No Worries for Hillary from the Left
 

     Hillary-beat reporter Raymond Hernandez takes a slightly different angle in his approach to centering Sen. Hillary Clinton for Wednesday’s “Frustration Over Iraq Vote Unlikely to Trouble Clinton.”

     Hernandez’s article does note left-wing dissatisfaction with Sen. Hillary Clinton, passing on the opinion of a MoveOn.org director who “said that while Mrs. Clinton had solid support among liberal Democrats, her break with them on a crucial issue like Iraq could lead to questions about her commitment to her own supporters. That, he said, could ultimately fuel a sense within the larger electorate that she is politically disloyal.”

     But Hernandez once again never identifies Clinton herself as a liberal, and his emphasis on criticism of Hillary Clinton from the left underlines the spin of the Times (and Clinton herself) that she is more centrist than her actual voting record indicates. (The American Conservative Union gives her a lifetime rating of 9, the same as ultraliberal Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.)

     Hernandez also soothes concerns of Hillary Clinton supporters by suggesting that the left-wing outrage won’t damage her re-election in 2006 or her presidential prospects in 2008.

     “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for the war in Iraq has outraged many liberal activists in the Democratic Party, who are warning of retribution, including a primary challenge to her re-election campaign next year. But the activists are in the same sort of political bind that liberals found themselves in a decade ago when Bill Clinton defied liberal orthodoxies: struggling to bring meaningful pressure to bear on a politician who is cherished by many traditional Democrats. The frustration on the left toward Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, has been building for months, particularly as opinion has turned against the war and some Democrats in Congress have begun to pressure President Bush to begin a withdrawal of American troops.”

     Hernandez details how Hillary is being challenged from the left: “Recently, the anger erupted into public view, with antiwar activists publicly protesting against the senator and, perhaps more significantly, an antiwar candidate emerging to challenge her in the Democratic primary next year. That challenger, Jonathan Tasini, a longtime labor advocate, has the support of Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar protester who lost her son in the war and who camped for weeks outside Mr. Bush's Texas ranch, demanding to meet with him. Mrs. Sheehan has been critical of Mrs. Clinton.”

     But there’s apparently nothing to worry about: “Now, liberal critics of Mrs. Clinton appear to be running headlong into the same political reality: the immense support she has with the party faithful, despite having taken positions that infuriated the left. That loyalty among the rank and file may help explain why the senator's advisers do not appear to be very troubled by the protests erupting on the left, loud and persistent though they may be.”

     In fact, Hernandez says soothingly, mean conservative attacks are just making her more sympathetic to Democrats, who like her for her position on abortion, or as the Times puts it, “reproductive rights.”

     “Mrs. Clinton's stature in the party stems from several factors, political analysts said. Part of it is her long record of support for traditional Democratic principles on issues like education, health care, civil rights and reproductive rights. In part, the relentless attacks that conservatives have leveled at her have threatened to make her something of a political martyr among Democrats.”

     Hernandez cites MoveOn.org’s Matzzie and a polling director that indicate Hillary Clinton doesn’t have much to worry about.

      “Even Mrs. Clinton's critics on the left agreed that it was very difficult to chip away at her immense popularity within traditional Democratic circles, despite her war position. In a recent interview, Tom Matzzie, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, suggested that the antiwar movement would potentially undercut its own message by waging what he said would be a hugely unsuccessful primary challenge against Mrs. Clinton. [Maurice] Carroll, of Quinnipiac, argues that many of Mrs. Clinton's more moderate positions will help inoculate her against what he says will be a line of attack against her in a Democratic presidential primary: that she cannot win a general election for the White House because she is so politically polarizing.”

For more Hernandez on his high hopes for Hillary, click here.

The Year In Pictures (and Liberal Slant)
 

     Wednesday’s special 12-page section, “The Year In Pictures,” leads off with photos of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and includes text by Paul Vitello: “The hurricane shook an assumption of most Americans: that no matter what disaster befell them, their government would quickly help them out.”

     Vitello next takes a race and class angle: “Then one night, Wolf Blitzer of CNN blurted out another revelation -- that many of the most hard-hit victims seemed to be ‘so poor, so black.’ It was true. But whether they reflected an American racial underclass, or, as President Bush said, ‘a regional’ problem of racial underprivilege, their faces evoked an era that resonated with shame.”

     Vitello, who apparently wrote all the text in the pictorial compilation, also manages to tease race and class issues out of stray comments from the brief, heated NYC subway strike: “Race, class and the future of defined-benefit pension plans all seemed grist for the battle. [Mayor Mike] Bloomberg called the transit strikes ‘thuggish.’ [Union president Roger] Toussaint called the mayor’s comments offensive and insulting. Others said it was a racially insensitive way to describe the actions of a union whose members are predominantly black and Latino.”

     One hot-button word missing from the Times’ slanted summary: Illegal -- as in the strike itself. And  no word from the Times on the true class issue – how the lower class who depend on public transportation to get to work suffered disproportionately during the strike.

     Instead, the Times relays the strikers’ argument: “New Yorkers, depending on their sympathies and their tolerance for cold, fumed either at the strikers or at the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s unwillingness to compromise on what was, for the union, an apparent deal breaker -- a pension provision that meant $20 million one way or the other -- while the city lost hundreds of millions a day.”

For the multimedia presentation of the year in pictures, click here.

Still Squeezing the “Bush Spying” Story
 

     Wednesday’s lead story is from the now-familiar domestic surveillance scoop team of Eric Lichtblau and James Risen (“Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts”).

     They begin with overheated language: “Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda. The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out. The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.”

     The Times stacks the deck: “While some civil rights advocates, legal experts and members of Congress have said President Bush did not have authority to order eavesdropping by the security agency without warrants, the White House and the Justice Department continued on Tuesday to defend the legality and propriety of the program.”

     But is the White House really standing alone in support of the warrantless surveillance? For one, the Times has yet to cite the supportive op-ed by John Schmidt, associate attorney general under Bill Clinton, in the Chicago Tribune last week.

     The Times concludes: “But some Justice Department prosecutors, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified, said they were concerned that the agency's wiretaps without warrants could create problems for the department in terrorism prosecutions both past and future. ‘If I'm a defense attorney,’ one prosecutor said, "the first thing I'm going to say in court is, ‘This was an illegal wiretap.'”

For more Lichtblau and Risen, click here.