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The Presidentials Land at YearlyKos — Hillary Clinton Edition

The secret service cars are out front and the mainstream media has shown up in force, so you know it's time for the big boys. Hillary Clinton, who is up first, provides the most compelling story lines here at YearlyKos. As Kos himself admitted in a press conference a few moments ago, "Her negatives in this community are fairly high." She isn't seen as a true progressive, nor as someone willing to stand strong for her principles when it is politically inexpedient. But as Kos admitted, Clinton has moved strongly in the last year to engage the netroots and bring down those negatives.

Will she get hit for being the most moderate of all the candidates, or will she get kudos for trending in the right direction? Or, as has the case been throughout this convention, will the crowd be polite, respectful, and almost bland? Stay tuned…

Update: Half an hour into HRC's speech. The senator is continuing the netroots lovefest started yesterday by the mainstream media. "Let me start by saying something unexpected," she said. "Thank you. You have built the modern progressive movement in America. What you have done in a real short amount of time is fight back against the right wing noise machine."

"We have suffered from a real imbalance in the political world," said the senator, and that doesn't just mean the right has more organizations, think tanks, and media outlets than the left. The right actually runs what they have better. "The fact is, they were better organized, more mission-driven, and better prepared," she said. The netroots are remedying the problem and giving the left a chance.

But the bloggers, says Clinton, don't just right the balance of power, they also benefit the candidates on the left that they occasionally, or sometimes frequently, criticize. "I think it makes those of us who run for and hold office a little sharper," said Clinton. "It's nice to have some accountability and new ideas coming in."

But Hillary's not ready to embrace the blogosphere fully, not yet. "I actually read blogs," she said, "but don't tell anybody. Don't let anybody know that." The question, of course, is, why not?

Hillary Clinton just got an excellent question: it identified four pieces of legislation passed by the Bill Clinton administration as part of its triangulation efforts and asked her if she would support repealing them, as she has supported repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Welfare reform, NAFTA, and the Defense of Marriage Act were on the list.

Clinton had a tough balancing act to perform. She couldn't abandon the work of her husband, which she was often intimately involved with. But she couldn't embrace the legislation without looking overly non-progressive and out of touch/date. She acquitted herself well. She mentioned the parts of each law that worked and the parts that didn't. She was knowledgeable on the details, and tied the laws to new issues that are in everyone's shared comfort zone.

Oh, she just said she is in favor of universal broadband access — that's red meat for this crowd. She's quite good at this, isn't she? This has been a friendly little session...

Comments

She was clearly in her comfort zone at the meeting, in control - she and her managers had done a good job getting ready for this one (IMO compared to her speech at Take Back America that had her repeating Republican talking points about how it's all the Iraqis fault that things aren't going so well. . . ).

But besides the 4-parter that Jonathan mentioned, she also dodged a direct question about what sort of surveillance of US citizens she'd authorize, and what she wouldn't. Classic Hillary.

Posted by: Steve Katz on 08/04/07 at 12:27 PM

Read about Hillary and Money Laundering here

hillary and gore
http://hillaryandgore.blogspot.com

Posted by: hillaryandgore on 08/05/07 at 7:32 PM

Hillary supported the fiasco in Iraq when it was politically expedient and began opposing it when it became otherwise; to this day, she continues to lie about the reasons why. A vote for Hillary represents a vote by the truly naive. As a matter of record, a vote for anyone because they claim to be, "liberal" "progressive" or because they are female, instead of a vote based on someone's actual track record, rather than rhetoric, is a vote by the truly naive.

Posted by: Richard Aberdeen on 08/06/07 at 12:39 PM

Well, I thought, too, that that war vote was a vote to give the President a real stick--as a threat! The actual war and the false intelligence that got us into it are reprehensible. I support Hillary.

Posted by: Alice Wahl on 08/06/07 at 2:49 PM

Alice, you know left-leaning Common Dreams did a masterful job of exposing why John Kerry could have, and should have known better than to cast that "yes" vote. Why all his excuses for his Yes vote were just exactly that: Excuses.
You can read it here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0301-01.htm

It applies not only to Kerry, but also to Hillary and anybody else who claims to have been duped into a yes vote.
There was enough available evidence, enough reason to doubt, that the Sane heads in Congress DID vote "No" (remember?). Kerry wasn't one of 'em, and Hillary wasn't one of 'em.

I'll be damned if I'll be a part of putting another one who wasn't bright enough to see it, or gutsy enough to say NO into the oval office.

Posted by: gvc on 08/06/07 at 3:25 PM

You guys are being WAY too hard on Kerry and Hilary. If you would think BACK to post 9/11 times, their vote wasn’t about attacking Iraq. Their vote was about showing that `merica was run by a strong fascist Daddy. If the next door neighbor breaks your window, daddy needs to act. The children (most peasants) and mommy (the Democrats) wanted a STRONG daddy after 9/11. This is NORMAL HUMAN psychology. It’s what males are designed for; to act more stupid and violent that the OTHER tribe’s males; and to protect the woman and children.

All peasants assume that their leaders are somehow special. They think their leaders act differently or are motivated differently than themselves. But, the leaders are just “otherwise normal” people, who are more confident and bigger assholes than their followers. Just because they’re confident assholes, why should their natural human behavior be different.

Kerry and Hilary did “the right thing”, at the time. If “the mommy party” hadn’t voted for daddy going over and beating up the neighbor, daddy’s children would have beaten THEM up FIRST - before going off and beating up the wrong neighbor for breaking the window. That’s the best thing about watching the trash-peasants - and their leaders - (from a great distance) they are so predictable and amusing.

Posted by: John on 08/06/07 at 4:10 PM