A TERRFIC commentary by ALEXANDER COCKBURN captures the essence of the Democratic Party's COLLAPSE vs the Republican Juggernaut of the past decade (or 15 years) - the Democrat's INABILITY to coherently, articulately, and forcefully defend 300 YEARS of increasing human progress: INCREASINGLY BROAD ENFRANCHISEMENT; increasing economic upward mobility; increasing worker rights and workplace safety and security; increasing education access; and an egalitarian ideal of equality under law and reduced economic disparity, that saw such policies enacted as the GI Bill, Social Security, civil and voting rights, workplace rights, public health for millions, regulatoin of financial markets, etc. etc. etc.
Somehow, in the face of the Republican reactionary media machine of the past 15 years (ever since the end of the Cold War robbed Right-Wingers of an enemy they could hate and focus their efforts against) DEMOCRATS HAVE BECOME VOICELESS at defending that 300 years of American progress, from the European ENLIGHTENMENT which formed the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, to the Magna Carta which came long before even the Enlightenment!
Detailing Bill Clinton's self-inflicted follies would take a book (or three), but suffice it to say Clinton, despited his vast political and personal skills, never understood the vehemence of the Right-Wing reaction ("blowback") to his election in 1992 (which to reactionary Right-Wingers was the distilled essence of all that was evil about the 1960s, desegregation, and an open, chaotic, 'ammoral' society.) (Note: Al Capone was running an entire EMPIRE of speakesies and cat-houses, right smack in America's "Heartland," long before anyone ever heard of hippies, free-love, or war- and civil rights protesters. America's "MORAL VALUES" scolds doth protest too much.) At every turn, Clinton GAVE THE ROPE that the white-collar Republican lynch-mob (shouted cries of "rape!" and "moral values" enabled Ken Starr to switch from a FINANCIAL Whitewater real estate investigation, over to the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky "did she, or didn't she?" scandals.)
Worse, Clinton's narcissism ENABLED Republican reactionary policies, whether standing by idly as Yugoslavia descended into madness and mass murder (by comparison, GERMANY assisted the almost bloodless seccession of Slovenia from the collapsing Yugoslavia), or doing nothing to de-energize the Rawanda genocide, or, worst of all, Republicans hot on impeachment shouted "WAG THE DOG!" as President Clinton sought to bring justice to the Al Qaida terror organization which bombed two US embassies in Africa! And... NINE YEARS LATER - the current Republican administration - so hot to BOMB IRAN - STILL ALLOWS the perpetrator of the Embassy bombings in 1998, the USS Cole bombing in 2000, AND THE 9-11 ATTACKS in 2001... to OPERATE WITH NEAR IMPUNITY in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan!
ALL THE ABOVE FOLLIES were products of the shortcomings of the Clinton administration, powerless against Reactionary Republican sabotage and financial looting.
Unfortunately, HILLARY CLINTON is even less able to dance the political dance in real-time than her husband. The 800 lb gorrilla in every American's living room is THE ABUSES OF POWER, abject corruption, and gross INCOMPETENCE of the Bush-Cheney White House... but like most of the other Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton is FOLLOWING the DISMAL path set by Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, GIVING the Bush-Cheney White House a FREE PASS on ISSUE AFTER ISSUE, SCANDAL AFTER SCANDAL, fraud after fraud, failure after failure, lies-to-war, and now, MORE SABER RATTLING!
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Dance of the schizophrenic Democrats
By Aalexander Cockburn
November 8, 2007
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=9470
But Hillary Clinton doesn’t have her husband’s sure political feet...
Hillary has a ton of money and the solid support of the party's bosses, which is not surprising since the Clintons picked these bosses in the first place. A great many women in America want her to be president. Recovery is a process the Clintons have been refining ever since Hillary got herself into trouble with the voters of Arkansas back in 1978 for insisting that the first lady of that state be called Hillary Rodham, a stand on feminist principle she abandoned in time for the 1980 Governor's race.
At the very moment in February 1992 when Bill Clinton was battling political extinction in New Hampshire after disclosure of his affair with Gennifer Flowers (right), Hillary made one of her worst gaffes, again as a consequence of thinking too slowly. Hillary urged her husband to go on 60 Minutes.
In front of a vast national audience Bill, visibly ill at ease, admitted to causing pain to his family while denying that their marriage was merely an arrangement. "This is a marriage..." he asserted. Then Hillary broke in. Years of effort in burnishing Bill's image as
a Son of the South went up in smoke as she declared: "You know, I'm not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette."
The polls promptly showed Bill's numbers plummeting south of the Mason-Dixon line. An affair with Flowers was one thing, but insulting Tammy Wynette?
So Hillary will almost certainly tack to safety out of this mini-typhoon. But the bigger problem is not going away. There's a solid slice of the Old-Glory-loving superpatriots who will never, under any conditions, vote for Hillary Clinton a year from now. Every equivocation on immigrants, on the war, will be replayed mercilessly next autumn.
Hillary's best chance is to have the Republican vote split by the Evangelical Christians - unable to stomach a pro-abortion wife-hopper like Rudy Giuliani - running a candidate of their own. Some born-again type from the South.
Now there's a job for Bill if he really wants to make it up to Hillary.
