Extremely bizarre. It can’t be that she’s manoeuvering for the Dem presidential primaries, because conventional wisdom has it that to appeal to their more politically-engaged bases who vote proportionately more heavily in primaries, Dems veer further left and GOPers further right than for a general election. By that rule of thumb Hillary should right now be trying to out-liberal the liberals.

I don’t get it.

“Of her ambition there can be little doubt. The most sensitive and convincing (though not friendly) portrait of her, by the late Barbara Olson in ‘Hell to Pay,’ shows a woman determined to wield political power from her days in college and law school. She has been working toward this goal for 35 years now. She is not going to give up when the highest prize seems within reach.”

Michael Barone, OpinionJournal.com, June 19, 2003

Answering Unadorned: I think that Hillary is sure of the leftwing vote in her party: in any primary contest she’d squash the others. Therefore she’s thinking of the general election, and to do that she must appeal to the centrists, and to those Democrats who also are looking beyond the promaries and who know that a far left candidate would lose. She’s saying, in effect: “Don’t be afraid of me; I’m now a New Democrat, and unlike Dean, Kerry, and the others I might win the swing votes in the general election.”

I think frieda is essentially right. Hillary must lie in order to win the general election. She knows that. Her supporters know that. The whole goddamned country knows that. Therefore, she is lying, and she’s starting early because a) her supporters know the game and won’t hold it against her, and b) it will provide her cover in the future: no one will be able to say that she went into the primary saying one thing and then switched over for the general election.

Or it may be that this is actually what she believes. That’s almost impossible for me to fathom, but it could conceivably be true.

“[S]he supports domestic partnership laws, though not marriage, for homosexuals….”

And the difference is?

It would seem that the difference is the name “marriage”—and little more than that. But that’s liberalism for you. It transforms the essence of things, while keeping their original name so that the fact of the transformation can be denied. “America,” “patriotism,” “the Constitution,” “rule of law,” “marriage,” “higher education,” “high standards,” excellence,” “critical thinking,” etc., etc., etc.

When Governor Cuomo wrote an executive order that allowed homosexuals the right to employment without discrimination, he failed to recognize that there was no need for it. For in fact, there is no discriminatory action requiring the execution of such an order. All persons seeking employment do so, not with their sexual life styles laid bare as an applicant, but as persons whose abilities and credentials are presented for review. To suggest that a homosexual is protesting discrimination on the criteria outlined here, is ludicrous. What one does in his prvate life has no bearing here. To openly state that one must be accepted on the grounds of homosexual tendencies is putting fuel to the fire. Discrimination comes into play, then, only when the applicant makes his or her sexual preferences known during the interviewing process. The issue of discrimination now takes on a different light, encouraged by the applicant. The whole procedure becomes one to be hotly contested as the result of introducing matters which are not relevant to the job requirements.