Clinton's Caution Leading to Defense Industry Support?

Alternet, which is a website that complies articles from the left side of the cultural and political spectrum, has a story from the Independent newspaper of Great Britain about Hillary Clinton and the defense industry. This article points out that as of the date of the article more money had gone to Democrats from the defense industry than had gone to Republicans. This is a quote from the article:

Employees of the top five U.S. arms manufacturers -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon -- gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. "The contributions clearly suggest the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed," said Thomas Edsall, an academic at Columbia University in New York.

This illustrates both the potential and the problem with a Clinton candidacy. The potential is that she may be the one Democrat who can tap into support from groups that traditionally support Republicans. Groups like executives from large corporations, the defense industry, the securities industry, and the insurance industry. The problem is that she gets this support because she doesn't challenge the status quo as far as the economy is concerned.

Somewhere I read that the Clintons who had worked for McGovern and seen him defeated, and who had experience in government in Arkansas are convinced that progressive change in America has to be incremental. This belief was only fortified by their experience during his presidency.

Clinton governed from a centerist position. He signed onto the NAFTA treaty. He restored fiscal discipline to the Federal government. He worked with the Republicans on welfare reform. Yet, for all that, he was hounded by the right-wing and had to fight off impeachment. One can only imagine what the right-wing reaction would have been if he would have tried to expand government programs to benefit the poor or reduce the influence of the rich on our goverment.

You can see the impact of those experiences on Hillary Clinton during her campaign for the presidency. She is very cautious in what she says, she doesn't take positions that are too far from the center, she is determined not to give the right-wing an opening to further distort and demonize her and her record.

In one respect this makes a lot of sense. There is a reason why she is leading the polls right now among Democrats. Her name recognition is one reason but another is that she is not giving the right-wing attack machine a lot of openings. The problem is, though, that if there is an opportunity to bring about real progressive change over the next four to eight years she may not, if she were president, recognize it.