Before Hillary’s machine steamrolls her way to the Democratic nomination, it’s not a sin to wonder if our 2016 frontrunner is being honest. At least one nanosecond should be spent thinking about whether she is the right choice for president or, gasp, whether someone from a different political party might be a better choice. If you think Hillary Clinton won’t be running for president against the eventual GOP candidate in 2016, you probably don’t know that Clinton has raised $328,742,879 since 1999. That money didn’t help her in 2008, but she did become Secretary of State, and the hundreds of millions will easily beat someone like Elizabeth Warren, who had less momentum, money, and publicity.
So, I urge all Democrats to insist that the Clinton campaign be honest. Sincerity is very important, but it doesn’t mean “evolving” on gay marriage when it’s convenient or being completely against letting people use marijuana without getting in trouble. Hillary Clinton could have made a lot more progress on marriage equality and legalizing marijuana if she had worked on these issues when they weren’t popular and didn’t try to save as much political capital as she could like it was Frodo’s ring.
It doesn’t make much sense to just assume that Hillary will go along with the party line on issues that groups like LEAP and GLAAD have been working on for years to bring to everyone’s attention. Gay rights groups could have used Hillary Clinton’s help in 2004 when Karl Rove was pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This was a successful political movement that appealed to the anti-gay part of the GOP and helped Bush win the election. Clinton’s voice back then would have been epic, but it would have cost her votes even within the Democratic Party, so Hillary’s Machiavellian silence worked well enough to make many readers think the words on this page are blasphemous.
But let’s not talk about this, lest we be accused of having a bad “plan” (the tweet mentioned was a reference to Ralph Nader hating Hillary, not me). If a Democrat has to “evolve” on an issue that has always been popular with liberals, it is because of politics, not because of a set of values. This year, The Nation wrote an article called “On the NSA, Hillary Clinton is Either a Fool or a Liar.” It was about domestic spying. So, I’d like it to stop being said that I have a personal “agenda” against Hillary, especially when one of the most liberal publications in the world writes a headline like that.
Sorry, but even Dick Cheney changed his mind about gay marriage, and letting Clinton off the hook on this issue doesn’t make us much better than the GOP. Waiting for the public to agree with your values before going up against conservatives to defend those values makes you an opportunist, not a liberal icon. When it comes to war and foreign policy, Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney have the same ideas. However, progressives today are not the same as the Vietnam War protesters of the 1960s.
“You’d vote for Rand Paul just because of war?” is a question I’ve heard often enough to make me question my faith in people. If you think that America should always be at war, read Why We Lost. It almost seems like no one cares that the president just sent over 3,000 soldiers back to Iraq, even though close to 7,000 Americans have died in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and close to one million Americans have been hurt in both wars. For liberals today, the 2016 presidential election is tied to a lot of social issues that Hillary Clinton once opposed or said nothing about. These are issues that a president can’t solve on his or her own.
Or, we act on our fears because the media groups good candidates with extremists in their own party. This is why most Democrats think it is heretical to vote for Rand Paul. As a quick civics lesson, the person in the White House can’t change laws or social issues on their own. Only Congress, state legislatures, courts, and public opinion polls can do that. Yes, President Obama did the right thing by taking action on immigration, but he was told to do so by the public, and the political will to do so has been clear in recent years. Most Americans don’t agree that the EPA should be wiped out or that civil rights laws should be rolled back, or that any other irrational fear is connected to voting for Rand over Hillary.
What about Rand? I must be stupid or gullible. Even though I have no power in the political world, at least I took a stand on the issue of Ferguson. I wrote about killing unarmed black men and claiming self-defense, what would have happened if Trayvon, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown were white, and the economics of Ferguson. No, I didn’t wait 19 days to say something. When it mattered, I spoke up with my tiny little voice. If Clinton had raised her $328,742,879 voice during the protests in Ferguson, the whole world would have taken notice.
The truth is that only one of the 2016 presidential candidates (not Hillary, Jeb, or anyone else) went to Ferguson and talked about race and how the police are armed. Rand Paul went to Ferguson when it should have been Hillary Clinton, and his actions speak louder than any assumption that Clinton is always a better choice on civil rights. Before the indignant Twitter barrages and emails to this lowly writer, please ask yourself why Hillary Clinton has not once visited Ferguson or why it took 19 days for her to make her first statement.
Marc Lamont Hill said this about Clinton’s later-than-expected statement on Ferguson: “Hillary Clinton’s statement shows careful triangulation and calculation driven by political interest rather than genuine feeling.” Doesn’t this idea deserve to be talked about more? The CNN commentator and Morehouse College professor also made another important point, which was, “Hillary Clinton says something about Michael Brown and the situation in Ferguson. Nineteen days later…she will talk about Rodney King and Vietnam next.”
In the MSNBC article titled Hillary Clinton finally speaks out on Ferguson, Al Sharpton said the following about Hillary Clinton’s initial silence on Ferguson:
Civil rights leaders and others have criticized Clinton for not saying anything about Ferguson. “Don’t get laryngitis on this issue, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton at a rally. Sharpton is the leader of the National Action Network and also has an MSNBC show. Even though msnbc called, a Clinton spokesperson wouldn’t say anything, and Clinton herself avoided questions about Ferguson when she signed books last weekend.
So, I think it’s fair to ask if Hillary is taking the same approach to Ferguson as she did when she first talked about gay marriage.
So you’d vote for Rand Paul, a Republican who doesn’t share our values on civil rights, just because the Clinton campaign is hypocritical or slow to act for political reasons?
Well, yes, because I think his actions speak louder than a weird interview where he talks about how libertarian he is when it comes to business. Rand Paul’s words and actions about police who use guns and the shooting of Michael Brown say a lot. Sen. Paul talks about the dangers of a heavily armed police force in an opinion piece for Time called “We Must Demilitarize the Police.” He also talks about how this scary fact affected Ferguson:
If I had been told to get out of the street when I was a teenager, there is a good chance I would have gotten mad. I didn’t expect to be shot, though…
When this militarization of law enforcement is added to the loss of civil liberties and due process that lets the police act as judge and jury (through national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, and pre-conviction forfeiture), we have a very serious problem on our hands…
Because of the way our criminal justice system treats people of different races differently, African-Americans can’t help but feel like their government is out to get them.
Is there a serious candidate for president in 2016 who talks about “racial disparities in our criminal justice system,” or how many African-Americans feel like the police are out to get them? These are powerful words that touch me. I don’t care that they were written by a Republican. They talk about what I think is fair and where I think this country is going.
Paul wrote, “I might have been rude, but I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.” This is something that Clinton would never have touched with a hundred-foot pole in a million years. This sentence gets to the heart of the Ferguson problem by pointing out that police forces today are not only armed but also quick to pull the trigger. Anyone can see how bad this problem is by reading about the latest tragedy of an unarmed man being shot by police. So, Paul’s Time article is very different from how most Republicans feel about Ferguson. In fact, the difference is so big that it took Hillary Clinton 19 days to write a balanced response.
But Paul is just pretending to be black so that black people will vote for him.
Okay, then Hillary Clinton should do the same instead of thinking that she would get 93 percent of the black vote, which would give her the confidence to stay silent about something that the whole country was talking about. Taking a group of voters for granted is dangerous and does no good for anyone. You can’t just expect Hillary Clinton to look out for the interests of African-Americans when Rand Paul is talking about reforming the criminal justice system with Sen. Cory Booker and going to a controversial place like Ferguson. These things should be taken seriously and not just written off as publicity stunts.
Does Paul agree with what I think about immigration? No, but President Obama’s recent order is only temporary, even though I strongly support his most recent action on immigration. In the end, Congress will decide what to do about immigration reform. One reason why a Paul presidency doesn’t scare me as much as it might scare most liberals who think he’d do this to government programs is that the executive and legislative branches have different powers. I also like that he met with Al Sharpton to talk about crime, as a recent POLITICO article pointed out:
Sharpton said in a statement from the National Action Network, where he is a president, that they talked about how he feels about some criminal justice issues that worry him.
“We also talked about his and Senator Cory Booker’s plan for mandatory sentences,” the statement said. “We talked in a very honest and polite way.”
It would have been nice if Hillary Clinton also met with Al Sharpton, but she was busy with other things.
But more people will die from global warming than from American military adventures in the Middle East.
True, but Paul told Bill Maher the following:
I’m not against the rules either. I think that over the last 40 or 50 years, rules about pollution and clean water have done a lot to improve the environment.
Also, the sun won’t send your grandchildren to war against the fifth rebranding of al-Qaeda, that hooded man in 2045 who beheads an American to get us into our 5th Iraq War. Ending endless wars in the Middle East, the war on drugs, domestic spying (before you accuse Rand Paul of being a snitch, he recently voted against a bill co-sponsored by Ted Cruz that would have extended the PATRIOT Act until 2017), militarized police, corporate welfare, and failing criminal justice systems should be at the top of everyone’s list of priorities, but it looks like I’m in the minority when I say this about progressive politics. Paul is not a pacifist, but he has said many times that the U.S. should stop fighting in the Middle East. He has talked so much about ending these kinds of wars that GOP war hawks think he must be an isolationist.
If Hillary Clinton had fought for things like ending endless wars or limiting domestic spying, which is directly related to the power of the president, I probably wouldn’t be considering Rand Paul in 2016. On the other hand, if she had gone to Ferguson, she might have turned off possible swing voters in 2016. Like with gay marriage, Clinton has put calculated strategy ahead of bold positions. Considering a Republican for president is not blasphemy if Ralph Nader and Bill Maher are willing to vote for Rand Paul. Another reason to like the Kentucky Senator is that he wants Congress to declare war on ISIS. This would force the president to listen to Congress on this issue and start a real debate about going to war in the Middle East.