Hillary Clinton in The Contenders
On Civil Rights:
Compiled “Handbook on Legal Rights for Arkansas Women”
Hillary Clinton has taken hits for her early writings on children’s legal rights’ for her activism in women’s issues (she compiled three editions of a Handbook on Legal Rights for
Arkansas Women), and most spectacularly for the failure of her healthcare effort. Media misogynists hold nothing back: the attacks on the
First Lady have always been personal and vicious, and for years they wouldn’t let up.
Her looks, her parenting skills, her sexuality, even her daughters’ teeth were deemed acceptable targets for right-wing talk radio and the press. To this date there are scores of Hillary Clinton websites, mostly negative.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 37
Nov 11, 2007
On Foreign Policy:
2001 speech to AIPAC pledges money for Israeli military
On a visit to Gaza City in 1998, Hillary met with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his wife and declared, well ahead of the official line from the White House, her support for a Palestinian state.
Her husband’s spokesperson had to distance him from her comment.As a senator, however, one of her first major speeches was to AIPAC, the Israeli lobby group where she pledged to work to send more money, not for peacekeeping, or to both sides, but for
Israel’s military. (She’s spoken to AIPAC many times since.)
On the fortieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza, Clinton joined the rest of the
Senate in sending a message of congratulations and support to the Israeli government. No encouraging message went to the Palestinians still enduring occupation.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 34
Nov 11, 2007
On Free Trade:
Criticized trade pacts for weak labor standards
Now courting labor and the environmentalist crowd, Hillary Clinton has come out against a trade pact with South Korea, but as senator, she has voted in support of free trade pacts with Oman, Chile and Singapore, even though she criticized them for what
she said was their weak enforcement of international labor standards. In fact, she’s voted for every trade agreement that has come before her except CAFTA, the Central American version of NAFTA, the pact the public has heard the most about.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 17
Nov 11, 2007
On Government Reform:
HILL-PAC is one of politics biggest money-raisers
Since she entered the senate in 2001, no senator has raised more money than Clinton has--$51.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Her personal political action committee,
HILL-PAC, is one of the biggest money-raisers and spenders in the business. For her 2008 presidential bid, she set a goal of $100 million raised through the primaries. To reach her target, she’s decided to forgo public financing, just as Bush did in
2000 and 2004.
While Barack Obama has decided to reject donations from political action committees and lobbyists, Hillary has embraced the politics of the Penthouse Party. Raising money in the suites, she hopes to send her
campaign workers out to flood the streets, and in most primaries to date she’s doing just that. In early June 2007, the Clinton campaign had more paid workers in New Hampshire, 54, than every other Democrat combined.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 21
Nov 11, 2007
On Government Reform:
Change system from the inside, not from the outside
“Outside-in” activism wasn’t Hillary’s way. The popular guru of “people power” organizing, Saul Alinsky, was a Chicago man [and Hillary met him & studied with him.] Hillary chose to write a college paper on a group inspired by Alinsky--the
Community Action Program. After studying the group for weeks, she came away unimpressed. “[Alinsky] believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn’t,” she wrote bluntly in “Living History.”
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 24-26
Nov 11, 2007
On Homeland Security:
2001: Called for wrath on those who attacked America on 9/11
Within hours of two planes crashing into two New York towers on 9/11/2001, Hillary Clinton’s closest advisor, Bill, urged her to come out strong. It was he who encouraged her to show that she had the requisite boldness and guts to lead the nation and
protect her people. The very next day, Hillary delivered a call to arms that hailed “wrath” on those who harbored terrorists. While others were modeling a different style of leadership by holding firm for global cooperation, criminal prosecution, and a
reassertion, rather than a shedding of international jurisprudence, Clinton channeled Thatcher, Britain’s “Iron Lady,” and delivered a bombastic speech in which she described the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as an “attack on
America.” Clinton called for punishment for those responsible, the hijackers, and their ilk and vowed that any country that chose to harbor terrorists and “in any way aid or comfort them whatsoever will now face the wrath of our country.”
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 18-19
Nov 11, 2007
On Principles & Values:
An anti-agitator; never sought changing system from outside
The job Hillary has signed up for is to win her party’s nomination--and then the country--while keeping the party status quo mostly in place. Clinton is seeking the nomination without a record of dissent from
Bush on the use of force to solve problems abroad. Looking towards the general election, she’s counting on winning it the same old way, running a big-budget, cut-throat campaign, financed by all the usual suspects.
Hillary’s task is to dress her establishment-self up in just enough rebel’s clothing to pacify the critics before the primary, and then win over enough alienated voters in November--probably by persuading them that she’ll change some things, but not too
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 24-26
Nov 11, 2007
On Principles & Values:
Cultivates grassroots groups & “grass-top” leaders
Clinton’s field organizing in the states, early on, has been stellar: monied, methodical, and smart. Her team makes a habit of plugging into grassroots groups like ACORN (whose support has been indispensable to her in New York) as well as to what she
calls “grass-tops”--community leaders and local legislators. In N.H., [a pundit] described Clinton’s campaign as “flawless,” the only risk being that there’s little room left for the kind of spontaneity that keeps volunteers excited. In Nevada, every
candidate is lobbying hard for the kind of influential “grass-top” endorsements that have the power to turn party faithful out to the caucus. By mid-July 2007, it was hard to find a single Democratic legislator in Nevada,
Iowa, or Hew Hampshire who hadn’t received a call or visit from the woman-who-would-be president.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 29-30
Nov 11, 2007
On War & Peace:
Called war on terror “Bush’s war” but has played active role
[After 9/11], Clinton called for punishment for those responsible, the hijackers, and their ilk and vowed that any country that chose to harbor terrorists and “in any way aid or comfort them whatsoever will now face the wrath of our country.”
Bush apparently liked what he heard. He echoed her language and issued an almost identical threat, eight days later, in his address to Congress.
On the campaign trail, and especially in television debates,
Clinton is at pains to frame the so-called war on terror as “Bush’s war,” but she’s had an active part in it. It isn’t as if her 9/11 speech was an exception. Clinton supported Bush’s invasion and bombardment of Afghanistan. She voted for the USA PATRIOT
Act, which gave the government new unconstitutional tools of search and seizure even as federal agents were sweeping thousands of innocent civilians off the streets of US cities, notably in New York.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 18-19
Nov 11, 2007
On War & Peace:
2002: Accepted connection between Saddam & Al Qaeda
When the US-led invasion of Iraq lay in the balance, pending a vote in Congress, Hillary rose in the Democrat-controlled Senate and voted to give the president the authority he sought to decide to attack.But Clinton not only gave Bush and
Cheney her vote, she embraced their argument, saying that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had “worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stocks... and his nuclear program.”
Alone among Democratic Senators, she accused Iraq’s leader of giving “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.” That link, so shamelessly pushed by the
Bush administration, was always doubted by most in so-called “intelligence”--and most Democrats, not to mention war critics. It was later publicly debunked as false.
Source: The Contenders, by Laura Flanders, p. 19
Nov 11, 2007