Hillary Declares for President

In what could be described as the first speech of her Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton came out swinging. Some of the analogies are a little off. Speaking to a black audience in Harlem, she compared the House of Representatives to a plantation.

The House “has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about,” said Clinton, D-N.Y. “It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard.”

Now call me crazy, but an all black audience in Harlem hearing the word plantation on Martin Luther King Day isn’t thinking about the right to free speech – they’re thinking slavery.

It was intentional.

Had a Republican said it, there would be charges of racial insensitivity, minimizing the feelings of minority communities, etc. Had that word, to that audience, been uttered by a sitting GOP senator, the left would be spastic. But when they say it, it’s just “rhetoric.”

Fiery rhetoric is stuff like this:

“We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence,” she said. “I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country.”

That’s fine, Hil. Predict away, but be honest. The plantation remark, on Martin Luther King Day, was race-baiting at its finest, not appropriate political discourse.

Now, the good news is, if you try to find the text of her remarks, you’re screwed. On the day after a speech that garnered much media attention, the media center of her campaign website (which should have text of the speech) hasn’t been updated in almost a month (here’s a screen grab in case they change it).

Meanwhile, Al “Don’t Forget Me When I’m” Gore gave a fiery speech as well. It was long on accusations, and populist rhetoric. He kept referring to a need for “the people” to do something, but as a lifelong political insider, his concept of “the people” apparently only extends to “the elected people” and “the powerful people.”

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General…

Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel…

…new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch …

…both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior…

…the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted…

…any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.

Sorry, Al, but I’m confused… Where do the people fit into this?

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