Hillary, FDR, LBJ, McGovern, Watergate and Yellow Dogs
Hi. No links, just my two cents worth.
First, a disclosure. I supported Elizabeth and John Edwards in 2008, so I watched the Obama/Clinton wars with amusement rather than true interest. Either candidate was fine by me, and as a yellow dog democrat I was prepared to vote for my party's nominee.
Now, for some history. The modern Democratic Party got its start during the flooding of the Mississippi in the 1920s, when the Republicans lost the support of African-Americans by siding with landowners and whites who enslaved Blacks to work on the levees.
FDR then courted Blacks--and labor and all the other groups that make up our modern Democratic Party--during his New Deal, when it was Us against the Banksters. LBJ, a veteran of the New Deal cemented the modern party by working like a yellow dog himself to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and Medicare.
That is my Democratic Party, the one of jobs for all, equal opportunity for all, the one that believes that the key to economic success is a strong middle class with strong purchasing power and a voice at the table, the one that believes that no child should live in poverty and no one should die of a treatable disease for lack of health insurance.
Hillary did not have to become a Democrat. With her background, she could just as easily have become a Republican. However, she worked on the McGovern campaign in 1972. She worked to prosecute Dick Nixon on the Watergate committee. She supported her (Democratic) husband Bill when he was governor and president. She was a (Democratic) senator for that blue-est of blue states, New York, and she very graciously supported her nominee rival in 2008 in the general election and was his Secretary of State.
Now, I am going to go back in time a little bit. To 1980. Had Ted Kennedy acted like Hillary in 2008, would the outcome of the general have been different? Let's go back further. 1968. Had Humphry's rivals gotten behind him, would we have had the Killing Fields in Cambodia?
You call it "inevitability". I call it Solidarity. Looking forward to the primary. It is how we show the world how Democrats do things---by discussion and consensus. But I am not about to stay home in November 2016 as a "protest" and I am never, ever going to dismiss a candidate for being too popular and too electable.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Unfortunately, they are biggies.
1. New York is HARDLY the bluest of blue states. If by that ("blue"
you mean progressive. It is, in fact, the most politically corrupt state of all 50, by most measures.... w. the DEM party actually more corrupt than the GOP.
The party and the state are led by a tedious, relentless, narcissist whose modus "governandi" is pay-to-play and is so blatantly corrupt that he disbanded the Moreland (corruption) Committee as soon as he realized it was starting to investigate his own donors.
The rest of the DEM apparatus is just as compromised. (Just not as laughably obvious as Cuomo.) They are currently playing "hide the bacon" w. the US federal prosecutor.... who, to everyone's surprise, seems to actually think corruption is a BAD thing.
The fact that Clinton was essentially *selected* by this crew, the NYS Dem party, to serve as US Senator says more about her than I think you realize.
2. We'll see how much "discussion and consensus" there actually is in the DEM primary... if there is one at all. If Clinton runs (yet again!) it will be next to impossible for anyone to compete w. her. Money = speech ( It's official, now. I'm sure you know.)and the kind of money we're talking about comes from places such as the "financial sector." Clinton feels Wall Street has been and is being "scapegoated" for the super-recession and for the unprecedented income disparity that our political system has managed to achieve.
With periodic pronouncements like this , she's going to be *very* popular with the financial sector.
Fine; she can say what she wants; People can believe it if they want.
But: that's' a loooooong way from FDR.
