WHY CONTEMPTIBLE TRIANGULATING POLS LIKE HILLARY CLINTON AND RAHM EMANUEL MAKE MOLLY IVINS WANT TO THROW UP-- & WHY I AGREE WITH HER

Since starting DWT, I haven't been hiding my distaste for Hillary Clinton and other establishment, careerist, corporatist, opportunistic Beltway politicians who call themselves Democrats. I'm just mortified at the looming certainty that I'm going to have to go to the polls in 2008 and choose between Hillary and some even worse Republican (and, make no mistake, they are all worse, including John McCain).

So I was so excited this afternoon when my friend Rachel sent me a copy of Molly Ivins' newest column, "I Will Not Support Hillary Clinton For President".

"Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton 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."

In fact, she is so cautious that she doesn't speak out about anything, or at least not about anything the right gets angry about. (She certainly speaks out about sending more troops into the Iraqi Civil War she is partially responsible for and she certainly speaks out in support of bogus Republican talking points like censoring"course" youth culture and the "flag burning amendment.") And then when she dares to pop out of the hole she's hiding in, the Republicans and their media allies jump all over her immediately and she scurries away like a coward. Yecchhhhh.

"What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake?" asks Ivins. "The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?"

And she knows what they're afraid of-- losing their cushy jobs in Washington and having to work for a living-- or being forced to find some other way of handling their out-sized egos and painfully needy self-definitions. "I listen to people like 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 damn polls?... You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine 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, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. 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 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 piss on them 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 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."

A few weeks ago I sat on a plane to Madrid with a Republican Mormon from suburban Salt Lake City. He has every expectation of voting for a Republican in 2008-- unless Howard Dean runs (which he won't). There's a reason why the Establishment mass media fears and loathes Howard Dean and its the same reason why the extreme right hates him so much-- and that is also the reason why someone like the Republican Mormon from Utah would like to vote for him: Howard Dean is real and he's honest. He's not a pre-packaged "reality" show.


TUESDAY DAWN UPDATE: ARIANNA HAS ANOTHER NAIL FOR HILLARY'S COFFIN-- AND SO DOES SANDY PEARLMAN

Today on her POST Arianna Huffington leads with an excellent piece on how conventional wisdom about Hillary having sewn up the Democratic nomination is all wet; worth the read-- and the prayers that she's correct. The best defense I've heard for a Hillary candidacy was from an old pal, Sandy Pearlman, who started off accusing me of demanding unrealistic "perfection" and then conceded that Americans have come to expect to choose between "shit and shit in cream." (Well... look at that picture; if that isn't shit in cream I don't know what is!)