That Sucking Noise Pulling Anti-War Radicals into Hillary's Camp? It Was Charlie Rangel.

It's incredible when you think about it. Yvette Clarke and Ed Towns had signed onto Dennis Kucinich's resolution calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, putative architect of the Iraq war.

Right on, hundreds of thousands of New York anti-war voters might say, especially in Park Slope, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn Heights and elsewhere in North and Central Brooklyn.

Give this reality, you'd think Dennis Kucinich would have had the backing of at least one member of the New York Congressional delegation, the elite club to which Clarke and Towns belong.

But no. They all -- yes ALL -- went into Hillary Clinton's camp.

Stupidly, I used to wonder what would make an elected official so dismissive of his or her political principles that he or she would want to impeach Cheny while at the same time backing someone like Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war and has been largely hawkish about it.

Is her power over these officials so great that their aura of independence in the eyes of their constituents means nothing to them?

Then an acquaintance of mine, someone more steeped in politics than I am, told me:

"It's not Hillary Clinton. It's Charlie Rangel."

Now that makes much sense. No one was as invested in the future of Hillary Clinton as much as the Harlem Congressman, no one besides Hillary and Bill and Chelsea Clinton, that is.

It was Rangel who pushed Hillary Clinton into the Senate and got ex-President Bill Clinton to set up an office in Harlem.

Not for nothing was Rangel once the White of the Democrats in the House of Representatives. And not for nothing did he go on to become chairman of the all-powerful Ways and Means Committee.

Still, the thoroughness of the unity behind Hillary Clinton astounds, making them seem like uniformed members of a marching band, trotting to the beat of a single drummer.

One has to say for Charlie Rangel that he very likely had misgivings along the way about his choice. He has said that he did not realize how much and how strongly Barack Obama's campaign would catch on (although "catch on," at this point, is clearly an understatement).

It seems that Rangel's connection to and affection for the Clintons overrode his otherwise very canny political instincts.

Did he not feel at all the trans-historical glee and hope and faith that penetrated the souls and minds of many young people and blacks and other disaffected ones?

Perhaps not.

It would have been a great sacrifice on his part, perhaps, to have walked away from the Clintons early on and embraced Obama. But it might be said also that his ultimate position in the minds of many progressive Americans, especially black Americans, would have been much higher than it otherwise will be, when the book on him is finally written.

Time for politicians to move on, yes, but always time for others to reflect.

Comments

[lornah]

"Time for politicians to move on, yes, but always time for others to reflect". That you for such an insight.

[Hawi Moore]

Nice