Is Hillary Gonna Go Independent and Launch a New Party?
It Sure Looks Like It
by Davey D
So for a while I been saying Hillary was gonna pull a gangsta move at the convention in Denver and declare that she is going to run for President as an independent. Its not as far fetched as you might think.
Hillary has been over the top divisive to the point that she is damn near saying; ‘If I can’t be the nominee nobody can. I’m gonna fuck up this Democratic Party so much nobody can use it…That’s how she has been acting with all the racial disharmony bit.
There was a lot of early chatter before the first primaries that went along these lines-The game plan was for Hillary to be the nominee and Barack Obama to be back up. His role was to be a second rockstar/superstar type figure in the newly energized Democratic Party that was set to take back the White House in 2008.
He was to bide his time and get groomed and be a spark plug for young voters, moderates and maybe African Americans. Keep in mind, the Clintons pretty much had all of us Black folks sewn up.
They had locked down most of the Congressional Black Caucus who were publicly pledging their support and acting as surrogates. They had gathered up damn near every key Black elected official from here in Cali to New York.
We’re talking from Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums to Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel-all were riding hard for Hillary. Adding to that, was the Clintons had sewn up most of the non-conservative Latino vote. The only thing Hillary Clinton had to work on was swooping up women voters who interestingly enough were divided about her candidacy weeks and months before the first primaries.
Now somewhere along the way something changed. Call it a miscalculation. Call it a double-cross. Call it a change of heart but the bottomline is Obama who was behind by double digits defied the pundits and started winning. Initially his success came with the help of enthusiastic young voters and college educated white voters. His momentum caused the Clintons to panic at which point they tried to ‘control all their Negroes’ and keep everyone in check, it backfired. The Clintons showed their true colors which manifested in their overt disrespect for Black folks.
Can anyone say South Carolina?
It was like almost overnight, Black folks who were still questioning Obama’s intentions and even his Blackness, started rolling with him when Bill Clinton, the supposed first Black President got real nasty and dissed Martin Luther King just days before his birthday.
Hillary Clinton, during that South Carolina stint added to the disrespect when brought out billionaire and former BET CEO Bob Johnson who she proudly claimed as a long time friend and advisor. That was a bad move considering the anger Johnson has sparked in Black folks nationwide because of his staunch refusal to stop showing degrading images of Black folks on his old network (BET is now owned by Viacom.
) Bringing Johnson out to rep Hillary and endear her to Black people would be like me bringing OJ Simpson to a NOW convention in hopes that he would endear me to women. It wasn’t happening.
Johnson showed his lack of worth by playing the role of Hillary’s subserviant lap dog as he promptly went on the attack and tried to clown Senator Obama by eluding to his past drug use which Obama had already admitted to in his memoirs. His action drew swift rebuke and was perhaps the final straw in a week full of racial swipes and insults by the Clintons.
Since South Carolina, the race between Obama and Clinton has been more than spirited but on many levels personal with the Clinton’s finally realizing that the guy who was supposed to be backup quarterback was actually gonna take this thing.
So now we fast forward with two or three weeks left in the primary and we see Hillary running harder than ever even tho there’s no way she possibly win in terms of pledge delegates. Thus far her strategy has been to keep bringing up ‘fuzzy logic’ and even fuzzier math which includes her continuously saying that she won the popular vote by counting the votes from Florida and Michigan in spite of the fact that both states were in violation of Democratic Party rules and thus did not and should not count. In the case of Michigan, Obama name wasn’t even on the ballot but that has not made no difference to the Clintons who seem to hope that by repeating a lie often enough people will start to hear it as truth.
By now we are all aware of the divisive race card the Clintons have been playing. They have been anything but subtle. Hillary has all but said she is in the race to rep for white people which is in sharp contrast to Obama who routinely gets criticized for not pushing a ‘Black agenda’ while seemingly always bending over to appease whites. Obama has made the cornerstone of his campaign to be a transcender of race and bring all people together. Such has not been the case with Hillary. One would think that Obama who has been winning impressively by bringing together folks of all ethnicities only attracts one type of person, where in fact its Hillary who increasingly appears to be a one horse show. She appeals to working class whites.
So what’s really going on? Why is Hillary still running everyone is wondering?. First, we know Hillary is not just running for herself. She has an entire team which includes her husband that she got to be accountable to and they’re not about to give up on their plans to be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave come January 2009. Hence Hillary who is the face of that team is out there running like there’s no tomorrow.
There’s been all sorts of speculation. Some are saying Hillary is vigorously running in all 50 states for the sake of history. It would be akin to running out a ground ball or remain standing after a heavyweight prize fight.
others are saying that she’s running to increase her influence and have much more say so as to what direction the Democratic Party takes and the strategy it employs come the fall contest.
Others say she’s doing it to assure being included on the ticket as vice president or to ideally position herself for another run in 2012.
My prediction as I mentioned earlier was Hillary Clinton was gearing up to try and run as an independent but I couldn’t fill in all the gaps to complete the entire scenario.
This afternoon (Tuesday May 20)on former Air America talk show host Randi Rhodes did on her new show.
She talked about Clinton’s close ties to Senator Joe Liberman who was basically run out of the Democratic Party during the 2006 election because he was always riding hard for the Republicans and a stauch supporter of the Iraq War.
The Dems thought they could bounce him out and replace him with someone more liberal-Ned Lamont who was against the war.
Unfortunately the plan backfired. Liberman lost the Democratic primary but came around to kick everyone in the butt by winning the general election when he ran as an independent. So you know dude is salty. Rhodes surmised that Hillary and Liberman who was the 2004 democratic Vice President nominee, had to have discussed the possibility of her making an independent run.
Rhodes went on to give some insight as to what the Clintons may likely be feeling after having super delegates and party leaders who owe a lot of their success and positions to the them, turn their backs and break ranks to support Obama. She said in short, they may be more than miffed.
With Rhodes assessment in mind, you can now understand how a possible indy run would make sense.
People forget that Bill Clinton was one of the chief architects of the winning strategy of running to the political middle and taking a more conservative stance on social issues which was employed by the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) which he chaired in the early 90s. The DLC strategy is what led to the re-hauling of welfare, media consolidation which led to the Clear Channeling of commercial radio and the infamous crime bill which resulted in our prison population exploding to over 2 million.
The DLC’s willingness to forsake the progressive wing of the party and placate so called Reagan Democrats has been touted as the best political strategy to come along in decades. Its angered a lot of folks on the left who have found themselves either taken for granted or key issues along the lines of race and class, marginalized.
For a long time media outlets like Black Agenda Report with writers Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon have been putting Obama’s feet to the fire. Initially it was because of his ties to the DLC and later because of him following their strategy which means in the end Black folks will see their many of their key issues put to the back burner while white working class Reagan Democrats are appeased.
The way its shaping up is that there appears to be resentment that Obama might possibly be successful at that game and hence we are seeing the Clintons guard the white working class vote with the viciousness of a pitbull.
Any talk of racial reconciliation has all but been spat upon not so much by the Republicans but by the Clintons themselves along with key surrogates like Geraldine Ferraro who has already made disparaging racial comments about Obama has recently suggested that if he gets the nomination she will not support him.
The tactics used to lure the Reagan Democratics are the same racial fear based tactics used during the Clinton hey day.
It’s interesting to note that the Clintons now refer to this demographic as ‘hard working Americans’ as if no one else in this country works hard. It’s as if single Black & Brown mothers aren’t putting in work or Black and Brown fathers aren’t going through economic challenges after seeing their factory jobs disappear overseas?.
During the Clinton hey day those hard working Americans were depicted as ‘angry white males‘ who were supposedly royally getting screwed by the system.
Am I the only one who recalls the day when Reagan Democrats were crying that they were victimized by social programs like affirmative action, system abusing Black welfare queens and inner city crimes from the likes of Willie Horton?
Today we have one too many talk show pundits who are now floating out the idea that Hillary Clinton’s alignment and unwavering support of white working class voters is the start of a new movement and needs to be celebrated.
In recent weeks Hillary Clinton has been praised for reaching out and uplifting white working class voters with words like ‘forgotten people‘ and ‘marginalized communities‘ to describe them.
This time around their biggest fear is the afrocentric teachings of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and comments about them being ‘bitter’ from out of touch college educated types. Hillary is being depicted as their champ. The praise of her starting a movement is eerily similar to what was being touted about Obama early on when he was winning white audiences. But unlike Clinton the white people Obama has been attracting have been described as more educated (meaning they went to college) and therefore they are part of the elite.
Are the Clintons creating a scenario where they can they can take this new movement and start their own thing? It may not work be fully successful in 2008, but an independent Clinton run in 2008 sets the stage for 2012. I’m imagining a scenario where a somber Hillary Clinton from the floor of the Democratic convention announces that she is duty bound to ‘working class voters who are getting screwed and that she wants to be their champ and ensure that that they are truly represented. Hence she is gonna run as an independent.
Heck she and her crew may even spark off what they think will be a viable 3rd party that adheres to the values and platforms of the DLC. This new party will leave behind progressives, Black folks and young voters while offsetting that with moderate Dems, and Republicans and their new voting population that they will eventually take for granted-Latinos..(Peep the interview I did with Immortal technique and listen to how he laid the role Latinos voters will come to play in future elections)..
This is how things seem to be shaping up.
What do you think?
