Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Hilary Hires Daou

Peter Daou is one hell of an asset to the left blogistan and I wish him well. Clinton couldn't have picked a better person. Too bad Clinton herself is wrong, wrong, wrong for America and Peter has a lot of work ahead of him as Norman Soloman accurately blasts Hillary as anti-progressive:

But the people who "do consider Hillary progressive" could mostly be divided into two categories - those who are Fox News-attuned enough to believe any non-Republican is a far leftist, and those who are left-leaning but don't realize how viciously opportunistic Sen. Clinton has been. Today, in keeping with her political character, she welcomes the fund-raising support of reactionary media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Unfortunately, the kind of confusion that sees Hillary Clinton as progressive is apt to get a boost from her appearance at a conference with avowedly progressive sponsorship - particularly because the person in the best position to dispel such confusion is not on the program. The "Take Back America" schedule set aside half an hour for a speech from Clinton but not a minute for any words from Jonathan Tasini, the longtime union activist who's running - on an anti-war and all-around progressive platform - against Clinton in this year's Democratic primary for senator from New York.

It's sad to see that the progressive conference has excluded from the podium the vigorous primary challenger Tasini while featuring a speaker who has stood against the progressive agenda consistently for more than a decade on issues ranging from NAFTA to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Tasini points out that Hillary Clinton remains for the war in Iraq, for so-called "free trade" agreements and for the death penalty. She supported the notorious 2001 bankruptcy bill, "has never been for single-payer health insurance" and has worked hard to undermine a host of other progressive positions.

In the interests of truth-in-labeling, shouldn't Hillary Clinton be described as anti-progressive?

This isn't to say that Hillary doesn't have some truly progressive platforms such as The Privacy Bill Of Rights but how far is she willing to go in defining what that privacy is and how it pans out in that peice of legislation? It's gotta be more than protecting Americans from being spied on from a renegade Bush Administration or profit-seeking multinational corporations because, when I think of privacy, I think of total privacy and such issues as abortion and gay marriage are privacy issues specifically for the Americans it involves. Is she going to go that far or will she toss feminists, humanists, socialists, and the homosexual community under the bus if they come between her and electability? That remains to be seen.

There's also the issue about her grandstanding over the Grand Theft Auto "Hot Coffee" debacle where she felt is was prudent and necessary to follow Joe Lieberman's lead and blow another $90 Million into studying violent video games. Apparently $50 video games are more important than spending that money to medically insure all New York residents, especially when the gaming industry has no lobbiests yet takes alot of attention and disposable income from the 18-34 age demographic that the Hollywood entertainment industry (which has no shortage of lobbiests and owns the MSM) would love to have back in their pockets. Since Clinton herself, Take-Two Interactive, and the ESRB are all based in NYC, I doubt that her grandstanding and demogoguery was purely coincidental nor was it totally altruistic.