Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has now blasted President Obama on foreign policy, using terms that make her sound suspiciously like a neoconservative. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been promoting her 11 Commandments for progressive Democrats, and now Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska and partial-term governor of the state, now presumes to give the Republican answer to Warren.
{mosads}Pardon me, but the only rational person in this political trio is Elizabeth Warren, who not only outlines a clear and cogent progressive agenda for Democrats and America but is also campaigning around the country to elect other Democrats in the midterm election — something Hillary Clinton has not been doing all year, being preoccupied with other matters.
I will have more to say in future columns about Warren’s 11 Commandments, which offer the most coherent platform of any Democrat in America on matters such as equal pay, climate change, immigration reform, equality of marriage, banking and financial reform and a list of other vital issues. I may have more to say soon about Clinton’s attack on Obama. For now, I would suggest that she spend more time campaigning for Democrats in November, less time attacking Democrats — including the president — and no time sounding like a neoconservative, which is not my advice on how she can best run for the Democratic nomination.
As for Palin, I feel her pain. She has become inconsequential in national politics. She will be on nobody’s list for president, vice president or any national office. She is sadly forced to throwing red meat to the right by triangulating herself against progressive leaders such as Warren in order to get any attention at all. This, of course, is great news for Warren, whom Palin elevates with her scorn, and who has nothing to worry about from Palin’s attack, which, for those who read it, was incoherent.
Regarding Hillary’s attack on Obama, bad move, and I predict we will be hearing less of this going forward. Regarding Palin’s attack on Warren, virtually nobody except me will pay it any attention, and I only do so because it is too easy a target. Regarding Warren’s 11 Commandments, we will be hearing much more about them. If Hillary Clinton adopts these views as her platform for the presidency, she would win in a landslide, and if she does not, I predict we will soon be hearing more of the words “Run, Elizabeth, run.”
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net.