Katha Pollitt: How Different Are the Top Three Dems?

The other night I got an irate e-mail from an old acquaintance on the left. He was furious because I'd quipped in an interview that if people didn't stop making sexist comments about Hillary Clinton, I might just have to vote for her. Maybe he missed the ironic conditional: he thought I supported her. He went on to excoriate Clinton: she is militaristic and ultranationalistic; she would carry on Bush's policy of a long-term occupation of Iraq, define foreign policy around the "war on terror," support the hard-liners in Israel and promote the centrist-Democratic left-smashing ideology of the DLC. We need to rebuild the left, he concluded, and that's why he was supporting... Barack Obama.

If you get your news from the progressive media, especially the web, you would think large fields of ideological difference separate Clinton, Obama and Edwards. I haven't decided who I'm voting for. I would love to see a Democratic woman President; I'm not ashamed to say that. I'd love to see a Democratic black President too. But obviously--I shouldn't have to say this--what matters is what the candidates stand for and to whom they'll be beholden if elected. My problem is, the three don't look so far apart to me--certainly not enough to justify demonizing one and canonizing another, as my left-wing correspondent does. The differences seem more like branding: the strong, experienced woman; the black (but not too black) inspirer of hope; the hands-on economic populist crusader. Or if you prefer, the evil pro-corporate phony and everyone else. No sooner had Clinton announced her healthcare plan, for example, than my colleague John Nichols denounced it as a gift to the insurance industry. Fair enough, but this is the same healthcare plan that Elizabeth Edwards said with some annoyance was copied from the one her husband--the man who cares about poor people--had put forward months before. Obama's plan is similar. Likewise, on the same day that my colleague Laura Flanders wrote that an Obama campaign rally in New York City was buzzing with progressive energy, I read in the New York Times about his attempt to woo McCain voters in New Hampshire. Both these things can be true--but isn't being all things to all people a bit, well, Clintonian?