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she had not demonstrated her eagerness to knife people in the back at the first opportunity.
I don't have a real bone to pick with her policies -- at least, a bone that I can't also pick with Obama's. Other than her stance on war, her positions are not that different from his, and I don't give a shit about the war.
Yes, you read that correctly; I don't care about Iraq or Iran or any other country in the Middle East. I'd prefer to get out of there because it's draining money from us, but otherwise, they can shoot each other into nonexistence and I won't blink an eye. I'm not a "global human rights" voter; I'm far more of an isolationist.
There is a group of bloggers who think that the Senate vote of Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq in 2002 should be a litmus test for any president, vice president, or Cabinet secretary, but I am not in that group. I think the AUMF votes were perfectly justifiable in 2002, for political reasons, and had I been a Senator, I would have voted for it myself, because I would have been representing a southern state and my seat would have been more important to me than a quixotic protest vote against a president who does not even recognize the law. Bush defied the AUMF, you know. He was supposed to wait for the UN inspectors to finish.
So someone's war vote and/or hawkishness was always a non-issue to me. I vote on the economy and the Constitution, period. War is only important for how it intersects with these issues. Hillary's views on these areas were, and are, every bit as tolerable to me as Obama's.
I'm a womanist. I think that it is offensive and insulting to classify the anger of the oppressed group as somehow equal to the bigotry of the oppressor group. One is based on a belief in the fundamental inferiority of a group of people; the other is based on actual actions taken by people. I would like to see a strong woman become President and have it be one in the eye for all the sexist men out there.
I find the Obama campaign's optimism and emphasis on "hope and change" to be funny, and I think it's nothing but a slogan. I'm a cynic and glass-half-empty type. Actually, more like glass-3/4-empty. I don't believe in "hope and change." I believe in chessboard politics -- outmaneuvering the other side.
I like dirty campaigns. I was a campaign operative at age 15, and in recent years I've been a staffer for a major campaign. The thing at 15 was a very personal campaign at a local level, and I enjoyed it. It was an adrenaline thing. Or maybe I'm just a sadist. I don't think personal history is ever off the table, and I have a fantasy, so to speak, of being involved in a race and having the opportunity to slime the opponent into oblivion. Clinton supporters, she has tried to do that. I wouldn't even mind that if I thought that she was a person who, however nasty she could be to opponents, could be trusted by her allies.
Other than my age (I'm under 30), I have the perfect profile to be a Clinton supporter; yet I've been opposed to her from the start. And that is how she lost me, backstabbing past allies of herself and her husband, for no good reason, when they needed support.
Hillary Clinton, in 2006, had the opportunity to stand in support of her colleague, John Kerry, when the right-wing slime machine was seizing on his misstatement as being somehow more important than their abysmal, criminal record. She, as perhaps the single safest incumbent that year, could have stood with her party chairman, Howard Dean. Or with the challenging Democratic candidates, Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown. Or others. She could have said, in effect, "This right-wing-generated media storm is a load of crap. The Senator from Massachusetts left a word out of a joke. He did not insult anyone except George W. Bush. You know it and I know it. You are doing this for one purpose, to distract attention from your alliance with K Street, your covering up for a child predator, and your atrocious records of not doing anything to help this country." But no, she saw an opportunity to bury him, and said "his remarks were inappropriate," giving credence to the right-wing lie about what he had said. Siding with their interpretation of his words rather than his own assertion. Inappropriate indeed.
I am being completely honest when I say that this is the reason why I did not support her. That's it. Character. If your longtime allies can't trust you not to stab them in the back at an opportune time, who can trust you?
Dante thought that treachery was the worst evil that man could commit.
I can tolerate a great deal on the campaign trail. I like a good, old-fashioned personal history mudfest. I can even justify switching sides, or being pragmatic, if necessity demands it. But I draw the line at the needless backstabbing of allies and friends, just because they may, possibly, one day pose a threat to your ambition.
I can only wonder how many other people Clinton lost because of this. I've deliberately chosen expressions to cast myself in a bad light, but this was for a reason. If she lost a person like me, then there can be little doubt that she lost others with far more idealism.
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