Dr. J.'s Commentary: Why Does Hillary Run?

Recently both BuzzFlash Editor/Publisher Mark Karlin and I have written only slightly tongue-in-cheek columns suggesting that Hillary Clinton would make a good vice presidential candidate -- on the McCain ticket. After all, McCain could well be looking for a Democrat and his good friend and alter ego Joe Lieberman just won't do: McCain said last fall that non-Christians are not qualified to govern (The Progress Report, "Blackout and Brownout," Oct. 1, 2007).

So how is Hillary sucking up to McCain? Quoting from Mark Karlin's article: "It is the one inviolable rule of party politics; don't promote the other party's candidate at the expense of your own. . . . In the past couple of weeks, Senator Hillary Clinton has violated that cardinal rule again and again as she personally vouched for the readiness of John McCain to assume the presidency, while belittling Barack Obama as nothing more than a speech. . . . ‘[Y]ou'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,' she said. . . . Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a "distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,' Clinton said."
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However, what is happening with the Clinton campaign now goes way beyond violating the above rule, which in doing so has brought Sen. Clinton nothing but an unending series of rebukes from Party elders such as former Senators Gary Hart and Bill Bradley and present Senators Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Patrick Leahy. Senator Clinton and her husband are now clearly going out of their way to provoke both the leadership and rank-and-file of the Democratic Party that support Sen. Obama and very likely even some of their own supporters. The move by Governor Richardson to support Sen. Obama rather than Sen. Clinton, brought forth such a hyperbolic response from James Carville, may well indicate that it was indeed symbolic of such moves occurring at much lower levels of the party.

It is highly ironic that it was James "Sleeping with the Enemy" Carville, long-time husband of Mary Matalin, who was Ann Coulter before there was an Ann Coulter, who uttered the "Judas" charge. Also ironic is that close on the heels of Richardson's Obama endorsement came the endorsement of Bob Casey, the anti-choice Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania. Carville had strongly supported him in his run against a traditional Democratic challenger in the primary election to choose the Democratic nominee to run against the equally anti-choice Rick Santorum in 2006. No "Judas" charges there, however.

As is well known: a) for some time now the Clintons have been proposing to change or break Party rules on how the nominee is chosen; b) Hillary is behind in the elected delegate count; c) she is getting closer to being behind in the announced superdelegate count; d) she is now talking about engaging in a Credentials Committee fight at the Convention over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations, both elected in violation of Party rules to which she had agreed last fall. None of these things seem to make any sense, unless. Unless. Well, let's consider the possible explanations for just why it is that she is hanging on in the campaign.

-- She and her advisors really think she can still win the nomination. However, they can count as well as anyone. So unless they have some bombshell to throw at Obama, much more explosive than the Rev. Wright (and if they had one, one can presume that they would already have thrown it), an unlikely explanation.

-- Her ambition and ego-mania and those of her husband are so over-weaning that neither of them can keep them under control. So it is ambition and ego that just keep pushing them along, come what may. Possibly, but both of these people have through almost the whole of their public lives have shown what control-freaks they are (and yes, Monica is the exception to that rule). Another unlikely explanation.

-- She is positioning herself to run in 2012, should Obama lose. Given the extent to which she has antagonized the Party leadership as well as major elements of the rank-and-file, this too is unlikely.

The real explanation: She knows that Obama will get the nomination and she wants him to lose alright, but for a much larger reason than giving her a chance at the nomination in 2012. That larger reason? To maintain the control of the Democratic Party by the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council, which has effectively run the Democratic Party since the Carter Presidency (Jonas, S. www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/016; The Political Junkies, Oct. 20, Nov. 10, 2005, June 1, 8, 2006).

Way beyond the top Clinton donors who recently threatened the Democratic Party with harm if their candidate was not chosen, the DLC represents major corporate interests in the United States, such as those who thought that three of the major "accomplishments" of the Clinton Presidency: NAFTA, the WTO expansion, and the proclamation by him the "the era of big government is over" were just wonderful ideas. If Obama wins the presidency, the leadership of the Democratic Party will move into the hands of a different group. Hardly totally anti-corporate, but much more forward-looking in terms of the Constitution, the War, global warming, and more. The DLC will be politically dead if that happens. The Democratic Party will return, in contemporary terms, to its Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy/Johnson (before Vietnam) roots. The Clintons are fighting hard to prevent this from happening. Their sabotage-in-advance of the Obama campaign is not accidental. And if in the end, they fail to prevent him from becoming president? Their next move will likely be to attempt to split the party, just as the pro-slavery reactionaries split the Whig Party in the 1850s.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine The Political Junkies.net; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and an invited contributor to the Web log The Daily Scare.

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