Friday, October 25, 2013

Hillary Clinton in 2016: a sickening prospect

Oh shit! Guess I better get this on record right now. Just saw this item:

Liberal billionaire investor George Soros backed Ready for Hillary on Thursday, the super PAC organizing support for a possible 2016 presidential run by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

TPM

The people with the grease are spreading it for Hillary in 2016.

And Hillary has a message:

"We are careening from crisis to crisis instead of having a plan, bringing people to that plan," Clinton said, urging lawmakers to come together on a way forward following a raucus government shutdown fight.

I think I might vomit. As if Hillary running for President in 2016 will bring cooperation to the warring parties in Washington. No way! And I don't blame her for that; she would face frenzied Republican opposition. But I could do without her pretending otherwise!

Clinton as the Democratic standard bearer is an awful prospect in so many ways. I'll stick to one for the moment: I don't trust Ms.Clinton on issues of war and peace. Obama has not been nearly as good at reining in the empire as I'd like. He has seemed cowed by the "security" establishment and the military (interesting discussion here) and more than a little inclined to posturing. But he has walked us out of Iraq and seems bent on the same from Afghanistan. And you get the sense that, at root, he thinks war is a dumb idea and the country better served by focusing on domestic problems.

I do not trust Hillary to shrink from using military force. She strikes me as hawkish by instinct and all the rumors that emerged from her tenure at the State Department put her on the side of wider U.S. interventions. She felt a need to speak out for bombing Syria in the narrowly averted response to Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons.

The first woman president will be under even more scrutiny than the average Democratic party male, constantly the subject of the question: "is she tough enough to use force?" I don't trust her to resist the attractions of being able to blow away some enemies (look how that instinct has turned out lately!) Some woman is going to have to do the job, but this one gives me no confidence.

But -- and this is the crux of the matter -- if this country is going to get over the demographic hump, become a nation in which no race has a majority, and have a chance at preserving or even advancing some measure of egalitarian democracy, the next President has to be a Democrat. So if Clinton is the nominee, I'll take part in campaigns that help put her in office. Electing some Democrat, any Democrat, is about living to fight another day for people of color, young people, queer people, poor people -- so this is what we have to do.

Not very inspiring, but a fact.

5 comments:

Kalpana said...

Clinton's hawkishness was the main reason I didn't support her in the primaries - I wanted us to at least have a fighting chance (so to speak) against embroiling ourselves in new military interventions and stopping the existing ones.

Rain Trueax said...

You said it well for me too. I think she was instrumental in Obama's warlike side. Once in she and Bill will be as hated as they ever were. How anybody can forget the conspiracy talk that they murder people or the impeach Clinton bunch. Clinton was in bed with the rich as much as anybody. And there is talk about the corruption in the Clinton foundation. They got very rich off something more than $100,000 speeches-- and what do those people expect in return for the big fees...

But I agree... if it's her, I'll have to support her too because who would the righties put up, given their current rush to the bigoted right-- Cruz, Rubio, Lee, Bush or even Christie where they talk like the latter two are moderates-- except listen to them talk. They are not moderate on social issues! We'll have no choice if it's Hillary who will be more like Margaret Thatcher than many of us would like but is she better than the alternative? Definitely for anything the Republicans could currently put out given who is running that supposed grassroots bunch.

Rain Trueax said...

The problem though is-- what alternative do we have with a realistic chance to succeed?

Hattie said...

Who could have dreamed a few years ago that a black man named Barack Obama could ever become President? There is no point in even thinking about who will be running for pres. in 2016 until January of that year.

janinsanfran said...

Hattie -- emotionally I couldn't agree with you more. Politically active people need to be focusing on Congressional districts we can claw back in from Republicans in 2014, not 2016. Lots can happen and will.

But these things now shape up much earlier than they once did. Clearly we're being subjected to a Clinton-suppporting inevitability blitz. So I figured I might as well just out with what I think. In the future if I feel the need to comment on Dems circling each other warily, I can just refer to this ...