To the editor:
Music to my ears. That was my reaction to Hillary Clinton's
response to the question put to her last Sunday by CBS's Jane Pauley on whether
her political career was over: "I am done with being a candidate."
For me, a progressive, the prospect of another Clinton
candidacy by Bill or Hillary for any office (I don't know enough about Chelsea
to include her) has a distinctly zombie-like quality. What, for once and all,
can be done to erase from our nation's future these two life-long principle-less
office-seekers, these awful consummate politicians? Indeed, I worry that, like
Bill's weasel-worded "explanations" of his perjurious denials of sex
with Monica, Hillary will later (depending on which way the wind is blowing)
retract her announcement and we'll have to waste yet another election cycle
driving another stake into her (alleged) heart.
It's my hope that we progressives can now turn to effective,
even "radical," solution, not accommodation, of the issues of
economic fairness, global peace, environmental sanity. The Clintons and their
enablers (I include almost all politicians whom California Democrats have been
sending to Washington, including Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer – and, to my chagrin,
Obama) have delayed, distracted and obstructed us long enough. As Bob Dylan
enjoined "senators, congressmen" more than a generation ago,
"Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall ... There's a battle
outside and it's ragin'...For the times they are a-changin'."
