Hillary Clinton is no friend of American workers—so why do they like her?
New Zealanders and Americans are divided by a common language, it seems.
All the reports I read about the US election said that the economy is the number one issue on Americans’ minds. Why, then, did Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton do so well in the Super Tuesday primaries for her party? She has just taken California, I see.
As a Wal-mart board member, Mrs Clinton was quite happy to be anti-union and see jobs outsourced to Red China. That was her position from 1986 to 1992.
By the time she was First Lady, her husband presided over an administration that saw this trend continue in full force, satisfying the technocrats. That was her position from 1993 to 2000.
Today, while Sen. Clinton says Wal-mart no longer represents her beliefs and that she respects the right of workers to unionize, she still took $20,000 in campaign contributions from Wal-mart. That is her position in 2008.
Add the 2004 joke she made about Mahatma Gandhi being some guy who pumps gas in St Louis, and it’s plain to see that Sen. Clinton is no friend of the American worker. She spent only a year working with a non-profit—certainly her record is not as grand as she would like voters to think.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton thinks along élitist lines and that is the one consistent position she has had throughout her life. Watch any speech she gives: she thinks she’s better than you.
If it’s about the economy, stupid, to borrow a 1990s phrase, then she would be the last person whom I would associate as being a friend of the American worker.
Or of any worker.
Sorry, Democrats, this guy sitting in New Zealand just doesn’t get it.
Mind you, if she gets her party’s nomination, this sure is ammo for the Republicans to use.
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Ah, I believe that it has to do with a couple of things. The first is that the Democratic primaries seem to be splitting very nicely along gender and race lines, which either means that it's actually the identity and not the economy or that both candidates are so equally well qualified that all that is left to decide between them is this superficial stuff.
The second factor is that Obama does not seem, so far at least, to have anything more to offer working classes than Clinton does, and so it seems, again, to be defaulting to the gender and race issue, rather than the economy (or any other issue). I feel strongly that if Clinton is running against McCain in the general election, she will have a very difficult time winning the working class and rural voters. Can Obama do better among those voters? I don't know, but it's possible with his "hope" and "change" message he can.
I had this very suspicion, GinBaby, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough writing about it outside the US. I have heard that (generally) female and Hispanic voters prefer Sen. Clinton, young and black voters prefer Sen. Obama. That leaves old Caucasian and Asian men unaccounted for!
You are right that Obama has not outlined why he is different from Clinton for the working class. I assumed it would be a case of “better the man who might be for us than the woman who definitely isn’t”.
I am glad you mentioned the experience because both senators are fairly evenly matched: 12 years in elected office for Obama, eight for Clinton.
There is also a theory that goes like this: more people will say they are for Obama in polls to not appear racist, as it is more widely believed that there is no gender-based ceiling any more—thanks in part to Sen. Clinton herself. (The fact she is the only female in this race suggests otherwise!)
Behind the curtain, however, voters may think again. The California gap (13 per cent at this point, with 72 per cent counted—it has been narrowing for the last four hours) is an example: polls had showed that Obama would either take the state or come within a few per cent. It is not the first time this has happened during the primaries and it is, if the theory is right, worrying.
Down here, the incumbent prime minister and her predecessor are women, so gender means little. I may be seeing this race through those eyes: once we take away considerations of gender, as we would do here normally, Sen. Clinton has one fewer superficial quality. She just becomes a white, 60-something politician. Obama, however, still has his colour (and relative youth) as part of his identity.
It’s not pleasing to know that race comes into it, but I suspect it would down here, too, especially for blacks and Asians, less so for native Māori who (technically and legally, but not in practice) have joint sovereignty.
What I now wonder is whether Hispanic voters are pro-Clinton or are they merely anti-black. I understand there is some tension between Hispanic and black groups in certain parts of the United States?
Yes, there is tension between Hispanics and blacks. I don't know that much about the situation in California, but I know it exists in several other areas. I hate to think that's what is driving their vote, but it could well be.
That's interesting about people reporting votes for Obama and then actually voting for Clinton--I hadn't realized that was going on. I really wish these factors weren't having any influence. From the women leaders we already do have experience of, I can't see that having a woman in office is going to be automatically great for women. That doesn't mean Clinton couldn't do a fine job of being president, it just means that I don't understand why women would vote for her on the basis of her being a woman. Maybe it is just the old idea of breaking the glass ceiling, but surely there are better ways (and better candidates, someday) to do that. Indeed, I have wondered on occasion if Hillary is not so divisive that it might make things temporarily worse.
Time will tell, I guess.
I completely agree with you about having women in office. Gender should not make any difference; it should be about who is best suited to the job. I have some issues with Hillary Clinton, as you might be able to tell from this blog, but if a man were to hold the same opinions and exhibit the same character, I would have the same problems. The glass ceiling should be shattered and I agree there are better ways than voting in someone just because of her gender.
It will take a while, however. The way Washington (indeed, most nations’) politics are—biased against women at every level—means that we were plain lucky this time even to have one woman in the running. Until the established way of thinking disappears and the male-biased Congress and Senate change their approaches, the glass ceiling will, quite wrongly, remain mostly in place.