Across the country, Senator Hillary Clinton is facing growing skepticism about her coming campaign to become President of the United States. It isn’t just that Senator Clinton supported George W. Bush’s plan to invade Iraq back in 2003, and that she continues to support the Iraq War today. Hillary Clinton has made a series of anti-progressive votes that betrayed the issues that the core of the Democratic Party’s supporters cherish. Clinton votes in favor of the infamous Patriot Act, which has led to things such as secret government searches through library records and FBI surveillance of reporters’ telephone calls, and her refusal to support an effort to censure President Bush have been compounded recently by her embrace of right wing Democrat Joseph Lieberman. Hillary Clinton’s swing to the right has been too much for many Democrats to take.
It is against this backdrop that a squabble has begun within the New York State Democratic Committee, where resentment of Hillary Clinton’s Republican-leaning politics has been festering in private for a long time. New York State Democratic Committee members are now arguing with each other about whether that festering anger should be brought to the surface.
This debate is manifested nowhere so strongly as within the NYSDC’s Reform Caucus. One camp is struggling to keep dissatisfaction with Senator Clinton out of public view, saying that, as delegates to the New York State Democratic Committee, Reform Caucus members should present a united front in support of Hillary Clinton – whether or not members really support Senator Clinton’s senatorial re-election campaign. The other camp says that members of the Reform Caucus should make their disagreement with Hillary Clinton public, and end the secrecy.
Personally, I’m with the second camp. Democratic voters in New York State have a right to know that many of New York State’s Democratic leaders are sick and tired of Hillary Clinton’s pattern of collaboration with the Republican Party. Members of the New York State Democratic Committee are supposed to represent the Democratic voters of New York, after all. Keeping secrets for the sake of the false appearance of party unity does not become them.
Besides, Hillary Clinton has a Democratic challenger in this year’s primary: Jonathan Tasini. Tasini is running a strong progressive campaign that includes, but is not limited to, opposition to the Iraq War. Tasini is working to return the New York State Democrats to the tradition of progressive politics. That, apparently, is a profoundly threatening idea to many in the leadership of the New York State Democrats.
It is also important to note that trying to push for reform behind the scenes has not worked for the Reform Caucus. One bone of contention within the Reform Caucus is that Senator Hillary Clinton has neglected to meet with the members of the caucus even once during her first six-year term in office. For members of the Reform Caucus to support Hillary Clinton in spite of this rude snub seems like political suicide. If quiet pressure on Hillary Clinton to do a better job of representing the progressive attitudes of New York State Democrats has not worked, then it seems to me that members of the Reform Caucus have the duty to go public with their criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s anti-progressive politics.
Senator Clinton’s almost certain run for the White House in 2008 makes open resistance to her rightward tilt even more important. Right now, Hillary Clinton seems so tightly focused on appealing to Republican voters in the 2008 race that she is doing a poor job of representing the progressive state of New York in the United States Senate. The anger of New York State Democrats at this neglect is well-founded
