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Hillary Clinton is dead to me.
This occurred long before she officially declared that she was running for president but began selling out large parts of her agenda to make herself more palatable to “moderates,†who she seems to believe stand for absolutely nothing, so she should not either.
Forget the fact that approximately half of the nation already hates her and decided that she is a pinko communist scumbag. She could declare herself to be William Kristol’s #1 fan, become BFFs with Ann Coulter, and kiss Bill O’Reilly’s ass from today until the end of the world, but she will not change most people’s minds about what she believes.
Other than shedding her convictions like a reptile regenerates limbs, her other big tactic appears to be to remind people that she is married to Bill Clinton.
Yes, I remember. Whoop-de-doo.
The transition to appease began early in Clinton's Senate career (or even earlier, according to an article in Salon.com), and it continually rankled me until Jan. 2005. I was visiting the HQ of the nonprofit organization I worked for at the time, and passed a few minutes while waiting for a colleague at the end of the day by reading the newspaper online. The normal quiet and calm of the mellow Northern Cali office was shattered by the charming combination of my nasal Chicago accent and vivid New York street vocabulary when I read that Clinton made a speech in which she suggested that Democrats drop the right to a legal abortion from their plank. (Correction: she never explicitly called for this, but her remarks have led her to be grouped with other Democrats who are distancing themselves from pro-choice plank. Apologies for this mistake, and thanks to Maria Niles for pointing this out in the comments below.-SR) According to the New York Times, Clinton declared, “There is an opportunity for people of good faith to find common ground in this debate - we should be able to agree that we want every child born in this country to be wanted, cherished and loved.â€
Well, what sane individual on earth would disagree with that statement? But sometimes shit happens. No matter how careful a couple is, birth control sometimes fails. Even abstinence fails when it is not used 100% correctly, 100% of the time. Life is tricky. Sometimes a couple tries and tries for a kid and then finds out that it will die an excruciating death not long after being born while also risking the mother’s life. The point is that we all want abortion to be rare. We need it to be legal because shit happens.
Anyway, that is the type of sell out I personally cannot support, my “come to Jesus moment,†so to speak. There were no more excuses I could make to myself to continue to like Hil and respect myself in the morning. To quote a friend, Hillary Clinton is a politician in all the worst senses of the word. It makes me horribly sad to write this because way back in the late ‘90s, I thought this headband wearing working mom was a role model. I adored her. I believed she'd go places and do awesome things. Yet going through the grindstone of DC has left her a hollow woman.
Maybe my reaction is over the top, but I am not the only person who noticed her careful machinations before her official declaration. Elisa at Come Speak to Me 2 noted:
Hillary has probably been thinking about running for president for years. Evidence? She's ambitious, she takes herself seriously, and her words and actions as a senator are always carefully rendered with the utmost calculation. Risk and passion are notable by their absence.
Not everyone is a cynic like me who thinks this is a bad thing. Kaite at Grandma was a Suffragette urges readers to, “Sign up to Hillary's website to join the HillRaisers and support Hillary in her bid to become the first female POTUS…†and sites the inspiring credo of the fundraising organization Emily’s List. There are legions more like Kaite, who are still able to see the good side. Which is nice. If no one has hope, where does that leave tthe world?
Still, I’m left hoping that Barak Obama, my other favorite politician from the Chicago area, can avoid
