I saw a TV segment today that made me start to think about the
realities about Hillary Clinton running in 2016. Is she a fantastic choice for
President and probably the most well known female politician for the past
thirty years, yes! But, does that mean she should run again for the Presidency?
I can say that after watching the TV segment (link below) that it made me
highly question my previously unfaltering support of Hillary for 2016. In the
segment Krystal Ball talks about some of her own reasons for not supporting Hillary
Clinton's run including some of her anti-union stances and her inside the
beltway attitudes. I can say that I don't agree with all of her own
reservations for not backing Hillary but I do understand many points she makes.
Hillary Clinton is a wonderful person and someone that all young women in
politics look up to. However, we, as Democratic women especially have put
Hillary Clinton on podium that is higher than many others because she is a
powerful woman, she's been on a stage for many many years, and when she's in
charge she can get shit done. However, she might have missed her time.
There are other drawbacks I have about Hillary. I think that
there is always a benefit to running someone who is outside of the beltway,
Hillary isn't but Obama was. Obama was
an outside candidate that came with a different yet very good background and
did very well against those who were very much beltway candidates. Not that I
would put Obama at being the "best" example of a outside Washington
candidate but I do feel like because he wasn't the well known, very rich,
beltway mold of many Presidential candidates he did better than some others who
were competitors of his in 2008, including Hillary Clinton. I also have a
reservation with how well known she is, with a favorability rating of 66%
before even deciding whether she is going to run or not. This can be a problem
when there are many great "new" politicians that are coming in with
"new" faces and beliefs that might back out if they assumed they
would loose to Hillary. If Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, or
even Martin O'Malley would decide to run, I might back any of them before
Hillary because to be honest, especially Warren and Booker represent to me what
Democratic politics is all about. I would like to see some information about
Hillary's stances on many issues especially if she was running against a Warren
or Booker. I mean honestly if you haven't seen some of the pure awesomeness
from Elizabeth Warren, you need to because she is one of the greatest
"new" faces of the Democratic Party. Her messages about gender and
tax equity and her own sense of the "we're all in this together"
politics are spot on and these are the issues that need more media attention
than the issues are presently talked about. And though she says at the moment
she wouldn't run, the question is whether if she was put in that position to
truly decide to run...would she? Then there is everyone's favorite
bachelor...Cory Booker, who has made democratic ideals sexy again. He has used
social media as his jumping block to show constituents and others around the
United State what he is doing moment to moment. He has also embraced an
"all politics is local" ideal and has incorporated an open door
policy, putting out his daily schedule EVERYDAY.
So as you can see there are many many great candidates who might
not want to run if Hillary Clinton does because it already seems like Clinton
has the entire election won even before anything has started. There are very
important issues at hand. Even in this next election cycle, Congress is looking
at having a very high turnover: there are 470 elections this year with 114
seats being highly contested. There are big issues at stake as well. To just
name a few: there is the war on everyone's voting rights by conservative
majority who are trying to take away anyone's right to vote at every turn,
there is huge problem of America's failing infrastructure which is making us
pay more taxes to repair the less impressive technology of the 90s versus
looking forward to create the newest technology of the 2020s, and biggest problem
facing the world: climate change which the South and East coasts are
experiencing this winter. These problems are the current issues that will be
talked about in the upcoming 2014 and 2016 as well as Obama's minimum wage and
America's inequality problem. In the meantime, we can all hope for a little
less gridlock in Congress as the Republican Party of our parents' is falling
apart in front of our eyes as well as feel very patriotic watching the United
States compete in Sochi.
Don't
Run Hillary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/02/11/msnbcs-krystal-ball-to-hillary-clinton-dont-run/
