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Hillary Clinton, the Senator from New York State, is widely believed to be the leading contender for the Democratic Party's nomination to be President of the United States of America in 2008. If elected she would be the first female President of the United States. She would also be the first wife of a former President elected.
Hillary wants to be the first female President pretty badly. She appears to have no remaining principles except to get elected. While much fine tuning will doubtless take place, the main course of the campaign has been set, not by the actual needs of the earth and the people of our nation, but by the needs of the campaign. Unlike Gore and Mondale, Ms. Clinton will not have to tack much to the left during the primaries. She is a Woman; she has money and the aura of power; she can sail straight down the wish-washy center of American politics. Her Republican opponent, whoever he might be, will find the precious center ground pre-occupied. Right-wing radio will assert that Mrs. Clinton is a communist, which will insure her (in the general election, if not in the primaries) the votes of the progressive feather of the Democratic Party.
What is really going to kill the Republicans is that Wall Street is going to support Hillary, and with good reason. Both as Bill's wife and much more so as Senator from New York, Hillary has shown herself to be a friend of Big Business. She does not bash Walmart; she does not demand we end the occupation of Iraq; she is not going to raise the capital gains tax. She is perfectly willing to tax workers and small businesses to subsidize the Pentagon and international corporations. She'll make some token gestures: a billion here or there for children, an arrest or two of overly zealous anti-abortionists, maybe she'll even shake Hugo Chavez's hand (but not any Hamas or Hezbollah hands). She'll provide taxpayer subsidized windfall profits for enviro-capitalists, but won't take windfall profits away from oil companies. Of course the way Wall Street works is that they make donations to both candidates in proportion to the likelihood of having bought a winner. So Hillary will get more money than the Republican this time around.
Wall Street may love the Republican Party, but they aren't stupid. If they can get Democratic Party politicians to do what they want, they have no problem with that. If something goes wrong and too many citizens get mad at the Democrats, Wall Street always has the Republicans standing by panting for the spoils of office. When the Republicans are in power and there is a major screw up like in 1929, the Democrats provide a fallback, but therein lies danger. To this day Wall Street wishes that the Democrats had won the election in 1928.
At a time when we need a dynamic leader to deal with rapidly multiplying environmental and social problems, we are going to be served Hillary. Wall Street will provide the golden serving tray; advertising firms will provide a secret sauce with great taste and empty calories; fem-dems will assure us that the party is just beginning and there is plenty of food for everyone.
Unless a better option arises, I'll be voting Green Party again. Hopefully the Green Party will have the good sense to run a woman for President in 2008. Maybe Hillary will have to make some promises, maybe even keep them, if the Greens can communicate to the voters what the real issues and real solutions are for this election on the cusp of the Age of Global Warming.