Your Liberal Media at Work

America's pre-eminent newspaper declares:

Senator Hillary Clinton is a white liberal . . . .

Now look, I will concede that Hillary Clinton is white--but liberal?  By whose standards?  She voted to authorize the war in Iraq.  She voted for the PATRIOT Act and the bankruptcy bill.  She has pushed for content restrictions on movies and video games.  Her health insurance plan would be a boon to the private, for-profit health care industry; she eschews single-payer national health insurance.

Hillary Clinton is a moderate Democrat--maybe even a somewhat conservative Democrat.  The labeling of her as "liberal" shows how far our whole political spectrum has been wrenched rightward.  A legislator who is a "moderate Democrat " one year becomes a "liberal Democrat" the next as conservative memes infect our political discourse.  Those supposed "liberal" legislators are then painted as out of step with the mainstream.  They lose their elections, and then everybody steps to the right.  Conservative Democrats then find themselves cast as liberal, go down to defeat, and make room for other Democrats who are even more conservative.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama is a liberal Democrat.  Neither was Howard Dean.  Historically, they are all well to the right of FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ.  At present, they are to the right of true liberals like Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich.  When our media tell us otherwise, they lie--and take the politics of the 21st century a few steps closer to reactionism.