By MARC MCDONALD
In a shocker that all the highly paid political pundits missed by a mile, Hillary Clinton achieved a stunning upset in New Hampshire's Democratic primary Tuesday night.
To my fellow progressives: I'd like to remind everyone, Clinton's win is not the end of the world.
Don't get me wrong: Clinton is a sorry corporate sell-out and she did vote for the fiasco in Iraq. And if I had it my way, Michael Moore would be our next president (with Al Franken as vice president).
But let's be real, people: after eight horrifying years of George W. Bush in the White House, ANYONE new will be an improvement by a trillion light years. Hell, I'd even welcome back Dick Nixon with open arms, if it meant getting Bush out of the White House.
To the anti-war base on the Left, I say this: take heart. Sure, it'd be nice to have a strongly outspoken anti-war candidate in the White House, like John Edwards.
But look at it this way: the Iraq fiasco simply can't drag on much longer, no matter what our corrupt politicians in Washington want. The fact is, America is a bankrupt nation, with the biggest deficits of any country in history.
America can only "afford" the Iraq War's eye-popping $12 billion/month cost because China and Japan are loaning us the money. But it's unsustainable. History has shown time and again that bankrupt empires must eventually stop their wars of conquest.
Let's look at the bright side of things, people. One of the things I would enjoy the most about having Hillary Clinton in the White House is that it would drive the nutcase right-wing absolutely batshit.
Can you imagine the likes of Rush OxyMoron and that crazy Nazi nutcase Mark Levin in the aftermath of a Clinton victory? That alone would make a Clinton victory a pure pleasure.
I've heard some pundits argue that the GOP would really secretly prefer Hillary, if they had to have a Dem in the White House, simply because she's so pro-corporate and business-friendly. But these pundits are over-estimating the wisdom and depth of the Republicans. Talk to a wingnut sometime: these people really do despise Hillary with every fiber of their being.
And let's face it, we're not really ever going to get significant change in our rotten-to-the-core, corrupt political system, outside of armed revolt. When the People's Revolution comes, I'll be waiting on the barricades, ready to fight, along with millions of other fed-up working-class people. Until then, though, at least I can enjoy the spectacle of seeing the wingnuts have a heart attack over having Hillary in the White House.
At the end of the day, what's the most important lesson Dems can take from New Hampshire? It's this: nothing is set in stone in the 2008 election. I see too many Democrats who seem smug about re-taking the White House in 2008, simply because Bush has been such a disaster for America. But New Hampshire ought to show all of us that anything can happen and that nothing should be taken for granted in 2008.
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Ah Marc... The image of standing at the barricades fighting the Peoples' Revolution is indeed a romantic one, but it's not going to be so noble. When the hard times hit, if they're even half as bad as I fear (and what I've been reading is twice as bad as I predicted) it's going to be painful. On a physical as well as a psychic level.
There are going to be a lot of hungry people. When their jobs dry up and no money is coming in, they're not going to be stuffing their faces like before. Not a good way to deal with the obesity crisis. And people are going to be cold. Not just the ones evicted from the homes they can no longer make payments on, but the ones who can't afford oil because of the crash of the dollar used to buy it from overseas, or the ones whose electricity gets cut off for non-payment. I wonder how many will take to burning down the houses that police marshals have forced them to move out of, but that's only a short-term warmth.
I fear there will also be a lot of people with agonising pain from gunshot wounds. In a country as gunned-up as America, when some mens' lives go into the crapper, they're going to blast the people they hate most when they've got nothing else to lose. That will usually mean people in their own extended families, but it still equates to lots of agony.
I wish that Americans would develop some sense of class consciousness, and stand together against the bastards who have drug the country down. But it's more likely they're going to turn on each other in anarchic fury. Look at past revolutions from times of collapse, like the Russians and French. Solidarity it wasn't. Senseless slaughter it was.
I hope I'm wrong. I have a tendency to think apocalyptically. Still, it's a good time to batten the hatches. When you prepare for the worst that could happen, if it's anything less awful, you're all to the good. Know who your true friends are. Watch your back. Good luck in the new world...
I have the sense that Clinton is more bought and paid for than Obama too.
The real problem, and no politician touches it because they got in with it, is the financing of political campaigns by wealthy individuals and corporations.
Nobody's going to change that, at least not in my lifetime. It's not an emotional/colorful enough issue for Americans to generally recogize as the biggest single factor that's eroded our democracy, from what I can see.
Hi Bukko, thanks for stopping by.
I don't have any "romantic" fantasies about a worker's revolution. I'm a realist and I realize that a lot of people could die.
Still, I will be locked and loaded and fully ready to participate, if the revolution comes. And I know that I'm not alone in this country.
I do have mixed feelings about the French and Russian revolutions. The latter, I feel, started out well as a genuine worker's revolution with good intentions. It was betrayed by forces within and without. But even so, it wasn't all bad, I believe.
In any case, I tend to see history as a series of grays, rather than the simplistic black-and-white good/evil viewpoint that many people have. I'm always amused at how many Americans profess to be horrified at things that happened in other nations over the years, while we blissfully gloss over our own often-horrific history, which included slavery and the genocide of the Native American people.
I reject the idea that Soviet Communism was ALL bad. I mean, there's a REASON that a lot of older people in Russia today continue to fondly remember that era and even hold regular street demonstrations (and these people know more than anyone what that era was like, they LIVED through it). These are not naive youngsters with romantic visions of Communism...these are people who actually lived under Soviet Communism. You'll never see TV footage of a pro-Communist demonstration in Russia on CNN, or any of the other corporate media channels, but these demonstrations do occur, drawing large crowds.
I have mixed feelings about the French Revolution as well. I do believe that there was a tiny, rich leech class in France that was eating caviar off of gold plates while the masses starved. So the cause of the Revolution was entirely understandable. And frankly, as far as these leeches on society are concerned, I could care less if they had their heads chopped off.
The wealthy and powerful leech class in America today needs to be aware of history and the fact that it could all happen again someday.
"nothing should be taken for granted in 2008." Wow, I kinda learned that the hard way yesterday!
I, too am an Edwards supporter. However, I am not afraid of Mrs. Clinton. If she becomes our next president, all I can say is, "Do your worst."
I find it odd that the Repukes are so strongly against Hillary---after all, she is the furthest to the Right of all the Dem candidates and she is the most business-friendly.
I'm awfully afraid that, instead of a President Clinton or President Obama, it'll be President Giuliani, or President McCain, or President Huckabee, who'll take the oath of office in January 2009.
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