Sunday, April 12, 2015

Hillary Clinton Officially Announces

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially announced her intention to seek the 2016 Democratic nomination for president on Sunday, ending speculation over her plans to pursue the Oval Office.

Clinton announced she is officially seeking the Democratic nomination to become the 45th President of the United States of America, via an email to supporters from top aide John Podesta, as CNBC reported.
The news came via an email to party stalwarts from John Podesta, a top Clinton adviser and a loyalist, who said Clinton would soon embark on a tour in Iowa.
Do not listen to anyone who tells you that partisan gridlock, the rightward-lean of the Democratic party, or Hillary’s centrism add up to there being no difference between political parties or between candidates: it matters very much to the future of this country who the next president will be!

Clinton’s campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, has just gone live with her first campaign ad placed at the top.


The ad pitches hard to the middle-class – the theme of choice among Republican and Democrat candidates – and meshes with Podesta’s call to “make the middle class mean something again.”
“Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.

“So you can do more than just get by. You can get ahead and stay ahead. Because when families are strong, America is strong.

“So I’m hitting the road to earn your vote because it’s your time. And I hope you’ll join me on this journey,” Clinton says.

There have been 44 presidents, all men, sworn into the Oval Office. Hillary Clinton, likely to be America's first woman elected to serve in that office, may not be the progressive some progressives want, but she may well be the president progressives need.

Clinton enters the race as one of the most qualified candidates in history, with more than three decades in the spotlight, serving a variety of roles in public life. She was a staunch advocate for women and children, and the poor, as first lady, and proved to be a strong voice for her constituents in New York State. She was a tough as nails Secretary of State who faced down a Republican congress over Benghazi. What Democrat is better prepared to deal with rightwing reactionary Republicans on any progressive front?

The next president we elect (assuming he or she serves two terms) could very well appoint four Supreme Court Justices. Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsberg will be ages 78, 80, 80, and 83, respectively, the day the next president is sworn in. Breyer and Ginsberg are liberals. Kennedy is a swing vote between conservative and liberal decisions, but often sides with conservative on social and corporate rights decisions. Scalia is a hard right conservative.

According to a 2006 study conducted by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Supreme Court justices are retiring later and later. Before 1971, the average age of retiring Supreme Court justices was 68. The current average age at which Supreme Court justices retire is 78.7.

A possible cause for longer tenures is the increased politicization of the Court over the last century. Political motives have become a important factor in Justices’ retirement decisions. While it has always been recognized that the Court has had some influence on politics, in the last fifty to eighty years the Court has come to be seen as a more important player than ever before in shaping political and social change. As a result, the political views of individual Justices have become correspondingly more important. To sitting Justices contemplating retirement, the political views of a likely replacement (similar to those of the presiding President) may lead to their timing their resignations strategically. Such strategic resignations may have led Justices to stay on the Court longer and later in age, which has expanded the real-world, practical meaning of life tenure. Politics and strategic factors in Justices’ retirement decisions may have also been shaped in recent years by frequent splits in party control of the Senate and the Executive branch.  The next President will very likely change ideological balance point of the Supreme Court.

What Democrat is better prepared to deal with right wing reactionary Republicans in the Senate to change ideological balance point of the Supreme Court?

There was a time when Democrats talked about government that worked for real working people - everyone.

Democrats said 'we the people' working together through our government can create a level playing field to give everyone an equal opportunity to live a comfortable secure life.

Democrats said 'we the people' working together through government can invested in building a future for everyone. We did it in multiple places:

In education: What did a grateful nation say to returning WWII GI's? We will help you get an education. In the 1950's and 1960's America said, we're going to help young people who can't afford to go to college, by giving them subsidized loans so that they'll be able to get an education. We poured money into our state universities, so that every kid who worked hard, who played by the rules, would have an opportunity to get an education. Why? Because we believed that if our kids had a better education, they could build a stronger, brighter future for themselves.

Infrastructure: We made huge investments in infrastructure, in roads and bridges and power grids. We built the interstate highway system. Why did we do those things? We did it because we didn't know who was going to have the next great business idea, we didn't know who was going to have a clever way to take a small business and turn it into something big, but we were pretty darn sure they were going to need electricity. We were pretty sure they were going to need roads and bridges to get their goods to market. We have the Internet because the Government invested in building the computer network infrastructure in the 1970's and 1980's that formed the Internet we use today. We were pretty sure they were going to need opportunities to have good workers, and workers who could get to them, so we all invested in that infrastructure, so that those who had the great business ideas could build those businesses here in America, build those jobs in America and we would have a brighter, stronger future for all of us.

Research: The third big investment we made, and it was a huge investment, one that had such vision as a country, we invested in research. Just think about that, we did this. We invested in medical research, in scientific research, in engineering research, in chemical research. We invested in research because we believed that if we built this giant pipeline of ideas, our children would have opportunities that we couldn't even dream of.

Earned Benefit Safety Net: The Social Security earned benefit has succeeded in keeping millions of senior citizens, widows and orphans and the disabled out of extreme poverty. Before Social Security was developed for Americans to invest in our retirement security, about half of our seniors lived in poverty. Today, fewer than 10 percent live in poverty and all of that is done with minimum administrative costs. In America right now more than 53 million Americans receive Social Security benefits. Extending that earned benefit safety net, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare ensure Americans do not die for lack of healthcare.

So we made these investments as a NATION to invest in ourselves. We said, we're going to have tough rules in place, a level playing field, and then we're going to invest in building the future, and it worked. It worked for half a century.

The numbers tell the story: Our country got richer, our families got richer, and as our families got richer, our country got richer -- until the start of the Reagan era, 1980.

The Democratic Party is often described as a "big tent" party. I think that is the wrong analogy; The Democratic Party is actually a village of many tents populated by people of diverse interests who find common cause.

The progression vision for America that once called people to pitch their tents in the Democratic village is what made American the greatest and wealthiest nation the world has known.

It is this vision the Democratic Party must reclaim to again unite the American village as one. What Democrat is better prepared than H. R. Clinton to explain that America is like a village of diverse tents that have common cause.

A year ago Chris Matthews gave a forceful case for Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016. Matthews makes sense -- it’s worth the time to watch it.

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