Hillary Clinton

Who's Calling the Shots Now: The Death of American Empire

dlindorff — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:59:11 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

It may not be obvious today, and certainly it’s not how the corporate media reported it, but future historians are likely to look back at March 13, 2009 as the day that American imperialism began it’s inexorable decline. That’s the day that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced that his country was “worried” about its holdings of over $1 trillion in US treasury securities, and warned that he wanted the US to assure China that it would maintain its good credit and “honor its promises” and “maintain the safety of China’s assets.”

There is no way that the US can accommodate Premier Wen and still finance and operate a global military system with over 1000 overseas bases, massive aircraft carrier battle groups, and with hundreds of thousands of men and women armed to the teeth with the latest high-tech military hardware, not to mention fight endless wars on the far side of the globe.

What China is doing is pulling the rug out from under America’s six decades of global military dominance. It is no coincidence that the weekend before Wen’s statement, Chinese naval vessels aggressively harassed a US intelligence ship, the Impeccable, that was operating in the South China Sea.

The implied threat in Wen’s seemingly mild comment was that if the US doesn’t trim its deficit spending dramatically, and get its economic house in order—which means dramatically reducing the American standard of living, and reducing wasteful spending of its military, China will simply cut back on its funding of the US deficit, in the form of buying US Treasury issues, an act which would cause the collapse of the US dollar and what’s left of the US economy.

Now this decline of the US as an economic and military power is not going to be an overnight thing, because China needs to keep selling manufactured goods to the US market—the largest in the world—and in order to do that, it needs to keep recycling dollars spent on Chinese goods back into the US, which to date has meant buying US debt issues.

But there are other ways to recycle dollars back to the US, most notably by investing in actual US assets. To date, China has done this cautiously, in part to avoid arousing political concern in the US. Typically China, when it has purchased shares of US companies, has done so by buying small minority stakes, as it did in the case of the Blackstone Group, a private equity investment firm. But if China were to decide to stop funding America’s massive deficit, this could change. It could decide to just let the dollar slide, and take advantage of the slumping value of US assets to start buying the US up on the cheap.

There is already talk of Chinese auto companies buying up General Motors and Chrysler, and why not? They could have those companies, not to mention most of the national banks, for a song now. But China wouldn’t have to limit itself—nor would it—to buying up dying companies. It could also buy entities like General Electric, Boeing and IBM, or it could buy agricultural assets and mines—or oil companies and oil reserves.

In fact, China has been using its vast trade-surplus-fueled currency reserves of dollars and Euros to lock up at cheap prices on long forward contracts for oil and other critical commodities. This is just the beginning. (It would be ironic and incredibly foolish if the US, which has spent several hundred billion dollars in borrowed money, and as much as $3 trillion if interest costs are factored in, on conquering and controlling Iraq, really did so to gain control of oil, since China has accomplished the same thing peacefully for a small fraction of that cost, by just buying forward supply contracts.)

It is likely that India, whose economy is doing even better than China these days, will do much the same thing.

The end result will be a vast permanent weakening of America, as its economy becomes increasingly subservient to the interests of its new owners.

There is a delicious irony here, since the US, for decades, has done precisely this kind of thing around the world to developing nations, buying up their industries and their resources, and manipulating and controlling their political systems, to its own advantage, always with the backing, or threatened use, of America’s powerful military. Now the once-might US (remember Dick Cheney’s “world’s lone superpower” and George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order”?) is reduced to pleading with China to leave its warships alone, and to shamelessly begging, as Hillary Clinton did in one of her first public statements as secretary of state, for China to “keep buying” US Treasuries.

From the point of view of the majority of the world’s people, who have lived for too long under the American jackboot, this is all a good thing. But forcing the new “Rome” to retreat back within its own borders will also be good for us Americans, who have had to pay for all those military adventures in the name of empire and corporate profits over the years with our blood and taxes.

The problem, for us, however, is that all this military and economic comeuppance will also be accompanied by a dose of reality about our own real living standard. As long as China, India and the oil-producing states were willing to just keep buying American government securities to finance our multi-generational spending binge, it was possible for the US government to keep us citizens all fat and happy by creating a series of bubble economies, pushing up our salaries and the value of our homes to absurd levels, while interest rates remained comfortably low and the US dollar, as the world’s reserve currency, remained strong enough for us to continue to buy goods, the production of which was increasingly being moved overseas.

Suddenly, however, in one brief speech, Chinese Premier Wen has made it clear that the US is no longer calling the shots. Nobody’s saying it out loud here in America, but behind the scenes, it’s clear that increasingly US economic policy is going henceforth to be dictated by governments in places like Bejing, Tokyo, New Delhi and Brazilia. Those same places will also increasingly be telling us where and even if we can use our once mighty military forces.

Given our post-WWII history, that can’t be a bad thing.
_______________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He spent five years reporting on China and Hong Kong for Business Week magazine in the 1990s and is author, most recently, of “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy, But That’s Not the Biggest Scandal

dlindorff — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:32:55 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

A new congressional report is belatedly confirming what many have
long known: that the White House and in particular then White House
Counsel Alberto Gonzales, lied to Congress in 2004 when he told them
the Bush administration was not repeatedly warned by the CIA not to
make the claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger.

What is astonishing about this report,
which documents that the CIA at least four times tried to prevent Bush
and other top officials from presenting that lie to Congress and the
American public in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, is not that it
documents what has long been known, but that Congress and the corporate
media are still pretending that the claim itself was an acceptable
justification for launching a war.

Set aside for the moment the fact that the claim that Saddam
Hussein had tried to buy uranium ore (so-called yellowcake) from the
desert nation of Niger was based upon forged documents which were
almost certainly the work of Defense Department hacks in the
Rumsfeld/Cheney-created Office of Special Plans (see my book The Case for Impeachment).
Even if this fraudulent deal had been real, how on earth could it have
been used as it was by President Bush and Vice President Cheney to
justify an invasion of Iraq?

Consider that what was being asserted was that Iraq had attempted
(not even succeeded!) to buy 400 tons of uranium ore. This claim was
used by President Bush, in his Jan. 20, 2003 State of the Union
address, to argue that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program. But in the case of a country that does not have a nuclear weapon, a program is years away, perhaps a decade or more away, from the reality of having a usable weapon.

As we have seen in the case of Iran, which has been refining
uranium ore now for at least five years, the mere fact of possessing
uranium ore, and even of having a quantity of gas centrifuges to refine
out the minute quantities of the fissionable isotope U-235 are only the
first and, technologically speaking, the easiest, steps towards
actually constructing a bomb. (Experts say that after all this time,
even if it is actually trying to build a nuclear bomb, which the
Iranian government denies, the country remains years from that alleged
goal.)

If Bush and Cheney had not been lying through their teeth, and
Saddam had actually been buying yellowcake for the purpose of making a
nuke weapon, he would still have had to obtain large numbers of
centrifuges, would have had to power them up and run them for years,
and would have then had to obtain the technology to build and test a
bomb, none of which steps he was even alleged to have taken.

Yet Bush was claiming that there was an imminent threat to
America posed by Saddam Hussein’s yellowcake purchase effort, and that
an invasion had to be launched almost immediately. He used the term
imminent because that is the legal requirement in the UN Charter, to
which the US is a signatory and which is based upon the Nuremberg
Charter established at the end of the Second World War. It states that
no nation may invade another nation unless that nation poses an
imminent threat to the would-be invader.

The yellowcake story, now definitively shown to have been a
deliberate lie, even if true, could not have constituted such an
imminent threat.

Yet not once has this key point been addressed by any member of
Congress who voted to authorize an invasion. Nor does the point get
mentioned in mainstream journalistic reports on the matter.

Average Americans, nearly half of whom reportedly believe that the
earth was formed just 6000 years ago and a fair proportion of whom
believe that the sun revolves around the earth, might be excused for
not understanding this point, but clearly intelligent members of
Congress like former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry
and future secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who both claim they
might not have voted for war “had they had known then what they know
now,” are themselves caught in a lie.

They and other war backers clearly knew in 2002 and 2003 that the
yellowcake story, even if true, was no justification for war. So did
editors and reporters (like Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of the New
York Times, for example).

I have yet to see a single US corporate media outlet explain that
the yellowcake story was simply never a justification for war. It will
probably never happen, and yet many analysts have said it was that
claim by Bush, Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and
others (remember her dark warnings about not wanting a “smoking gun” to
be a “mushroom cloud”?), more than any other that stampeded the nation
into a war that has cost over $1 trillion over five years, and over
4000 US lives and one million innocent Iraqi lives.

Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld and others in the outgoing
administration should all be impeached, tried and jailed for their
lying and treason in embroiling the US in the pointless and criminal
Iraq War, with the yellowcake story a key element in any indictments.
But there needs to be some kind of reckoning too, for the willful
ignorance and deceit on the part of the majority of Congress and of the
press in pretending that an alleged scheme to buy uranium ore was a
justification for launching a war of aggression, which five years on,
is still continuing.

The American people themselves also need to reflect deeply, not
just on how ill served we are by our elected officials and by our
media, but on how gullible we have become, and how ignorant.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2008 and
now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/38360';
digg_title = "White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy, But That’s Not the Biggest Scandal";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\nA new congressional report is belatedly confirming what many have long known: that the White House and in particular then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, lied to Congress in 2004 when he told them the Bush administration was not repeatedly warned by the CIA not to make the claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger.\r\n\r\n What is astonishing about this report, which documents that the CIA at least four times tried to prevent Bush and other top officials from presenting that lie to Congress and the American public in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, is not that it documents what has long been known, but that Congress and the corporate media are still pretending that the claim itself was an acceptable justification for launching a war.";
digg_skin = 'standard';

Dear Caroline: Say it on Youtube

Bob Fertik — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:14:08 -0500

As a lifelong New Yorker, I have mixed feelings about Caroline Kennedy's desire to represent me in the U.S. Senate.

On the positive side, obviously her father and her uncle gave their lives for our country, and I am a child of that era so that counts for me. She has lived her entire life in a fishbowl, yet became a person of principle and character, in both her public and private lives. She wrote two books on the Constitution and worked to improve New York City schools. At a time when virtually the entire American establishment - political, military, media, financial - is corrupt, she appears untainted.

But appearances can be deceiving. Kennedy's first purely political move was hiring consultant Josh Isay, whose clients include Joe Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu, two of the strongest supporters of the disastrous invasion of Iraq. That awful hire quickly cost her the support of Kos; Jane Hamsher then found a lying Isay-Lieberman ad against Ned Lamont which promised to bring our troops home from Iraq, shortly before Lieberman called for more troops.

Kennedy's personnel decisions are crucial because her positions on the issues are a mystery. As Jane Hamsher writes,

It doesn't seem to have occurred to her that letting people know where she stands on important issues of the day should matter, or that she should have to subject herself to public questioning. At best it seems like a political afterthought -- because she hasn't troubled herself to do so.

But even if she adopts progressive positions on all the issues, how can she possibly represent me or my fellow 20 million New Yorkers? She comes from a rich dynastic family, was a national celebrity from birth, and never had to struggle to get a job or pay a bill in her life.

Sure FDR was rich and did a pretty good job. But he still had to work his way up the political ladder by fighting for key Democratic constituencies like labor unions. Caroline wants to come in at the top without having fought tough political battles for anyone.

That's a tough one for me to swallow, especially now when our fundamental economic and political structures are coming undone, thanks to the corrupt actions of America's elites, including Democratic elites.

The last 8 years have been a litmus test for Democrats. When George Bush stole the election in Florida in 2000, activists around the country took to the streets - but influential Democrats like Caroline Kennedy said nothing. When George Bush marched the nation to war in Iraq on the basis of lies in 2003, millions of Americans took to the streets - but influential Democrats like Caroline Kennedy said nothing. When George Bush's Iraq lies were exposed in 2005, along with his dictatorial regime of torture and wiretapping, millions of Americans called for impeachment - but influential Democrats like Caroline Kennedy said nothing.

Why should Caroline Kennedy be rewarded for doing nothing over the past 8 years about the most important issues we faced as a nation?

Yesterday, Gov. David Paterson said of their conversation: "She'd like at some point to sit down and tell me what she thinks her qualifications are." Here's my suggestion: rather than having a private tea with our accidental governor, why doesn't Caroline sit down in front of a camera and tell all 20 million New Yorkers what she thinks her qualifications are, and put it up on Youtube so we all can judge? And then she should invite and answer questions from all New Yorkers, just as President-elect Obama is doing at change.gov.

If we like her answers, New Yorkers are likely to support her. But if we don't, we'll thank her for her interest and consider other influential Democrats who demonstrated their commitment to fighting for us over the past 8 years, like Liz Holtzman.

Liz Holtzman for Senate

davidswanson — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:48:06 -0500

New York State could soon be represented in the U.S. Senate by a woman with more respect for and understanding of democratic representation, the Constitution, and the rule of law than we've grown accustomed to finding in Washington, D.C., a woman who has done more to oppose the abuses of power of the Bush administration than have most current members of the House or Senate.

Elizabeth Holtzman has asked the Governor of New York, David Paterson, to consider appointing her to fill a seat that may be vacated by Senator Hillary Clinton, whom President elect Obama intends to nominate for Secretary of State. I encourage you to ask everyone you know in the state of New York to contact the Governor and ask him to choose Liz.

Liz Holtzman served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the youngest woman elected to Congress, where she quickly took a leading role in the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. She served two terms as the first woman elected District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn) and served as the first woman elected New York City Comptroller.

Before any of that, she co-founded Law Students Civil Rights Research Council, which recruited law students to work in the civil rights movement in the South. In 1963 she worked for a civil rights lawyer in Georgia. In 1964 she interned for the NAACP and helped write a brief on the first anti-miscegenation case.

Holtzman entered Congress in 1973 and took a seat on the House Judiciary Committee, just in time to pursue the impeachment of a lawless president. She gained national attention for her work on that impeachment, and for her questioning of President Gerald Ford about his pardoning of Nixon. She then gained international attention by exposing the presence of Nazi war criminals in the United States and forcing the creation of a special Justice Department unit to bring them to justice. Holtzman led committee work and passed legislation on a wide range of issues in Congress, but in the area of justice alone it is worth noting that she co-authored the special prosecutor law and brought a lawsuit challenging Nixon's unauthorized bombing of Cambodia.

Serving as District Attorney in Brooklyn from 1982 to 1989, Holtzman played a key role in ending racial discrimination in jury selection, led the effort to reform New York's rape and child molestation laws, persuaded the Court of Appeals to allow prosecution for marital rape, and created the first environmental crimes bureau in the state.

I didn't know Liz for most of this history, but I can understand how she got so much done everywhere she went, because I have seen her advocacy work during the Bush-Cheney era. She has been one of the most articulate, authoritative, persuasive, and energizing speakers, writers, and agitators against warrantless spying, torture, the occupation of Iraq, and the erosion of the rule of law in our federal government. In 2006, she published, together with Cynthia Cooper, "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens." Whether or not you want Bush impeached, this book is worth reading for a refreshingly different view of the law and the balance of power in our government. Here's a video clip of Liz testifying in Congress on this topic earlier this year: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dohgkV53tBQ

If you would like to see her in the United States Senate, please send your comments and your name and New York address to Governor David A. Paterson, State Capitol, Albany, NY 12224, or call 518-474-8390 or Email at http://161.11.121.121/govemail

Hillary and Bill Clinton Rock for Obama!

Bob Fertik — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:22:25 -0400

Hillary: "With eyes firmly fixed on the future, and in the spirit of unity with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let's declare together with one voice right here, right now that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president. I move that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by this convention by acclamation as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States."

And with that, Barack Obama became the first African American in American history to be chosen as the nominee of a major party. It's impossible to find the words to describe how amazing that is. Watch the video:

Bill: "Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world. Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States."

What a night!!!

It's Hillary's Night!

Bob Fertik — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:03:33 -0400

For weeks, we've heard endless lying pundits insist Hillary Clinton would undermine Barack Obama. Of course Clinton proved them wrong in June when she graciously ended her race and enthusiastically endorsed Obama. And she proved them wrong again tonight.

Hillary introduced the widow of Arkansas Democratic Chair Bill Gwatney, who was recently murdered in his office. And she introduced the son of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who recently died of an aneurysm. The two survivors sat next to Bill Clinton. What a classy family!

Then she turned to policy issues and ripped the Bush Administration to shreds while praising Obama to the rafters. The convention is loving every second.

You go, Hillary Clinton!

More Blood Money from Our Democratic Congress and Democratic Presidential Candidate

dlindorff — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:49:05 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Laid-off American workers will be getting temporary extended
benefits as the nation sinks into recession, thanks to Congressional
Democrats, who cleverly tacked a funding provision onto a bill giving
the president all the money he asked for (and then some) to fund the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars on out through next June. Veterans of the
Iraq War will also be getting tuition benefits equal to the full cost
of in-state public college tuition plus $1000 a year for books and
supplies.

When workers pick up those unemployment checks from their state
Department of Labor offices, though, they should see them as dripping
blood. Those checks have been bought with the blood of American men and
women in uniform who have been sent over and over into harm’s way in
those two countries in misbegotten and criminal adventures that have
nothing to do with defending America and everything to do with boosting
the profits of oil companies and defense contractors, and with getting
Bush re-elected and Republicans elected.

Iraq Vets, too, should not
overlook the blood on their VA education benefits checks, because their
tuition will be paid by the blood of active-duty comrades still left
stranded in battle zones overseas.

It didn’t have to be like this.

For generations, Congress has voted supplemental funding for
unemployment benefits to be extended during economic downturns—not
always willingly, but always eventually, following enough pressure from
workers and the labor movement.

For generations, too, Congress has voted for education benefits for veterans.

This being an election year, passage of a freestanding supplemental
benefits bill for unemployment insurance and a restoration of decent
education benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans would have
been a sure thing. Even Republicans facing the prospect of re-election
campaigns would have signed on to both measures by Labor Day and the
votes would have been there to override any Bush veto. Neither
measure—both important in themselves and badly needed—had to be tied to
a war-funding bill.

But Democrats in the House and Senate leadership weren’t really
thinking about the plight of the unemployed or the needs of returning
veterans in this case. They were, rather, thinking of a way of putting
some “progressive” window-dressing on a war-funding bill that they
wanted to pass without having to take responsibility for it. Their
objective was to push the whole issue of funding the wars out past
Election Day, in hopes of not having to discuss it in the coming
campaign.

Funding Bush’s and Cheney’s war in Iraq especially has, after all,
become a more and more unpopular and difficult affair for Democrats. In
this last go-round, fully 141 House Democrats voted against further
funding of the war—nearly the same number as voted for it (149). At
first, back in mid-May, the measure didn’t even pass, because
Republicans cleverly joined with the anti-war Democrats in blocking the
measure, forcing Democratic leaders to scramble to round up the votes
to pass a bill the second time around.

Americans clearly don’t want the war to continue, and Democrats
don’t want to have to face the voters, as every member of the House and
a third of the Senate have to do this November, being labeled as war
backers. That’s why they come up with these pathetic excuses like, “I’m
opposed to the war but we have to support the troops.”

Any sentient being in the country by now knows that most of the
long-suffering and abused troops, as polls have shown, think that the
best way to support them is to bring them home immediately. A Zogby
poll of active-duty troops in Iraq taken in 2006 found that 72% wanted
the US out within a year, while one in four wanted all US troops out
immediately. Only one in five supported staying “as long as necessary.”
(With many of those troops on yet another rotation, in some cases their
fifth, those numbers are probably even more in favor of immediate
withdrawal today.) Military experts have also written about how all the
troops in Iraq could be pulled out safely in as little as two weeks’
time. All the Pentagon would need to do is start running a constant
convoy of trucks south to Kuwait, carrying troops and weapons systems.
They could leave the porta-potties, the McDonalds stands, the bowling
alleys, the gyms and the barracks to the Iraqis and then blow up
whatever they didn’t want falling into the wrong hands. It would be
easy and fast. There’s no need for Obama’s proposed 16-month staged
withdrawal, which would just mean more unnecessary deaths and killings.

Democrats in Congress know all this, but congenitally spineless and
devoid of principle, they’re afraid if they don’t fund the war they
could be accused by Republicans of being “soft” on defense—as though
the Iraq War had anything at all to do with protecting America.

And so they have come up with this shameless ruse of attaching a
$95-billion domestic spending package, including unemployment funding
measure and a veterans’ education benefits measure, to a $162-billion
atrocity—a measure that assures more death and destruction in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and more dead and maimed American military personnel.
They’re pretending that they “pulled one over” on Bush by forcing him
to sign an unemployment extension bill and a veterans’ bill, when they
know Republicans would have forced him to sign those anyway, later in
the summer.

The real joke is on the American people, and on those very workers
and veterans who will be receiving the unemployment checks and tuition
reimbursements funded as a result of this duplicitous tactic.

The $162 billion that Congress has voted for the continuation of
the two pointless and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, together
with the money already allocated for the so-called “War on Terror,” is
all borrowed, and is a major contributor to the collapse of the dollar
and to the resulting soaring of the price of oil, electricity and
imported goods. It is thus a major contributor to the credit crisis and
the collapse in the housing market that has pushed the nation into what
may be the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

Furthermore, the blood-money unemployment and tuition checks bought
through his gutless subterfuge by House and Senate Democrats will be
pissed away in no time on higher gas prices spent by workers on
desperate job searches, or on long commutes to distant jobs or commutes
if they are lucky enough to find them. It will be pissed away too for
veteran/students on their commutes to college, and on higher heating
bills for their families at home.

Equally important, the $160 billion wasted in Iraq, along with the
half trillion dollars being wasted every year on military spending for
a military colossus that encircles the globe for no good purpose other
than intimidation of other nations, assures that those Democrats who
control Congress can do nothing of consequence to shore up retirement
funds, to develop a national health program, to improve our dismal
school system, to repair our crumbling infrastructure, or to develop
alternative, non-polluting energy sources that could combat global
warming.

The Democratic Congress has shown itself to be worse than useless.
It is part of the problem. That includes Sen. Barack Obama, who like
Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain, signed onto this
contemptible funding bill.
_______________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

Thank You, Hillary

Bob Fertik — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:11:26 -0400

Thank you, Hillary!

Thank you for making history by nearly becoming the first woman President.

Thank you for inspiring 18 million women and men to vote for the first serious female candidate for President.

Thank you for putting 18 million cracks in the ultimate glass ceiling, so you or another outstanding woman can become President soon.

Thank you for proving to every girl and boy in America that a woman can be President or do anything she wants to do.

That you for proving to every woman and man in the world that an American woman can be President or do anything she wants to do.

And thank you for uniting the Democratic Party behind our extraordinary nominee, Barack Obama.

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States. Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him. And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

Obama returns the love:

"Obviously, I am thrilled and honored to have Senator Clinton's support. But more than that, I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans. Our party and our country are stronger because of the work she has done throughout her life, and I'm a better candidate for having had the privilege of competing with her in this campaign. No one knows better than Senator Clinton how desperately America and the American people need change, and I know she will continue to be in the forefront of that battle this fall and for years to come."

That sure sounds like Unity to me - we're on to Victory in November!!!

Hillary: What Went Wrong

Bob Fertik — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:11:41 -0400

As Hillary Clinton ends her campaign, I can't help but note that she came so incredibly close to being the first woman to be nominated by the Democratic Party, and the first woman President.

Hillary started as the frontrunner because of her fame, her dramatic personal story, her powerful organization and fundraising machine, her very popular husband, and her powerful charisma. So what happened?

As a candidate, she had just a few weaknesses: the Hillary-hate industry, her vote in favor of the Iraq War, and plain old-fashioned sexism.

The Hillary Haters were a powerful force on rightwing TV, radio, and blogs. They got started during the 1992 campaign, and they never went away. They published endless books and spread endless lies. I thought they would be a factor in the Democratic campaign, but I was wrong - they never made a serious dent.

But Hillary's pro-war vote hurt her far more than the pundits are willing to acknowledge. The millions of activists who protested the war before it began are the "base" of the Democratic Party. Hillary could have won our votes, but she made a decision early on to ignore us - and that proved to be a very bad and possibly fatal decision.

I was in Washington DC at the "Take Back America" conference in 2006 when all the candidates gave their first major speeches to progressive voters. It was early in the campaign and no one was in a rush to make up their minds, especially since there was several excellent candidates. So we listened carefully to what each candidate had to say.

Hillary gave a good speech touching on the full list of progressive issues. But when it came to Iraq, she blew it. Unlike John Edwards, who also voted for the war in 2003, she refused to apologize for her vote. Unlike the other candidates, she refused to call for a deadline for bringing our troops home. And finally, she tried to blame Iraq for its problems, which outraged the audience and elicited angry boos. At that precise moment, Hillary lost the anti-war vote forever.

The anti-war vote never coalesced around any other candidate; it split between Kucinich, Edwards, Richardson, Dodd, and Obama. Still, it was a powerful enough force to keep Hillary from winning Iowa, where she came in third. And while she bounced back with a big win in New Hampshire, she lost the "inevitability" factor and GHWB's "Big Mo," momentum. It's safe to say that if Hillary had won Iowa, where anti-war activism was particularly strong, she would have been our nominee.

Finally, there was raw, old-fashioned sexism all over TV (collected video here). That TV sexism forced Hillary to avoid any mention of the actual problem of sexism in society (she was viciously attacked for her Wellesley speech) or show her femininity in any way (she was viciously attacked for a hint of cleavage). TV sexism managed to turn her strongest political asset - being the first viable woman candidate in history, in a country where women are the majority - into a liability.

As her campaign ends, her supporters find the sexism hardest to deal with. I wasn't a Clinton supporter, but I do too. As always, Digby says it better than I ever could:

Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

So I will do what I can to make sure Hillary and all of her supporters get treated with the respect they deserve - and have earned the old-fashioned way, through the hard work of campaigning and winning.

Update 1: Hunter makes a number of good points about Clinton's strategic error of running a safe race as the frontrunner.

I think her early anointing by the media did her campaign a disservice. She campaigned as the frontrunner from the outset, and as a Democratic frontrunner at that, and the age-old Democratic mandate for running campaigns has been one of excruciating timidity. The goal of most recent high-profile elections, the Kerry campaign included, the Gore campaign included, and several dozen other campaigns besides, has not been to win, but to simply avoid losing.

Towards that end, no large issues are addressed with too much passion, and no stances are taken with too much vigor, and for the love of God nobody is made to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. It is playing to the middle writ large, and in crayon, and with big block letters. The goal is to assemble the broadest coalition possible -- by saying nothing that could possibly offend anyone. The premise is to appeal to "independents", and "centrists", and most of all the "undecided", that group of people so uninterested in politics that they cannot fathom the difference between the parties, but who allegedly can be mobilized into action if only you do absolutely nothing that will get them the slightest bit worked up. It is a cynical, wretched excuse for leadership, but more to the point it provides absolutely no room for error: it is an all-defensive strategy. If your opponent is a block of wood, incapable of making any positive plays on their own, you may pull it off; but if your opponent scores any point, you are left unable to answer it.

Hung Up on Hillary?

davidswanson — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:16:22 -0400

There's a new group on the DNC website called Democrats Against Obama. Sometimes the loyalty of party loyalists escapes me.