Question for supporters of the "presumptive nominee"

[Parisle]

--- What is Hillary's strongest or most important issue? Behind which principle of governance does she stand the most foursquare? Here's why I ask...

--- When I think of Al Gore, I can isolate on a few things,... namely his voluminous office-holding experience,.. he was even in Vietnam,... and he sure as hell makes good use of his time out of office. When I think of Clark, I can isolate on his superior qualifications in national defense, foreign policy and 1st-in-his-class intellect. Edwards combines populist appeal with a clear concern for the economic disparity faced by the working underclass,.. and he knows what it's like both to take on a big corporation or admit a mistake. They all present discrete values or qualities which I can associate with them.

--- I don't have that with Sen. Clinton. (although I could cite the same several negatives which will be keyed upon by the republican opposition during the entire 2008 campaign) Does she have a "specialty?"

--- Don't get me wrong. Personally, I want a candidate who will be pursuing prison sentences for Bush administration officials, PNAC members and select CEO's, alike. I want to hear a candidate promise to completely erase all that was done by the Bush regime. And I want corporations kicked out of politics completely. So I basically do not yet have a candidate yet, eh?

--- And while I feel the democrats certainly hold all the cards for 2008, I cannot escape the nagging feeling that Hillary represents our best chance for miscalculation and defeat. If Clinton's "presumptive" hold on the nomination comes down to name, big money and upper party organization, then she is succeeding for all the wrong reasons.

[Vincardog]

1. Hillary's "specialty" is political triangulation and self promotion.

[Mz Pip]

2. Ding ding ding!

We have a winner!

You've put into words what I've been unable to nail down about Hillary.

Still these will be necessary skills going into the general election if she turns out to be the candidate.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[jobycom]

3. Well, since no one has fully provided a platform for any of the main candidates

we can go more off what she has done so far, than what she has said.

Her big issues in office have been domestic. She's been strong on stem cell research, pro-choice issues, labor, and medical care. She's been strong on "family issues," though not in the way the Republicans interpret it (as a way to promote white Christian Americans over everyone else), but by taking on corporations who market misleading products to minors.

On the war, she voted for the IWR, as she said at the time, not to vote for war, but to give Bush the power to force Hussein into compliance to avoid a war. She has since said the vote was a mistake, though her reasoning for voting for it wasn't to get us into a war. She's been consistent on that, from the day she cast the vote until a speech I heard recently in which she reiterated that she would not have invaded Iraq if she had been in charge.

Since then she has blasted Bush for the Halliburton and other corporate giveaways, and has called for (but not gotten) investigations into those deals. She has criticized Bush's planning of the invasion, saying (like other Dems) that he did not plan for enough troops to do the job properly, and that he did not equip the troops properly. She said this around the time other Dems were saying it, so she didn't come around quickly enough, but then again, both Kerry and Edwards were still gung-ho at the time.

Since then she's called for a soft timetable for withdrawal of troops, but has been opposed to a firm deadline--although the soft deadline she set back in 2004 was by the end of last year sometime.

She does have a compromising attitude, like her husband. She wanted, for instance, to head off the flag burning amendment by co-sponsoring (along with a lot of other liberal Democrats) a bill that would make burning a flag for the purpose of intimidating someone a crime (this was a response to the Repub criticism that it was illegal for KKK members to burn a cross on someone's yard, so it should be okay to ban flag-burning--a lot of people missed the purpose of this bill). She isn't as absolute as Americans generally want their politicians to be. To me, that's a plus, up to a point, but there's an art to giving away only what you can't get anyway, and I don't know if she has that or not.

Given her past issues of interest, I suspect that when she has a platform, it will contain a program for education, for health care, for labor, for the environment, to battle global warming, and for diplomacy with a strong hand to back it up--I'm not thrilled with the last, but I doubt we'll get a true pacifist in office.

You know her experience and her resume--one of the most powerful lawyers in the country in Arkansas, an activist, before she married Bill and as "first lady" (I hate that term) in Arkansas and then in the White House, and a two term senator. Stronger experience than some (Obama, Edwards), not as strong as others (Biden,), and completely different experiences than some (Clark, Kucinich). She also wouldn't have to go through the "I'm God, bow to me" phase of being newly elected president, since she has seen how it works from the inside. A lot of new presidents screw up early on because of this, and then outgrow it. Bush Boy obviously never outgrew it.

That's the gist of it. I'm not the best person to answer your question, since I haven't decided who to support yet, though she's on my list, but given the misinformation and the swiftboating against her, and my inherent love of facts and fair play, I thought I could give a basic answer.

[AtomicKitten]

4. too early to declare a "presumptive" nominee

any reaction to that would be knee-jerk at this stage of the game