http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/16/hillary-clinton-on-workin_n_97017.html
During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a
working class populist, the
politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of
her opponent, Sen.
Barack Obama.
But a telling anecdote from her husband's administration shows Hillary
Clinton's attitudes about
the "lunch-bucket Democrats" are not exactly pristine.
In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994
congressional elections,
a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration
make
overtures to working
class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The
then-first lady took a
less than inclusive approach.
"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill.
They're doing nothing for
you; you don't have to do anything for them."
The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in
his book, "The Truth
of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House" -- was prompted
by another speaker
raising the difficulties of reaching "Reagan Democrats." It stands in
stark
contrast to the
attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail,
in
which she has
presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class
needs.
"I don't think [Obama] really gets it that people are looking for a
president who stands up for
you and not looks down on you," she said this week.
But those who were at the event say the 1995 episode fits into her larger
political viewpoint. As
Harry Boyte, the director of the University of Minnesota's Center for
Democracy and Citizen****p
who was at the retreat, told The Huffington Post: "[Hillary Clinton] sees
herself as the champion
of the oppressed, but there is always a kind of good guy versus bad guy
mentality. The comment
before that was that 'the Reagan Democrats are our enemies and they
weren't
on our side,' and she
was agreeing with that comment. She said we should write them off: screw
them."
Perhaps even more telling than Hillary Clinton's "screw 'em" proclamation,
however, were the
words from her husband that followed. As re****ted by Barber, Clinton
"stepped in, calm and
judicious, not irritated, as if rehearsing an old but honorable debate he
had been having with
his wife for decades."
I know how you feel. I understand Hillary's sense of outrage. It makes me
mad too. Sure, we lost
our base in the South; our boys voted for Gingrich. But let me tell you
something. I know these
boys. I grew up with them. Hardworking, poor, white boys, who feel left
out,
feel that our
reforms always come at their expense. Think about it, every progressive
advance our country has
made since the Civil War has been on their backs. They're the ones asked
to
pay the price of
progress. Now, we are the party of progress, but let me tell you, until we
find a way to include
these boys in our programs, until we stop making them pay the whole price
of
liberty for others,
we are never going to unite our party, never really going to have change
that sticks.
If the tone and tenor of the above sounds familiar, it's because the
message, Boyte says, is
remarkably similar to what Obama was trying to convey in his now
controversial remarks about
small town America.
"Well, yeah, absolutely," said Boyte, when asked if Obama and Bill Clinton
were expressing the
same political viewpoint (Boyte said he and his organization are neutral
in
the presidential
race). "I think Obama's better-or-worse versions of this have always been
that people are
complicated. It comes from an organizing perspective. You don't write off
people, everyone is
complicated. It just depends on the issue. And that's what Bill Clinton
was
saying. He was a
sentimental populist."
Not to be lost in all this, as Boyte notes, is that Hillary Clinton has
consistently been a
"champion for the people who were helpless and powerless." But there is a
political component to
the mindset.
"Hillary Clinton has a very strong customer view: the citizen is the
customer and the government
the vender," said Boyte. "You can see it in Mark Penn's frame. In fact,
last
Christmas she had an
ad of herself writing checks to different groups."
The Clinton campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
THE MORE YOU CAN GET CAUCASOIDS TO READ, THE SOONER THEY FIND OUT THAT
THEY
ARE JUST CONSPICUOUSLY EXPLOITED CAUCASOIDS WHICH ARE WHITE NIGGERS.
What Is a "White Nigger" ?
By Andrew D. Todd
http://hnn.us/articles/1220.html
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