents. They are people throughout New York State who don't want their loved ones killed, and their government throwing away hundreds of billions on an immoral war.

My question to Hillary: if you can't stop being the Terminator, can you at least be the Terminator 2?