On Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger, a cost benefit analysis.

[EEO]

There has been some spirited conversation about Hillary Clinton, and many have posited her statements about Kissinger are all to beef up her foreign policy credentials and appeal to conservatives because she is a real liberal at heart. Others have taken a position more like my own, shaking our heads and laughing at the absurdity of what she said and those who are scrambling to defend her or deflect and attack someone else like David Corn.

As I see it there is a big problem to getting behind an "inevitable" candidate like Hillary Clinton and excusing her actions by saying it is all politics and that she needs to get elected then she'll show us her true colors. Right. Because the game ends when someone is elected. Not so much.

You can tell me this is just one compromise we have to make in the name of politics to get a liberal wolf in conservative sheep clothing (which some in this community think Hillary Clinton is), but I don't buy it. Because then the next compromise comes, and the next. All justified because the game has to be played and while all that bullshit is happening the liberals are being sold out - again (ahem, ahem, President Obama).

At some point we have to make a cost benefit analysis and determine at what point we say Hillary Clinton is too much cost and too little benefit for us. And I reached that point well before her Kissinger comments. The Democrats need someone better, and there are others out there. And ironically it is Bill Clinton that proved you can come out of nowhere to take a nomination and then the presidency.

[elleng]

1. Yes. Problem is

who, and how likely to succeed. Of course its too early to say, but you raise good points.

[Voice for Peace]

2. Any progressive governors thinking about running?

[arcane1]

3. Our absolute biggest problem is this focus on 2016 instead of the election around the corner.

Getting some good liberals into congress (and getting some bad right-wingers OUT) should be the only priority right now. The 2016 election is over two years away. Anything can happen during that time to make this non-stop Clinton speculation irrelevant.

I don't remember this much talk about Obama and Kerry in 2006 and 2002, respectively

[EEO]

8. I agree. But those who want to anoint her president must receive a reponse.

[Louisiana1976]

4. Hillary Clinton has allied herself with a disgusting war criminal. Kissinger aided the right-wing

coup that toppled Allende in Chile and greenlighted Argentina's bloody Dirty War. I'd like to see Kissinger travel to Argentina and see the inside of an Argentinian prison.

[EEO]

6. He did a lot more than that.

Pretty horrible person.

[Deny and Shred]

5. Too rational a question

Cost benefit isn't nearly as fun as flame away, facts be damned.

Through a very long lens, I would imagine a HRC presidency as a similar scenario to Obama. Costs? She'll cave on several topics that truly concern the money/war contingent: TPP will pass, enough war will be started to satisfy the hawks, Wall St will get whatever they want, surveillance continues, none of these perpetrators will ever have to fear justice. Whistleblowers and protests from the left will still be crushed. Those from the right, not so much.

Benefits? She'll still come through on some social issues like gender equality, gay rights, maybe minimum wage, possibly others.

My two cents.

I do hold out hope, though this DLC wolf in sheep's clothing analogy seems apt to me at this point.

[blkmusclmachine]

7. "..she needs to get elected (and) then she'll show us her true colors.."

Obama did that, and we're all still wincing that we got fooled twice by a slick-talking politician.

[DonCoquixote]

9. a snippet that sums it

You can tell me this is just one compromise we have to make in the name of politics to get a liberal wolf in conservative sheep clothing (which some in this community think Hillary Clinton is),

Sorry, if Hillary wanted to be a liberal, she would show it by now.

[YOHABLO]

10. Hillary thinks (naively so) that campaigning from center right is the way to go. She'll throw the

progressives a bone or two, but she's now a Washington insider and will make abominable compromises with the corporate elite. At this point even Biden is looking better as a candidate. No one ever talks about his ambitions for running. What we need to do is pack the House with a majority of Dems, which will be hard to do.

[EEO]

11. Taking the House would be nice, but is not looking very possible this cycle.

I supported Biden in 2008 before it became a two horse race.