HILLARY CLINTON: IS SHE THE NEXT PRO-WAR DEMOCRAT TO FALL? [View All]

[Demeter]

Original Article at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_randolph_060816_hillary_clinton_3a_is_.htm


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August 16, 2006

HILLARY CLINTON: IS SHE THE NEXT PRO-WAR DEMOCRAT TO FALL?

By Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Joe Lieberman's sorry hide has been nailed to the wall, and there is rejoicing in the land (except from the lobbyists, pundits and political hacks who make up the permanent occupation force of Washington). And while I am pleased to see a discredited, humiliated Lieberman forced to cast his lot in with his friends in the Republican Party, I won't be completely convinced that the revolution is here until Hillary Clinton's hide is nailed to the wall beside Joe's.

The conventional wisdom is that Lieberman lost because he consistently supported the Bush administration on the Iraq war. But that isn't the sole reason why Lieberman lost to Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic Primary.

The Democratic Party's big problem is that people like Clinton, who also supported the invasion of Iraq, are trying to change the subject now that things have gone horribly wrong.

Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards and John Kerry - to name four prominent Democratic Senators with presidential aspirations - all voted in October 2002 to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq. Of the four, only Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, has publicly apologized for his vote. He is no longer a senator and he supports a withdrawal of U.S. troops. Kerry, who ran for president in 2004, co-sponsored a Senate resolution with Russ Feingold, D-Wis., to set a timetable for a withdrawal. Kerry and Biden are both up for reelection to the Senate in 2008.

Biden and Clinton, who are on the short list to run for president for the Democrats in 2008, are more circumspect in their opposition to the war. They both rail against the incompetence of the Bush administration in its execution and hope no one remembers that they supported the war in the first place.

Authors Bio: Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 25 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at [e-mail].