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Why Can’t Hillary Win?
by David E. Meadows , 2005

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, December 26, 2006

A lot is made these days that Senator Hillary Clinton is unelectable because of her baggage. What baggage? What has she done so terrible that alienates the American people? We veterans tend to be moderate conservatives, but few seem to support her and I have found none who can say why. So, the question is why can’t Hillary win in 2008? Leftist? In a broad stoke, we veterans tend to think leftists are people who are anti-military-kind of Jane Fonda-ish.

If she is a leftist as many accuse, then why did she vote for the war in Iraq? Same reasons others did. In a time of American crisis, she believed the President. She strongly supports our men and women who are in harms way in Iraq even as she recognizes the political mistakes that led us into this conflict. Over 70% of Americans agree with this position. If she is a leftist, then why has she pushed several times for a strong veterans health care system? And, wants a health care system available to everyone across our nation? If you’re a baby boomer, you should be interested in these issues.

She believes in fiscal responsibility, a strong military, and free trade. So why does the very mention of her name stimulate the emotions of Americans?

I think it started with Bill’s off-the-cuff humor about us ‘getting two for the price of one.’ We did not like the joke, if it was one. Then, almost immediately Hillary led a ‘Secret-closed door-don’t talk about it’ committee to find some way to develop an affordable, accessible universal health care system. We crucified her on the cross of public opinion for trying to do something good for the nation. We rose up with our pitchforks waving them as a mob, knowing there were nefarious deeds afoot behind those SCDs and managed to kill it before we even saw it.

Ironically, when Dick Cheney hosted ‘Secret-closed door-don’t talk about it’ committee meetings with energy officials we thought what a wonderful idea. Here was someone trying to solve the energy crisis. Today, gas prices soar while American families load debt because of a broken medical care system. His SCD meetings never produced the national rancor hers did and they never had the goodwill of the American public in mind as she did.

Senator Clinton is the first woman to serve on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, but more importantly, what has she done on it?

She has visited Iraq, Afghanistan, and has journeyed many times the short distance to Walter Reed to visit the returning wounded. Other Senators have visited Walter Reed also. She votes in favor of bills and budgets that push adequate veteran health care along with a capable military that can act in the interests of National Security. She cosponsored a bill to guarantee VA health care funding. It was defeated by the administration. She is pushing another bill to guarantee veteran health care where the administration wants to impose an annual enrollment fee on certain classes of veterans. She demanded answers from Rumsfeld when others gave him clear passage on his less forthcoming answers. Time has vindicated her political positions that others avoided.

Why can’t Hillary win? What are the specifics; not generalities-that so energize the American people along ‘for’ and ‘against’ lines? No one straddles the American fence on a politician like we do with Hillary. Her own party seems the loudest antagonist against her, raising the specter of Obama as the answer for 2006. But, it’s Hillary who has weathered the gauntlet of the worse in American politics and public. It is Hillary who grasps foreign policy, medical care, military requirements, and the needs of this nation’s veterans.

It’s time we vindicate her. Her politics are there for anyone who can ignore personal dislike long enough to see she is a first-rate politician trying to do the right thing. She is a centralist-a moderate like most veterans; and, not pegged to the left, as many would have us believe.

David E. Meadows / SixthFleet.Com David E. Meadows Washington D.C. E-Mail readermail@SixthFleet.Com