Dialogue with Hillary II

I don't think America or the Democratic Party can afford, at this juncture in world events, a national political experiment. That is probably how voters in red states view the presidential candidacy of Senators Clinton and Obama. They see two shrewd opportunists trying to parlay their historically oppressed status into a political selling point.

Hillary said in New Hampshire that we can not know if America is ready for a woman president until we elect her. I don't think America needs to know that right now, Senator. What it needs is a cohesive political faction that can govern effectively, fairly and coherently. You have the highest negatives of any major candidate, even among Democrats. What the party needs is a candidate that is palatable to those areas of the country in which it does not have a majority base anymore: the south, the intermountain west, and the plains. America needs a Congressional majority that can defeat a filibuster. In order to do that, Democrats need to build on their gains in 2006. Your candidacy does not fit the tall order, Senator.

Right now, Democrats in Congress must feel like an abused wife. You and other Democratic centrists took impeachment off the table in order to "go forward". Twice so far Republicans have rewarded your efforts at collaboration with slaps in the face. They filibustered the minimum wage bill, and they filibustered the effort to simply debate the the Iraq occupation. You will not even admit that voting for this foreign policy catastrophe was a mistake you made. You voted for an invasion on precious little evidence of a credible, imminent threat. I think if you are scratched deep enough Senator, a Democratic primary voter will find a hawk beneath your fine liberal plumage. Perhaps someone in the audience will be bold enough to ask if you support the radical neoconservative doctrine of preemptive war. Not even during the tense years of the Cold War did America adopt the doctrine of first strike. No wonder crafty President Putin can credibly claim an American policy of global hegemony now threatens world peace. Democratic voters have inquiring minds Senator, and they want to know what you really think about war and peace.