What is the difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? A lot more than most think. It lies in their actions and their records, which speak far louder than their similar policy platforms.
I ask you to look carefully at the three major events in Hillary Clinton's career:
- her failed healthcare reform initiative in the early 1990s,
- her wrong vote to go to war in Iraq, and
- her poorly organized, and underperforming campaign for President.
I ask you to look carefully at her record and to compare it to that of Obama, who has been a consistent, positive, well-organized and unifying force for change.
Above all fellow Democrats, even if you disagree, please vote! We need to activate America. We need to stop sitting it out. We can do this. Yes we can!
Obama and Clinton’s stated policy platforms have a lot in common. Do they have any real differences? The answer is yes, and many are not the fine differences raised during the debate. They are real life real world differences. The most important differences stem from the candidates' actions and records, which speak far louder than words.
- The Iraq War
Obama got it right when it counted.
Clinton’s vote for the war was a huge failure in leadership that she still hasn’t come to terms with. Why did she do it? She admits she ignored the call to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before casting her war vote. Did she rush to support the war to try to show the public she could be as tough as Bush? Or was she afraid to stand up to the powerful Bush Administration? Or both?
In debate after debate, Hillary Clinton was still in deep denial over her crucial error in judgment over the war. She says that Bush duped her, as if that is a good excuse. Is that the kind of leader we want? She also made has no sense in explaining why at the time she voted for the Iraq war bill she would not vote for Senator Levin’s accompanying amendment to reign in the President’s authority under the war bill.
Hillary Clinton said the Levin amendment would have subordinated the President’s power to the UN. That is wrong. The bill said the opposite. Senator Levin said the opposite. As Keith Olbermann has pointed out, the person who in fact made Hillary’s incorrect UN argument at the time was none other than Dick Cheney himself.
Hillary Clinton’s vote on Iraq was a test. It was the single most important vote during her tenure as Senator. Thousands of American lives and over a trillion US dollars were on the line. She failed. What has she done to show she will not continue to make errors in judgment? Her fearmongering "red phone" advertisements claiming she has superior judgment because of her experience ring hollow. They remind us of Bush's constant fearmongering to goad America into Iraq, into the Patriot Act, into looking the other way at the torture enabled by the Bush Administration.
And how will Hillary Clinton's record on the war in contrast to her current position affect her electability? How will she explain her position against John McCain? Would Hillary Clinton be forced into admitting to John McCain that the Iraq war was not fundamentally flawed in its conception? Will she have to wrongly admit the Iraq war just a problem of execution, which McCain will argue he can fix? Will Republicans run ads saying "she voted for it before she was against it," just like they did so effectively against John Kerry in the last Presidential election? You can bet on it.
- The Other Near War Against Iran
Bush almost started another war against Iran last Fall. Whether she knew it at the time or not, once against Hillary Clinton was complicit. More than four years after our disastrous declaration of war against Iraq, just last Fall, Hillary Clinton voted yea on Bush’s resolution to declare that Iran’s military is made up of terrorists. If you think about it, this is another declaration of war, albeit a thinly disguised one. In fact, a government which consists of terrorists is worse than the government we attacked in Afghanistan, which we only accused of harboring terrorists.
Only a few weeks after Hillary Clinton voted again to support Bush's warmongering against Iran last Fall, we found out that while Bush was waiving around the specter of World War III from a nuclear Iran, Bush knew of a secret National Intelligence Estimate report that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This NIE also found that Iran probably has not restarted its nuclear weapons program since. Hillary Clinton admits Bush duped her into voting for the Iraq war. Just last Fall Bush duped her again. Fool me once . . .
In contrast, Obama did not fall for Bush’s warmongering resolution against Iran. Although Obama was not in Washington at the time of the vote, which was unscheduled, he came out on the record against the resolution. Once again Obama was on the right side and Clinton was on the wrong side.
- Health Care
Hillary Clinton tried to reform health care in the early 1990s. She failed. Her plan was created in a secretive process that produced an overly complex bill that was was dead on arrival due to the health care lobby.
Although it was still early in Bill Clinton’s Presidency, Hillary and Bill ended their efforts at universal health insurance. They packed it in. For the rest of Bill’s term in office, Hillary Clinton was relegated to visiting foreign dignitaries, defending sexual harassment charges against her husband and presiding over several scandals of her own (Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater, Vince Foster etc.). Even Hillary Cllinton admits that her failure on healthcare was a mistake which has spiraled into the current health care crisis over a decade later. As a result, the US badly lags the rest of the world in coverage, quality and cost of care.
Hillary Clinton claims her time as First Lady represents an important experience that Obama lacks. It's just not the case. She also is still refusing to advocate for the release of her records as First Lady in time for voters to judge them in this Primary. Not to mention that her hiding the records undercuts the Democrats claim to want transparency, it is scary to think what these records may contain and how McCain may use them against her.
- Special interests and lobbyists
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is awash in money from lobbyists, political action committees and special interests. Obama, on the other hand, says that these special interests exert far too much power over our government. Obama practices what he preaches. He does not take special interest or bundled lobbyist money. He also passed important laws to reform lobbyists in Washington, including requiring them to disclose all their bundled donations on a public web site.
- Transparency
Unlike Hillary Clinton who still refuses to release her official records as First Lady, thanks to Obama we now have a web site where everyone can see which contractors get which projects and how much of our money from our government. Unlike Hillary Clinton who along with her husband will not reveal the records for their half a billion dollar "charity" which has employed key campaign staffers and has taken tens of millions from unnamed campaign donors including Mark Rich's wife, thanks to Obama we now also can see on a web site what the lobbyists are up to, who they are donating to and bundling for.
And as for transparency in media, Obama showed guts by pushing back hard against the FCC’s recent attempt to gut the anti-media consolidation rules as a bone to Murdoch’s ever expanding empire – Obama did this at personal risk during this election when he needs positive media coverage.
As for transparency into how our government truly operates, as opposed to the propaganda put out by this Administration, Obama uncovered the atrocities at Walter Reed and passed a bill to address them.
- Tone
Why is there so much controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton? Certainly some of it can be attributed to right-wingers throwing blood in the water year after year after year. But where do the Republicans get all that blood and where do the sharks come from? Some of it stems from Hillary Clinton's record and her tone. She does not hesitate to take every opportunity to bash Republicans in a manner that is counterproductive.
Hillary Clinton and her husband have not exactly been selfless in standing up for the little person, the Democratic Party or America for that matter. Their collective net worth of over $50 million is in the same range as that of Dick Cheney, our arch enemy and exploiter of government for personal gain. As we recently learned from the New York Times report on Bill's junket to a despotic third world country to promote a billionaire uranium mine owner, the Clintons got most of that money by trading in their government service and connections.
- Management Ability
Hillary Clinton's health care reform effort was not her only chance to demonstrate her management skills. Her current campaign is basically a repeat of her failed healthcare initiative. Hillary Clinton's campaign has been poorly managed. There has been no consistent message as her slogan changes every other week. She assumed she would easily win the nomination and had no plan at all for what to do after Super Tuesday. This is reminiscent of how we had no plan for what to do in the event our occupation of Iraq was not a cake walk.
More disturbingly, last Fall Hillary Clinton said the "fun" was starting. It was clear that by fun she meant dirty politics. To review some of the Clinton "fun," it started with members of the Clintons’ campaign sending emails lying that is Obama a Muslim when he is really a Christian. When Clinton staffers got caught doing that Hillary Clinton was shamed into firing them. She acted surprised at their misconduct, as if she hadn't signaled to her campaign that anything goes with her comment about the "fun" starting.
Then Hillary Clinton complained in Iowa that students shouldn't be allowed to vote in Iowa. It’s just a funny coincidence of course that the students she tried to disenfranchise don’t support her.
Then we had the rumors that the Clintons had more smear dirt on Obama that they supposedly had decided they weren't going to use because of obvious moral concerns. A few days later they used it - surprise! The co-chair of the Clintons' campaign in the State of New Hampshire let the drug-related slur fly. Then Hillary was shamed into firing him too, as if she hadn’t authorized it.
Then, when she was starting to feel desperate she really got down and dirty in identity politics, fake crying and scaremongering. A few days before the Primary vote in New Hampshire, which she felt she needed to win in response to Obama’s surprise blowout victory in Iowa, Hillary Clinton diminished the legacy of the greatest black civil rights leader ever, Martin Luther King, by saying it took someone who looks more like her, an older white dude in President Johnson, to get civil rights done.
Throughout her campaign Hillary Clinton has repeated disingenuously that it’s not about race race race race race or gender gender gender gender, as if she wouldn’t love white people and women to gang up on black people. In the very next few sentences after her comment about MLK, Hillary Clinton scaremongered a la Bush/Giuliani that if we elect Obama the terrorists will attack. During this same remarkable sequence Hillary Clinton welled up tears in her eyes for more sympathy. As Maureen Dowd astutely pointed out afterwards, the reason Hillary Clinton was crying was because she was so frustrated that people couldn't see how much they need her.
Then, in Nevada, we saw mysterious Swift-boat robocalls against Obama referring to his middle name Hussein no less than four times and lying that he takes money from lobbyists. While the robocalls went out, Bill Clinton trolled the casinos in Vegas for caucus voters and, mysteriously, in his presence the Vegas casino caucuses (thought to favor Obama) shut down a half hour early.
Then, in South Carolina when things were looking down again and the Clintons were in the midst of losing, Bill Clinton played the race card again, comparing Barack Obama's victory in South Carolina to those in the 80s of Jessie Jackson, a fringe black candidate who never had a competitive chance at garnering mainstream support.
More recently, Hillary Clinton has tried to reneg on her agreement with the Democratic Party, Barack Obama and John Edwards that the Democratic Primary votes in Florida and Michigan would not count. The results in Florida and Michigan had been disqualified by the Democratic Party because those states flagrantly violated the rules in moving their primaries up into January to front run the other states voting on Super Tuesday on February 5.
The Democratic candidates were told not to campaign in Michigan and Florida. They did not campaign there. They all agreed the results would not count. Why does Hillary Clinton want those states to count? She says she wants the votes. This last stunt in particular shows an absolutely incredible lack of judgment and fairness.
Now, the Clinton campaign is talking about challenging the caucus component of the Texas primary. Why? Simply because Hillary Clinton doesn’t do as well in Primaries. Once again she is trying to change the rules of the game midstream for no principled reason and simply to benefit herself.
- Honesty and Hard Choices
Hillary Clinton praises her life before politics. As we recently learned, on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart, Hillary Clinton stood mum as Wal-Mart and the Rose Law Firm in which she was a partner fought to smash labor unions. She stood mum as Wal-Mart discriminated against women workers and shortchanged workers their time on the clock. During this time period she famously made $100,000 offer a suspicious commodity trade in which she essentially took very little risk.
Democrats do not unquestioningly praise our leaders. There were hard choices for Hillary Clinton. And her "experience" is consistent: she took the wrong easy answer every time. Were her actions somewhat understandable? Maybe. Was she gutsy? No. Has Hillary Clinton shown that she can make the tough, selfless choices that show the strength of character to be President of the United States. Not a chance.
In contrast, Obama is the candidate that reminds key members of the Kennedy family and JFK's advisors of JFK. Obama stands as an inspiring leader who can unify this nation to produce real and lasting change in withdrawing responsibly from Iraq and reforming our healthcare system.
Barack is not perfect. Nobody is. But he can best unify America to make it happen. With his relentless steady energy and his amazing string of victories as an underdog candidate who keeps his eye on the ball, takes smart positions and gets people behind him, Barack is the best candidate for President.
Barack is not burdened by the major events in Hillary Clinton's career: 1. her failed healthcare reform initiative in the early 1990s, 2. her wrong vote to go to war in Iraq and 3. her poorly organized, and underperforming campaign for President. Once again, I ask you to look carefully at Hillary Clinton's record and to compare it to that of Obama, who has been a consistent, positive, well-organized and unifying force for change.
Above all fellow Democrats, even if you disagree, please vote! We need to activate America. We need to stop sitting it out. We can do this. Yes we can!