Does anyone share my vague unease at all the crowing coming from Hillary-on-the-Hill about the $26 million she's managed to prise from the populace in just three months? Pretty good sugar for sure, but isn't it a trifle well, unseemly, or to use the synonym my thesaurus comes right up with - Republican - to make this much racket about it? For many voters 'shrill' is already synonymous with 'Hill'. This adds 'loud and crass' to the list: as in 'I'm-just-as-crude-and-vulgar-as-you-moth-eaten-money-grubbing-roosters-across-the-aisle'
Time was Democrats distinguished themselves from Republicans in being more discreet - even apologetic - about the fund-raising-race, however good they actually were at scooping the stuff up by the handful. The message was: unlike Republicans we don't measure everything by money; we don't plump for property over people, we don't choose corporate prosperity at any cost to life and limb. We don't believe that everything - even basic human rights like shelter, education and healthcare - should be a profit center. We're not in the business of business, we do not believe that government exists to make the rich richer, preferably obscenely so.
A very smart message even if - once they got into power - they never acted on it.
I know, 80% of the moolah is supposed to have come from contributions of 100 bucks or less. But a hundred-bucks-a-pop prices out the working poor and the barely-hanging-in-there middle-class. And of course there's that other 20% - a tidy $5 million, for a possible $20 million by year's end - which you can bet are those good old "contributions" from "major donors" Or to use the synonym my thesaurus comes right up with: "bribes"
I think the message Hill's sending with her roostering is new (at least for us Democrats hoping for profound changes after eight years of war, mass murder, constitutional rape, corruption, theft, lies and treason):
It goes like this:
"Hey GOP guys, I'm just as good as you at raising obscene amounts of money. I'm just as obsessed by it as common criminals like Tom Delay; like Tom and Karl and Dick I love to sail upon the ocean green and slalom down the great cash mountain."
"Allow me to confirm that as the Democratic candidate I will be happy to use Republican tactics on anyone who dares bring up my left-wing past or the courageous positions I once took, which will now have to be concealed, distorted or denied. Because for once - like Republicans always do - I'll have enough lovely money to keep on and on and on and on repeating lies until they become the truth...
"If elected I will spend just as much time and energy as my Republican colleagues, grubbing for re-election gelt from business-as-usual sleazeballs in the sewer of K Street. And if elected I'll spend just as much time and energy as Republicans do watering down, compromising or eviscerating crucial legislation on education, the poor, the environment, the Mid-East, the income-gap, healthcare, all the areas in which I'm expected to make a huge difference, to pay back aforementioned business-as-usual sleazeballs.
"I'm just as good as Republicans at promoting the oldest and crudest aspect of our culture, lapped up by young and old alike, that money talks and everyone else walks, that if you want something done you get to the biggest fist with the biggest bag of cash.
"I'm going to be just as good as Republicans at sending the message to voters that our democracy is secondary to influence and any principle however hallowed is for sale. I'm going to be just as good as Republicans at getting voters young and old to lose faith in the electoral process - thus increasing the power of the backroom oligarchs with whom I intend to do business.
"In fact I'm just as good as Republicans at being Republican! But I'm also a Democrat! How can you lose? Vote for me - the best of both worlds!
PS Check out my new paperback The Messiah of Morris Avenue. Over there on the right. Yeah that one...