Estrogen Tour.
Hillary joined three other female Democratic members of the U.S. Senate to help Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.) raise money and to rally the troops for what they said will be a close and critical election this November. Sen. Clinton was joined by Senators Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.).
Hillary warned the audience not to be complacent this election. Republicans, she claimed "come in at the end, and they dump unbelievable amounts of money . . . to stem the momentum of our candidates. We are up against an extraordinary machine that wants to keep power more than anything else." She noted how former Democratic senators Max Cleland (Ga.) and Jean Carnahan (Mo.) led in the polls up until the very end, but lost nevertheless, so Democrats must prepare for "the onslaught of negativity that is going to fill the airwaves starting at Labor Day if not before." The event, plus another appearance by Hillary the day before, raised a total of $900,000 for Sen. Boxer and the DSCC.
Hillary also told the donors, some of whom had paid $10,000 to see her, to expect to pay more in taxes if John Kerry and the Democrats take over: "Many of you are well enough off that . . . the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
Somewhere, Karl Marx is smiling.
Left Coast Tour.
After raising big bucks for Boxer, Hillary traveled to Seattle to get donors to cough up more than $400,000 for yet another liberal Senate colleague, Patty Murray (D.-Wash.). She told the audience of 750, "Now that my husband is working and selling his book, we are actually in that category of people favored by the Bush Administration. Can you beat that?"
Both Sen. Murray and Sen. Clinton criticized the Bush Administration's record on the economy, contrasting the rough economy of the past four years with the prosperity of Bill Clinton's two terms. Said Hill: "All of that has been squandered." The emphasis on the alleged economic downturn seemed ironic considering the audience was able to spend $250 each to attend the luncheon, not to mention the 150 people who paid $1,000 to attend a reception and have their photos taken with both senators.
Fiction Afficionado.
While Hillary raised money along the left coast, her husband wasn't far behind, hawking and signing his new autobiography, My Life. Hillary was asked what she thought of Bill's book, and she said, "I loved it. You've got to read all of it." She didn't say "'I' read all of it," but even if she did manage to finish all 957 pages, is it realistic to assume that she loved all of it? Did she love the myriad of times where her husband gratuitously reminisced about all the "attractive" women in his life, or where he admitted that there were indeed "inappropriate" encounters with Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky, or where he writes that Hillary's "lovely but large head seemed to be too big for her body?"
Former President Clinton also showed up at a fundraiser for the American Himalayan Foundation, a charity run by Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. Speaking of the Himalyas, Bill also used My Life to repeat the obvious lie that his wife was named after Sir Edmund Hilary, even though she was born seven years before the then-unknown beekeeper scaled Mt. Everest.
