I always think it's nice for a candidate to have an actual platform, don't you? One of the items I personally have struggled with over the past few months has been the fact that the entire Democratic Party appears to have embraced Hillary Clinton as the standard bearer without requiring some sort of advance notice as to how she will fall when it comes to the issues of our times. HRC herself has been notably closemouthed about specific policy stances to date.
We don't know for instance, at this point, if she is for or against the TPP. If she supports it, she will align herself with the President and Republicans; if she speaks against it, she will align herself with Elizabeth Warren and others from the populist side of the Democratic bench who see it as a Pandora's box of corporate giveaways at the expense of labor and the environment, with the added feature of lifting global businesses profit-making beyond the reach of national regulation, oversight and judicial systems as a result of the Investor State Dispute System. It's a big deal to me, and how a candidate stands on this issue will matter a great deal in whether I can see myself supporting them or not.
I am happy to report that Hillary has begun to be more forthcoming with her views and has lately decided to clue in Iowans and the rest of us as to what we can expect from her candidacy as a result of an editorial she wrote that was published Sunday in the Des Moines Register: Clinton: Iowans have great ideas for a better future
To cut to the chase, in her editorial HRC defined "the four big fights I'm taking on for you":
We can build an economy for tomorrow, not yesterday, where being middle class means something again. We can strengthen families and communities, because when families get ahead, our country gets ahead, too. We can fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment. And we can protect our country from the threats that we see around the world and ones that are still over the horizon.
Her four big fights are:
1. Building an economy where being middle class "means something again"
2. Strengthening families and communities
3. Getting the money out of politics
4. Protecting the country/ national security
I suppose that all sounds good, yet she's still short on details and specifics. While this is a criticism, I don't really expect much more in a campaign editorial, especially one that was designed to be the thank you note of her "listening tour".
As to item 1, Yes, it would be nice if being middle class means something again, even if we don't know what that something is. It sounds like an allusion to correcting the massive wealth inequality that has overtaken our society, especially since she refers to CEOs making 300 times a worker's wage - but how exactly would she stop that from happening? I agree that hedge fund managers have the greatest tax windfall in existence due to how their compensation is calculated, is she going to make this part of a tax re-structuring plan? I would hope so.
Item 2 - I have absolutely no idea what her plan is to "strengthen families and communities". Education? Reducing or eliminating student debt? Helping small businesses? After school judo classes? I guess HRC will have to give us more breadcrumbs on this one.
Item 3 - Yes, the Supreme Court idiots who couldn't conceive of unlimited money corrupting our political system, have pretty much destroyed the country and made quid pro quo the underpinning of our electoral processes. We will sink further into the cesspool of corruption and crony capitalism if some way isn't found to tunnel out of the sewer of bribery and influence they created. I don't know how exactly how we as a nation can overturn Citizens United. I honestly wonder why we don't consider impeaching the judges who made this ruling and insisting that it be re-tried. Is Hillary Clinton a credible leader to get "unaccountable" money out of politics? I only ask the question, I don't know the answer.
Item 4 - Ah yes, Hillary and National Security. How often has she been right and how often has she been wrong?
_______________
So anyway, thanks Hillary for taking the time to drop a note and letting us know that Iowans, like the rest of us, know they have been shafted and that you see yourself as a fighter for and a champion of the middle class. I personally would encourage you to get involved in addressing the issues of inequality in our judicial and policing systems and also start trying to move us away from being the global leader in mass incarcerations. I also don't think there's anything wrong in occasionally dropping the words "poor" and "poverty" into your rhetoric - the actual poor do exist and it's one class that has been growing at record rates. I also would like to hear you start to speak about the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and not in Austerity mongering terms involving how we have to cut them to save them. The Prez just spoke about negotiating the cost of pharmaceuticals in Medicare as we should have been doing lo these many years- why not hop on that bandwagon, it's an easy one.
One last question - when are you, yourself and not one of your surrogates going to come out and say unequivocally that you did not benefit personally in way from your actions as Secretary of State? IMO you are making the John Kerry/Swiftboat mistake of thinking the assertions would disappear on their own without a strong response from him personally. The "there's no proof of wrong-doing" argument that your stand-ins are making is nowhere near as strong a rebuttal as "There's no wrong-doing, period" coming from yourself. I admit to being mystified as to why you haven't done this by now.