Before noon today, I am going to pull on my boots and mittens, wade through five inches of sloppy snow, scrape the half-inch of now-frozen sleet off my windshield, thaw out my vehicle and head for the polls.
And after brandishing my Republican-dictated identification, I will wield my black pen and firmly fill in the blank space next to UNCOMMITTED at the bottom of the ballot, underneath the names of Democratic candidates who remain on the form.
You want a mitten for Mitt? Buy your own. Mine are going to be busy. Love you, Orange Overlord and myriad minions...but seriously, butt the hell out of my state's primary and get your own to screw up just as certain so-called leaders in Michigan's Democratic Party did to ours. Here's why I refuse to cross the aisle and vote for that hair gel abuser with an appropriate four-letter nickname -- oh, and here's why I refuse to vote for the candidate allegedly leading in our state's polls.
/1/ -- I do not and have not supported HRC
Her inability to firmly commit to removing ALL troops from Iraq is a deal breaker. When a majority of the public say they want out of Iraq, this means she's not listening to citizens.
/2/ -- I want to send a message
To the members of old school machine politics in Michigan: Your gaming the primary in order to skew the vote towards a preferred outcome has:
-- given the Republicans the opportunity to compete here without the annoying interference of Dem candidates' ads, at a cost to them of only half their delegates;
-- displayed how lacking in party discipline most of our current Dem leaders are, along with an inability to think strategically;
-- shown that the Clintons and their machine here no longer "own" the DNC, and are taking out their pique with a democratically (little d) selected primary season by jacking the primary into irrelevancy;
-- exposed a rift in the Democratic Party, between real progressives who now comprise a majority in the DNC, and the Clinton/DLC faction.
My message to the machine is that we're PISSED and we're not going to put up with this; we already looking to replace you with grassroots candidates. By voting 'Uncommitted', I am choosing something other than the machine. (And no, I'm not endorsing Obama, but this video says it all for me.)
/3/ -- NO. The Mitten does NOT go for Mitt.
I will not cross the aisle, as tempting as it is to mess with the idiots who brought us 7 years of hell under Bush and a bankrupt state thanks to John Engler. Any vote for a Republican candidate improves HRC's results, and there are a number of Republicans who are going to cross and vote for HRC anyhow, because their field is represented by the likes of Mitt and Huck.
There, that's most of my thoughts on the subject. I am hoping that HRC does not win the nomination, and that a progressive ticket takes the White House in November -- and that it doesn't hire machine politicos to fill positions in its administration. I hope that we will be able to undo the damage of the last 7+ years (and congressional damage going back more than a decade), but I don't think it will happen without solid commitment to progressive values and real change.
Voting for Mitt and his hair products, or HRC and her position on the war, is not a vote for progressive values. It's 'Uncommitted' for me today, because that represents a real commitment.
And lastly, after shoveling the entire driveway by hand just to get out the door to vote, I think I've bloody well earned the right to vote anyway I feel like it without somebody in a nice warm state telling me how I should vote in my own chilly primary.