Not as Bad as Your Regular GOP


First, let's get this out of the way--over at YRHT a couple of weeks ago I played Satan's Advocate (see Nader, Ralph) in a comments thread about the election, and I hope and think it was seen as that. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, I'll definitely vote for her (although I hope people won't be wondering why I'm less than enthused, especially if it shapes up to be Hillary versus McCain).

And I sure as hell don't understand--at all--the sheer batshit insane viciousness directed towards all of the Clintons, from Shuster to Katie Couric to the shrieking wingnut flying monkey chorus. Not that I expect them to show signs of rationality, but they display a particularly primitive hostility, complete with bared teeth and gutteral, sub-verbal utterances...

That said, I can't really say I've EVER been enthused about Bill or Hill. My votes for Bill were always lesser-of-evil concerns; of the two, I'm more impressed by Hillary, but likewise I wouldn't be voting FOR her as much as I'd be voting against her opponent. And, let's face it, that's all either one has ever really promised: an administration that won't be quite as bad as the other party.

Now, to be sure, compared to the last eight years of His Abject Moronness, at least Bill was competent, and again, I think Hillary is even more so, but if you go back and look at Bill's eight years, well...you wonder why wingnuts would be soooooo unremitingly hostile, unless you consider that he basically stole their thunder...well, that and the fact that wingnuts are just in general rabid little lunatics.

I can't think of a single issue during the Clinton administration that a moderate Republican couldn't support wholeheartedly. It's as if their governing principle was to cozy right on up to that faction of the GOP, embrace it, and in doing so, cobble together a bare working majority while ignoring the left.

Lawrence O'Donnell expressed this succinctly, and I've got a strong, strong feeling that both Clintons feel likewise:

"I didn't listen or have to listen to anything on the left while I was working in the Democratic Party -- because the left had nowhere to go."

Oh, and one more thing: it's not like I expect Barak Obama to drift particularly leftward: if anything, his record shows a tendency to do just the opposite. And again, I think the Clintons have been singled out somewhat unfairly by a media a wingnut chorus that's in no small measure purely sadistic...on the other hand, their record speaks volumes, and, for me, it's a record of "a few crumbs is better than no loaf at all," ...but at a certain point you begin to realize that you'll starve just as quickly on crumbs as you will on air...

And heaven knows what awaits the next president, with the freight train of reckoning bearing down on us at full speed. I still wonder/worry that whoever takes office next year will be envious of how easy...Jimmy Carter had it.