Ivins says thumbs down to Hillary

I am not usually a fan of Molly Ivins. Too folksy. Too much of a cheap Bush-basher. Frankly, I think she would not be a nationally syndicated columnist without the electoral success of George W. Bush.

Anyway, her column Jan. 23 is a solid one:

It's time for Democrats to put up or shut up

By Molly Ivins

Creators Syndicate

AUSTIN - I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. The senator is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times when a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing President Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich.

The majority (77 percent) think we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) think big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

I listen to people like Rep. Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the polls?

Here's a prize example by columnist Barry Casselman: "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party now under way, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by "a string of bad news from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat from Iraq," vs. those pragmatic folk like Rep. Steny Hoyer, Emmanuel and Sens. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.

Oh, come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war -- from the lies that led us into it to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine that you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, and so does everyone else who's ever studied this. Embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Own this issue or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The minute that someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means.

That, or you could just blow them off elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending that the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

It's enough to make every true yellow-dog Democrat question whether the politics of Hillary Clinton, and the other centrists who woo both sides of the aisle, will be the message that wins in 2006 and 2008. Increasingly, I find myself looking at candidates such as Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a senator with conscience and with a voice that sounds more and more worth listening to.

Don't get me wrong; I don't want to support a candidate who can't ever win an election, but I don't think the alternative to George W. Bush and the corruption of the Republican Party has to be just to the left. Why can't we step back and say, "Hey, they're weak. Let's put up a candidate that is a sharp contrast, not just bluish shade of red."

I don't know who that candidate is, but it ain't Hillary Clinton.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.