Date Posted: 4/30/2008 8:34:00 PM
Hillary Clinton has the common touch and I don't. What a sobering realization that was. Actually I'm not surprised she connects so well with blue-collar voters. She's gritty. She understands the issues inside and out; therefore she can convince people that she really does care about their concerns. I come from a blue-collar family myself and the folks identified with that hue don't even want to hear my take on the Clinton's career of ethical lapses, skating from an irresponsibility here to irresponsibility there, letting some other poor slob take the fall for them. Remember Les Aspin, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, who fell on his sword because of the Black Hawk Down debacle in Somalia? Les was forced to resign and six months later he succumbs to a heart attack. I'm tempted to add him to my list of people whose deaths were remarkably beneficial to the Clintons but the blue-collar folks have no interest in hearing it.
That's not saying blue-collar folks are bad or dumb. They have issues of survival on their minds and the story I tell is way too fantastic. (Although not really. Almost everybody underestimates the Clintons and what they are capable of. Not me.) Hillary is very good at shaking hands with workers on an assembly line because there's nothing fantastic about the bread and butter issues. She's got, "We'll fix that. We'll fix that," down cold. That's the common touch. I can't create that 'aura of hope', that Clinton nimbus around Hillary she learned to wear so well from Bill. I just don't like myself that much if I over-promise and lie through my teeth.
Like Charlie Daniels has said, "A rich man goes to college and a poor man goes to work." My family wasn't rich, but I managed to go to college because there was one up the road. What did I study there? English Literature and Political Science, which probably leaves me fit to practice in only one area - political language. And that's what I do - I think about Hillary Clinton's use of political language. The problem is, there isn't much of it I believe.
My political arguments tend pretty much towards The Salon variety, not the stuff a candidate might hear visiting a shop floor. Why talk that way if you were smart like Hillary? She wants your support and if you support her she can be treacly. If you don't support her she'll want to beat the living shit out of you. Hillary shaking hands at the plant gate and Hillary in Washington DC are two separate animals.
The blue-collar folks should understand this but the dynamic tension between me and them is clear - I eat this stuff like popcorn and Joe Six Pack can't wait until it's all over. But just for the sake of argument let's say Joe Six comes up to me and said, "Awright, Kissinger. Look into your crystal ball and tell me, what are we going to get with under Hillary."
I'd say, "I only have a minor degree in the subject but I'll give it a shot." So let's take Hillary at her word: 'I'm a fighter.' What does that mean? If she's elected President and goes to Washington, eventually she'll deliberately picks fights with the Hannity-Limbaugh contingent in the US Congress. Suddenly we're back into the same 'Never Give An Inch' games that we've been seeing in Washington since ... well, since Newt Gingrich gave Speaker of The House Jim Wright the boot for 'ethical lapses'. Unlike Barack Obama, who I believe genuinely wants to reach across the aisle and work with the other Party to make America better, Hillary may only want to create 'issues' which congressional candidates can run on in the 2010 elections. She did say, 'Your not going to get Universal Health Coverage for two years.' Gee, just in time for the 2010 elections.
"I think her only goal is to clear the House and Senate of as many Republicans as she can and she'll waste the people's business for two years getting that done, demonizing the Republicans, calling them obstructionist. Who can blame her? As the leader of The Democratic Party that would be her job. But who will be her willing participants in this exercise in Politics As Usual? The Hannity-Limbaugh contingent in The Congress who'll be forced to 'fight fire with fire' one more disheartening time. All I can say is, they must think we're idiots
Consider this. Rush Limbaugh has been preaching the gospel of 'those that govern least, govern best,' for the past twenty-five years now? I used to buy into that until I started seeing our bridges and roadways crumble. Now I think, hey, we can use a little governance here. And wasn't Hillary supposed to chair some sub-committee after the I-39 bridge collapse to look into our ailing infrastructure? I guess she was supposed to ride at pothole covered road right into The White House but that never happened. Never happened? When it's all said and done, I hope my blue-collar brethren don't end up saying, about what they were promised, 'Never happened.'"
Hillary Clinton, President. Rush Limbaugh, America's Anchorman who doesn't accept the fact that yes we can sell electricity back to the electric company. There's the big stage of American politics for you - and nothing will get done. But to be fair I should say I do believe Hillary will create jobs - for every political consultant you can stomach pleasing the ultimate Boss From Hell.
But there's plenty to do. She's got a House and a Senate to clear don't cha know.
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