When I voted in the Missouri Presidential Primary, my choice was Hillary Clinton.
I have watched this woman fight the good fight for decades. When Bill Clinton was elected President and appointed her the chair of the task force to create a plan for reforming health care, I was delighted. Not only did we hope to finally bring about health care reform, but we saw a First Lady given a position commensurate with her capabilities. No more flowers and china…real work.
She served as chair on the committee that devised the plan. She testified for days in Congress in support of the plan. She traveled around the country talking about healthcare reform. She worked tirelessly on a plan that would have, among other things, instituted a mandate that employers provide healthcare insurance for their employees, that no one could be denied coverage, and lower-income people would not have to pay a dime.
I also watched as Republican vilified the plan, with a little help from the insurance companies. But what was harder to watch was the Democrats, with their incessant demands to have their own plans considered instead. President Clinton’s Democratic support fragmented to the point that we lost our first, best effort at healthcare reform. Democratic Senator Patrick Monyihan went so far as to declare there was no health care crises, as he pushed his own agenda. Representative McDermott and Senator Wellstone pushed a single-payer plan that hadn’t a chance in hell of succeeding, with only 4 additional Senators and 90 House Members in support—including an independent by the name of Bernie Sanders.
Thank goodness President Obama didn’t have as many difficulties with the Democratic Congress as Clinton had, or we’d still be debating that we don’t have a health care crises, we have a health insurance crises.
I have health insurance for the first time in years because of the Affordable Care Act. It may not be perfect, it may not be the ideal, but when you’ve sweated over the fact of being financially ruined because you get sick, well, perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
Hillary Clinton has promised to continue support for the Affordable Care Act, and improve on it, as she can, and as Congress allows. It’s a realistic promise that builds on what we have. It takes into consideration the very real makeup of Congress that will exist in 2017: a House still controlled by a rabid bunch of extremist Republicans, and possibly, only possibly, a Democratic controlled Senate.
More importantly, she sees the ACA as a stake in the ground in which to tie new reform to, rather than just dig everything up, and start over.
What Clinton promised on healthcare is what she can, as President, accomplish. There’s no fireworks, no talk of revolution—none of the sexy populism and grandiose schemes that seem to be the byword of this election. It would be so easy to promise the moon, along with everyone else, and then backtrack later by claiming Congress is too difficult and the Republicans have too much control. No, she’s quietly confirmed what she knows she can deliver: no more, no less.
In none of the issues listed at the Clinton web site, do we see promises that can’t be met. She doesn’t talk about “working towards” goals, she talks about actual, real-world efforts that we can see, and judge, ahead of time, and also hold her accountable for. That’s not glamorous, but it is gutsy.
She isn’t promising to free half the prison population, because she knows most prisons are state prisons and a President has no control over them. But Clinton can work to reduce the reliance on mandatory minimum sentences. She can also work with the Justice Department to ensure equal protection for all under our country’s judicial systems—just like Obama is doing now in places like Ferguson, MO.
Clinton isn’t promising to eliminate all student debt; doing so would take an act of Congress. Instead, she wants to work towards refinancing existing loans so former students have more favorable terms; and that no one ever pays more than 10 percent of their income. She’s not promising free college for all, but easier access to tuition assistance by expanding on the existing Pell Grant system. Free college tuition for all, even if it were a good idea, would not only take an act of Congress, but would also require support from the leadership in all of the states.
Considering that Republican governors have been cutting state funds to colleges in almost all states they control, I doubt that we’ll see them gladly accept the fact that they have to provide even more funds.
Clinton supports the President’s DREAM Act, and she’ll work towards immigration reform. She promises to help families as much as a President can. No magic wand approach, here. No mention of walls, either.
No President has the capability of breaking up the banks, but Clinton has promised to strictly enforce rules against them. And work to strengthen the existing rules, and close loopholes—all actions an Executive can take if Congress resists any other effort.
Clinton won’t ban all fracking, because no President can ban all fracking. Only an act of Congress can enforce a fracking ban.
But Clinton has promised to phase out fracking on public land, as well as more strictly enforce safety and environmental regulations. The important thing to remember, though, is we can’t phase out fracking by dumping us back into a dependency on coal and coal mining. We don’t have an infrastructure in place where we can immediately replace non-renewable energy sources with renewable ones. It’s a complex problem with a lot of dependencies, none of which easily fits into a sound bite. But then, I’m not sure that voting for someone because of their sound bites is representative of good governance.
I have no doubts, though, that Clinton will honor the Paris Agreement, work to have Congress ratify it, and even expand on it, if possible. And that she’ll be a fervent proponent for both solar and wind energy.
Hillary Clinton is also capable of holding her own under pressure and attack. We’ve seen the Republicans mount a campaign to tear Clinton down that exceeds any other in modern history. The only person they’ve gone after more virulently is Obama. He’s only been the target for eight years—she’s been a target for decades.
Case in point is the infamous emails. Clinton establishes her own professionally maintained email server rather than use a popular email service like AOL (Colin Powell’s favorite), and next thing we know, according to our Republican friends, the fate of the country is undermined.
Partisan hyperbole aside, Clinton scrupulously maintained a set of her emails from when she was Secretary of State, turning them over when requested, and asking for all of the emails to be published so that people could see she had nothing to hide. No other person in the White House Administration has had every email they’ve ever received or sent be scrutinized with the level that Clinton’s emails have been scrutinized. They have passed through the Intelligence Community filter, and when consider the agencies involved, it’s almost unbelievable that any of them managed to survive relatively intact. Since the last of the emails have been delivered, we now know, for a fact, that none were classified at the time they were sent or received. We also know that emails Powell received in his private email have also suffered the same retro-classification, symptomatic more of inter-agency squabbling than a real threat to national security.
Yet here is the Republican National Committee, now suing the State Department for even more, trying to get emails from people connected to Hillary Clinton, many in private organizations; all in a desperate attempt to keep the manufactured scandal alive. It would be funny if it didn’t cost tax payers millions of dollars.
Thankfully, most of us see this for the desperate and despicable act it is. Clinton will survive it, as she’s survived so many of these contrived controversies. She survived the emails, she survived the Benghazi never-ending committees, which Republicans foolishly admitted were created to undermine her Presidential candidacy.
There are even those who would hold Clinton accountable for the actions of her husband when he was President, as if she’s nothing more than a faint echo of him. You’d think we’d be beyond considering women to be nothing more than appendages of their mates, but evidently not when it suits certain agendas.
Bluntly, in my opinion, Hillary Clinton will be a better President than Bill. She’s more experienced now than he was when he got the job. She’s also more open to hearing new ideas, more aware of all the factors in play that can cause havoc. As practical as she is, she’s also more idealistic—a little more empathetic to what’s happening to the average person.
I’ve also seen Clinton exercise her considerable intellect, her shrewdness, and her team-building skills in support of the United States and our current, much loved President, Barrack Obama. Team building doesn’t factor into our discussions about being a good President, but it’s an essential element. FDR managed to pull positive results out of disaster because he was able to swear in the majority of his cabinet the very day he was inaugurated. He had the complete backing, not only of Congress, but also most state governments. To hit the ground running, he knew he had to have a good team in place.
Over the years, Clinton has helped raise funds for Democratic candidates in Congress and down ballot races. She knows, as President, she can’t hope to bring about change all on her own. She needs a solid team behind her.
(We all need more Democrats in Congress if we hope to save this country—something we seem to forget every odd year election. We even need some independents. Among those who have received campaign funds directly from Clinton’s PAC is none other than Bernie Sanders, in his Senatorial race.)
The most recent attack against Clinton is that she’s not publishing transcripts for all her speeches given when she was a private citizen—something that’s never been asked of any Presidential candidate. Why do people want the transcripts? So they can cherry pick through the text, taking bits and pieces out of context in order to misrepresent who she is and what she believes. They did the same thing with her emails.
This isn’t transparency…this is fresh fodder for the anti-Clinton machine, necessary because no matter how much she’s been bashed, she’s survived. The only difference now is that she’s being bashed from the left—an act that has caused deep fissures among those who have long fought in solidarity.
I don’t fault those on the left who don’t support Clinton because they believe Bernie Sanders has a better plan for the country. We each have our own interests and beliefs. I do, however, fault those on the left who repeat the GOP talking points, because they’re so obsessed over Sanders winning that they’ll burn anything in his path—and that includes the future of the country, because they’ll toss this next election to the GOP rather than work with the rest of us to keep what would be a complete disaster from happening.
Bernie or Bust is a shout from the privileged class, because they’re not a minority, or gay, or poor, or a woman who demands the freedom of choice, or Muslim, or an immigrant. They can call for a revolution, safe in the knowledge that they have nothing to lose.
The rest of us live in the real world. We know what’s at stake. I don’t believe Bernie Sanders has a chance for the nomination, but if he were to get it, I would support him.
I feel confident, though, that the Democratic nominee will be Hillary Clinton. She’s our best choice, as President, and our best chance at winning the election. She’ll be a good leader, building on what Obama started, but also adding her own personal touch, and achievements.
We’ll progress under a President Hillary Clinton presidency, and isn’t that what being a progressive is all about?
Ms. Squirrel is hiding in tree, until this is all over.
