I’m voting for Hillary because she fulfills the promise of my revolution. My revolution started in the 60’s, and was about “hell no, we won’t go” to Vietnam, elimination of the draft, and inclusion of women, blacks, and gays in civil rights, human rights and voting rights. We also desperately wanted to get out from under the false, delusional and paralyzing fear of communism that got us into Vietnam.
There is a new revolution going on right now about economic injustice, and I understand the anger: the anger people are expressing about exclusion from the wealth that is becoming concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group. This is the anger that feeds Trump’s campaign, Bernie’s campaign, and ISIS. It’s about experiencing the burden, the oppression and despair of economic deprivation and powerlessness. A lot of women have been experiencing those things for a long time, and we feel your pain. The rhetoric of the current revolution, like so many, tends to demonize the establishment. We did the same thing in the 60s, but we called it the system.
A recent book, “Right Out of California: the 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism” tracks the history of that vast right-wing conspiracy (VRWC) we talk about. It describes the straight line from Herbert Hoover and Big Ag in California to Nixon and Reagan. It’s a fascinating read.
One very clear take-away is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a truly transformational President who recognized the attacks from the right for the delusions that they were, but he was nevertheless vulnerable to them, like all politicians. His many social safety net innovations were not nearly as threatening to the VRWC as the legalization of collective bargaining. In fear and loathing, the Right’s strategy was to attack the hardest just as his administration was moving away from the left. This strategy of anti-communist rhetoric from the Right, at these pivotal moments, inexorably moved Democrats to more centrist views in each succeeding decade, as we lived through McCarthyism. Kennedy was vulnerable to it, as was Lyndon Johnson.
The most revolutionary thing we could do right now is elect the person who has been targeted relentlessly by the worst of the right wing venom, and expose it for the delusion it really is. Hillary has been a target of the vast right wing conspiracy (VRWC) because she is, as she puts it, the “tip of the spear.” She was the feminist in the public eye who was willing to take the risks that made other feminists seem safe. She was the person, with her “tea and cookies” comment, the gall to act like her husband’s equal, the temerity to speak on an international stage, who outraged the right wing from the day her husband was in office. She has been attacked relentlessly, mindlessly, and cruelly, and her response has been courage, conviction, and continuous action in regard to women’s rights, and civil rights wherever and whenever it was possible.
Her professional career began as a professor of law in Arkansas. She has learned to be a political strategist, an economist, a legislator, and a world-class diplomat. Her activism began with the Children’s Defense Fund, continued with a transformation of the Arkansas education system, and the orchestration of a huge but failed attempt to create health care legislation. She rose from that failure, learned from it, and went helped establish health care for 8 million children. She continued to be the most visible and vocal proponent of women’s rights she could be, on every stage available to her, in every decade since.
A lot of people don’t understand the good that the Clintons both do. The Clinton Foundation helps people from all walks of life on several fronts. One is getting HIV/AIDS drugs inexpensively and getting them to the African countries they are most needed. One of them is as a funnel for aid to Haiti. One of them is similar to micro-lending, but it facilitates micro-investing, most of which is directed towards poor neighborhoods and schools in the US, and some of which is directed towards investing in women entrepreneurs in remote areas of the world. So even when Hillary is not in government, she is working to do good, along with her husband.
People only hear the bad stuff, because it’s become the norm to dismiss, ignore, and denigrate Hillary. Those of us who have been around awhile, don’t believe any of it. But younger people have a tendency to think that where there’s smoke there’s fire. In this situation, it just means, when the smoke machine is working hardest, it is targeting the VRWC’s biggest threat.
If, by some chance, she actually bowed out of the race for the Democratic nomination, and the Right realized their dream of getting her off the public stage, they would gleefully train their sights on Bernie, and he would be obliterated very quickly. There is no political consultant or strategist with any experience who doubts that.
So, for my rights as a woman, for the good of this country, for the success of the Democratic party, for the very revolutionary goal of electing a woman as President, I will do everything I can to get Hillary nominated and elected in 2016. And if Bernie is nominated, I would of course support him because I’m a team player, and he would be the Democratic standard bearer.