Recent scrutiny of the Clintons' income isn't just the latest obsession of a media immune to Clinton Fatigue. It is the tip of a spear the Republican Party will use to steal what should be a Democratic message about income inequality. Another way for the 1% to rig the game by channelling resentment in their base to yet another red herring in their decades long rigging of our democracy.
Our only hope, as Democrats who want to win the White House, and Democrats who want the Democratic Party to return to acting and governing like Democrats, is to move Hillary Clinton to the left whether she wants to or not, before the GOP slices her to pieces with the very message we should own.
Channelling resentment is the core competence of the GOP. Until now, the richest have been immune, because they are the beneficiaries of channeled resentment targeting the vulnerable, the architects of race-based, gender-based rage that has kept them rich, richer, and in control of our democracy.
While rigging America for their own benefit for decades, our overlords immunized themselves against their own preferred weapon by labeling this channelled resentment with familiar themes - makers vs. takers, "freedom", "class warfare", etc. The Tea Party fused all the resentments together into a sharp spear, while ignoring, willfully, just who was using who to keep themselves forever rich.
Now that income inequality has reached medieval levels, with no hope of change surviving the rigged game, the gig is up. Occupy Wall Street blared flood lights onto the obvious. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign failure proved even to the Tea Party that they, and all of us, are being used. OWS and the Tea Party move ever closer together, if not in on the ground fact, certainly in theory. "Class warfare", the pejorative which the GOP has used to dismiss any policy approach to the problem, is slowly becoming a powerless term.
The GOP's skill at channelling resentment will not, and cannot, ignore the power of a population realizing the game is rigged. Republicans will figure out a way to turn this against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It is the GOP's game.
As Democrats, we are stuck with Hillary Clinton. She has played this rigged game to perfection, and now sits at the precipice of ultimate power, funded by the very same 1% that funded Mitt Romney. Most of us yearn for someone, anyone, to run against Hillary in the 2016 primaries to at least challenge her from the left, from where we all live groaning under the weight of this rigged game. Because at the moment, aside from the culture war spears used to constantly divide us by their paymasters, there is no substantive difference between Hillary Clinton being president, or Mitt Romney, or Jamie Dimon. Hillary has been paid by the 1%, for services rendered, for far too long for any of us to ignore this reality.
Somewhere inside her lies the Hillary Clinton who grew up in the sixties, marching against the Vietnam War, fighting the old Democratic fight we all want Democrats to fight. It is buried underneath hundreds of millions of dollars from our overlords, which the Clintons have tapped to their own personal benefit since 2001, and to Hillary's political benefit as US Senator & Secretary of State.
But she doesn't have to stay that way. We have to unbury that Hillary.
"Drafting" Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or Al Gore or whoever absolves each of us from doing what we can, individually, to force Hillary Clinton to the left ourselves. We must be the change we wish to see in the world. We have two years to do so, which is plenty of time. So how do we force Hillary Clinton left?
1. Use your voice.
OWS taught us, first and foremost, to stand up, use our voice, because the power of our voices together cannot be stopped, no matter how rigged the game is. Are you an elected Democrat? Speak up. Are you a precinct committeeperson? Use your voice every chance you get to force Hillary left. Are you an early primary state voter? Engage the process with your voice. Talk. Write. Video. The power of our voice in unison cannot be ignored. Hillary is a politician, she will respond to political pressure. Use it.
2. Withhold your vote up and down the ballot this mid term.
There are rigged-game Democrats all over every ballot across the country in 2014. Make them pay. And be vocal about it. Write a letter to the editor telling why you have decided to withhold your support. We have to send the message, now, not in 2016, that 1% whore Democrats will be identified, targeted, and will soon be unemployed. With enough blood on the floor after 2014, Hillary will notice. She may be bought and paid for at the moment, but she's no idiot.
3. Confront Hillary personally. Get someone to record it.
Are you attending a Hillary event? Walk up to her, shake her hands, and very politely inform her that the rigged game will end whether the 1% likes it or not, and she is the only chance for Democrats to do that job. Tell Hillary, eye to eye, that the Democratic Party is not for sale, that she needs to tell Wall Street "thank you for the cash, now shut your pie holes, I'm a Democrat". Get Hillary ON THE RECORD regarding corporate personhood, Glass Steagall, student loan forgiveness, the minimum wage, collective bargaining, clean energy, fracking, breaking up the banks - pretend YOU are Elizabeth Warren on a debate stage, and be the change you want to see. Hillary will notice. Especially when it's on YouTube.
4. Be urgent.
Time is running out. Never in the history of humankind has an oligarchy as morally bankrupt as our current near-feudal system of inequality survived without being destroyed. We can do it nonviolently, or we can guarantee it will end violently by our acquiescence. But make no mistake - it will most certainly end.
If, most likely when, Hillary Clinton is elected the first woman President of the United States, she can make those changes, or she can be the target of them. That is her choice. But it is OUR choice to help Hillary seize this moment for the Democratic Party, and reclaim our democracy. We know she won't do it on her own, she's been paid much too handsomely to do the precise opposite.