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Brand Hillary

By Greg Sargent, The Nation. Posted May 25, 2005.


By crafting an evolving politics that's uniquely her own, Senator Clinton has won supporters in unlikely places.

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Not long ago, Senator Hillary Clinton went on a 2006 re-election campaign swing through the North Country, that vast expanse of upstate New York that stretches from Albany to the Canadian border. With its mix of family farms and grubby towns struggling with disappearing manufacturing jobs, the region feels less like the Northeast than like the industrial and agricultural Midwest. In other words, it's not a bad place to gauge how Clinton might play in swing-state America.

It's a question that of late has obsessed the pundits, who frequently, and often quite mindlessly, hold up the most obscure of the Senator's utterances or policies -- even ones that echo positions she's held for years -- as proof that she's readying herself for a 2008 presidential run. The political classes tend to offer us two tidy Hillary narratives to choose from. The first (courtesy of Dick Morris and company) is that Clinton has given herself a moderate makeover designed to mask the fact that she's really a haughty left-wing elitist, in order to appeal to moderate Republicans and culturally conservative, blue-collar Democrats who are deserting their party. The opposing narrative line (courtesy of her supporters) is that Clinton, a devout Methodist, has revealed her true self as a senator; she's always been more moderate than is generally thought, and, as Anna Quindlen wrote recently in Newsweek, "people are finally seeing past the stereotypes and fabrications."

Yet if you watch Clinton on one of her upstate swings, as I did earlier this spring, it becomes clear that neither story line gets it right. What's really happening is that Clinton, a surprisingly agile and ideologically complex politician, is slowly crafting a politics that in some ways is new, and above all is uniquely her own.

Clinton's evolving approach -- call it Brand Hillary -- is sincerely rooted in her not-easily-categorized worldview, but it's also a calculated response to today's political realities. In effect, she's taking her husband's small-issue centrism -- its trademark combination of big but often hollow gestures toward the center, pragmatic economic populism and incremental liberal policy gains -- and remaking it in her own image, updating it for post-9/11 America with an intense interest in military issues.

At the same time, she's also experimenting with an increasingly national message about smart government and GOP extremism and testing new, unthreatening ways of revisiting her most politically disastrous issue: healthcare. In one setting after another, she offered the same impromptu-seeming refrain: "You may remember that when my husband was President, I tried to do something about healthcare. Well, I still have the scars to show for it. But I haven't given up." That's a line worthy of the man Hillary married--you can picture Bill sitting at the kitchen table in Chappaqua, repeating the line and chuckling, "That's good. That's really good."

Bill Clinton's political success, of course, sometimes came at great cost to liberal Democrats, and Hillary's brand of politics, too, poses a tough dilemma for liberals and progressives. It asks them to swallow their discomfort with her tactically shrewd but sometimes morally questionable maneuvers on big issues like war and abortion. In exchange they get less visible victories for progressivism, as well as the pleasure of seeing the former First Lady--the figure most loathed by the right in at least a generation--succeed at a time when Democrats are desperate to figure out how to get that winning feeling again.

For liberals it remains to be seen whether this transaction will prove to be a good deal. Yet for some Democrats the trade is indeed worth it, as you could easily see during one of Clinton's first stops on her upstate swing, a speech to Democrats at a re-election fundraiser north of Albany. The event was closed to the press, and the Senator shed her typically demure, bipartisan approach and launched a sharp attack on the GOP. Yet she knew her audience -- these were hardly red-meat-craving Democratic activist types. They were rural, moderate Democrats -- small-town schoolteachers, librarians, general-store owners. So Clinton's assault was spirited, but even-tempered and larded with patriotic language.

"We're seeing the slow and steady erosion of what made America great in the twentieth century," Clinton told her audience in an even tone. "When I got to the Senate I asked myself, What's going on here? At first I thought the President just wanted to undo everything my husband had done." Clinton waited a beat, then added, "And I did take that personally."

The audience laughed. "But then I thought, Wait a minute. It's not just about turning the clock back on the 1990s.... They want to turn the clock back on most of the twentieth century. They want to turn the clock all the way back beyond Franklin Roosevelt. Back beyond Teddy Roosevelt. That's why they're trying to undo Social Security. Make no mistake about it.


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Greg Sargent is a contributing editor at New York magazine.

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The Clintons are opportunists, nothing more
Posted by: apodapa on May 25, 2005 4:33 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I am so sick of the Clintons, they are not what everyone makes them out to be. They are just a couple of oppotuninsts who thrive on their own quest for the spotlight and power. I will not support Hillary any more than say Bill was a great president, which clearly, he was nto.

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Two points...motherhood, and the drug war
Posted by: jules_siegel on May 25, 2005 5:28 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
[1] I'm not sure what was morally questionable about Hillary's positon on abortion. I don't know anyone who doesn't feel that an abortion is a tragedy. No one can question my liberal credentials, but I felt a sense of profound relief when she began speaking out about the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies. I'd be happier if she went on to talk about how to make more pregnancies wanted -- accidental or otherwise -- by fully supporting the needs of mothers and children. That's utopian, of course. Plus you can't mention motherhood without setting off feminist women-bashing static. Mothers are just supposed to be wage-earners, no matter what that does to their children. For feminists, daycare centers answer all other childcare needs, I suppose.

[2] Where does she stand on drug policy? To me, the biggest tragedy of the Clinton years was the complete sell-out on drug enforcement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the American Gulag had it's greatest growth spurt under Bill Clinton. Building all those prisons distributed some of the profits of the criminal injustice system to a whole new class of Americans -- the rural working poor who are now feeding in a pork delivery system that rivals defense spending. Thus the drugwar is now set in cement from a political standpoint because the prisons need prisoners. I'm ridiculed in liberal forums any time I post opinions such as those in my Alternet story The Doper Vote. Perhaps surprisingly, any item on the drug war will produce many anti-drugwar responses in forums such as freerepublic.com.

I used to consider myself a Yellow Dog Democrat. These days, I am a Junkyard Dog Democrat. I'll vote for Hillary and I'll bark and bite ferociously in her behalf if she's the candidate, but I will have to see more about how she plans to tackle the motherhood and drug war issues before I can enthusiastically support any campaign to nominate her.

--
JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764 77501-Cancun Q. Roo Mexico
Newsroom-l, news and issues for journalists

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Hmmmm . . .
Posted by: hagwind on May 25, 2005 6:25 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If I lived in New York, I might even register to vote. I haven't voted for -- as opposed to "against," or just to make a point -- a candidate since Gerry Studds retired in my district (Massachusetts 10th Congressional). Hillary sounds like she might have some of the same stuff.

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Opato
Posted by: Opato on May 25, 2005 6:37 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Oh, come on, guys and gals: Hillary is smart, skillful at her work, and, yes, ambitious. Soooo? Quibbling over detectable lapses in liberal or progressive positions will only result in Jeb Bush or a Frist/DeLay team in the White House in January 21, 2009. There is an unfortunate game both liberally leaning and conservative leaning candidates have had imposed, yes, imposed on them. There are some other Democrats that are likely more attractive to some of us, but Hillary is likely the best thing we could actually get in the White House since the fall of Jimmy Carter. Look at the field: Another Bush is out there until Jenna is old enough (if Laura doesn't have ambitions) and here in New York a Richard Nixon son-in-law is thinking of challenging Hillary for the Senate. My "dream ticket" for 2008, as unlikely as it will be, is Clinton/Obama.

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» RE: Opato Posted by: Shakti
» RE: Opato Posted by: apodapa
» RE: Opato Posted by: hilchris
» RE: Opato Posted by: Asses of Evil
Donald Carl Isenman
Posted by: Lackawack on May 25, 2005 8:29 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This article is a good overview of Senator Clinton's modi operandi; however, it appears to accept all of her presuppositions (and those of too many Democrats) that there is no other way to be elected than by luring Republicans: I think not. There are more eligible voters who did not find a compelling reason to vote than voted for either Kerry or Bush.

They are hardly all Republicans.

But of course the Clintons offer them nothing, so even if she should be elected she will be another flash in the pan like her husband and leave behind an even more devastated party than it now is. [From scripture: Al From, et alia.]

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I've always like Hillary
Posted by: Shakti on May 25, 2005 8:37 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
... I voted for Clinton based on my high opinion of his wife and his running mate (Gore).

However, like many progressive liberals, I grew disillusioned and impatient with the Comprehensive Clinton Compromise and the Great Gore Presidential Give Away ... "why don't the Dems stand up to the reactionary right? What's wrong with them?"

I think the answer is this: they believe, perhaps rightly, that the majority of the U.S. population is too befuddled to know the truth when they hear it and too stupid to understand what is really in their best interests. So, they end up having to be stealth progressives, protecting the powerless in small, hidden ways, while giving in to the conservatives on other issues.

If Americans were smarter, better informed, and less easily manipulated by a corporate controlled media, we'd have much more progressive leadership and politicians like the Clintons could openly formulate policies (e.g., universal healthcare) that would actually be good for the people of the U.S.

Absent that, perhaps the best they can do is try to steer a middle path, thus alienating the liberal core but ensuring a continued role in national politics.

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Senator Clinton is a True Politician
Posted by: hbw on May 25, 2005 8:46 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
After all the bile flung at Bill Clinton for eight long years from the fascist hate machine, I cringed when Hillary announced her candidacy for the Senate. She flew in the face of common sense, and she won. Enough New York residents turned out to overcome the hate. For that I salute her and her campaign staff.

How did she do it? She didn't just run for office; she became a politician. This article illustrates that she has gone through years of training to cater (pander?) to her audience the way the most skillful politicans, including her husband, do. If people perceive her as down-to-earth, it is because she has worked hard on appearing down-to-earth. Face it, 30 years following Bill around is bound to teach you something about playing to the crowd.

There is a real Hillary, I'm told, but on the stump, she is an actress playing a role, and that role varies with the audience. Her performance in the Senate, of course, is hardly any different. Her votes on Iraq and Afghanistan just prove that she follows prevailing political winds on an appalling foreign policy that her husband did little to correct in eight years, and may have made worse.

Go Green.

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Only Marginally Better
Posted by: nakis on May 25, 2005 9:40 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
A lot of people look to Bill Clinton as a light from the past in the current dark gloom. It's only from this bitter darkness that you can look onto that past and see a bright light.
Yes he was a good administrator. He did good things for the environment and the economy was much better off (even without benefit of war). I can't forget to mention he didn't fail the US by allowing a terrorist attack by a foriegn group (dig).
But he was only marginally less the corporate boy. His foriegn policy though less drastic than Bush's was still the same wealthy elite/corporate abuser policy you see today that uses our military to enforce our form of economics on other nations. Hillary is another pollitician just like Bill. You will see the same things that the Republican/neocons do just to a lesser degree. Which pisses off the far right since they can't get the killing and hording done fast enough and pisses off the far left because we're still killing people by the millions.

Sure, go for Hillary and hopefully stave off the far right Bush/clones or clone of the Bush/clone or something like that. But you still have the people that brought you Bosnia/NAFTA/Rwanda, etc... . And did only marginal work for social works like healthcare, education, .... .

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Why should politicians that should be in jail be elected at all?
Posted by: LoisC on May 25, 2005 12:53 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Why anyone would want Hillary Clinton to be in any official office is well beyond my comprehension. Maybe the following will open your eyes to the fact that she is as much a part of the New World Order as the Bush admistration.

Hillary Clinton was well aware of Bill's drug and sex addiction and was a willing participant in the mind control activities and as you will read on the following site she transported the mind control victims of our government officials. Bush, Cheney, Clinton and others are all implicated in these sadistic activities.

The site in question has been removed due to government pressure but can be found through achives using this url:
trance-formation.com

---------

Public Health Authority Urges
Inquiry in Foot-and-Mouth Slaughter Raises Spectre on Industrial Espionage

--------

Clintons and the New World Order
Denver International Airport

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I'm all for a woman president, but......
Posted by: mendomama on May 26, 2005 7:17 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Hillary is not my first pick, or even my second or third. She's a middle of the road type gal, always playing it safe. I'd like a politician, be it a woman OR a man, that is strong enough, independent enough, to stand up and call it like it is. Someone with the conviction to set themselves apart from the Dems who spend their time sucking up to Republicans. I'm not talking about compromise, which I accept is something necessary in a country with so many points of view. But, in the last 5 years, Republilcans have been "having their way with us", while the Dems, for the most part, are curled up in the corner. If I was going to pick a female candidate for President, I'd go for one of California's female politicians, Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi, over Hillary. My distrust in her was confirmed when she got all "buddy buddy" with Newt Gingrich, recently. As a woman, I admit it would be validating to have a woman elected as president, but Hillary? Truth is, if it ends up being between her and some Bush look-alike, I'll take Hillary over the alternative, hands down. But, I would much rather have a candidate that I could support more sincerely. Also, the idea of our list of presidents starting in '88 being - BUSH - CLINTON - BUSH - CLINTON - is just twisted! It's like we've got a dictatorship, with power being shared alternately between two families. I'm ready for a change in scenery.

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