OK, so that’s a deliberately provocative headline. Having never actually met Hillary I can’t say whether I like her as a person or not. I have friends who have spent time with her and who think highly of her, speaking of her “warmth” and her ability to connect. But that’s really a personality trait she shares with her husband and a good political skill to have and she’s nothing if not a good politician.

What I don’t like Hillary for are her aspirations, or alleged aspirations, for even higher office than the one she holds now. I don’t like her for President. I don’t even like her as a Presidential candidate in primary season. And I don’t like her for reasons quite different than Chris Bowers over at MyDD seems to think that I, as a progressive blogger, don’t like her.

Here’s Chris’s take on what I’m supposedly thinking: [emphasis mine]

As obvious as I thought my last point was, it is probably even more obvious by now that Hillary Clinton is, um, not exactly the most popular Democrat within the blogosphere and the netroots. I can offer loads of anecdotal information to support this, but perhaps the most striking evidence is that despite her large lead in national telephone surveys, she polls around fifth or sixth in our presidential preference polls. The real question we face is to figure out why she is not very popular among this large segment of the progressive activist class.

People will offer lots of reasons for this. In the past, I have done so myself. However, when one understands who actually makes up the blogosphere, a rarely, if ever, discussed reason comes to the fore. Within the progressive activist class, there is also a very real class stratification. While the blogosphere and the netroots may not be “the people” within America or the Democratic party as a whole, within the world of progressive activists, they are definitely “the people,” “the masses,” “the rank and file,” and any other populist term you want to throw out there. I believe the main mark against Hillary Clinton within the blogs and the netroots is the degree to which she is perceived as the uber-representative of the upper, aristocratic classes of the progressive activist world.

Now Chris is a pretty smart guy overall but on this one he couldn’t be more wrong. And from my experience he’s not only wrong when it comes to me (and full disclosure here requires that I let you know that the chances Chris Bowers knows who I am or reads this blog are so small that they approach zero), he’s wrong when it comes to many of the progressive bloggers I read and many of the other progressives and others with whom I converse in various venues, both online and off.

Many of us became re-energized after the debacle that was the 2000 election and not just because bush stole it. A large part of my personal anger has been directed towards the Democratic Party for their limp and pathetic response to the assault on our democracy that began in Florida in 2000. That anger was further stoked by their inability to raise any kind of serious challenge to the bush administration’s rush to invade Iraq and to making the phony “war on terror” an excuse for everything from gutting Medicare to yet more tax cuts for his rich friends. Not only did Gore roll over and play dead (and dumb) in 2000 but he then went mute, as did all major Democrats, for almost the entirety of bush’s first term in office. Kerry stepped into his cement shoes with far too much eagerness to follow the same path and major Dems, and here is where Hillary comes into this, did the same thing.

I have never believed that either Hillary or her husband represented the progressive activist world, either as a representative of what Bowers calls “the upper, aristocratic classes” or any other classes for that matter. Bill Clinton was entirely an agent of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that did its damnedest to emulate the Republicans in both policy and behavior. During the Clinton administration this was thought by many to be his greatest strength, his ability to co-opt Republican positions on issues and make them his own. This may have given him the appearance of great political skill but it arguably cost the Democrats the Congress in the 90s and any possibility of any identity of their own in the 21st Century.

Why? Because Clinton and the old-line power brokers in the Democratic Party got too drunk with his easy political victories and allowed that intoxication to keep them from responding appropriately to the right wing assault on Clinton, which I think they viewed as a nuisance at first and then with their own faux outrage (more emulating of Republicans, a very bad habit to develop), both behaviors which fogged their already addled brains even more.

Hillary is the Queen of that realm now, which I view as akin to being considered the queen of Puerto Rico for all the good it does the Democratic Party, and that is the reason I don’t like Hillary for any office higher than the one she now holds. She has been a staunch supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and has done more to enable the bush administration in its multiple crimes than any other Democrat save Joe Lieberman, and he isn’t fit to be elected as the proverbial dogcatcher.

So sorry Chris, I dislike Hillary and any further political aspirations she may have intensely, but it hasn’t got anything to do some bizarre vision of her as the Red Queen of upper class progressives. Besides “aristocratic class” is not a term I consider synonymous with progressive so to suggest I might oppose her on that basis is ludicrous.

I dislike her for the reality of her political life, her policies and practices and the threat she poses to the chance of ever having a Democratic Party that is actually progressive.