Dyed in the Wool

[Growler]

I found the following piece very interesting.
Note: I didn't write it. :)

http://littlehoppingbird.blogspot.com/2008/04/dyed-in-wool.html

I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat since I was just a tyke. I remember jumping on my friend Tracy’s bed and shouting “Humphrey! Humphrey!” with her repeatedly on a hot August night during the 1968 Democratic convention when Hubert Humphrey became the nominee after front-runner Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June. Our parents were crowded around a 12-inch black-and-white TV in the living room with a bunch of other adults watching the convention. I was only five, but my friends and I were already aware that Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated that year, that there were riots breaking out in major cities, and that the world felt like a dangerous place where people, presidents, cities and whole countries were on the edge of death or madness much of the time.

<snip>

We shoot ourselves in the foot when we engage in public intraparty backbiting. And then we end up with people who say, “I’ve been a Democrat all my life, but I’m so angry at that if that nasty is nominated, I’m not going to vote at all. Or I’ll just go and vote for McCain!” I’ve heard Hillary supporters say if people aren’t smart enough to line up behind their woman, they’ll be too disgusted by the nearsighted sexists all around them to vote for Barack. Yeah, letting the party that represents everything they say they’re fighting against win—that’ll show ’em! And I’ve heard even more people say that they think Hillary is so much in the thrall of behind-the-scenes power brokers and special interests and has moved so far to the middle and done so much damage to her party’s image, she’s essentially a Republican now, so voting for a straightforward Republican would be better than voting for a stealth Republican like her.

<snip>

But she and Obama agree on most of the important things. Their health care plans are very similar, they agree in their opposition to continuing the war in Iraq, to stopping the mess in Guantanamo, to ending the violations of habeus corpus and stopping the disregard of the Geneva Conventions. Many of their economic plans are similar, too. Their ways of expressing themselves differ vastly, of course, enough so that I think it would make a great difference in their ability to get the country to go along with them and to get the rest of the world behind us. So yes, it matters to me a lot that Obama be our nominee and win. But with all her faults, Hillary would be a much better choice for our country than McCain, the hypocrite, who’s all big talk about not being in lobbyists’ pockets while being in their debt, who voted to continue waterboarding (so much for all his fancy words about it being torture a few months back), and is famous for his nasty temper and bullying manner.

<snip>

Please, fellow and sister Democrats, don’t even THINK of staying home when a Republican has a chance to put another civil rights-hating conservative on the bench.

http://littlehoppingbird.blogspot.com/2008/04/dyed-in-wool.html