Dear Hillary
This weekend Hillary Clinton attended the annual commemoration of the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery. This was the famous march that ended on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with the marchers being attacked and beaten by police. Current Congressman John L. Lewis was one of the young leaders of that march, and suffered a skull fracture in the melee.
Clinton was only one of the dignitaries honoring the memory of the marchers. Civil Rights icon Jessie Jackson was present, despite suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Announced Presidential candidates Senators Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders were there as well, though Sanders had to leave before the memorial march itself along with unannounced candidate Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.
As Lincoln said, “…it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” The marchers on “Bloody Sunday” altered the course of the Civil Rights movement. The media coverage, particularly television, brought the reality of Southern discrimination into every American living room, and forced the nation to confront its brutality.
Secretary Clinton was one of the speakers at the Brown Chapel, the historic starting place of the march. In her speech, she spoke of the continuing fight for voting rights in the United States. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the basis for applying racial equality to voting, was passed as a direct consequence of the March. Part of the Act required that nine southern states demonstrate that any changes in their voting laws would not be racially discriminatory. That remained the law from 1965 until 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down that portion of the regulation.
Since 2010, the Republican Party has made it their policy to try to gain power by redistricting (gerrymandering) to advantage their candidates, called the “Redmap” plan. They have also engaged in a nationwide campaign to enact laws that make voting more difficult, reducing lower income and minority voting. Voter ID legislation, restricted polling times and locations, and voter roll purges are all part of a clear strategy to keep groups seen as “Democrats” from being able to vote.
The impact of the Republican policies has been seen in several close elections, including the 2018 Georgia Governor campaign, where Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp used multiple forms of voter suppression to defeat Democrat Stacy Abrams. Secretary Clinton also mentioned the closeness of her own electoral defeat in 2016, with states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania all enacting laws suppressing minority votes.
She isn’t wrong. But the problem is that when Mrs. Clinton talks about losing the 2016 election, the narrowness of the loss means EVERY factor cost her the race. Absolutely, voter suppression in those three critical electoral states made a difference. And so did FBI Director James Comey’s announcement October 26thstatement saying he was re-opening the e-mail investigation, the social media attacks by Russian Intelligence, and their still unexplored attacks on the actual voting systems.
No, she isn’t wrong. But somehow every time Mrs. Clinton talks about the election, it seems she never states what most Democrats would now acknowledge: that despite all of these factors, her campaign should have won. They lost because of a failed campaign strategy, probably based on flawed polling data. And they lost because she was unable to overcome an undeserved image as a cold candidate, unable to relate to regular voters.
She now comes across as a sore loser. Even though it’s hard to deny she has that right, it indicates that she is unable to move on. You can’t blame her, or Al Gore; they both had the Presidency and the fate of the nation in their grasp, only to have it ripped away. But that attitude won’t work with the American voter of 2020; and if Hillary Clinton isn’t running for President, she needs to step back and let the new candidates take charge.
America is in an existential struggle. If you didn’t think so before, just spend a couple of hours listening to our current President’s speech at CPAC this weekend. Defeating voter suppression is a major part of that struggle, the courage shown by the marchers on Bloody Sunday may well be needed again to change the Republican plans already in the works for 2020. But unless Hillary Clinton is going to run for President (and I hope she is not) she needs to take a role familiar to her husband; one where she encourages specific voting groups to take action. She needs to get off of the main stage, and allow the Democratic Party the room to sort out the list, and determine who should lead us in this next battle.
