Hillary's "unpleasant and unattractive" political machine

There are all kinds of reasons many prospective voters will not vote for Hillary Clinton.  Some will find David Geffen's comments out of order and others (including me) find them close to if not at the center of the  matter. 

Clinton's attachment to the slick right wing of the  party is enough to put me off.  And then there's her pro-Iraq vote.  Condemning her because that single vote can be explained many ways, but a letter to the editor in today's New York Times does it best.  It echoes my greatest misgivings about Hillary and, frankly, about both the Democratic Party and about our lackaday Congress. 

I think it’s immaterial to debate whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton should apologize or not for her vote in 2002 authorizing the Iraq war. The issue of real importance is that she failed to see what almost one-third of all Americans were able to see in spite of the Bush administration’s relentless citing of “evidence”: that there were no legal and legitimate reasons to invade Iraq and that the war was being launched to serve the administration’s ideological ends.

Don't tell me there were no New Yorker state voters among those who saw what Bush was doing.  Hillary Clinton was their representive.  She failed to see what they saw either because she wasn't paying attention  (that's bad enough) or because she didn't want to see (because her political ambitions trumped doing her job).

The WMD issue is not the only issue.  Iraq was on the agenda from Bush's first days in the White House and we knew it.  If we knew it, why didn't Clinton know it and act on it?  Does self-protection on her part count as an excuse or is it precisely what we don't want in the next president?

That brings us to another issue:  the purpose of Congress.  The purpose of Congress is to make sure the will of the people is expressed in political decisions.  The job includes being adversarial when necessary.  Oversight of the executive branch is in the job description.  Republicans in Congress certainly didn't do their job.

It's far more shocking that the opposition party -- at least some of whom saw Bush for what he was -- didn't do its job. 

Congress was bound not only to question the executive branch but to represent Americans who did see very clearly what was happening.  Democrats could have stood up for a popular majority which had and has grave doubts about how we got into war, how it has been conducted, and why we are still in it.  The last thing I want is a president who, as a senator, went along with the whole thing.  As David Geffen said, Hillary is now being propelled forward by a "political operation [that] is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective."

Unless we give our attention and political support to a better candidate.  That shouldn't be too hard.