Is Hillary just playing to the center when in reality she is much more liberal?

Thom Hartman was giving a history of many Democrats like FDR, Johnson etc. who did this then once they became president they shifted back to the left. He thought Hillary might have decided to go this route thinking she has a big enough lead even though she could cause the base to lack enthusiasm.

Also, I think it's a given that she will fire up the Republican base but I have also heard that there is a whole other demographic that usually doesn't vote that is expected to come out for her.

Thoughts?

If you consider her publicly stated positions to be centrist you are sorely mistaken.

Remember, her positions on the war, health care, economic policy are squarely at odds with the overwhelming majority of Americans.

for the nomination.

To stay in office he wouldn't come out and support the anti-Lynching bill, so as not to alienate southern support.

He would not do more for Jewish refugees because of conservative opposition.

He would not come out with his opposition to Franco in Spain so as not to lose conservative support.

FDR did it ALL the time.

The Clintons do precisely the opposite - they move to the right to take votes from the Republicans, which simply pushes the Republicans, and the zeitgeist, further to the right - one reason why today's Democrats are far to the right of Republicans of a generation ago.

On racial equality? No. His progressivism went no further than not excluding blacks from government welfare programs.

:popcorn:

How will she treat a Democratic majority? One the same size and attitude as this Congress, perhaps. Or how will she respond to a republican-dominated Congress? I'd like her answer on specific issues.

She will never be President.

that she was silent during Terri Shivao, vocal during the anti-flag burning amendment, and seems to be more hawkish than not.

I think the American people are looking for authenticity and honesty.

Winning is not everything, nor governing from the right of center to win a second term is not everything either.

but if she gets the nomination I sure hope she moves back to the left.

at the thought of her governing with a legacy in mind rather than doing the right thing.

If doing the right thing were easy.....then everybody would do it.


The question of the day is, what has she done, that would make a voter believe she would move to the left of center if she won????

I don't want to take a chance with Hillary. I also think someone like Edwards would help bring the country together while Hillary would just be salt on old wounds. If Hillary gets the nomination I will most certainly vote for her though.

When she was first lady, I certainly thought she was to the left of her husband. But that was not an elected office. She is different as a Senator and different as a presidential candiate. So, I guess that's the reason why there is so much frustration with her. Yes, people change, but who is the real Hillary?

then played as a centrist or even conservative.

When the Republicans took over Congress he moved to the center.

that's why I think he's a centrist. He really seemed to have no problems budging a little bit and seemed unapologetic about it.

He also ran as pro-union, pro worker but during his presidency he had mostly an anti-union, anti-worker platform.

I think she goes to great lengths to present herself in politically correct way. There is not a chance she would get any audience if she was a "left" female politician.

I think she is a bit of a Trojan horse. You can tell from her husband IMO. I think they are probably very open in what they talk about between themselves. People that are more right are much more repressed than she is.


Pretend to be Athena before revealing she is a Medusa.

...but has been entirely too willing to compromise in favor of the corporations. I don't think she's going to give America the radical change we need right now, whether or not she has a comfortable Dem majority in Congress.

The "conventional whiz dumb" advises a candidate to appeal to the "base" when seeking nomination and appeal to the center when seeking election.

For a Democrat, that historically caused candidates to emphasize their pro-labor positions BEFORE the convention and emphasize their pro-business positions AFTER the convention. Hillary is so pro-business she's unable to find much in the way of a pro-labor position. She's a corporatist.

When Hillary responded in the debates regarding the unemployment problems in the U.S. and eagerly blamed the workers for not having the right education and training, she lost me permanently. We have people being attracted from outside our borders who don't have a high school education, taking 'jobs' for substandard pay and substandard working conditions while college graduates are asking "Do you want fries with that?" We have educated and experienced people in Information Technology who can't find a decent job because their jobs are being off-shored or filled with work visa-holders. It's fucking insane.

We tax corporations at lower rates than we tax workers. We tax unearned income at lower rates than earned income. We penalize labor and celebrate death. And Hillary is a advocate for MORE of this. Sure, she's a "social" centrist, more liberal than the American Taliban on social issues like abortion - where she opposes overturning Roe v. Wase but has no interest in making abortion available to the least enfranchised. That's good - who can afford a kid with lowered wages and salaries?

because their jobs are being off-shored or filled with work visa-holders."

That would be a lot of the people I know.

Humphrey went two ways in his campaign and there is debate which one hurt or helped the most. He definitely was going to be a liberal president but had succeeded dramatically in trashing that reality at his Convention alone. Was Bill a closet liberal? Hillary started out as a Republican. Did Bill get liberal legislation sailing through a growing Dem majority? He himself complained they were Eisenhower Republicans and then sailed on to NAFTA and the welfare "reforms".

What you commit to in the campaign commits you to performance. And further, if the centrism ends up dampening your coattails and those coattails make more centrists, the liberal suppression is even more de facto. So, is a liberal agenda peeping in to be seen as a mystery consolation prize? What's in the box, like those bargain surprise packages in the store?

JFK's strong centrist commitments gave us tremendous drawbacks in foreign policy belligerence and near fatal disasters. If that is what it took him to win, the cost was tremendous, and collected, while liberal initiatives floundered until LBJ. Centrism cannot be defined as giveaways to war and big money, to moral jingoism. Liberalism can be centrist in a way that would dissatisfy progressive activists, people who see the necessity of bigger reforms. But then the impetus can naturally move toward the more progressive.

Disastrous centrism dealing with war, permissive deregulated capitalism and repression of rights, all commingled with hate and fear poisons a presidency too much. "Moving" from that is a dangerous waste, impeding all progress, always looking in a diseased mirror toward the second term. Only money and media can make the concept of "winning" cater to these horrors which are not in the interests of the general public at all. This time there should be no even field of candidates. Nixon and JFK was something of a fair matchup, inconceivable as that sounds to us today. With a good Dem candidate there is no matchup except against he big special interests and their control over media and fraud. Moving in THAT direction is what this is REALLY about and we have only one candidate in danger of doing just that.

His big issue in '60 was the supposed build-up of Soviet forces and he proposed our own military response. The true liberal in that race was Hubert Humphrey, not Kennedy. I honestly can't think of any "liberal" issues Kennedy ran or...or for that matter took a stand on.

I've read some of JFK's campaign speeches and they're filled with hope for poverty reduction, international cooperation and yes a few mildly patriotic platitudes, mostly regarding the Bill of Rights. Can't say the same for HRC and she's been stumping for months.

put her in the center--not playing anything.

Would a Liberal cheerlead permanent "free" trade status for China?

Would a Liberal vote for a Patriot Act, and it's renewal, that are so radically to the Right that the courts have deemed provisions to be unconstitutional?

Would a Liberal profess a need for torture?

She has been chosen to receive the endorsement of Republicans by being the only candidate that is receiving coverage in the mass media. The Republican owned mass media will succeed in brainwashing the populace into believing she's the only viable candidate. If elected she'll do their bidding. I believe she is controlled by special interests just like the Republicans. The real candidates who advocate for the essential changes that would really benefit this country don't receive any coverage and the American people as a whole don't have a clue. Good Luck America Wake up!

And, anyone who is even considering a vote for her on that premise will be sadly mistaken.

No one in the DLC is ever more "liberal" than they seem.

TC

Democrats will be desperate enough to vote for a corporate centrist.

Let's just look at the cold, hard facts about the DLC and its record. The DLC has pushed, among other things, the war in Iraq and "free" trade policies, using bags of corporate money to buy enough Democratic votes to help Republicans make those policies a reality. They have chastised anyone who has opposed those policies as either unpatriotic or anti-business -- even as a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, oppose the DLC's business-written trade deals, and are sick of watching America's economy sold out to the highest corporate bidder. Additionally, in brazenly Orwellian fashion, the DLC has also called its extremist agenda "centrist," even though polls show the American public opposes most of their agenda, and supports much of the progressive agenda. http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0727-32.htm

The progressive movement has not just threatened this message monopoly -- it is undoing it. Through MoveOn, the rise of popular documentaries, blogs, think tanks, etc. It's not just that we talk about real values and innovative strategies. It's because we're talking, period, that the centrists feel threatened.

Hence the DLC's vicious attempts to discredit the movement. And that's what they want. They don't seek to win an argument over policy. They seek to destroy the credibility of their opponents and restore their message monopoly. http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=721

This is why the DLC is dangerous. For all their claims of supposedly wanting to help Democrats, they employ people like Marshall Wittman who specifically try to undermine the Democratic Party, even if it means he has to publicly defecate out the most rank and easily-debunkable lies. They reguarly give credence to the right wing's agenda and its worst, most unsupportable lies. They are the real force that tries to make sure this country is a one party state and that Democrats never really challenge the Republicans in a serious way. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/why-the-dlc-is-so-dangero_b_13640.html

"The Democratic Leadership Council's agenda is indistinguishable from the Republican Neoconservative agenda," http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Kucinich_DLC_agenda_undistinguishable_from_Neocon_0813.html

DLC Watch, the wicked shall not escape justice http://dlcwatch.blogspot.com

Without a doubt, the DLC is the most fundamentalist organization within the caucus, the most ideologically rigid, and the most destructive to the progressive cause.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/5/24/1712/23448

These DLC types are amazing, they really are. Their pathology is unique; they all secretly worship the guilt-by-association tactics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, but unlike those two, not one of them has enough balls to take being thought of as the bad guy by the general public.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11275627/the_low_post_democrats_walk_themselves_to_the_gallows

she's completely ignoring the left.
I see no reason to believe she'll suddenly change if elected and start addressing liberal issues any further left than the center.

about Iran's involvement in Iraq to justify her recent vote, just like she did when voting for the IWR? Please wake up!

but she will not be allowed to follow a more liberal course, IF she gets elected.

we will still have the corporations, and they will still have their lobbyists. they will call the shots. they will have helped her to get elected.

i do think she is a strong candidate, but not that strong.

which means there will be no REAL change, just cosmetics.

(are you listening, al?)

It says "Signs Point to Yes".

I see no evidence of this "liberalism."

she IS a centrist.

she'll pander to whoever needs pandering to.

planned on voting for her. I think this might be an example of political games backfiring. Adding this to the fact that the right wing hate machine is warming up for her, we need someone who will do the best for our country and have the best chance of winning. Period. Is it too much to ask politicians to stop playing games and do what's right for our country?

She'd hang on to all her original backers to win the midterms, win reelection, win the next midterm, get her veep elected, get her Social Security "reforms" passed, etc.

then after he got in shifted hard to the right. What's to say Hillary isn't playing to the center with an intent to shift to the left?

Since there is a mass of centerist and Cons around, they all have to play a horse and pony show for them to help get their vote; at least some of them anyway. But, that is just IMHO.

thru and thru.

She is trying to convince the country she's moderate.

In reality, she's more liberal than DUers think and more conservative than the country at large thinks.

She is already supposedly a shoe-in as the candidate so she doesn't have to play to the left to win support in the primary.

I thought this was obvious yet I see so many posts disecting her every word. :shrug:

to the theat-ah, doncha know?

recognizing of course that the center has shifted right over the yrs, making now's right be what used to be far right.