The results 13th Congressional District of suburban Philadelphia will determine the outcome of the general election this November. If the district swings towards Obama, it will be a mandate away from the establishment, and John McCain will face a hopeless task this Fall. The district is a microcosm of America.
Within its bounds lie key attributes of modern America. Moving west from the banks on the Delaware River in Philadelphia to the rolling hills of rural Montgomery County, the district runs from deep blue Dem territory to bright GOP turf. The district transforms from scenes of post-industrial decline in the City with miles shuddered factories, old row-homed neighborhoods, into shiny new office parks, the most prosperous suburbs in Pennsylvania, in the west, green fields. Voters are split nearly dead even between Republicans (49) and Democrats (51), however the trend has been favoring the Democratic Party. Demographically as well, the picture is balanced; approximately 75% white, 10 % black and 10% Hispanic. More than a vignette of Pennsylvania, it is a picture of America. The race between Hillary and Barack in this district is a test of the mood of the nation. If the 13th goes strongly for Barack, it will be a mandate for change. John McCain will have no chance at all.
Keep your eyes on the results for this district. As it goes, so will America. I know the place pretty well. It’s home and where I ran for Congress.
Hillary Clinton has called upon President Bush to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing. This controversial step, she states, would teach China a lesson about human rights, especially in view of the recent Chinese crackdown in Tibet and Chinese support of a genocidal regime, in exchange for natural resources, in the Sudan.
I hope this approach of boycotting and effectively sticking our head in the sand does indicate the approach Senator Clinton would take as President.America’s problem with China is not their treatment of their own people, but how we are allowing them to treat America.While human rights should and must always be a prime concern in US foreign policy, our problems with China are much more immediate and dangerous. China has been allowed, even encouraged, to achieve their calculated and spectacularly success program of hollowing out and consuming America’s industrial backbone. We all know that “Made in China” tags far outnumber those of “Made in the USA.”We have allowed China to make us so deeply dependent on their loans that Chinese that they could single-handedly sink our country into an economic depression if they demanded to be repaid.
Our problem is that we have allowed China to make Americans addicts, as once the Chinese were opium, of their cheap, subsidized goods bought on their easy credit. But there is no free lunch in this world, and with each passing day we sink further into dependancy on China for our goods and money.Indeed, our problems with China are not the well-known brutality of that totalitarian regime. Our problem is that the Chinese are building a mighty empire on the weakening back of America.Our politicians, all the while, are complaining about human rights. If we do not compete with China and WIN in global economics, we will not be in a position to fight for human rights abroad at all. We will, instead, be fighting to secure human rights from China right here at home.So, Senator Clinton, we can’t hide behind human rights, we need to win economically. Economic wars are not won by boycotts; they are won by establishing a level playing field for American companies, by forcing China to stop making their goods artificially cheap though playing games with their currency, and by investing in education and infrastructure.
