When I first arrived at DU, I generally defended Hillary against the claim

Occam Bandage

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Fri May-02-08 10:47 AM
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When I first arrived at DU, I generally defended Hillary against the claim

that she was a Republican in Democratic clothing. I pointed to her near-pristine voting record (outside of matters related to Iraq, of course). I acknowledged that liberals occasionally have to take nuanced stands, and that we shouldn't rush to judge on matters like Kyl-Lieberman any more than conservatives do on nuanced votes on war funding.

Yeah, I'm pretty openly an Obama supporter, but I've generally thought Hillary was a fine candidate and that she'd be a fine Democratic nominee. I still think she'd be a fine nominee. Problem is, in the past few weeks I'm having difficulty figuring out which nomination she's shooting for.

1. On foreign policy, she repeatedly and deliberately struck a more hawkish note than any John McCain has yet sounded, in which she proclaimed that any Iranian aggression against any non-nuclear state in the Middle East would result in the "obliteration" of Iran.

2. She has echoed the right-wing campaigns against Gore and Kerry (and has provided John McCain with one of his favorite new talking points), by making the "out-of-touch elitism" of Obama a central issue.

3. She has run fearmongering advertisements that would fit nicely in the Republican campaigns of 2002 and 2004, in which she made the express point that voting for Barack Obama just might lead to your children dying in bed at 3AM at the hands of Osama bin Laden.

4. She has echoed both John McCain and George W. Bush's belief that tax "relief" cures all ills, by claiming that an insignificant temporary gas-tax cut constitutes an intelligent energy policy.

5. She has attempted to fracture the Democratic racial coalition by dismissing states Obama has won through his strong support among blacks, for the explicit reason that those states contain many black voters.

6. She has mocked liberal activists--the backbone, soul, and conscience of this party--and has sounded indistinguishable from right-wing commentators in doing so.

7. She has cuddled up to right-wing media, striking a friendship/alliance with Richard Mellon Scaife, and going on the O'Reilly Factor (in which she attempted to distance herself from the goal of single-payer healthcare, claiming that she did not want a government-run program.)

8. Now, with the Kantor tape and the revelation of her earlier "screw 'em" comment, it has become evident that Clintonworld has long held the working class in utter disdain. This is perhaps unsurprising, given Clinton's earlier support for destructive trade deals, but it is nevertheless offensive.

Frankly, she has made it very difficult to claim that she is not running against Barack Obama as a Republican. In order to win the White House, it seems, Obama must defeat two Republican candidates back-to-back.

I think we're up to it.