I am a Clinton supporter
Published by Lisa Kansas May 7th, 2008 in Remember November, Soapbox, A Clinton Post that implies no hatred of Obama
And I’m not even an old woman! And I have a college degree! And once in a while, I’m even HIP. (Really! at least once a year or something.)
What I am very tired of reading is the endless stream of calls for her to pull out of the primaries.
“BeCUZ!” shriek the shriekers of this tired refrain. “It’s SPLINTERING the PARTY!! We’re HANDING THE ELECTION TO THE REPUBLICANS! DIVIDING OUR UNITED FROOOOONT!”
Really. How disinterested of you to be asking both the candidates to consider leaving the primaries, regardless of whom you personally support! man, I so admire people who can put the good of the many over their own personal agend—oops. Nobody’s asking Obama to leave, are they? Just Hillary. Now WHY is that…
(shriekers are back!) “BeCUZ it’s CLEARLY the WILL OF THE (registered Democrat) PEOPLE THAT OBAMA BE OUR REPRESENTATIVE IN THE FALL!”
Wow! He must be really way, way ahead of her! (peeks at latest delegate count) um, at least 50% ahead of her? 25% ahead of her? 10% ahead of her..? (peeks again, does some quick and dirty math) …um. Hillary has between 48% and 49% of the delegates’ votes. Which means Obama must have between 51% and 52% of the votes, which means…he’s about 3% ahead of her.
(shriekers!) “BUT he has more of the POPULAR VOTE–”
So? She’s got more of the superdelegate vote. Are they somehow not people who’s will doesn’t count?
(shriekers!) “That system, that’s so WRONG, that’s so UNFAIR, they need to just vote with the PEOPLE–”
Funny, you weren’t crying and screaming about the deep and intrinsic wrongness of the superdelegate system before the primaries. I’m afraid…very afraid…that the facade of disinterested devotion to the good of the people is showing some strain, a few cracks…
Let’s get back to how the extended Democratic primary (I love that…like it’s some kind of baseball game that’s run into extra innings as opposed to still being right on its original schedule) is basically handing the presidency over to McCain. As I was just saying to someone last night–why would anybody think that? Does he have time now to focus on bashing the Dems in general rather than his Republican opponents in particular, whereas Obama and Hillary have to devote their primary (’scuse the pun) energies to bashing each other, forced by time and money constraints to leave the particulars of McCain alone? Yes. However…and I was saying this last night, I can’t be the only person! who’s realized what a great gift this intense race has given us (and it turns out I’m not, as you see below):
Historic election inspiring millions of new voters, survey finds
Voter excitement, always up before a presidential election, is pushing registration through the roof this year — with more than 3.5 million people rushing to join in the historic balloting, according to an Associated Press survey.Registration seems to be up strongly among black and women voters, according to the AP survey.
Figures are up for blacks, women and young people. Rural and city, South and North.
Overall, AP found that nearly one in 65 adult Americans signed up to vote in just the first three months of the year. And in the 21 states that were able to provide comparable data, new registrations have soared about 64 percent from the same three months in the 2004 campaign.
Voters are flocking to the most open election in half a century…
Some Democratic Party leaders bemoan the long battle, with two strong candidates continuing to undercut each other. But there are clear signs that the registration boom is favoring their party, at least for now.
“This could change the face of American politics for decades to come,” said Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, predicting permanent gains for her party. Republicans, concerned at least somewhat for 2008, say these surges come and go over the longer term.
While detailed data are available from only a handful of states, registration seems to be up particularly strongly for blacks and women.
It’s a close race, folks. May the best individual win. That’s how you decide great contests between great contenders who are nearly neck-and-neck in all walks of life, y’know…not by pressuring one of them to quit, but by letting them compete head-to-head at the highest level to the bitter end of the final round. Whoever’s still standing, bloody but undefeated, is the winner. Unquestioned, undisputed, with full honor and integrity, the candidate who is truly the best representative for our people in November.
…except for this absolute bullshit:
According to the exit polls, half of Clinton’s supporters in Indiana would not vote for Obama in a general election match up with John McCain. A third of Clinton voters said they would pick McCain over Obama, while 17 percent said they would not vote at all. Just 48 percent of Clinton supporters said they would back Obama in November.
Obama gets even less support from Clinton backers in North Carolina. There, only 45 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama over McCain. Thirty-eight percent said they would vote for McCain while 12 percent said they would not vote.
Obama voters appear to be more willing to support Clinton in November. In Indiana, 59 percent of Obama backers said they’d vote for Clinton, and 70 percent of Obama backers in North Carolina said they’d support the New York Democrat.
This is the only thing that makes me at all ashamed to be a Clinton supporter, though being an Obama supporter here wouldn’t be the best of improvements either…s’cuse me for going off a little here, but are you all CRAZY!? EITHER of them is so much better than McCain–I don’t CARE HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT EITHER OF THEM, they are each, on their weasliest, least admirable, most politician-y day 1,000,000 times better than McCain. The best of his platform is still not as good as the worst of either of theirs. Don’t do this. Don’t, don’t, don’t…and if you won’t listen to me, listen to your candidate of choice:
Hillary Clinton pleaded for partisan unity on Thursday, urging Democrats not to abandon their party to vote for John McCain if their preferred candidate fails to secure the nomination.
The Allentown Morning Call reports that Sunday Sen. Barack Obama told a “rowdy” crowd in central Pennsylvania, “You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain.”
I think that absent votes in Michigan and Florida, this is all just political theater. For me to take democracy seriously, I like to see some democracy. Oh, I know that parties could select their candidates by roulette and have it be legal - but tossing out 10% of the population in a supposedly democratic process is pretty terrible. I won’t even go into super-delegates. For me to see the process as having democratic legitimacy, there needs to be a little democracy in it.
That said, I have watched with some horror at the manipulation used to try to bully Clinton. It’s bad because she’s not . . . giving up? I mean, the problem with Clinton is that she wants to fight to the end? Isn’t that democracy? That it’s not over until all the votes are counted?
It leaves me continuously horrified.
Well as an Obama supporter we are obviously in contention. However, if Hillary were able to secure the nomination I would work for her, and I would hope fellow Hillary supporters in the great state of MN would work for Obama if he secures the nomination. What disheartens me is that I have had cinversations with Obama supporters who would rather vote for McCain than Hilary. These people span the democratic voters, white, black, men, women! It is a sad state of affairs we are in and we need to end it soon!
I’m not sure I agree.
On a domestic front, neither Clinton nor Obama has shown the slightest interest in rolling back any of the massive consolidations of Executive Branch power which have occurred over the last seven years. Neither of them talk about restoring our right to Habeus Corpus, for instance. Habeus Corpus, which is the foundation of a just legal system, and no longer truly exists in America. I can only presume that Clinton and Obama want to have their chance to enjoy all that extra power as well.
On an international front, Clinton won’t promise a date of withdrawal from Iraq, and Obama’s plan is so full of loopholes that we’ll never get out. Meanwhile, with regards to Iran, Clinton makes it clear that she’s happy to “totally obliterate them” (yes, I know the context in which she said it– it doesn’t help much) and Obama continues to insist that “all options are on the table”, including nuclear.
Even though John McCain’s insane and evil, at least there’s a certain kind of honesty there when he says things like “we’ll be in Iraq for a hundred years”. No, I’m not planning to vote for him. But just sayin’.
And if we conveniently find ourselves suddenly at war with Iran come October, it really doesn’t matter which Democrat you’ve previously been supporting, because then there’s no way that our blinkered population is going to vote any way except Republican.
If you asked, “Which candidate will be most damaging to our country?”, I’d have to agree with you– it’s McCain. But our country is broken, and none of the three are saying anything that makes me think they’re planning on fixing it. So forgive me if I’m a little bit underenthused about the presidential race right now.
I’m expecting that once the primaries have blown over, the voters who say they won’t elect the other candidate will come to change their minds. I’m guessing the reason the Clinton voters are more likely to be saying that than the Obama voters is simply that the Obama voters are mostly figuring they’ve already won, so the question is purely hypothetical; it’s far less abstract from the people who’ve been putting their mental energy behind the Clinton campaign. But I think they’ll come back, especially if both Obama and Clinton are graceful about the eventual resolution of the race, and work together from then until November.
I’m an Obama supporter, and I am sick and tired of the media coverage that makes us all look like brainwashed freaks who want to assassinate Hillary. Most of us believe in letting the process play out, we can’t help it if there’s a very vocal and fanatic minority.
And I don’t believe 99% of the people who say they’d vote for McCain if their candidate doesn’t get the nomination.
June and Thene: I think the media is having one hell of time trying to paint the image of Obama and Hillary supporters as slavering beasts at each other’s throats. It seems obvious to me that most of us AREN’T like that and will happily shove Bush v2.0 out of our way this November with *either* candidate. Exit polls like that scare me, though.
Quin: Hmm…you’re not really saying why you think Clinton and Obama aren’t any better than McCain, though. He’s “honest” about his warmongering–I don’t think that Clinton and Obama not saying we’ll be in Iraq in 100 years is “dishonest,” I think they genuinely don’t believe we will be, and I don’t see in either of them any desire whatsoever to prolong our stay there. Have you seen/heard something from either of them that I haven’t? I agree that it’s massively disappointing that we don’t have any truly dove-ish candidates.
And one of the inbuilt defects of our particular political system is that in order to gain the highest position of power in it, one must actively pursue it to the exclusion of nearly all else, which generally you don’t find in people other than those who, yeah, want power most.
Chris and Texas: Word.
Lisa KS, do you remember the midterm elections, where Democrats won the House, the Senate, and the majority of state legislatures and governorships? Yeah, me too. Now that they had the actual power to stop funding this monster, they instead proceeded to repeatedly re-up hundreds of billions of dollars of funds for more and more military operations in Iraq.
But the business interests at stake are too huge. The neo-cons’ “Project for a New American Century” will march on. If you think same rules won’t apply to the next president, I’ve got some swampland in Louisiana I’d like to sell you.
Of course they’re not saying that, or even thinking it. I didn’t say they were.
Now it’s true both of the democratic candidates give lip service to getting out of Iraq; that this is a marked rhetorical difference from McCain. When it comes to the details, though, both Obama and Clinton intend to declare the war “over”, yet leave American military troops in the country for an indeterminate amount of time (code for “never”). And don’t forget the ridiculously huge U.S. Embassy Complex they’re building right now. The world’s largest. Perhaps I should be putting “Embassy” in scare quotes, actually.
But don’t worry. Regardless of whether we’re “officially” at war in Iraq, it’ll be just as forgotten as Afghanistan as soon as we declare war with Iran.
Well if you’re silly enough to want to save billions or trillions of war dollars and spend them on actual citizens of the U.S., you’re clearly not a “serious” candidate.