Big Money Hillary?
Aye yi yi.
Let's be frank: These people are whores. As in the case of Clinton, they say one thing at the Take America Back conference, but then are "on the phone with Fortune - and her tone was far more measured." Whether you support business over labor or vice verse, there's no denying the duplicity and double-speak needed to run a Presidential campaign--for those on either side of the party aisle.
But still, it's important to keep your eyes open for the least whorish option. And as the Fortune article says, "Democrat John Edwards, who offers sharp-edged populism, is a tougher sell to business. But Clinton and Obama view CEO support as a key part of their crossover appeal." They have a relevant link to Edwards' strategy here. It's also heartening to see that of Edwards' major corporation donors, one is Costco--a business known for its good treatment of workers, hefty benefits, and a long-time Democrat CEO--while another is Starbucks, which despite its annoying ubiquity is actually quite a good place to work, apparently.
Edwards, of course, is a millionaire trial lawyer and hedge fund investor (nothing necessarily wrong with either of those, per se), and it's laughable to think that he has much of anything to do anymore, on a purely class-based level, with impoverished and working-class Americans. But we have to accept the reality that the Presidential race is a millionaire's club, and as it stands in America the poor have to be represented, in the last instance, by the rich. (Indeed, this is probably their best chance at real social improvement.) I've said it before and I'll say it again--Edwards in '08. Let me just state, though, that an Edwards presidency is not enough and that I would consider it only a first step in moving towards a more progressive agenda in this country.
Opensecrets.org, the official website of the Center for Responsive Politics, will be a good resource in the coming year.
The Hillary pic is via David Sirota.
posted by to scranton at 2:29 AM
9 Comments:
Wah wah political determinism. This is a very simplistic view of things. We're all whores in your perspective.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by political determinism here.
Are you and John Liberty in Europe yet?
Political determinism doesn't really mean anything, but I'm sick of hearing this kind of complaining as if it's a new thing. How do you think Bill Clinton got elected? Going back, have you ever studied the way machine politics got FDR and Truman into the White House? They're all whores, by your definition. What is a whore, anyway?
I think the problem that Scantron points out is not that this is an old or new problem -- Austin is right that dirty politics and "determinism" is as old as the Greeks (Scantron, fact check me on that) -- but that Hillary is engaging in an egregious doublespeak. On one hand, she goes to TBA and rallies the nutroots and labor unions, but behind the scenes, she is taking millions money from corporations that have damaged labor unions across the country. She's heavily in favor of outsourcing as well -- as is seen by her courtship with Indian tech giants -- another means of ramping up global corporate power.
We shouldn't dismiss this argument simply because the saintly FDR and Truman "did it too"; this is something that seriously plagues our electoral politics. To get elected in America, one has to cater to the upper echelon of wealth and corporate power -- be it Democrat or Republican. But our Hillary tries to deny that in front of whatever audiences she is in front of at the time.
Scantron answer my facebook message
If they are all whores (which I am pretty sure of), I hope that they all get nasty STDs
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Curry is mostly right in his characterization of my position. I was not pointing out anything new in the position of Hillary Clinton; I'm sure we would all scoff knowingly at Fortune's headline "Business Loves Hillary! (Who Knew?)" Well, um, *I* knew, for one, or at least I knew it was a possibility.
By my definition, we are not all, in fact, whores. In saying that I'm assuming that *we* do not routinely enter into what are ostensibly non-economic, cooperative partnerships with people, claiming we will attempt to represent even-handedly their views and desires, only to turn around and engage in trade-offs with vested interests on the basis of what can only be called "economic" transactions. If, recognizing the history of such practices dating back to FDR, we choose to accept them despite their obvious incompatibility with certain principles of democratic representation, we ought to ready ourselves for some level of cognitive dissonance about the justice of the American political system. If you think I'm being unrealistic and unprescriptive about the current state of affairs, I readily advocate publicly funded elections as a remedy to these woes.
However, the real point of my post (the glaring graphic of Hillary notwithstanding) was that despite my cynical views on Hillary and other Democrats, others, particularly John Edwards, might actually represent a lesser -- even significantly diminished -- whorish position. This prospect excites me and perhaps it does some of you, too.
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