| A bit late, but still happy about Tuesday. =) |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|09:25 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | abortion, afghanistan, barack obama, caucuses, contraception, election 2008, environment, global warming, green energy, health care, hillary clinton, iraq, media bias, plan b, politics, presidential election, presidential politics, sexism, solar power, superdelegates, supreme court | ] |
"For everyone ... who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you."
You want non-issue oriented, inspirational quotes? That has to be one of the best quotes of the entire campaign, and honestly, when she's on, as she was there, I find her to be every bit as inspirational as him, as when she went on to say,
"You know what they say, as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.
Well, this nation’s coming back, and so is this campaign."
Heaven knows I *hope* this nation is coming back, because if we continue in our death spiral most of the country is going to make "Death Race 2000" look like a prophecy that was just a decade or two ahead of time, and I think a Hillary Clinton presidency is our best chance to avoid this fate, so rather than simply cheerleading, here's a list of reasons why I'm not just picking her as a lesser of evils but enthusiastically supporting her (and I'm talking about in the primary here, as I'd be really surprised if anyone reading this would vote for McCain under any remotely likely set of circumstances):
(1) Plan B contraception. Without Hillary (and Patty Murray), this *still* wouldn't be available over the counter. I've seen numerous people try to counter "Hillary is a fighter" with "What has she successfully fought for?" This is exhibit A on the list.
(1A) Women's reproductive freedom in general. She didn't just support the Alito filibuster and oppose the Roberts nomination, she spoke about these things, albeit in a losing cause. For a whole list of things, (and a few other things like family medical leave and such) go here: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/02/07/why-hillary-clinton-is-the-best-choice-for-women
I would add to this that I think women's reproductive freedom is an essential civil right to *everyone*'s freedom and even if all else were equal, her work in this area would make her a clear cut choice over Obama, who wasn't for the Alito filibuster and wasn't fighting for any of these things and didn't just go along with a plan to vote "present" on abortion issues in Illinois but is actually the one who came up with the plan.
(2) Her health care plan is better. It covers everyone, it's based on a sliding wage scale so people lower down on the ladder are paying little to nothing and people who aren't making anything don't have to shell out money they don't have, contrary to the "negative, fear-mongering" ads that the Obama campaign has been running.* Also, it does a better job of keeping costs down and the insurance companies in line (see Paul Krugman for detailed analysis)
(3) Her bill to get the mercenaries out of Iraq. Yes, her bill. That she introduced. To shockingly little coverage. Her bill to get mercenaries out of Iraq, which Obama initially opposed, tho he was waffling a bit last time I noticed.
Yes, the timing is beyond curious, it's *obvious*. She is doing this now not just because it's a good idea but because it's good politics. But it *is* a great bill, doing a good thing, which someone should have introduced long ago. She, now, is the one who's finally *doing* it. Better late than never and all that. And Obama's opposition . . . all the people who think he's the better guy to get us out of Iraq, is above politics on these issues, and is the peace love and understanding candidate, who also is about making positive change happen even when it means working with the opposition and is supposedly above and out to end politics as usual, anyone want to try to explain how his position here fits in with that?
(4) Global warming solutions. Hillary's clean energy plan emphasizes solar, Barack's "clean" energy plan emphasizes nuclear (tho to be fair, during one of the debates he stated that wanted to see the waste problem solved; I don't think it can be which is one tho hardly the only reason I'm not favoring this). She had a really good announcement back in, January, I think, about this plan and all the "green jobs" she hoped it would add. I saw it covered maybe one or two places online, heard not a whisper elsewhere, and then never heard from it again, in yet another exammple of our national press corps doing a bang-up job of focusing on the important things.****
(5) Demonstrated competence at actually showing up for and doing her job. While she and Obama have both been campaigning for president, they are each in charge of running a committee. She has called several meetings of hers, as well as attending meetings of others she belongs to. Obama has yet to call a single meeting of his committee, with the explanation that he's been too busy running for president. Seriously? If you can't do the job, don't take the job. Especially if the committee involves Afghanistan and you're campaigning in part on what you think should be done in Afghanistan and why you think you are the best person to do it. She's running a subcommittee on environmental issues (which again is getting no coverage because, again, our national press corp is either incompetent or very competent at something that has nothing whatsoever to do with actual news; I'm inclined to think it's both) and making time to do her job in the midst of the campaign.
(6) She's still standing. Like her, love her, dislike her, hate her, find her personality indifferent, whatever, how can anyone not admire her toughness and resilience?
When the campaign first started, supposedly she was offered the presidency of the Senate to get her to step aside because the democratic leadership, from the senate to the DLC that Obama used to belong to but which she keeps getting accused of being the child of, thought her negatives were too high and she couldn't win. She was supposedly made the same offer last weekend if she would get out before this past Tuesday. Starting back in October, she had all the other candidates piling on and tag-teaming against her (occasionally excluding Richardson). The media has been out to destroy her since, oh, 1991? She's been accused of being a murderer, of having affairs, of being racist, and alone of all politicians, of pretty much everything except child molestation and rape, at this point, while the media has done its best to ignore and play down her accomplishments. I'm 42, and have been paying fairly close attention to politics since the early 80's, and never has anyone running for office had to run such a primary gauntlet. Well, I take that back. Howard Dean got attacked equally bad. And promptly got turned on by a brainwashed electorate and was gone in weeks despite basically saving the party from imploding permanently beyond repair, as he forced Kerry to move left and quit being Bush-lite in order to get rid of him, thus preventing a genuine blow-out win for Bush (this said by someone who thinks Dean has done a horrible, horrible, horrible job running the democratic party). Al Gore got unfairly put through the ringer, to a truly horrible extent, but not like this. Especially for a primary, the sheer hatred and the anything goes, lies-are-the-truth level of campaigning against her . . . okay, the Karl Rove led, "your wife is a drug addict and your adopted child is actually from your mistress who by the way is not white so all good racist Republicans must not vote for you!" stuff against John Mcain in South Carolina 2000 is hard to top, and the stuff against Clinton has been no worse than that, either, except in the sense that she's accused of bringing the race issue into the campaign and fanning the flames of it when it is actually the Obama camp that deliberately brought it in (see: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304 among other places), except that, again, when all (completely bogus, untruthful, bullshit lying) hell hit McCain, the voters turned and he was out of there. Hillary? After months of this, still standing.
The Democratic base has been clamoring for a fighter, not someone who will semi-easily semi-cave like Gore did in 2000 and concede when there were still battles to be fought, not someone who won't even try to fight the obvious battle against the obvious fraud in Ohio like Kerry in 2004. I don't think Hillary would have caved either time. Hell, as the Obama camp likes to say, she lost 11 straight elections (not 11 primaries; clearly, Obama does well in caucuses even in states where he loses the primary, like Texas, and what the hell is the point of that anyway and don't even get me started on caucuses, or superdelegates; neither should exist, but in this case should she win the popular vote by a fair margin but he have more delegates due to caucus superiority, I'd think the superdelegates performed a useful function by validating the will of the majority and the importance of the more-democratic primaries over the less democratic caucuses, and then we can get rid of both the things which shouldn't exist). Then came back and won three (including all the primaries up for grabs), two by huge margins, including one that is one of the single most important swing states. That? Is toughness.
(7) The incompetent and/or evil mainstream media hates her. Or, as one of said media who is covering this campaign said about her before it started, "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. I hate everything she stands for." They like Obama. Or, as same member of mainstream media said, "If you aren't moved by his speeches, you're not an American." And "Listening to him speak sends a thrill up my leg." (not that I don't think they'll turn on Obama and come out for McCain if that turns out to be the match-up) Anyway, the MSM hates her. A whole bunch of sexist scumbuckets hate her, too, on both the right and left, for reasons that essentially amount to her being an uppity woman. Spit in their eye.
(8) Contrary to conventional wisdom, I think she's more electable, even aside from the "harder to bury" argument. I think either she or Obama will beat McCain in the fall, but in the meantime, she won Florida and Ohio by wide margins(and the people of Florida, which could be decisive again, are mightily pissed off at the Democratic leadership, but not so pissed off at her, and for those "rules are rules" people, the Florida democrats had nothing to do with the date of their election, the Florida republicans passed a bill in the state legislature requiring both their primaries be held then, ticking off Florida is like French-kissing the Republicans, and giving the Republican Florida state legislatures a couple of extra tongue swirls while you're at it), New Mexico & Nevada even w/the caucus handicap, has more good will in and will probably in event of a do-over win Michigan easily again, etc. His only swing-y wins thus far are in caucuses, and in Missourri by one point, iirc. There are no caucuses in the general election.
My other reasons for voting for her are more "reasons not to vote for Obama", so I'll skip them, and reasons not to vote for her have been covered aplenty by others, so I'll skip those too.
*********************
*Sorry for that bit of derisiveness, but all the freak-out over the 3 AM phone call ad that just asks a question and lets people figure it out for themselves**, coming from people supporting a candidate*** who has been negative since he started questioning her integrity last October and who ran the deliberate distortion trying to scare people that her plan would force people to buy expensive insurance they can't afford, has me kinda ticked off for at least the next month or two.
** That said, yeah, the ad was minor-league fear mongering and the sort of thing I'd rather not see in politics. But not only was it much milder than a whole host of shit Obama's campaign has done, and barely fear-mongering at all by the standards of the last, oh, my entire lifetime, but does anyone in their right mind not think McCain was going to run that exact ad or something similar but stronger, over and over again, regardless of which Democrat he's against? If anything, Obama supporters who think he's going to be the nominee should be pleased it happened now, to lessen the impact when it comes later.
*** Obama himself didn't freak out. He gave a really fantastic answer to the ad. Give the man credit. It's a simple political fastball and if I didn't think he could hit it, I would have voiced the same objections to him that I voiced about Kucinich earlier in the campaign. I'm not quite sure why his fans worried (still worry?) so much about it.
**** I've been down on Pandagon's election coverage (and still am! very!) but this quote from Amanda Marcotte is applicable and so totally spot on, it sums up so *many* things about our media and how we elected Bush the first time (I still have no comprehension about 2004) so well: Your average voter has neither the time nor the energy to obsessively comb through political coverage and get to the real story behind the bullshit. It’s not people’s fault that they watch 2 hours of news a week and consider that a dutiful amount of time being a good citizen. In reality, it should be enough. They should be able to get 2 hours of entertaining but informative coverage, so that they can make a truly informed decision. It’s so obvious that this should be enough, that it’s hard for most people to question whether or not that’s actually happening, and instead they assume they’re getting the truth. Complete article here: http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/03/05/the-baby-back-ribs-that-took-our-democracy/ |
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