"To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee"
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville (1851)
(and of course, borrowed for "Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn" (1982))
So I figure it doesn’t matter if you would rather cite Melville or Star Trek--either way I’ve caught your attention and summed up Hillary Clinton’s campaign at the same time!
As I watch Hillary Clinton implicitly endorse John McCain over Barack Obama, I can’t help but think of the warfare of Khan--Genghis or Noonien Singh I leave to you--and the obsession of Captain Ahab. Am I the only one who sees in her single minded need for the Presidency, and the lengths she will go to fill that aching void, the same scorched earth "if I can’t have it I’ll destroy it" approach to the battle, and that same "damn the Pequod and it’s crew" approach to the hunt?
The truth of the matter is that anyone running for President has a huge ego. People have asked who would want the job. Who would want the job indeed! I often wish we could draft someone because I think I would rather have someone who doesn't want the job. After all, what kind of person looks in the mirror and thinks "Only I can run this Country?" Makes you wonder what’s really going on inside. But that's who we get because those are the only ones who will run.
So how do I justify my unqualified support for Barack Obama? Well, I ask myself "Who can transform the way this Country is run?" and the only answer is Barack Obama. And I ask myself "Who can inspire enough new voters in November to help us win the House and Senate seats we need to give our new President the ability to get things done?" and again the only answer is Barack Obama.
Many of her supporters point out that Hillary Clinton is a bulldog and a fighter, as if this were a good thing. What I take from that is that Hillary is exactly the same as what we've had in Washington my entire life, and I don't want any more of that. I don’t want anymore Presidents who think the only way to approach the job is with nastiness and animosity. I want someone who understands that yes, you have to draw a line, but working with Republicans is not in itself inherently evil.
Barack Obama will stand up for what I believe in without turning everything into a schoolyard fist fight. It’s been my experience that the only thing the Clintons know how to do is fight, and that's what she would bring to the White House. She has no ability to build coalitions to get things done because all she knows how to do is divide and polarize, and her campaign is exhibit A.
Yesterday I went to several county conventions around Colorado. Everywhere I went, the Obama campaign brought everyone to their feet in unity, and the Clinton campaign brought anger and division. And it's been that way all over America. I have been treated with scorn and contempt by Clinton supporters everywhere I have gone, all over Colorado, simply for speaking on behalf of Barack Obama.
As I said to some Hillary supporters a month ago, after they smugly heckled while I was speaking---If Hillary wins, how do you get me back on the team after the way you have treated me? That, I think, is a common theme across America. Yesterday a woman said to me "You have to make sure the young Obama supporters vote all the way down the ticket. They have to put the Democratic Party first."
Never mind the obvious irony of a Clinton supporter telling an Obama supporter to put the Party first. The response I had for her was that many of these young Obama supporters haven’t decided yet if they even are Democrats. At this point they support Barack Obama, and how he and his followers are treated will go a long way toward determining whether they stay on and become full fledged Democrats.
If this were solely up to the Clinton campaign, I would not hold out much hope!
As Gary Hart wrote today, Hillary has decided that Democrats deserve to lose if we don't choose her. She has decided to run a campaign that says she is more important than America. She is essentially campaigning FOR John McCain against Barack Obama. She is openly saying that only she and McCain are qualified to be President. How do I respect that?
As Senator Obama pointed out in one of the debates, there is an arrogance and condescension in the Clinton campaign that says that those of us who support Obama are deluded fools at best. How do I respect that?
Hillary Clinton is the past. She is a continuation of the last 40 years of politics. To me she represents a lack of vision, a lack of courage, an inability to move past what has not worked for America for too long now. She is the Baby Boom culture grappling to the last, and her campaign strategy has become Ahab’s--and Khan’s--ultimate curse: "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee". She seems to be saying "if I can’t have it, I’ll make sure you don’t get it either."
Barack Obama is the future. He can do everything that Hillary can do, he has far better judgment, he has run a far more organized campaign, and he can also offer a politics that says we can move past partisan anger and fighting. I can't guarantee that things will change with Barack in the White House, but I can guarantee that they won't change with Hillary in the White House.
And that's the dilemma for me. If Hillary somehow wins the nomination it will be very difficult for me to vote for her, though I will have no other choice. It will feel like a betrayal of all that I am, all that I believe in, and all that I hope to stand for. I would ultimately vote for her only because I know how much damage John McCain will do to America.
But in voting for her I would be diminished and I would perhaps lose my last bit of faith in the ability of Americans to do the right thing. And I would desperately hope that I am wrong about her.
I know many of you do not agree and that is okay. Unlike many people involved in politics, I know that I am not always right. I know that opinions other than mine can have validity too. You will never see me stand up, as I have seen many Hillary supporters do, and openly mock those who disagree with me.
I have never seen Hillary do or say anything that suggests to me that she cares at all about regular people like me. I have never seen Hillary do or say anything that suggests to me that she is interested in anything except power for it's own sake.
I'm not like her. All I want to do is help people and make a difference. I want to believe in something larger than myself, larger than the previous experiences of my life, and Hillary and her supporters tell me I'm a fool for doing so.
Sometimes the whole damn thing just makes me sad!