Clinton Takes Steps Towards Presidential Run

Taken from The Age, Australia, 05.12.06

LESS than a month after winning a six-year term in the Senate, Hillary Clinton appears close to formally declaring what everybody has always presumed: that she wants to be the next president of the United States.

She has been meeting senior Democratic officials from her home state of New York, discussing her ambition to reoccupy the White House, where she was first lady for eight years.

Among the figures she has met are Congressman Charles Rangel; the chairman of the state Democratic Party, Herman Farrell; and Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer.

Her staff have all but stopped equivocating. Her senior adviser, Howard Wolfson, was quoted by The New York Times as saying: "Senator Clinton made clear that after the election she would begin seriously considering a presidential run, and that process involves reaching out and talking to her colleagues."

Mr Farrell also told the Times that Senator Clinton had a discussion with him about running for president. "I'm not telling you what the decision was, only that we had the discussion," he said.

However, he did say he had been encouraging Senator Clinton to run, and that her news pleased him.

Senator Clinton has been the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination since the last election. She constantly tops opinion polls of possible Democratic contenders. But an entrenched 40 per cent of Americans say they will not vote for her.

She faces a real threat in Barack Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois who is the new darling of the Democrats. With a book tour promoting his bestseller, The Audacity of Hope, and appearances on talk shows, he is the one getting all the attention at the moment.

While he has been courting Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire — the first two tests for presidential hopefuls — Senator Clinton has been conspicuously quiet for several weeks, with few public engagements, apparently hunkered down deciding whether America is ready for a female president and assessing the opposition.

With no incumbent president or vice-president running for office, there is likely to be a crowded field of candidates in both parties.

With a sum of $US100 million ($A126 million) now considered the new benchmark for a front-running candidate to raise before the primaries begin in 2008, serious candidates will have to declare their intentions early next year to start fund-raising.

Senator Clinton spent more than any other senator in the recent mid-term elections in what appeared to be an effort to prove that she could win over Republican voters, which she did, although she faced only token opposition.

She still has $US10 million in the bank, money that can be switched to a presidential candidacy after she formally declares her intention. That is expected to be early next year.

On Friday, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack became the first Democrat to formally run. He is considered a long shot.

Democrat senator Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who is more conservative than most of his party rivals, also announced he would form a presidential exploratory committee within a few days.

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Has Senator Hillary Clinton got the mentality to fight for the job of President of the United States?

Senitor Clinton went to a rally staged by Zionist organizations during the Israeli attack on Lebanon when most people in the US and around the world were condemning Isreal for its aggressive behaviour.

Clinton made it clear that she not only supported the aggression that had been unleashed against the Palestinian and Lebanese people, but is quite prepared to back its escalation into a full scale war against Syria and Iran as well - again most people around the world beg to differ from the views of Mrs Clinton.

“We will support [Israel’s] efforts to send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians, to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom,” she told the crowd.

Israeli military officials have openly proclaimed that their aim is to drive Gaza “back to the stone age” and in Lebanon to “turn the clock back 20 years”—to the days of brutal civil war.

“We will stand with Israel because Israel is standing up for American values as well as Israeli ones,” the New York Democrat proclaimed at the New York City rally.

It would be nice if Mrs Clinton could tell the American people what these "American Values" were - I for one shall be waiting for her answers.

Further Information:
World Socialist Website: Hillary Clinton celebrates Israeli war crimes (PDF)