I take no credit for the post I include below. The author and I belong to a listserve where we have been discussing peace and politics. Saturday, we began discussing Hillary losing the delegate race. Below is Demi's post to the group about when Hillary actually lost this. I reprint it hoping that it will recieve a wide audience, and each of you may reflect on what she says here.
Updated to make reading easier on the eyes.
zamrzla
Instead of choosing to listen to the women of America who were saying "Run, Hillary, Run!" or to the Democratic Party which was looking to her to give them permission to attack Bush's failed Iraq and domestic agendas - Senator Clinton chose to listen to her conservative advisers who said "Bush is too strong - wait until 2008!" That was Hillary Clinton's crisis of judgment and the moment when she lost the opportunity to be the first Woman President. Real leadership requires risks and a sense of what the grassroots wants and needs. She declined to take that risk hoping to have a "sure thing" in 2008.
Everything that followed was a consequence of the power vacuum that she created by not stepping forward at that key moment in history. Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all became national names and the basis for powerful progressive grassroots movements as a result of Hillary's failure to act decisively when it most mattered. (And her inability to work effectively for John Kerry - because the Clinton strategy absolutely required that Kerry had to lose in 2004 - was yet another millstone around her neck.)
The progressives came all out to work for a Kerry victory - even tho he was their least favorite candidate! As a result they gained huge strength and clout in every state Democratic Party organization. So in January 2005 when it was time to pick a new Chairman for the Democratic National Committee the progressive wing (which had been in disarray in 2003 and no match at that time for the Clinton powerhouse and connections) were now, two years later, sitting in the drivers seat! The Clintons and the DLC were so weakened by their lackluster performance and ambivalence to the Kerry campaign - that none of their hand picked candidates for DNC chair had a chance to win and instead their arch-nemesis, Howard Dean took control of the Party structure and brought in his "Fifty State Strategy" with him.
The DLC and their allies fought against the progressive wing all through 2005 and 2006 - and lost primary elections to upstart progressive Democrats who successfully unseated a few significant Corporate Democrat incumbents - most notably Joe Lieberman. The Clintons wasted even more political capital fighting these battles against fellow Democrats (Democrats who prior to the 2004 elections had had no champions around whom to rally!) Now those same failed Presidential bids in 2004 were well organized political machines that won a huge upset victory in Congress in 2006 and began setting their sights for the White House in 2008!
In the runup to the 2008 primary season, the Clintons used their Corporate Media connections to play the "front runner" card for Hillary at every turn - but by then other candidates were making popular statements and getting good poll numbers despite Senator Clinton's nominal front runner mantle. And because of the power vacuum that Hillary created with her decision to wait until 2008 - the huge advantage she might have had at being the "first Woman President" had been effectively neutralized by a now seasoned Senator Obama, who presented himself as the possible "first African American President". The Clinton advisers could/should have anticipated much of this if they had bothered to think ahead - but they failed to really anticipate what possible outcomes might occur as a result of Hillary's refusal to run in '04. Such failure to anticipate all outcomes is as fatal a flaw for a great politician as it would be for a great chess master!
What we are now seeing is the end game (one would hope) of a person who ought to have seen it coming - but who was too wrapped up in the perceptions of her own "destiny" to see the weakness in her decision not to act at that crucial juncture back in 2002-3. To those who would argue that as a woman: "But - it was supposed to be her/our time now!" I would have to say - "That time was 2004 - and that opportunity was not stolen - it was forfeited!"
There is no better depiction of Senator Clinton's dilemma than the words of Shakespeare from the play Julius Caeser. They are spoken by Brutus - who is the ultimate tragic character in the play:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries."
So it appears to be with Senator Clinton: The reality of her dilemma is that it is her own doing. She waited too long to be the decisive leader she keeps claiming to be. Just imagine how different the country would be if Hillary Clinton were now going into this year's Democratic Convention, seeking her second term as a successful Presidential incumbent! Obama is now poised to win because he has run a superbly organized and supported campaign, but especially because at crucial moments, he has not hesitated to act boldly and has taken some big risks a key moments.
-in Love and Peace,
-Demi
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
"Pessimism of the intellect, Optimism of the Will."
- Antonio Gramsci
"We can have Democracy in this country,
or we can have great wealth concentrated
in the hands of a few.....
but we cannot have both."
-Louis D. Brandeis
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government
owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance
between corrupt business and corrupt politics,is the first task
of the statesmanship of the day."
- Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
-Gandhi
"Whenever the people are well-informed,
They can be trusted with their own Government."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1789
"We know how to transform this world to reduce our impact on nature
by several fold, how to provide meaningful, dignified living-wage jobs
for all who seek them, and how to feed, clothe, and house
every person on earth.
What we don't know is how to remove those in power, those whose
ignorance of biology is matched only by their indifference
to human suffering.
This is a political issue. It is not an ecological problem."
- Paul Hawken, from a speech in Oct. 2002
"I decided to accept as true, my own thinking."
-Georgia O'Keefe