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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb.1, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Bill Clinton has capitulated to the right wing on just about everything he possibly could in the course of his presidential term. He agrees with the Republicans on a "balanced budget" using their economic figures and based on a wholesale dismantling of federal social-service programs and massive cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. But so far even that's not enough for the profit-crazed ruling class--or at least the wing of it whose representatives are now in the majority on Capitol Hill. So they're bringing out every weapon in their arsenal against a White House they still view as way too liberal.
That explains the attacks on Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Whitewater hearings have now been under way for longer than any other special committee in Congressional history. And for what? To "investigate" business dealings that took place before Clinton became president and by someone who is not herself a public official. Even if the worst allegations are true, the Whitewater affair amounts to a minor, rather run- of-the-mill case of small-time lawyerly corruption--the sort of thing that is pure business as usual in ordinary circumstances. The fact that the chief inquisitor is Sen. Al D'Amato, a buffoonish reactionary thug who has somehow survived repeated charges of major corruption, makes it even clearer that this is no matter of principle.
The campaign against Hillary Clinton is blatantly sexist, even misogynist. This is a woman, after all, who dared to enter the public debate and claim her right to play a policy-making role regarding health care. Of course, her proposals were designed to maintain the insurance industry's profits; they did not in any way address the fundamental problems of health care under capitalism. And she lost--the whole health-care issue was utterly buried. Yet the right wing can't forgive her.
Neither Hillary Clinton nor her husband represents the workers and oppressed of this country. The working-class and progressive movement need waste no sympathy on them. But it's important to clearly understand Whitewater for what it is: the forces of political reaction pressuring the Democrats to move even further to the right--and while they're at it, punishing a woman who stepped beyond her wifely station.
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