[Mb-hair] shout it from the rooftops!

[Charles Kaiser]

By Molly Ivins

  AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to
the people   who run the Democratic Party that I will not support
Hillary Clinton  for president.

               Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and
equivocation.
    Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This
is not a   Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable
of taking a   clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to
disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to
mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible
little dodges.

               The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of
a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to
re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is
desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will
not do, and  this is one of those times. There are times a country is so
tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

               If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has
the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out
and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to
do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud,
"Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough,
tough  Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained
by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

               What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's
sake? The (SET ITAL) majority (END ITAL) of the American people (55
percent)  think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get
out. The (SET ITAL) majority (END ITAL) (65 percent) of the American
people  want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more
taxes to get it. The (SET ITAL) majority (END ITAL) (86 percent) of the
American  people favor raising the minimum wage. The (SET ITAL)
majority (END  ITAL) of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing
Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The (SET
ITAL)  majority (END ITAL) (66 percent) wants to reduce the
deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon
spending or  raising taxes.
                The (SET ITAL) majority (END ITAL) (77 percent)
thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.
The (SET ITAL) majority (END ITAL) (87 percent) thinks big oil
companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax.
That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
          I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously
    explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside
the  Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you
even read the damn polls?
             Here's a prize example by someone named Barry
Casselman,who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the
Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the
defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are
attempting to  prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and
2008."

               This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and
Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by "a string of bad new from the Middle
East ..  into calling for premature retreat from Iraq," versus those
pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe
Biden and  Joe Lieberman.

               Oh come on, people -- get a grip on the concept
of  leadership. Look at this war -- from the lies that led us
into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.
            You sit there in Washington so frightened of the
big, bad  Republican machine you have no idea what people are
thinking. I'm  telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his
district. If  Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the
issue of  political reform, I give up on them entirely.
                Do it all, go long, go for public campaign
financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the
only  reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone
else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has
made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral
reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own
this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

               Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the
patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it
before: War  brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went
around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were
"German dogs."
    They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.
The MINUTE  someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn
on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country
really means.
    That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep.
John Murtha  did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the
war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless
"string of bad news."
                Do not sit there cowering and pretending the
only way to  win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party
can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

                                                      -30-
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Charles Kaiser
Charles at charleskaiser.com  
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