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Hillary to State Dept. – Finally Some Good News for New York
If this Associated Press release is to be believed, the nomination of Hillary Clinton to head up the State Department is all but a done deal.
WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama plans to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state after Thanksgiving, a new milestone for the former first lady and a convergence of two political forces who fought hard for the presidency.
One week after the former primary rivals met secretly to discuss the idea of Clinton becoming the nation’s top diplomat, an Obama adviser said Thursday that the two sides were moving quickly toward making it a reality, barring any unforeseen problems.
So what’s the good news here? It’s simple, really. For those of us here in the Empire State, it means we may finally have a chance to put an actual New Yorker in our junior Senate seat once again. It also means that Hillary Clinton can stop pretending as if she knows or cares about New York beyond its usefulness as a stepping stone to higher ambitions. I worked for the Rick Lazio campaign in 2000 as we watched the DNC march in like well-funded stormtroopers and pull off one of the most flagrant cases of carpetbagging seen since the reconstruction era.
Since that time we have seen Senator Clinton fail to follow through on the majority of the glowing promises she made in her two campaigns. (We’re still waiting, by the way, for those 200,000 jobs for Upstate she promised would appear under her leadership and influence which actually turned out to be a loss of 145,000 jobs.) She has been a lackluster member of the upper chamber at best, authoring a relatively small amount of legislation and mostly making news simply because everyone was waiting for her run at the White House. Assuming she does take the job at the State Department, she can pack up her things and move permanently to Washington, where she will no doubt inform us that she’s been a fan of the Washington Nationals since she was a little girl.
I don’t know who we’ll get to replace her, frankly. I doubt America’s Mayor wants the job, though he may be the next Governor. Aside from Rudy, I doubt any other members of the GOP would have a shot so we’ll get another Democrat. But, with any luck, at least they’ll be from New York. So long, Mrs. Clinton. It’s been real. It’s been fun. But it sure as heck ain’t been real fun. Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord intended ya to sit.
9 Responses to “Hillary to State Dept. – Finally Some Good News for New York”
I don't think Rudy is running for statewide office, period. He still thinks he can be President. And his popularity is much lower now than it was a few years ago.
Paterson's replacement will be an interesting one. Hopefully he will pick somebody from Upstate, like Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo or one of the Congressmen(women) in western New York.
I was in Upstate New York for a two years and was familiar even before then with Hillary Clinton's bid to “represent” New York and New Yorkers, not all of them, but the Obvious Exploitables. It was transparent to those of us with an IQ normal or above that the Senate seat associated with a still-newsworthy place (largely out of past history) was transparently her springboard position to seek the Presidency. (She waited four years too late.) This is Blue Nation exploitability at its most obvious, which is exemplified also by the disgraceful loser-populist misconduct of Eliot Spitzer as Attorney General prior to his ascension to the governorship, once again of a state full of the easily exploited, especially in the larger cities. The wheezing dinosaur past on which New York and other Blue Nation-slash-Rust Belt Old America relies was, in fact, exemplified by the Spitzer campaign commercials, which appealed pathetically and cynically to primitive emotions and past graudeur-slash-contemporary defensiveness and inferiority complex relative to the modern, vibrant, vital Sun Belt. Do you remember the commercials, inviting New Yorkers to recall the past glorious history of the Empire State? It included black-and-white film footage of New York's glory years, complete if I recall correctly with views of steam locomotives (on the New York Central Railroad, no doubt)! Steam locomotives! 1930s America, when cities were supreme over rural backward America (which includes much of New York, especially Upstate, but shhh), before the post-World-War-II “urban problems” and beginnings of dumping money so very wastefully into inner city vortices, and then New York City bankrupted itself through years of liberal economic and social policies in the city itself. Talk about dinosaur stuff! Glory? [snicker]
Yet to this day many see New York as still a route not only to prominence (it is still important given its physical size as well as economic clout along with Pennsylvania in the Northeast — New Jersey, few can understand that well) but a route all the way to the Presidency. That's “Old America”!
I've written before about Blue Nation bad developments and failures before, most often on here about Michigan (with which I'm also familiar), but what's true there is true about New York (and Upstate is getting killed — it must compete not only with Georgia or Virginia but even with other nearby Blue Nation locations) and other “Old America” parts of the country. (Simply throwing huge amounts of money at it, as we did decades ago with the “urban problem,” is no viable kind of new Marshall Plan for the Blue Nation Rust Belt industrial-and-hinterland zone.)
[Chapters 1 and 2 are particularly relevent here -- see Figures 4 and 5 in Chapter 2, especially]
http://www.ppinys.org/reports/2003/censusbook.pdf
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/20…
Oh, one last musing about “New York's” Hillary Clinton: Maybe if Clinton does leave her Senate seat, Alan Keyes can run for it eventually and from there seek the White House again on behalf of social conservatives and the Religious Right one day. [wink; grin] More realistically, September 11, Rudy Giuliani, September 11, is probably, September 11, no more likely now, September 11, and probably less now, September 11, than a few years ago, September 11, to get the Senate seat than somebody else who, if he were honest, would be a Democrat now and would have been his entire political career — the darling of the chattering classes, New York Mayor Bloomberg. [rolling eyes at childishness and silliness surrounding the man] He's perfect for the exploitive role given his disgusting misconduct about term limits in the city of New York (which is _not_ the center of the universe or even of this nation).
And please, may we _not_ see scumbag Eliot Spitzer try for that Senate seat or the loser who has been aping him and continuing to exploit the easily exploitable people in New York, Andrew Cuomo.
We know it's going to be a blue man or woman (which includes Bloomberg, if people are honest).
[Note colors are _reversed_ below]
http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.ph…
http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.ph…
NO FEDERAL BAILOUT!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/nyregion/21tr…
“we have seen Senator Clinton fail to follow through on the majority of the glowing promises she made in her two campaigns”
I'm confident you never believed any of those promises. They were aimed mainly at New York City and at the major cities Upstate, that's all.
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/ny-map.gif
Incidentally, New York City, notorious mainly for its bankrupting itself through politics and policies that made it the pinnacle of liberalism for decades, is still in godawful shape, as is the state of New York (which is where the city should look for any bailout, never to Washington), and it's interesting that whereas Detroit, another Blue Nation city and state (the city itself is a wasteland — the new city government cannot determine what the city's finances actually are, and the city is asking for, you guessed it, a federal bailout), has a reliance on a failed-model old automobile industry, New York, city and state, are reliant on Wall Street for much of their sustenance, and they are hurting in their own way currently. While Obama is shunting Clinton aside and out of domestic affairs and related interference with Obama in these affairs, Clinton may actually be relieved to no longer go through the pretense of “representing” New York when there are all kinds of financial problems there and in the rest of the country.
[Note: Spending reductions are anathema to Old America Blue Nation bureaucrats, which include Michael Bloomberg; they instinctively and arrogantly respond robotically to shortfalls with tax increases or desires for these. I remember well the entrenched fiefdoms in Upstate and the attitude of the government people there. Shortall? Taxes "must" be increased, then. Arrgh.]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122688356681132…
Obama's Choice for the USA — Liberals Watch
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2…
(Floor yielded)
The real good news is that Obatma will be able to take his promised position as Commissioner of the Bureau of Mutant Affairs.
http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/election-08/hill…
Ooh ooh ooh! When she steps down for SecState, appoint Bill to the seat!
I doubt Hillary made nor was responsible for all of New York's problems. Just like it's now the Obama-economic disaster…lol…
People elect people to do their best. It's very possible that Hillary's strong points are in networking on a global scale rather than trying to mop up fiscal messes in New York. She never did strike me as one to stay at home and clean up other people's messes.
Apparently she's taking the job at State, Geithner is set to be in Treasury, and Richardson in Commerce.
“She never did strike me as one to stay at home and clean up other people's messes.”
Even the messes she promised to clean up at home? (Of course, it really has to be “home.”)
Or her own?
Sil: “It's very possible that Hillary's strong points are in networking on a global scale rather than trying to mop up fiscal messes in New York. She never did strike me as one to stay at home and clean up other people's messes.”
LOL! And you wanted the world to believe that Hillary, someone who can't clean up fiscal messes in NY (or clean up after other people's messes) was the absolutely best and most qualified candidate to be president…. Haha! Now that reality has set back in and it's apparent that Hill can't clean up messes in her own state (a job she was elected to do), suddenly she's qualified to solve the world's problems….
Thankfully there isn't a solar system-wide government because if there were one, then we'd be told that Hillary would only be qualified for that task, and that anything smaller would be beneath her abilities….
But I do agree that Hillary isn't responsible for all of NY's problems. But she should be able to do the job she said she could do. I actually went from being ambivalent over Hillary's Sec of State position to not liking it at all because of Jazz's post. He brings up some good points about Hillary being a lackluster performer in the Senate and her using the Senate seat as a stepping stone for her own benefit, rather than being truly concerned about New Yorkers' needs.