An essay supporting Hillary - as the last best hope for women

Francecsa, can I suggest you change the thread title so babblers know what the thread is about?

I've read the article, and you may already know that I disagree with the reasons feminists are giving to support HRC. And of course I deplore the sexist, sometimes violent, misogynist criticisms that HRC has endured and will continue to.

That said, I'd like to share an article I read in the December issue of The Progressive magazine. It's called "Hillary's Defense Dough" by Ruth Conniff.

quote:

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But the big news is the massive contributions by defense contractors to Hillary. Talk about “making history.”

The defense sector as a whole gave Hillary $122,988 this quarter, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, compared with Romney’s $82,975, Giuliani’s $58,400, and Obama’s $57,990. Only Chris Dodd, who has a major General Dynamics submarine project in Groton, Connecticut, fared better than Hillary, with $168,900.

Reversing their historical pattern of giving lopsidedly to Republicans, employees of the nation’s biggest weapons makers chose Hillary as their candidate, reports Thomas Edsall, Columbia journalism professor and Huffington Post political editor. Analyzing records of individual candidate contributions of $500 or more, Edsall found that employees of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Raytheon gave Democratic Presidential candidates $103,900 and Republicans only $86,800 in the third quarter. That’s a big vote of confidence for the Democratic Party, and particularly the frontrunner.

“The contributions clearly suggest that the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed,” Edsall writes.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton has befriended the defense industry (the contractors tend to be big donors to members on Armed Services, who control their access to lucrative government contracts). She has also issued calls for beefing up the military, increasing troop strength in Iraq and, most recently, refusing to discount the possibility of war with Iran.

But taking money from big military contractors isn’t the most troublesome fundraising issue in the current election season. The more worrisome group of donors is the private contractors that have been quietly taking over the war business from the military. It’s one thing to endorse boondoggle weapons programs like Star Wars, as Hillary did, or bring home the bacon for the base in your state, like Dodd. But the rise of the mercenary industry is a new threat to our democracy.

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[url=http://www.progressive.org/mag_conniff1207]Full article here[/url]

As a feminist, I will not support a woman candidate just because she's a woman. Absolutely she's experienced a very sexist and judgmental media. This is wrong, unfair, sexist and unrelated to who she is as a candidate.

However, every attack on HRC is not necessarily a sexist one.

Francesca, exactly. It's like, up until now, we've had various degrees of white guys who were/are variously embedded in the powers that be in Warshington. The lefties in the US (oh how I feel bad for them) must plug their collective noses and pick the best of a bad lot. Or the least bad of a bad lot.

Now, with Hillary and Barack, it's as if they become the conduits for all our collective lack-of-representation, they must be perfect, they must be squeaky clean. It's unfair, ridiculous and bound to failure. I read a story about how years ago, Barack was at a bachelor party and left when a stripper arrived, a story that "proves" his morality or some such. Whatever.

This connects to one thing that Robin Morgan mentioned, that of Chelsea Clinton, being regarded as "sane" and isn't that great, and is that b/c of Hillary or Bill, etc. Morgan went on to ask, have the Bush twins undergone such scrutiny?

What about GWB's long media-forgotten substance abuse issues? That are ongoing? Not that this makes him a horrible person, but in terms of credibility, and ability to do the job of President? No character assassination there, not even a whiff.

I've said it before: neither Barack or Hillary are lefties in the way we Canadians understand the term. At best they'd be red Tories here, or Paul Martin Liberals, but maybe not. This Barack vs. Hillary "fight" is based on manufactured parameters, and even if one or both of them presented a perfect progressive history and plan for the future, they are, after all, still politicians. Dems are famous for instituting draconian policies (look at Bill Clinton's horrific welfare reforms for one example) that make them not at all different from Repugs.

We fell for the hype! Damn it! [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

quote:

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Hillary Clinton celebrates Israeli war crimes
[b]By Bill Van Auken, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US Senate from New York[/b]

..Her remarks left no doubt that a vote for Clinton in November is a vote not only to continue the US war in Iraq, but to expand and intensify the slaughter throughout the region.

“We will support [Israel’s] efforts to send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians, to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom,” she told the crowd.
World Socialist Website:
[url=http://www.wsws.org]http://www.wsws.org[/url]

/articles/2006/jul2006/clin-j19.shtml

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Replace a male warmonger by a female warmonger and the world will be better, apparently.

Obama and Clinton both have made getting out of Iraq a key campaign issue. Obama's plan gets them out faster.

I was at a peace March in DC in 2005 that drew between 150,000 to 300,000 people. Lots of angry signs but everyone was happy about the turnout. As a Canadian visiting i was discovering just how much opposition there was to the war. We met some students who had driven in from Idaho. I talked for a while with a communist who thought the revolution was just around the corner. There was someone that i saw standing in the middle of the road facing the crowd streaming around him. He was yelling that this wasn't accomplishing anything, that what people needed to do was to sit down, where they were, and refuse to move. Not too many takers even though most probably agreed with him.

There were a few different areas where tables had been set up with groups distributing literature, selling bumper stickers and what not. There was also a table of supporters fundraising for Hillary Clinton, i guess it would've been for her upcoming Senate campaign.

At this time her public position was for the war. Her view was that Iraq was going well and that Bush had made the USA safer. She had concerns about not giving inspectors more time or bringing the UN on board. But she certainly wasn't calling for withdrawal, she was making tactical distinctions.

When i was asked for money i asked these people what they were doing at a peace rally fundraising someone who supported the war. They said that Clinton was actually against the war and wanting to bring troops home, and was working within the system until the political climate was in a better state to take action.

Obama was against the war from the beginning. I know what Clinton means when she talks about experience and judgement. While they both say they'll make getting out a priority, there's a lot more to it than that.