Most of these have a common thread, that the Clintons will when convenient, put themselves first, and the party second. The Clintons embraced some decidedly less than progressive policies, employed as their chief political advisor a Jesse Helms confidant, and failed to work well with Democrats in Congress.
- NAFTA: Let me begin by saying that I grew up in a steel town just outside of Pittsburgh. That part of the country has yet to see the fruits of the promise that "NAFTA meant jobs". We, along with Ohio, Michigan (both of which voted for Bill Clinton, twice), and much of the rest of the industrial Midwest are still waiting 15 years on. My problems with NAFTA run deeper than my regional roots, though. To put it bluntly, in my opinion, it was an issue where the Clintons decided it was in their own self interest to throw a huge chunk of the base under the bus and side with big business and the GOP. All that labor got in exchange as a lousy consolation prize is a pair of side agreements that have turned out to mean very little in the long run. Democrats voted against NAFTA by a 3-2 margin while the GOP supported it by a 3-1 margin. I'm pretty sure I want a President who's willing to stand with his friends, not help his enemies.
- The Hillarycare Debacle: Hillary has campaigned for President on the rationale that her experience will enable her to get things done. With that said, a key chunk of that experience was her effort to get universal healthcare passed in the early 1990s. The country was ready, public opinion was on her side....and she proceeded to royally botch it and in the process, set efforts towards a national healthcare system back a decade. Since I'm a sports fan, I'll use this metaphor: if you owned an NFL franchise, would you re-sign the kicker who missed that crucial field goal during the playoffs last year? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't either.
- Coattails: Its been mentioned time and again that Hillary is the one candidate who could provide the spark that would get the GOP to pull its s-h-i-t together. I firmly believe that, it will be much easier for the GOP to define Hillary as an out of touch elitist East Coast Washington insider who currently lives in a tony suburb of New York City than it would be to paint a Edwards or Obama in a similar light. Obama's a Midwesterner who sounds and talks like it, and Edwards is similarly very Southern.
- Best Interests of the Party: If there's any question about the Clintons as team players, I'll refer you to Senator Sherrod Brown's wonderful book Congress from the Inside. Brown is an unabashed progressive, and so, I'll share a few illustrative quotes:
[Bill Clinton] seemed to be following the advice of a new bipartisan political advisor named Dick Morris, who reccomended a new policy of trangulation. Clinton should seperate himself from Democrats....and govern as a convenient independent. Yet the President was listening to a consultant who had advised Republican Senator Jesse Helms to run a racist TV ad against an African-American candidate (p.180).
Hillary, no surprise, has a similar advisor named Mark Penn who has run a firm that has, among other things, advised big business on how to bust up union organizing efforts.
The President did not seem to weigh in on the budget that passed May 17, and as Republicans moved towards a balanced budget at any cost, Democrats were powerless to fight back. And so the Gingrich balanced budget-with $288 billion in Medicare cuts, $67 billion in Defense increases, an increase in taxes for 12 million families making less than $28,000, and $353 billion in tax cuts passed 238 to 193....then, in late May the bottom dropped out. The president, in a very short statement on national TV from the oval office, threw his support to a balanced budget, including sizable Medicare cuts. Congressional Democrats didn't even know it was coming (p. 179-180)
As 1996 wore on, it became clear to House Democrats that our electoral prospects did not always coincide with [Bill Clinton's]. His proposed Medicare cuts in June 1995, his October 1995 comment in Houston that Congress pushed him to raise taxes too much in 1993, and his triangulation strategy did not sit well with most of us in the House Democratic Caucus. With each incident, it became more apparent that his re-election strategy might not necessarily help us regain the majority. It did not come as a surprise, therefore, when the evidence began to accumulate that the President might really sign the Republican welfare bill, which most Democrats thought a disaster as well as an abandonment of Democratic principles (p.189).
I firmly believe that if Hillary is elected, she'll practice politics cut from the same cut of cloth as her husband. Bill attacking the Congress for pressuing him to raise taxes too much was a slap in the face to Democrats in the Congress who took a lot of heat for siding with him on that vote. Just like with NAFTA, the Clintons had no problem throwing other Democrats under the bus in order to advance their own interests. Guess who paid the price for the Clinton's triangulation strategy in the 1994 elections? Not the Clintons.
I don't know about you, but I spent my fall break in a not too terribly warm Midwestern Congressional District making sure we took back the Congress. I don't want to lose it because we end up with another President who puts their own interests before the party's.
- The Bush/Clinton Dynasties: There's something inherently wrong with a political system in which someone my age (23) cannot remember an election in which someone other than a Bush or a Clinton wasn't on the ballot for President. Maybe its just a generational thing, but I don't believe that its a good thing that our leadership pool for the last 15 years has been drawn from the same two political families who hail from the same region of the country.
- The Iraq War: Hillary still can't bring herself to say that she made a mistake in voting for the Iraq War resolution. Once again, my Midwestern roots betray me here-I expect those who lead us to be humble enough to admit when they were wrong. Bush has never been able to do it, and that's in part why after 7 years of him, I still don't like the man.
I'll close by saying that I will vote for her in the general election because I do put the party before myself. However, in the primary, I believe that we have better options.
For better or for worse, this is why I can't support Hillary in the primaries.