I swore I would not write a candidate diary. I'm so sick of them. But it seems necessary to document that my pro-Obama stance is one that I arrived to slowly. I have become too cynical over the Bush years to be easily moved by any candidate's speeches. I resent the implication by some that supporting Obama is a naive stance or arrived upon through feeling at the exclusion of rationality.
I also resist the accusations that by being against Hillary I am somehow anti-feminist or playing into patriarchal frames. I did not start out anti-Hillary. Like my support for Obama, it was an evolution, not a revolution.
I remember during the 2004 Presidential campaign (Kerry or Edwards), there was some speculation that Hillary Clinton might be the vice presidential candidate. I remember how excited the idea made me.
I've always loved and defended Bill Clinton. I admired Hillary for her grace under pressure. I believed her when she talked about the VRWC, because there was one. I still can't understand the level of vehemence and hatred against the Clintons by the right.
I came into this Presidential campaign supporting Edwards for his economic challenge to the status quo. I had wanted him for 2004, now I wanted him for 2008. Sure, I wished he'd had more time in the Senate. But I admired that he admitted his mistake in voting for the Iraq Authorization. I kept waiting for Hillary to do the same. I'm still waiting. Instead I heard excuses.
I was disappointed that Hillary felt it necessary to vote for the flag-burning ban - pandering to the right wing, I thought. I hated that she felt video game violence had to be censored. Give me a break, is that the most important problem we face? Then she voted for Kyl-Lieberman. I hated that she felt she had to prove her security credentials in order to be taken seriously as a Presidential candidate. She even schmoozed up to Newt Gingrich, of all people. But then, Obama seemed too fond of Lieberman for my tastes.
I also felt that Obama did not have much experience in the Senate. Neither he nor Hillary seemed to take the bold leadership roles in the Senate that Feingold and Dodd chose. Both seem to be taking the path of least resistance. Both seem too ready to capitulate and compromise with Republicans.
But when Edwards dropped out of the race, Obama was my next choice, primarily because Hillary had made too many faux-right-wing choices in the Senate. She had aligned herself with people like McAuliffe, Penn, Wolfson and Ickes. She was too DLC, too anti-Dean strategy for the party.
But I still defended Hillary against the Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews insults. I didn't think she was cold or bitchy or any of those horrible characterizations. Believe it or not, I liked when she cried in New Hampshire, because too me it seemed genuine and human, not fake. I thought, maybe, if she followed her own voice, she would realize that she didn't have to win the nomination by following the Mark Penn slime style. I still felt that I could happily vote for her if she won the nomination instead of Obama.
Then the rhetoric on both sides continued to heat up. I didn't like to hear Bill Clinton snapping at reporters, but I thought the media was exaggerating the "harm" he was doing to the Clinton campaign. I hated that both Clinton and Obama campaigns were taking quotes and positions out of context. Obama's Reagan comment, I wasn't crazy about. Hillary's comment about Lyndon Johnson's role in civil rights, I thought was fair.
What tipped the scale? What made me so pro-Obama, anti-Hillary as I am today?
I started listening to Obama's speeches, not just the sound bites, but whole speeches, and I visited his web site. I liked his policies. I liked that he wouldn't simply make health insurance mandatory and thus, punitive. I liked that he was editor of the Harvard law review, and a Constitutional law professor. (A candidate that knows the Constitution -- definite plus!) I liked the experience he had working in communities in Illinois. And yes, I started to get inspired.
But what really started to sour me on Hillary: the snotty anger she showed over the NAFTA circulars on that Youtube clip. I saw a different side to her. Then the mocking of the celestial choirs. I hated that. I hated that she thought Obama's supporters were gullible enough to believe in speeches without doing the research, as I was researching Obama at the time. I hated that she mocked the frail optimism I felt listening & learning about Obama. The plagarism charge was just stupid. I didn't like the "pimp" comment on MSNBC, but I thought suspending Shuster was excessive, when Matthews was most of the problem. In general she seemed two-faced and all over the place, while Obama just seem calm and cool.
The slime seemed to be coming out faster on the Clinton side. I began defending Obama more strenuously.
Then she started claiming Michigan as a victory, even though I, along with 40% of the "not counted" electorate had come out to vote against her (in my case, I was voting for Edwards by voting "uncommitted"). She started talking up Michigan voters when she had been silent about them before our bastard primary took place. She began making excuses, discounting Obama states and denigrating Obama voters and diminishing Obama victories. She never conceded. She kept changing the goalposts of victory. She began complaining against being asked the first question at debates (huh?). The whole "reject" vs. "renounce" stuff - ludicrous. She was losing credibility by the hour. She was flailing. She was desperate.
Then came the 3 a.m. shit. (What experience?) Then came the pro-McCain comments, and my realization that she was far too cozy with McCain anyway. I began to loathe the sight of her. I began to believe what the right wing had said about her ambition and her ruthlessness. I don't want to feel this way about her. I still think she would be a better president than McCain. I would like to see her as Senate Majority Leader, perhaps, or even vice-president (she seems kind of Cheney-esque to me now).
But I'm angry at Hillary Clinton. I do believe she is hurting the party at this point, especially by tearing down Obama and playing into GOP hands regarding McCain supposed security credentials. The longer she stays on the stage, at this point, the harder it will be to vote for her.
So I am not against Hillary because she is a woman, nor would I be "for" her because she is a woman. I hate that my womanhood or feminism are called into question if I believe she is being selfish and destructive. I hate that the people who defend her seem not to care that her policies and her behavior are part of the past. I hate that this party and this site are becoming polarized -- just as people said Hillary would polarize people.
Obama is the future. I firmly believe that Obama will win handily against McCain by bringing in young people and Independents and even Republicans, while she will mobilize the right to vote against her and cause moderates to mistakenly think McCain is not a dangerous warmonger. Will I still vote for her if I have to? Yes. I like my reproductive freedom, thank you, and McCain is scary. But she's making it harder for me by the day.