I Will Not Support Hillary Clinton for President

I seldom quote complete columns here, but 'I Won't Support Hillary Clinton' by Molly Ivins says everything I believe about the Democratic Party and its candidates, elected officials, "consultants" and "strategists." Moreover, it says it as only Molly can, with true grit, in a nutshell.

I hope you'll read the column (below) and then ACT. If we don't speak up and demand that the Party take notice of its base, who will? If we don't demand that our core beliefs BECOME the platform of the Party and that any candidate that runs as a Democrat must run on these positions, why have a Party at all?

This issue was underlined for me this morning as I read the Albuquerque Journal, which devoted a front page news story (subscription required) to the views of the Greater Albuquerque and Hispano Chambers of Commerce on a state minimum wage. The Chambers believe if there HAS to be an increase in the minimum wage, it should be strung out as long as possible -- applied in a "business-friendly manner," so adjustments can be made.

Sorry folks, businesses have had almost 10 years to "adjust" to an increase, with the federal minimum wage stuck at $5.15 an hour for almost a decade. Meanwhile, executive salaries have risen astronomically and obscenely, investor gains and business profits generally have soared and the cost of living has risen significantly. According to The Economist, American executives make an average of 475 times what their average workers make.

Not one word was included in the Journal article articulating the position of the dozens of organizations that are backing Rep. Lujan's bill to raise the minimum to $7.50 on January 2007, versus the Governor's proposal to take three years to do so. But perhaps the most dismaying development is that Bill Richardson is mostly siding with the views of the predominantly Republican business community on this issue, over those of his own Party and its core constituencies.

The Democratic Party of New Mexico's State Central Committee passed a resolution by an overwhelming margin at its November meeting that matches the provisions of Rep. Lujan's minimum wage bill.  You'd think that the Governor would be out there pushing these provisions, him being a Democrat and all. You'd be mistaken.

Apparently what the active members of the Party believe and have approved is just so much dust in the wind. Then again, SCC members generally don't have huge hunks of cash to contribute to campaigns. Members of the Chambers of Commerce, however, certainly do. Unfortunately, with way too many politicians who call themselves Democrats, paying for "access" is almost as much of a requirement as it is in the dismal Republican culture of corruption. The Party of the People? Well, once upon a time...

New Mexico Matters has more on the topic of "access." Read it and weep.

Anyway, I've gotten a little far afield. Molly Ivin's column is below. Granted, she's talking about national politics, but I think what she has to say clearly resonates in states like New Mexico as well. Are you with her or agin' her?

I will not support Hillary Clinton for president
Molly Ivins, January 20, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas --- 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. Sen. Clinton 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 recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

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 (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks 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 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 damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, 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 new from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat from Iraq," versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, 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 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, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. 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 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 piss on them 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 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.

https://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304