Good post, great point. Don't bring this over to bartcop. He's got a stiff hair up his ass for anyone who badmouths Hillary. Come on Al, please run!

It's time to move on - no white knights.

You go to election day with the candidates you have - let's do what we can to support them in making good choices.

"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

and there's no reason he can't happen again. If the Democratic Party has too many fault lines by late February of 2008 you may just see Gore bail them (and by extension, the United States) out, not because he insists he must, but because so many others will.

Seriously: he runs, he wins. Anyone doubt that? Naturally, there will have to be a lot of Hillary damage for that to occur...blood on the knees, the brass ring within her grasp, and then the final fall.*

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*Just one of many sad possible scenarios waiting to be played out, or not. Stay tuned. ++++

and ask if there's any evidence she has given up on the battle? If a little CT is allowed, isn't it at least possible that the prayer group and hugging a Newt (there's a hand sanitizer moment) and careful triangulation is just a smokescreen, that Hillary is smarter and colder and more calculating and vindictive than she's actually given credit for?

She may not be my image of Miss Liberty, or yours, but as an avenging angel with a Terrible Swift Sword she'll do just fine.

Plus the glass ceiling thing, even if she turns out to be mediocre she will still have done the service of removing the ridiculous notion that only men can be elected President. That alone is worth supporting.

an agreement with the incoming administration (if Dem), that they will ALL be immune from ANY prosecution.

Is there any among you who cannot hear Hillary, or Obama, or Edwards, either for that matter, saying: "We must not look back; we must look ahead to a united future?" or some such shit. I wonder that anyone thinks any 'mainstream' Dem candidate would, once in office, actually prosecute the Busheviks. Nagahapun...

Me? A Quick Study, But A Slow Learner

Say what? You know it's Friday, right MJS? Or are you still puttering around in PJs and bunny slippers wondering why your neighbor is looking at you funny?

Tell us more about this fascinating final fall of Hillary's that is going to set the stage for the triumphant return of Al Gore.

"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

The facility with which HRC advocates convert "she's not saying" to "she must really mean" continues to boggle the mind of at least this observer. It seems, well, faith-based...

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Perhaps my feverish imagination pushed too far for you. I base my thought on little else than this woman, whom I would vote for, has played everything so close to the vest it's impossible to see what many of her cards are. Perhaps no fall at all, should she stumble. Perhaps only a wee lurching forward with controlled perfection. She dithers on troop removal, being careful where she might be clear. The consequences of continued occupation are deadly (but we already know that).

btw: PJ's and bunny slippers*? So now put-downs are in vogue in the comments section of the venerable Corrente Building. I must have missed that email.

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*I trust you weren't channeling my cranky Erma Bombeck on Crack post...no mention of nighties in there, so perhaps you are pulling something out of your...let me think...foily hat? ++++

Doesn't it sound just a little too Brit royal for comfort?

Don't count me as a Hillary advocate, multiple others I'd sooner see pimping out the Lincoln bedroom, and wishing isn't faith exactly although probably no more useful.

The one thing that keeps me hopeful about Clinton is that she does seem to truly terrify the worst of the right-wingers I know. Something about her just drives them to frothing, much more so than candidates farther to the left, and I wonder why. Could be they sense something truly threatening - to them; whatever that is, if it frightens them it must be to the good.

I like to see a winger froth as well as the next man, but there's a really bad scenario that would cause the wingers to froth, and me, too, although for different reasons: And that is that Hillary plans to seize and make use of all the extra-Constitutional powers that Bush seized.

As I keep saying: I want to live under a legitimate, Constitutional government, again (?). I don't care if Hillary is an Augustus-like consolidator of Bush's crazed power grab. If anything, that's worse; we'll never claw back the powers seized (and all in service of a continued imperial role for America, mind you).

Hillary could make a gesture toward resolving all this with a Dodd-like speech. I think that she's way too smart not to see what's going on; so that she doesn't is very telling.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

but forty years of determined methodical Plutocrat usurpation will not be reversed in one fell swoop so steady on, one battle at a time.

The winger-frothing I hear, and patiently listen to with secret delight, is all about (here I paraphrase because I just won’t repeat their crap) socialized medicine and leaving Iraq and raising taxes and insuring the rights of GLBT and global warming and, apropos who knows what, thick ankles. Other than the last item it all sounds good to me, and I can ignore the ankles.

There's another "thick ankles" case on line 2. He sounds like he's calling from a basement.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Just writing the cartoonish headline here.

The idea being that once Hillary is actually elected, she's going to step into a phonebooth, strip off her Clarkette Kent garb, and emerge as SuperWoman, Defender of the Constitution!

Well, perhaps. She could very easily find ways to make this plausible. Nothing in her history makes me think she's like that. See this post about her speech at Constitution Center in Philly. This is back in 2006, though it seems like a decade ago. My views were still much more fluid then; but this appearance helped crystallize them. As I wrote:

4. I don’t get what the Hillary haters are on about. I’m not a huge Hillary fan myself, and the haters had gotten under my skin enough so that I wondered if I’d see or hear anything about Hillary that creeped me out. But no. So, the wingers must have manufactured their hate driven by fear of losing power, which is SOP for these guys, now that I think about it. Conversely, I wasn’t ravished by her appearance, or the speech, either. Ultimately, I suppose I saw a professional who cares about what she does and is very good at it. (Whether that’s enough to separate Hillary from the pack, or to pull the country out of the ditch that Bush drove us into, is another question entirely.) I also sensed, perhaps, rather than saw, someone who is thinking strategically, many moves ahead. God knows we Dems need that.

5. The issues that got the audience roaring were: Darfur, voting, global warming/oil, student loans. However, a holisic connection remains to be made—and, given the Hall and Hillary’s obvious powers as a speaker, it’s strange that it wasn’t—-between all of these single issues and the destruction of government and the Constitution by the Republicans. The coherent worldview, the common thread, the elevator speech, has yet to be created.

6. A “safe, secure, honest, hackproof” system—I like that meme. Hillary applies it only to voting machines, but I think it applies to Republican rule (I won’t say government). The country under the Republicans isn’t safe, is less secure, not honest (i.e., won’t “face facts”), and is being hacked—“inherent authority” and “signing statements” are both hacks (or should I say, cracks).

7. Leading me to my final point. The whole event was a praiseworthy endeavor and it’s great that Hillary’s taking care of the seed corn. But the country is in a Constitutional crisis today. We must face the facts now.

It was so odd it was to be in the Constitution Center, and hear nothing from Hillary about, say, Bush’s claim of “inherent authority” to set aside the law, which is a direct and blatant attack on Constitution’s doctrine of the separation of powers.

I can’t understand what would prevent Hillary from at least giving the issue a line. Sure, there was material from all the speakers about how the Constitution evolved to serve the public good, but there was nothing from Hillary about how the Constitution is foundational, and how the Republicans are eating the foundation away. Would the audience, not having lived through Watergate and Iran Contra, not have understood the issue? Had the hall, as I mentioned above, bought into the stifling Republican meme of Civility, which censors vigorous disagreement? Can it be that the Beltway believes that doing business as usual a little better than usual is acceptable?

Apparently so.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

The takeover of the country was in the midst of being accomplished. Reagan had been deified, 1st Bush had initiated the the second phase of the humiliation of the left (remember: Dukakis is a card carrying member of the ACLU). The right wing had assumed it's position of control with great satisfaction, the Gingrich revolution was about to ratchet it up about ten notches, it was all there, in place, they had won the grail. And they were ready to dismantle a hundred years of progressive government. Drown it in a bathtub. One thing, one obstacle that was only a small blip on the radar screen in the late 80's gave them pause and that was the possible entry of Bill Clinton into national politics. Operatives were dispatched to prevent that from happening. They thought of everything and what seemed to work better than Bills philandering was suggesting that a woman would secretly and actually be in charge of our government. This was not a case of the "woman behind the man". This was projected as a woman pushing her newly elected hubby aside and taking over. Who knew that Hillary could be such a useful tool? In 2001, when Bill was running, the snicker of resentment was that he wasn't really the boss. She had morphed into a political psycho-bitch hose beast. Hillary's presence behind Bill was offered up by the propagandists of the right as the virulent reason why you would not ever want to vote for B.C. And he got elected that s.o.b.! How dare he! He stole what was rightfully theirs for the taking. He broke into the middle of the right wing's dynasty. "we interrupt this takeover to bring you this important message": Bill and Hillary Clinton will be in charge nominally until we can figure a way to destroy them. And the left, all it could do was express it's satisfaction in foiling the right's plan by saying nanya, nanya, nya. Bill became our hero even though he was a Republican in action. Fuck, Nixon was more liberal than BS. (more creepy too) So in the mean time, the "Hillary is a hose beast" meme stayed with us and it's flame has been fanned. She represents the dark horror of "if women ruled the world". She was absolutely right to claim that there was a vast right wing conspiracy. There was and always will be. The Clintons made the mistake of getting in the way. Now here is the question I would like answered: does Hillary care? and what does she truly care about? I know what Al cares about and I trust him.

I was trying to be clever and channel your erma bombeck post - I was attempting to be funny, but instead I insulted you. There was no memo, and I would never call someone out personally. I should have linked to your post or said *kidding* or something. grrr.

sorry.

"A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Isn't that abundantly clear by now?

Thanks for the note THB. Sorry about suggesting that Hillary has a February, 2008 political fall coming, probably a Tuesday, late morning.

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Al? Are you there? Albert? ++++