The Problem with Hillary

From my Diary over at Openleft:

Why is it that those going after Obama from the left on healthcare and other issues--rightly--ignore Hillary Clinton's faults when it comes to progressive politics?

She is a CORPORATE Democrat. There is no other way to categorize her (except maybe as "DLC"). For a liberal near-socialist Democrat, i find my choice in this primary remarkably simple: forget Iraq, forget healthcare, forget everything--which candidate is going to at least attempt to end the stranglehold of corporations on our government? Barack Obama.

Another serious flaw Armstrong and Krugman and others do not seem to want to deal with: she essentially re-fights the 2004 campaign, doing NOTHING to change the electoral map. The attitude of her campaign about this has been very clear--Obama's states don't matter because they don't fit into our "electoral calculus" (aka the states Kerry won plus Ohio). That, to me, summarizes the Clintons quite well: they care not for their party, but for themselves. Bill Clinton left the Democrats in worse shape than he found them, and Hillary Clinton would gleefully do the same.

We need a Democrat who builds the party, who brings new people in, who, YES, does not plead at the feet of Reagan Democrats to come back, but instead gets a good cross-section of the country to choose sanity and liberalism, not partisan rhetoric with centrist policy positions and corporate dominance on the government.

I'm a former John Edwards supporter, and he said it best: We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats.

Vote Obama. Vote for CHANGE.


I haven't posted for a while, partially because I have a feeling this blog is read by about two people. But I will probably keep it up from now on, and try and figure out a way to get the word out about this thing.

Now, the race:

Obama has had a shitty week of press and campaign coverage. The advisors running their mouths, the primary results, etc., people are going at him and the HRC campaign's experience argument is working (or people are saying it is, which might be the same thing). He probably does need to do better at responding to attacks and winning the last 72 hours... he failed at this in NH and Texas/Ohio and it hurt him. All that being said, if he can retool and get a good messaging campaign out, I don't see Pennsylvania as being a Hillary firewall. The Philly area and the suburbs seem potential Obama strongholds, and a potentially huge portion of the vote will come from there, especially if disaffected GOP upper-income people come out for him.

As for this demographics argument about blue-collar Democrats, I don't buy that they won't come home in November. He's actually won them in several states (see Virginia, Wisconsin). they are not wholly opposed to him, they probably just like Hillary's "fighter" image better right now. Whoever he loses amongst "Reagan Democrats" I think could be regained amongst "Obamacans," upper-income GOP voters angry about Iraq, Katrina, etc.

And what a lovely day it was for a certain scientist from Illinois! We won in the IL-14, replacing Dennis Hastert with a progressive, zealous Democat named Bill Foster. Congrats to the netroots movement, which had a big role in this one. This aids Obama's coattails argument, as this is a traditionally Republican (went 55%-44% for Bush in 2004) district where Obama's cutting an ad for Foster appears to have helped.

I anticipate the next few days as being a question of how Obama's people aggressively (or perhaps not so aggressively) continue to respond to/attempt to change the narrative from the disaster that was last week. He needs to have a decent day tomorrow to bump up the score in Mississippi. If he barely etches out a win, it will be deemed a moral victory for HRC, and won't do him much good in the delegate count. I wonder why he waited until tomorrow to campaign? Perhaps he just needed to chill out in Chicago with the family. One could also argue they are all a bit shellshocked over there from last week and needed time to retool. We'll see what Axelrod comes up with.