#20 A Gut Campaign (2): Three E's and an HRC

Let me say a few things right now, up front, about Hillary Rodham Clinton. She has run about the worst possible campaign she could run, which means she's had bad advisors and bad advice. Her husband's occasional fits of temper, and her own fits of pique, haven't helped. She sounds shrill and petulant and whiney, and her campaign has taken exactly the wrong approach to Barack Obama. In fact, her strategy has just plain stunk. For the most recent example, her support of a gas-tax-holiday enabled BO to escape the negative publicity of his former minister's absurd remarks. Instead of forcing Obama to talk about his minister--or about ANYthing that might reflect negatively on himself--HRC enabled BO to explain why he opposes a gas-tax-holiday. That debate between the two Democratic finalists pushed BO's minister onto back pages in the news reports, and actually strengthened BO's position in the nomination marathon--in part because it de-emphasized the Rev. Wrong's remarks, and in part because BO had logic on his side.

I'm just surprised that neither candidate is yet attacking dubya and McCain for talking positively about how the up-to-$600 tax rebate/refund/whatever the heck it is will help jumpstart the economy. I personally am planning on using that $600 to open a factory or two, and hire a thousand unemployed folk. Or I'll use it to pay for the increases in gas and food prices. Let's see: which one?

I hope you noticed that brilliant segue back to the promised topic at hand, the Three E's. I'll deal today with the first of the three alphabetically, the Economy. It's a mess. Well, not for the super-rich, but for normal folk like us. Gas and food prices haven't crept up; they've leapt up. Oil price increases have made their way all the way up (down?) the food chain, literally and figuratively. Shipping everything costs more, and that increase is passed on in the form of higher prices to us. Those higher prices lead to a spike in inflation, which becomes a self-expanding problem: consumers, aware that tomorrow the price for what they need will be higher, buy today, thus increasing the demand for whatever it is, or increasing the motivation for producers and retailers to create the feeling of shortages (rice, anyone?), which in turn forces the price yet higher. We get an inflationary spiral, which hits almost every sector of the economy--currently, with the exception of housing, which apparently is in a DEflationary spiral. That's the ol' Stagflation of the 80s, that cost Jimmah Cartah a second term.

I bought a dozen eggs today, on a big sale, for $1.25; six months ago, on sale they were a little more than half that price. Milk at our local low-price supermarket is up 30% in about the same time frame. And fresh fruits and veggies have made similar moves. Bread prices have risen as well, subject to the commodity insanities affecting precious metals and what is becoming increasingly precious grains. I'm not talking about crap food here, people; I'm talking about the staples of healthy, well-balanced meals.

Benjamin Disraeli had it right more than a century and a half ago in England, when he gave his novel "Sybil" the subtitle, "The Two Nations." That's what we have increasingly become in the good ol' US of A. As Disraeli explains in the novel, the two nations are "The Rich and the Poor." The bush administration has succeeded in making the ultra rich even richer, and the rest of American society less well off, in some cases starvingly poorly off.

Whoever gets the Democratic nomination needs to emphasize how poorly the economy is doing for the overwhelming majority of our citizens. Why not wear a flag on your lapel? Better, wear a cornstalk instead, or a grain of wheat, or a picture of an empty carton of milk. Flags don't put food in the tummies of the poor. There is no more important Gut Issue than feeding our fellow and sister humans, and especially those who can't take care of themselves. This should be a prime topic of the campaign.

Next time: The other two E's, Education and the Environment.