Hillary Clinton Defended Our Civil Liberties Today

With all due respect to Sen. Clinton. . . . (4.00 / 3)

Dean, your money would be of greater use to the Obama campaign right now.  Remember, we're going without public financing this time, and the DNC has considerably less CoH than the RNC.  Big factor.

Obama's request to assist Hillary was targeted to those folks who have already maxed out to his campaign ($2300 primary, $2300 general per person).  Outside of those folks, we can't let this be a competing fundraising priority.  No doubt Hillary gets that.

Still, kudos to Sen. Clinton for her vote -- and her ongoing leadership in the Senate.  She's an outstanding public servant, and I hope she stays one for many years to come.

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by: Dartmouth Dem @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 17:57:18 PM CDT

All true. (4.00 / 2)

If Obama hadn't caved on this, I would be contributing to him. But he's chasing a different demographic, I guess.

I will send Clinton a small donation. She earned it.

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by: elwood @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 18:05:10 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Alas, too late. (0.00 / 0)

My donation was so paltry as to be almost insulting, FWIW.  And I'm sure BO will inspire me soon enough.  Just not this time, and on an issue that really mattered to me.

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by: Dean Barker @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 19:10:14 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Unconditional Love (0.00 / 0)

Makes great kids, but lousy candidates.

There's very few levers one has to get stuff done if one is commited to voting party line in the general, which we all are.

I think Dean's instinct is exactly right. Reward good behavior. Who knows, it might encourage Obama to be a better candidate and a better president -- and right now that is just as important a battle.

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by: Mike Caulfield @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 20:15:11 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Reward Productive Ends (0.00 / 0)

Donating to Hillary Clinton detours money that could be used to elect Democratic candidates -- and uses it to pay down Mark Penn's multimillion bill.  That doesn't do it for me, not when we have the Presidency at stake.

I am certainly not anti-Clinton -- far from it -- but Hillary's campaign debt will hardly be a permanent burden.  She remains a powerful incumbent senator from the wealthiest state in the country, and will have no problem paying down her debt over time.  (Of course, it helps that her husband gets 200G a speech.  Much of the Clinton campaign debt is money that she and Bill provided out of their own pockets.)

There's a reason why Obama targeted his pro-Hillary appeal to his maxed out contributors.  He gets this, and so should all of us.

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by: Dartmouth Dem @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 21:55:00 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Senator Obama (4.00 / 3)

voted for an amendment by Dodd to strip telecom immunity.

Just under a third of the Senate, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, supported an amendment proposed by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., that would have stripped immunity from the bill. It was defeated on a 32-66 vote. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain did not vote.

h/t to a DKos blogger on this.

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by: Jennifer Daler @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 18:04:37 PM CDT

At least in the choreography of the Senate (0.00 / 0)

this wasn't any sort of fake. Everyone knew in advance that the amendment could be blocked once Senators like Obama said, "Drop it and I'll still vote for the main bill."

That's like telling the car dealer "I'd really like you to drop the price $750, but I'll buy even if you don't."

So, the Obama vote for Dodd was untainted by any pretense that it could affect aything.

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by: elwood @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 18:12:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Your logic with a twist (4.00 / 1)

puts HRC in the safe zone to vote "her conscience."

Though AIPAC probably ain't to thrilled. Or maybe not.

www.KusterforCongress.com  

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by: Jack Mitchell @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 19:54:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

My money (4.00 / 3)

My money is going to Carol Shea-Porter, who did the right thing (as did Paul Hodes, but Carol is my congresswoman).

If Obama does something right, or particularly needs my meager contribution, then I will reconsider. This was a bad vote, and he deserves the heat he is receiving.

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by: dweingart @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 21:07:52 PM CDT

Disagree Emphatically (4.00 / 1)

We have two choices.  Unless you want to see John McCain as President of the United States, then please get over it soon.  It's not like punishing Barack Obama will achieve a single productive end.

Obama has made many decisions with which I disagree -- as did Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy, Harry Truman, and FDR.  If any politician did match me on every issue, he'd probably lose decisively everywhere outside of the San Francisco metropolitan area.  I can deal with that.

I have given money to Paul Hodes AND Barack Obama, and I will be sure to make contributions to Jeanne and Carol before all is said and done.  None of them are perfect, but all of them have aligned themselves on the side of people, peace, and progressive justice.  

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by: Dartmouth Dem @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 21:41:09 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Not quite. (0.00 / 0)

It really isn't binary.

If you give a candidate such as Obama so much latitude on his positions, you should also give the voters latitude along the spectrum of vote-contribute-work.

If Obama's advisers are right about his campaign, he is winning 1.1 new hard-working supporters for every one of us he leaves with a sour taste.

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by: elwood @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 21:54:37 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

It certainly is binary (0.00 / 0)

Two candidates, Elwood.  One supports ending the war, expanding access to health care, implementing a real energy strategy, increasing investment in education, protecting a woman's right to choose, and ensuring that gay Americans have the same rights as the rest of us.  The other does not.  

One of them will be our next President.  And any "punishment" we impose on Barack Obama will serve John McCain's interests.  No two ways about it.

I'm not saying that you should be happy about the FICA vote -- I'm not.  Just asking you to put it into perspective.

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by: Dartmouth Dem @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 22:02:07 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Maybe I wasn't clear. (0.00 / 0)

The VOTE is binary, of  course.

The level of support each of us gives a candidate beyond voting is not.

I'm not "punishing" anyone. I'm also not rewarding Obama for choosing to run to the right.

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by: elwood @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 22:04:25 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Was it ever there? (4.00 / 3)

I am happy Hillary voted the right way, but in flipping through a few FISA threads (certainly not all of them) trying to confirm this:

It is precisely why I have supported efforts in the Senate to strip the bill of these provisions, both today and during previous debates on this subject.

It never seemed to be about to happen. So while I support our general effort to bash Obama's stance, I think we may be piling too much blame on him. The whole caucus dropped this ball.

And why?

I think it's because the warrantless wiretap program has a number of data mining cousins that we don't know about, affecting:

- Banks
- Internet service providers
- Credit card companies
- Public libraries
- Payroll processing firms
- Airlines
- Retailers, especially online retailers
- Shipping companies
- Search engines

And others. And that's why telecom immunity was considered important, not because of the telecoms per se, but because the same (bad) logic could be applied to other companies that "cooperated with the war on terror."

To be optimistic, for a moment, we have screwed up before (see Hoover, J. Edgar), and then bounced back to Consitutional robustness.

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by: JimC @ Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 23:27:57 PM CDT

This from kos pretty much expresses (4.00 / 1)

how I feel about the whole sorry episode:

Regarding Clinton, I have no doubt she would've voted incorrectly were she the nominee. She's shown over the past few years that on every controversial "national security" bill, she has voted incorrectly, whether it was the Iraq War authorization bill, the Kyl-Lieberman Iran bill, or plenty of war funding bills. It's easy to vote the right way when you don't have advisors telling you to "take issues off the table" by betraying things like, you know, the Constitution.

If this marks the end of the triangulating version of Clinton, so much the better. That'll make her that much better a force in the Senate. (Which apparently is necessary given the new triangulating Obama now arrived on the political scene.)

But I also have no doubt that given Clinton's high profile and massive platform, she could've agitated and campaigned against this bill before today, rather than issue a statement during the vote. Dodd and Feingold could've certainly used the support way back when.

Hillary is no hero in all of this. But to complain that her vote somehow undermines Obama? No one here has undermined Obama more than Obama.

He or his advisors (or both) decided that they'd rather capitulate on the issue than face GOP attack ads claiming Obama is weak on national security. They let fear of political attacks (that are inevitable anyway) override respect for the Constitution and even his prior promises to the American people. The press insists on calling it a "move to the center", but really, it was a move borne out of fear. It wasn't an ideological decision (i.e. a "move to the center"), but a tactical one. It was a strategic retreat.

Like all retreats, this one came with a price. Much of his veneer as a transformational politician has faded. He's a gifted and inspirational politician, no doubt about that, and he will make a great president. But at the end of the day, he's a politician, with all the triangulating goodness that's become a hallmark of our presidential candidates. That has cost him some intensity of support, some bad headlines, a new avenue of attack for Republicans (even though McCain didn't even bother showing up for the vote), and ... renewed energy and sense of purpose for the ridiculous PUMAs. That last one is really fucking annoying.

And I'll just add as extra: I don't need to like, believe in, or even trust my public servants. I don't need to feel inspired by them or proud of them.

I just need them to vote in a way that better represents me and that upholds traditional American values.  So even though HRC could've been a better leader on this, and even though the pressure is off of her and on Obama, at the end of the day she voted the right way, and so I am moved to help out her debt a little, despite my tremendous distaste for creatures like Mark Penn.

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by: Dean Barker @ Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 10:20:42 AM CDT

typical garbage from kos (0.00 / 0)

Hillary Clinton opposed telecom immunity publicly throughout her campaign.

The kos article has inspired me to send my second donation today.

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by: calvin @ Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 10:30:36 AM CDT

Yes. (0.00 / 0)

Hillary Clinton opposed telecom immunity publicly throughout her campaign.

And she led on that issue neither during the campaign in October when it last flared up, nor now.

She voted against it, and her reasons as quoted above are great ones.

But like Obama, she carries a much bigger media stick than Dodd and Feingold.  Either of them could've brought enough attention to this to stop it.  And they didn't.

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by: Dean Barker @ Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 16:28:53 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Consistency (4.00 / 2)

Way go Dean, a positive diary about Hillary Clinton!  I am sure she appreciates your generous monetary contribution.

As to whether she could have done more to help the cause, I guess that is subject to interpretation. She has consistently been very strong in her opposition to the language granting immunity and promised to support Senator Dodd in his efforts. She kept her promise.

Senator Clinton has been opposed to telecom immunity since 2007 and she supported early efforts to draft FISA in a way that was more transparent, that provided more oversight and checks/balances AND that removed telecom immunity.

Here are the links:

February 2008:
Clinton's February statement on FISA & Telecom Immunity

January 2008:
Clinton's January statement on FISA & Telecom Immunity.

December 2007:
Clinton's statement on Senate effort to improve FISA, without telecom immunity

 

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by: gradysdad @ Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 17:21:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Respect for fellow Senators (0.00 / 0)

Thank you, Gradysdad, for doing the research I didn't have time to do.

As for whether Hillary did enough leadership on telecom immunity...in Congress, members try not to step on each other's toes (at least in all the time I worked in Congress).  This legislation was Sen. Dodd's and Sen. Feingold's.  Senate etiquette says you don't crash the party for other members.

That might sound too calculating to some people here -- but think about it.  If you've worked hard to make an issue yours, do you really want some more famous person to steal the fire?

Telecom immunity was an issue that Hilary Clinton made a strong stand against but it wasn't an issue she took the lead on and led the floor fight on. That was Sen. Dodd's effort and Sen. Feingold's.

I can guarantee that if Hillary had made a great big speech about telecom immunity, there would have been just as many posts here about how she was trying to steal Sen. Dodd's thunder.

Although I have no income at the moment, I'm seriously considering a third donation to Hillary today.

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by: calvin @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 00:30:46 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

This is utter nonsense. (4.00 / 1)

I can guarantee that if Hillary had made a great big speech about telecom immunity, there would have been just as many posts here about how she was trying to steal Sen. Dodd's thunder.

If she had done that, especially at the time when the whole world was listening to her every utterance, I probably would have endorsed her.

A shocker: some of us choose candidates based on issues!

And I respectfully but vehemently disagree that senate decorum kept her and Obama and others from leading on this.  Dodd and Feingold were practically begging colleagues to join them on this, and Dodd, as has been discussed in print articles on a few occasions, paid the price for his earlier strong stand when he returned to the senate in January.

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by: Dean Barker @ Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 06:06:56 AM CDT

[ Parent ]