I’ve never particularly liked Hillary. I don’t like that she runs on Bill’s name with the good, and separates herself from the bad (and as a fan of welfare and unions, I don’t put Bill on as high a pedestal as most Americans do). I don’t like that the Clintons have always worked separately from the Democratic Party. I don’t like the scandals. I don’t like the closed door policy meetings.
I’ve been rooting for the Obama campaign before the Obama campaign came to be. I believe he has one of the best policy and judgment minds that we’ll ever see. I’m not going to dive into a pool of cliché policy points, but if you want a more substantive reason: I think his health care plan is the only one on the table that can get 60 votes in the Senate. He’s also the most inspirational leader of my generation, and while that doesn’t take the cake in and of itself, it sure as hell ices it. The bottom line is that he’s easy to root for, and his good decision-making (speaking out against the Iraq War Authorization and Lieberman-Kyl) has earned my trust.
Until now, I could’ve lived with either. I agree with about 80% of Hillary’s voting record in the Senate, and at the end of the day I vote on issues rather than style. But Hillary has done something that no other politician has been able to do in my lifetime: she’s made me feel repulsed with myself for being a Democrat.
The way that she had Bill play the race card in South Carolina was desperate, despicable and stupid. Desperate, because she was down in the polls and felt the need to resort to that; despicable, because we should be voting on the merits of the issues rather than artificially-created racial tensions (as if there aren’t enough real ones already); stupid, because if she gets out of the primaries, she’ll need the black vote in November. Furthermore, her intentional misquoting of Barack’s remarks about President Reagan demonstrates an absolute lack of intellectual honesty. The only difference between what she did to Barack and what the Swiftboaters did to John Kerry is that she and Barack are members of the same party. That’s the sort of tactic that tears a party apart. Power, to her, has become as much of an ends as it has a means, and that is the greatest sacrifice that a politician can make.
When the Democratic race began there was one thing pushing me toward Barack: the Senator himself. Now there’s a second: the Senator herself.
tags: barack obama, hillary clinton