Well I am not assuming that Senator Kennedy will be less active or out of the picture any time soon at this point, and I hope he is not because fighting for labor is in his gut and it shows.

If Hillary comes out of this campaign as a Senator who embraces a pro-union agenda in a much more prominent way than she has heretofore then that seems all to the good to my way of thinking. As a respected commentator once noted in Not Your Father's Union Movement, women, minorities and recent immigrants increasingly are the face of the union movement in our country. Hillary will have instant standing with many women and can perhaps regain some of the stature appears to have lost, at least for the short-term, among minorities.

If for no other reason than because he is 76, and as was evident prior to the deeply distressing news of this week, it is obvious that Senator Kennedy will at some point be leaving the scene. His eventual departure will create a giant vacuum for the causes, including that of labor, for which he has so vigorously fought over the decades.

The Democratic party will need to fill that void and perhaps Hillary can at least partially fill those giant shoes. So I like your thinking on this. Labor desperately needs prominent, visible champions in both houses of Congress, along with many others willing to play strong supporting roles.

I think it would be awesome if Clinton stayed in the Senate to become a battling champion for progressive causes. However, if she is going to do something like become the new "voice of labor", and finally break with her DLC New Democrat past, then she and Bill might have to do something about their huge stable of international fat cat friends. Maybe they need to spend less time with the Davos crowd, and more time with the World Social Forum crowd.

Not saying I would bet it would happen. But politicians who go through a grieving process sometimes do change a lot following some major soul searching. I doubt any of the public post-mortems will eclipse in emotional impact the private one she will be going through at the close of this process, as it appears to be playing out. Out of the searing experience of this campaign, she will be faced with a need to take stock and decide what kind of an impact she most wants to try to make going forward. The decisions she makes may not necessarily be the ones her husband has made, believes he would make, or might advise her to make. I continue to see Hillary as a person capable of much personal growth.

What if Hillary finally admits she's a Republican and runs against President Obama in 2012?

Count me among the skeptics of Hillary's newfound affinity for the Labor movement for the following reasons.

1) Her union busting law firm back in Arkansas
2) Her time on the board of Wal-Mart and silence/complicity when union breaking was discussed
3) Her longstanding connections to the DLC
4) NAFTA-Which she did support despite recent obfuscation
5) "Screw 'em" in reference to Southern working class whites back in the mid 1990's
6) "Lobbyists are people too"
7) "Business Loves Hillary!"-http://politicallycorrected.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/the-champion-working-familes-deserve/
8) Her ability to grasp what is politically expedient and take advantage of it.

Hillary could not care less about the white working class vote until it became her main constituency by accident. Just like she became a champion of Hispanic causes when she was obtaining the majority of that demographic's vote. She is very adept at taking advantage of what is most politically expedient at the moment and it has kept her campaign "alive" for an extra couple of months. However, to claim that this recent affinity for the White Working class vote is the true Hillary, and not the previous 35 years of evidence, I think is a very tenuous argument.

Furthermore, she has no legislative accomplishments despite her claims of experience. She has not been able to get any of her bills of consequence passed into law-unlike Senator Obama. Her lone major legislative initiative failed miserably. Even if she has become a true believer of the White Working Class movement, her legislative acumen would have to improve dramatically for her to even approach Sen. Kennedy's effectiveness.

Sure, it would be great if she took over the role of Sen. Kennedy as champion of the labor movement whenever Sen. Kennedy is no longer in the Senate. However, I wouldn't hold my breath and I'd argue that this connection between Hillary and the White Working Class vote is nothing more than a spring fling that ends with the primaries.

I wouldn't trust her not to betray . . .

i am not interested in hilliary as a new kennedy. she is no "bill clinton" and is much more pro america then he was. this whole election has worn me out. i have decided to vote for mccain with the knowledge a predominate dem senate and congress will not allow him to do any real damage. i am a moderate to conservative master's degreed, female, african american democrat and the progressives have really turned me off and has made me feel as though i no longer have a place in the democratic party. this election has been extremely destructive between whites against blacks, men against women, young against old, the educated against non educated. it's time to turn the page on the players who allowed this to happen in my mind.

i can't stand lieberman but this is the only time i agree with him.

Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.

as a business woman i have never felt such hatred and disrepect for women from my own party and country. at this point i can not in good conscious support obama. i will either vote mccain or stay at home. i will also no longer volunteer, nor donate to the dem party. obama as well as the dems allowed the tone of this campaign to openly wage war against women and their value to this country. this is one woman who can not forget what this election and obama allowed and participated in under his watch. i am just one voter so i am sure no on here really cares anyway so you do not have to come out and assault another hilliary supporter.

I dunno. She obviously does have a corporate/DLC 'sucking up' quality which is distasteful to me... But I have heard her speak very eloquently about fair labor on the floor a number of times.

Let's leave ideology to the Right wing and at least give her voting record in the Senate a fair examination.

This is not to excuse her obscene politicization of race/gender in the Prez campaign.

But the issue is Hillary as a champion of fair labor. Let's examine her voting record. I am pretty sure it is decently solid on this issue and if anyone wants to prove me wrong based on actual votes, I'll be the first to acknowlege that.

Thoughts anyone?

Senator Clinton could take all the support she gathered in this primary season and play a pivotal role in the Senate and could offer hope to all the working class Americans that she has been hawking on the campaign trail.

That would require Clinton actually wanting to do something about labor because it's the right thing to do. And the evidence just isn't there.

This article might make sense if there were ANY reason to think that Hillary gives a rat's ass about working people. There isn't. She voted to send their kids to Iraq to get shot up for no reason. She voted to let credit card companies hound working people remorselessly for their usorious interest payments. She's never taken a single political risk to help working people, and there's certainly no indication that she has the slightest idea of how to shepherd a bill through the senate.

In short, Hillary's pro-labor image is a short-term fraud created for immediate political gain. It's based on nothing she's ever actually done. Kind of like her foreign policy "experience" in Bosnia, Ireland, and elsewhere, and her "experience" in undermining health care reform back in 1993.

Everyone is capable of changing. I agree with American Dreamer that Senator Clinton is experiencing a morale shattering experience right now, and may well take a few days off to reevaluate her future course. That could well lead her to conclude that the country is no longer swinging to the right, which would encourage her to stake out a position more in keeping with the left wing of the party, including the labor movement.

If she does this I think she could be as effective as Senator Kennedy in a few years. I really hope she does this.

i am on this planet. now what is interesting is that you act as though i am making some outlandish statement. well so you know there are thousands of democratic women who are meeting and will work against obama for the same reason i posted above. i guess when you ask which planet i am on...i am on the planet with thousands of other women.

First off, the implication of this post regarding Senator Kennedy is, in my opinion, inappropriate.

Second, if Hillary becomes a progressive champion of anything I would be shocked. Her time in the Senate has been used to establish her bona fides a pro-corporate centrist and a hawk. It would tickle me pink to see her start behaving like a real Democrat, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Hillary as labor's representative? Are we smoking crack here? Get real.

The Clintons aren't Democrats just as most so-called Republicans aren't Republicans anymore.

They're DINOs and RINOs in the Corporate Party and have been for decades.

I'm all for avoiding unnecessary fights. But this is getting absurd pretending that Hillary gives a damn about labor, now or ever. She sat on WAL*MART's board while they busted unions for decades! She was a partner at Rose Law Firm, one of the oldest and most establishment anti-labor corporate firms in the nation.

Bill Clinton passed NAFTA which Hillary supported for over a decade.

Bill deregulated banking with the near universal support of Republicans which directly contributed to the housing bubble and financial meltdown.

Bill kept Greenspan, the Republican favorite and Ayn Rand's patron, who inflated not one, but two bubbles due to borderline laissez faire monetary policy.

Bill deregulated media ownership leading to present day media consolidation which continues to stifle real debate and play up sensational and wedge issues.

Bill was for line item veto and signing statements deemed unconstitutional, but which have given cover to GW Bush's expansion of executive power.

Bill launched multiple wars, signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, claimed Iraq had WMD, and kicked the can down the road on Iraq for 8 years, while tens of thousands of children died of dysentery, ensuring a Republican President would invade.

Hillary Clinton supported all of those.

Hillary supported the Iraq war.

Both Bill and Hillary have since their college years been pro-corporate on economic policies that are unpopular with a majority of the American public, Democrats and Republicans. They've always campaigned on token social issues (such as gun control) to cover their economic stench, just as Corporate Republicans pander to their constituencies on similar issues.

No more rationalizing these Corporate DINOs and RINOs. No more social pandering while passing a corporate agenda.

you all are a bunch of childish idiots. i have been a democrat probably longer than you have been able to to write.

i was born in indiana and live in the suburbs of chicago near the indiana border. obama is my senator and michelle quakenbush is my mayor. jesse jackson is my ocngresman. you really are destructive and naive folks labeling people trolls just because they disagree with you. GOP talking points my arse...this is a large part of your party talking but you folks are not listening.

grow the $5@3 up.

Republican Troll Alert.

"michelle bociurkiw" is a new member and just ran down about every single Republican talking point to divide the Democratic party.

These trolls pop up in droves every election cycle.

Posted by kozmik
May 21, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink

"She" is also supposedly from Chicago, for that extra troll touch.

:rolleyes

First of all, I want to thank those bloggers who 'came to my rescue' against the allegation that I am on the corporate dole. That's pretty humorous, since I have never worked for a corporation in my life. Much of my working life has been taken up working for the union movement or the socialist movement and foundations that support social change. My company, ChangeCommunications, specializes in strategies for work with unions and social change organizations and foundations that promote the social good. Enuf said on that one.

Re Hillary, I'm really shocked at the vitriol among some folks about her. Let's look at the facts here. She has run a campaign, which I have by the way, been profoundly upset by re the use of race and frankly, even the fact that she won't wind down the campaign--but nonetheless, she has morphed into a populist and she's run her campaign promoting the cause of working Americans and unions. What's in her heart, who knows? We do know that she has shed her DLC past, at least as far as her on the record support for key union issues (the DLC has shed some of its own past in this regard too-it should be noted, as they now are on the record acknowledging that the Dems need a strong labor movement). My point was, this could be her moment to join with Ted Kennedy (and I wish him many more years of health and fighting for all of us) in becoming the legislator who will support a President Obama's efforts to make our nation more progressive. We need a Senator who, like Kennedy, is a workhorse, has great staff and will stick with an agenda for decades but will also be there in the immediate future to promote and get through Congress the two top rungs on labor's agenda:labor law reform and health care for all.

kozmik, i am already voting for mccain so if you are actually the republican troll you can give the song and dance a rest. oh, BTW i would have loved to have met both JFK and MLK.

Yeah right. More easy to create lies. Let me guess, you also once shook JFK's hand and broke into tears, and marched with MLK.

Piss off troll.