Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

I’m torn about Hillary Clinton. For one thing, I don’t buy that her candidacy is DOA the moment she gets nominated (maybe it is in the press, but not the electorate). For some reason, John McCain can post similar “unfavorability” numbers but not be regarded this way by the wise reporters in the beltway. Oh wait, this must be because of some left wing bias they have, right?

When I was campaigning for Wesley Clark, I was approached by a couple at the 4th Avenue Street Fair wearing matching anti-Hillary shirts. It was touching that two people show their love for each other this way. They started ranting at me that the Clark candidacy, and the whole Democratic primary that year was a sham designed for Hillary Clinton to sneak her way to the nomination. I asked how exactly this was supposed to work, they just said, “you’ll see.” I haven’t been able to track these two down to see what went wrong.

When folks on the far right, or even the mainstream right, start frothing at the mouth about her, it can be amusing. What frustrates me is when the mainstream media starts piling on. The latest slap on her is that she is “ambitious.” That’s quite a takedown, since it is so unprecedented to have ambitious people run for high office in this country.

I have no idea if this comes from sexism or just another example of the way these guys become irrational when the name “Clinton” is mentioned.

While I am okay with defending her from this kind of stupidity, she seems determined to infuriate me nonetheless. For example, she and her husband released their financial reports last week. The assets were in a blind trust, but still, it included investments in Wal-Mart and Pfizer. Geez. To her credit, she’s sold the stock back in April. But still…

(By the way, look for the national media to now attack her for being wealthy. Once again, unprecedented for a presidential candidate. Now that Mitt Romney and his $200 million…he’s a man of the people .)

The other thing that bugs me is her reliance on Mark Penn as her political strategist. Penn is the one who can be counted on every election to come up with a new euphamism for the same group of white upper-middle class voters and tell us all why it is critical to capture this novel voting block he has identified. This makes him a genius.

In even numbered years, Penn works for Democratic candidates, in odd numbered years, his interests are elsewhere. Penn is the CEO of Burson-Marstellar Inc, a public relations firm. This raises two questions about Penn. First, does the need for him to keep clients such as Microsoft and Shell Oil happy mean that he tends advise his candidates to stay away from progressive and populist messages? In Clinton’s case, her cautiousness may be more due to the status of being a front runner. But Penn seems to have a knack for pushing for relatively uncontroversial policies and positions (the V-Chip was a result of his poll-testing) that generate press releases but little lasting impact.

What is more disturbing for me is that his firm is involved boasts of handling “labor relations.” According to an article in Salon, a further description of the firms “labor” activities was scrubbed from the site:

…it advertised this specialty and noted the firm’s capacity to confront “Organized Labor’s coordinated campaigns whether they are in conjunction with organizing or contract negotiating.” Not the most graceful wording, but the idea is clear enough.

So, in other words, they are union busters. Wonderful. The silly part is going to be when she shows up at an AFL-CIO convention and her folks will wonder about the bad reception she gets.

She’d probably make a good president (and admitedly far better for labor than any of the Republicans), but it’s this sort of thing that frustrates me about her and a big part of the reason why I am hunting elsewhere for a nominee.