Hillary's Betrayal

Hillary’s Betrayal
By John Delloro

The endorsement of Governor Bill Richardson should have signaled to Hillary and her supporters of the limitation of her mantra of experience. Of all the original candidates for the Democratic nomination, Governor Richardson held political office the longest, which totaled more than the combined tenure of Hillary and Obama including a seat in US Congress as well as secretary of energy and US ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton. According to the Hillary’s standard of measurement, Richardson should be president and if you further extend “Hillary logic,” his decision, added with the official endorsements of Obama by two other former candidates Senator Chris Dodd and Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, both with impressive resumes, should be enough weight for Hillary to hang her hat and step aside for Obama. Alas, chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn labeled the governor of New Mexico’s support insignificant and fellow Clintonite James Carville painted Richardson with the same brush stroke of Judas Iscariot for his “act of betrayal.” The responses of a number of Hillary supporters in the vast blogosphere, parroting Penn’s and Carville’s pronouncements with their own cynical narrative of Richardson gambling for a position in an Obama administration, only further reveal the bankruptcy and irony of the Hillary campaign.

Hillary’s extensive courting of Richardson renders Penn’s assessment to the level of a spoiled child who didn’t get what he or she wanted—“well, I didn’t want it anyway.” Carville’s attempt at clever analogy by equating Richardson to Judas throws back the curtain and unveils the political quid pro quo and Washington DC machinations that majority of this country has long suspected and reviled—“Richardson owes the Clintons for his political career, therefore he should automatically and wholeheartedly endorse Hillary.” In regards to the number of Hillary supporters commenting on various blogs who dismissed Richardson’s actions as self-serving, they are probably correct. Extensive experience in Washington DC politics does midwife a wisdom that embraces quid pro quo tactics as necessary to political success and encourages loyalty to key insiders and beltway operatives as opposed to the nation as a whole. Whether Hillary supporters are willing to admit or not, this is the kind of politics that Hillary’s campaign will continue. Forget the speeches and examine the campaign strategies, this conclusion cannot be denied.

Her traditional campaign strategy of focusing on big states, targeting likely voters and reliance on key endorsements only reinforces the status quo by limiting the scope of whose voices are to be heard (This is in contrast to Obama’s 50 state strategy, recruiting the “unlikely voters” to participate, and implementation of the principles of community organizing). With Obama’s current lead in delegates, it is too easy to forget that Hillary, early on, was the choice of the establishment of the Democratic Party. In fact, most pundits, prior to the first primary, had already concluded that Hillary would most likely be the Democratic nominee. The recent tactics of Hillary’s campaign is the most telling. Journalist Marc Cooper noted its turn to negative and fear-based electioneering that began with her infamous “ringing phone” ad, “To heal her own malady of consistently losing to Barack Obama, Clinton decided to scrap any innovation and reach for Granny's old standby, fix-it-all remedy: When in doubt, just run like a Republican.” The sewer politics continue as Hillary ignored a reporter’s question last week if the Hillary campaign was pushing the controversial and racially divisive Pastor Wright’s story to the superdelegates. This stands in stark contrast to Obama’s recent attempt to bridge racial divisions in his historic speech on race, a risky political move that earned both acclaim and respect from a number of commentators from both sides of the aisle. Remember, extensive experience in Washington DC politics nods at Hillary’s campaign antics and counsels against Obama’s approach. If Hillary is willing to adopt Republican tactics during a difficult election, what would a Hillary Clinton White House do and accomplish during a difficult political season in Washington DC? What change does “experience” promise?
In the tradition of status quo politics and traditional media coverage, the news of Governor Bill Richardson’s impending endorsement of Barack Obama overshadowed a much more important meeting between several young war veterans, majority suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the two battling candidates that took place on MTV’s Choose or Lose program. “I would trade in my Purple Heart to get my life back to as normal as it can be," confessed Wendell Guillermo to the candidates. 23-year old Wendell faced a grenade on the war fields of Iraq and returned to the US with medals and a condition that rendered everyday tasks into bouts with anxiety and trauma-induced tension. Each of the newly returned soldiers confronted the two candidates with their stories of alienation and abandonment upon coming back home.

The real betrayal is not Richardson’s endorsement of Obama but the continuation of politics as usual.