2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary: No Need to Prove She's a Populist
http://bluenationreview.com/hillary-no-need-to-prove-shes-a-populist/By Martin Dickinson
Presidential candidates have to prove themselves every day. But the last thing Hillary Clinton should have to prove is her commitment to overcoming economic injustice. So-called progressives who delight in attacking her are trying to sell their craziest idea ever: that she just lately got religion on income opportunity. Not true, folks, not even close.
How do I know? I worked at the Childrens Defense Fund in the 80s and early 90s when Hillary was chair. Anybody who has yet to hear of CDF should check it out. The groups long-term vision is to end child poverty in America. If that doesnt address income inequality, then what does? Hillary was one of CDFs earliest staffers, and by the time I signed up as foundation development officer in the late 80s, she chaired the board.
Werent we out to rectify the unjust distribution of wealth when we advocated for child care support, childrens health insurance and tax relief for low-income families? If not, then how did it happen that visionary Marian Wright Edelman, leader of Dr. Kings Poor Peoples Campaign for economic justice was our founder and president? And why did Hillary chair a board that included Joseph Rauh, labor lawyer and civil liberties attorney, and civil rights legend Dorothy Height, not to mention Donna Shalala, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin and later Secretary of HHS?
When I signed up for CDF, I was a union staffer working on projects like grassroots lobbying for the Family and Medical Leave Act. I sometimes wonder how many of todays more-populist-than-thou Hillary detractors have ever done grassroots lobbying, worked a phone bank or walked a precinct for economic justice. I had, and I was eager to work for Edelman, but knowing zero about Hillary, assumed the First Lady of Arkansas would only be a figurehead chair.
I was wrong.
SNIP
All of which leads me to wonder, when I read headlines like the one recently in The Nation screaming Hillarys Newfound Populism will be Tested Early and Often, whether we now must remind Hillarys detractors of what the late Senator Moynihan once said: You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Martin Dickinson is a career nonprofit executive currently serving as vice president for development of a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group. Before working in nonprofit fund raising, he was an organizer and political staffer for the Service Employees International Union.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)the Bernie crowd because it doesn't fit their narrative.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)that Clinton is, in fact a corporatist.
Do you really think that with those large donations from Wall Street that she owes them nothing?
Think again about how Wall Street is behind a lot of this child poverty.
Only when you realize that these banks, in consort with the World Bank are responsible for the poverty of children, will you come to the conclusion that someone who takes massive amounts of money from said banks will be able to do nothing for the children.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)It is the only nonprofit organization she has ever worked for. (The Clinton Foundation is all about crony capitalism and money laundering.) Hillary serves and is part of the oligarchy. We know this by her record, her contributors, and by the company she keeps.
dirtydickcheney
(242 posts)pnwmom
(108,994 posts)for a year.
After that paid year, she worked there for years as a board member and eventually, while the writer was there in the 80's and 90's, she was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. And she was a hands-on Chair.
I was wrong. Hillary was a frequent presence at headquarters leading board meetings, discussing with staff, and even helping out with development. She took fundraising assignments, and yes, she made her calls.
One of my jobs was to help Marian and Hillary spread our message in philanthropic circles. Our daylong events on the status of poor children were hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation and attracted leaders of all the top New York foundations. It was great to work with Hillary on them. When she spoke, you could tell she had crammed on the advance briefing materials we had sent out. But even more, she brought something extra by describing her work helping poor Arkansas families get access to health care or her advocacy for adolescent pregnancy prevention efforts. Policy ideas for Hillary were always about the real people she came in contact with every day.
Read more: http://bluenationreview.com/hillary-no-need-to-prove-shes-a-populist/#ixzz3uRuGm3q8
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)*disclaimer: note to jury I was referring to the author of the article, not the op.
Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)member of the board. And for a number of years in the eighties and nineties, she was the Chairman of the Board.
Do you know what a Board of Trustees does? It leads an organization. Do you know what the Chair does? It leads the Board.
Yes, she was a paid staffer for a year. But she was an unpaid LEADER for years after that. Here, Dickinson describes the work she did as Chair -- not as the young staffer out of law school:
I was wrong. Hillary was a frequent presence at headquarters leading board meetings, discussing with staff, and even helping out with development. She took fundraising assignments, and yes, she made her calls.'
One of my jobs was to help Marian and Hillary spread our message in philanthropic circles. Our daylong events on the status of poor children were hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation and attracted leaders of all the top New York foundations. It was great to work with Hillary on them. When she spoke, you could tell she had crammed on the advance briefing materials we had sent out. But even more, she brought something extra by describing her work helping poor Arkansas families get access to health care or her advocacy for adolescent pregnancy prevention efforts. Policy ideas for Hillary were always about the real people she came in contact with every day.
Read more: http://bluenationreview.com/hillary-no-need-to-prove-shes-a-populist/#ixzz3uRuGm3q8
Todays_Illusion
(1,209 posts)Now it seems to be a word hurled around as a sub for liberal by the fake third way Democratic and the oxymoron defined left libertarians.
The work populist is not a synonym for liberal, never was, and still isn't.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)populism - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com
www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/populism
Your screen name really is quite fitting, Todays_Illusion. Can't wait to see what you bring tomorrow!
Todays_Illusion
(1,209 posts)to post my opinion, apparently you can only post insults.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Yeah, she's some populist all right.
If she's a populist I'm Queen of the May.
Vincardog
(20,234 posts)PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)Tax relief and child care and health assistance are not needed.
Roy Ellefson
(279 posts)Absolutely 100% true.
cali
(114,904 posts)AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)Hillary Clinton has clearly, succinctly, and repeatedly challenged Barack Obama and John Edwards to let voters judge them or her by their records. Hillary Clinton has included her 8 years as First Lady in her 35 years of political experience, so it is appropriate to take her up on her challenge. In this post, we will just examine one of the claims Clinton has made about her record, per her request to look closely at not just words, but her actions.
In the hot and testy debate in South Carolina, Clinton countered Obama's correct assertion that she served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart (followed by years as a corporate attorney for the Rose Law Firm) by saying, in essence, that when Obama was wet behind his ears, she was working and being inspired by the legendary Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund. That is true until you get to the issue of results in public office.
<snip>
As a result of Morris's "triangulating" advice, the Clintons embraced some cold-hearted measures, including what became called euphemistically "welfare reform." In fact, the progressive and children's advocate community considered it a Draconian measure that would punish poor children if their moms didn't find work. The Clintons, both of them, supported it, and Bill Clinton signed it into law.
Among those who ardently and eloquently opposed the Clinton "welfare reform" bill was Marian Wright Edelman. Her husband, Peter Edelman, quit his high-level job at the Department of Health and Human Services in protest when Bill Clinton signed the bill. He was deeply upset about what the legislation would do to helpless children.
In a July 2007 interview with Amy Goodman, Marian Wright Edelman had this to say about the "welfare reform bill" and Hillary Clinton:
AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heard Hillary Rodham Clinton. She used to be the head of the board of the Childrens Defense Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely critical of the Clintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off on the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, His signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children. So what are your hopes right now for these Democrats? And what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton?
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a constituency, and you dontand we profoundly disagreed with the forms of the welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, we need health care, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare. And yet, you know, many years after that, when many people are pronouncing welfare reform a great success, you know, weve got growing child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty over the last six years than we had earlier in the year. When an economy is down, and the real test of welfare reform is what happens to the poor when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gap between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one ofa growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boy whos born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are seeing more and more children go into our child welfare systems, go dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice detention facilities. Many children are sitting up15,000, according to a recent congressional GAO studyare sitting up in juvenile institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health and health care in their community. This is an abomination.
That is a staggering indictment, from the woman Hillary Clinton regularly mentions as her mentor, of a gap between Hillary Clinton's words and her record. It reflects upon a political decision that she and Bill made to leave many children behind in order to ensure a second term. (The "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act," as it was cynically called, was signed in August of 1996, just about three months before the '96 presidential election.)
I can personally understand the symbolic importance and progressive act it would be to elect our first woman president. That would be joyful indeed. But not if our first woman president is not progressive. BuzzFlash has received and posted many angry e-mails from women readers who consider any critical look at Hillary Clinton's record as an "attack" on her. Given that Clinton has invited the entire nation to investigate her record to see if she delivers on her promises, it betrays Clinton's own request not to proceed with such a task.
Does one's gender make one immune from betraying helpless children and the poor? Just ask Marian Wright Edelman and Peter Edelman.
<snip>
The Hillary and Bill Clinton betrayal of poor women and children in 1996 (and as Edelman notes in her interview, now having a devastating long-term impact) came to mind by chance. In the early '90s, I was an attendee at a meeting with Peter Edelman on an unrelated topic, and I was impressed by what an earnest, sincere person he appeared to be. When he resigned in 1996, I was a bit shocked. I hadn't followed the welfare debate at the time, but if he left his powerful position because of the Clintons embracing the "Welfare Reform" bill, I decided to look into it. Resignations over principle are rare at high levels of government, and it causes one to take notice.
When I heard Hillary Clinton bring up her Children's Defense Fund experience as a rebuke to Barack Obama, I recalled the '96 "abomination" as Marian Wright Edelman calls it, and just started Googling. Amazing what Google can do to help one fulfill Hillary Clinton's request of us that we examine her 35 years of experience and see the results of her record.
<snip>
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)No doubt she realizes that however justified her anger in 2007, children would not have been better off if Bill had lost and a Rethug had been elected. He did what he needed to do, to salvage what could be salvaged.
https://newrepublic.com/article/122035/meet-new-old-hillary-clinton
A few seconds into the clip, a voice takes us back before Secretary of State, before Senator, First Lady of the country to when Hillary Clinton was just a caring young bright creative student who cared about children and those left behind.
The voice belongs to Marian Wright Edelman, a civil rights activist and public interest lawyer who worked with Martin Luther King on his Poor Peoples Campaign and in that spirit founded the Washington Research Project and then the Childrens Defense Fund, a non-profit specializing in lifting children and their families out of poverty. Hillary Clintons first job out of law school was for Edelman; at the Children's Defense Fund she first worked as a staff attorney, then as a board member, and eventually as board chair. She has always credited Edelman with being her most important mentor and a close friend.
But after Hillarys husband signed welfare reform in 1996, Edelman condemned it, issuing a statement that President Clintons signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurt children. And eight years ago, when her former protégée was first running for president, Edelman was asked by Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, What are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham Clinton? Edelman answered, damningly, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. Now, in 2016, it seems that Edelman is back on board. But in her callback to the time before the State Department, before the Senate, before her first tour in the White House, its telling that Edelmans argument on behalf of a potential future president points straight toward Clinton's deeper past.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)pnwmom
(108,994 posts)and others who continue to support the gun-toters everywhere.
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)But it's almost virtually all you've got which is why it's rolled out on a regular basis. See 14,000 previous threads for that conversation.
Good luck unpacking and attempting to repackage an already failed candidacy. She's been skating on name recognition, but it's a double-edge sword. We know her well which makes OPs like this one laughable. Keep trying.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)And so transparent.
Exploiting gun deaths to smear Bernie is intellectually dishonest* considering he has been pro-gun control for decades - in fact he only voted for the 1994 crime bill because it included the Violence Against Women act and an assault weapons ban.
He's not responsible for any deaths, too bad they can't say the same about Hillary and her vote for the Iraq war.
*note to jury: referring to an argument as "transparent" and "intellectually dishonest" is not a personal attack
Betty Karlson
(7,231 posts)Memorandum: we are now in the 21st century.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)for Hillary.
https://newrepublic.com/article/122035/meet-new-old-hillary-clinton
A few seconds into the clip, a voice takes us back before Secretary of State, before Senator, First Lady of the country to when Hillary Clinton was just a caring young bright creative student who cared about children and those left behind.
The voice belongs to Marian Wright Edelman, a civil rights activist and public interest lawyer who worked with Martin Luther King on his Poor Peoples Campaign and in that spirit founded the Washington Research Project and then the Childrens Defense Fund, a non-profit specializing in lifting children and their families out of poverty. Hillary Clintons first job out of law school was for Edelman; at the Children's Defense Fund she first worked as a staff attorney, then as a board member, and eventually as board chair. She has always credited Edelman with being her most important mentor and a close friend.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)The author sets up a classic "straw man" and then proceeds to tell us how great Hillary was.... 20 years ago.
pnwmom
(108,994 posts)seabeyond
(110,159 posts)as opposed to those that just make speeches about it.
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)"chops" to me.
Response to pnwmom (Original post)
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pnwmom
(108,994 posts)the Rethugs. They don't want to accomplish anything but gridlock.