For many Kossacks, my feelings described below are not novel, but I'm hoping to articulate them here for the sake of my family and friends reading this.
The difficult thing about all this is that I have always really liked Hillary Clinton. You could say that my "Clinton credentials" are solid: I voted for Bill Clinton twice, and I supported him and argued on his behalf even during his impeachment. I always admired Hillary, and last year, when her candidacy seemed unstoppable, I looked forward to her presidency. The first presidency I remember was that of Jimmy Carter, and I was happy that my young daughter would be able to grow up with similar memories of Hillary Clinton leading our country.
I remember Bill Clinton’s first presidential candidacy in 1992. Desert Storm had granted the first Bush his own "aura of inevitability." Bill Clinton and 6 of his fellow Democratic candidates were less than underdogs during that primary. Back then they were known then as the "seven dwarves." At the age of 19, I focused only on the issues, and I didn’t understand why he earned the moniker of "Slick Willie." Apparently, millions of Democrats around the country harbored suspicions about his character and integrity, prompting the infamous Time magazine cover in April 1992.
I disagree with some of Hillary Clinton’s recent tactics, but I must say that seeing her in action like this makes me wish that she had been President in the 90’s, rather than her husband. She might have come across as abrasive, but we would have been spared such ridiculous memories as "I did not inhale," and not to mention the entire "I... did... not... have... sexual relations... with... that woman!" debacle.
If Hillary Clinton had been President in the 90s, she would have been America’s Margaret Thatcher. She knows how to kick some ass. I think that she is the better Clinton.
As a medical student in the mid-90s, I felt that people treated Hillary Clinton unfairly. Nobody had ever seen a First Lady take such an active role, not to mention her goal of bringing health care to all Americans. Sadly, people felt threatened by this, and permitted the ridiculous stereotype that she was out to "take away our health care" and give it over to the government. The HMO-financed Harry and Louise commercials on TV marketed this nonsense quite successfully.
Particularly distasteful was the comparison to violent female pseudo-celebrities of her time. I recall a popular joke from that era: Did you hear about the guy who had a one-night stand with Tonya Harding, Lorena Bobbit, and Hillary Clinton? When he woke up, his knees were broken, his (member) was cut off, and he had no health care. This was ridiculous.
In my high school ethics class, we debated whether the mainstream media carried an element of liberal bias (I remember Reagan bearing the brunt of constant ridicule), but I had never encountered an entire radio show or an entire TV show devoted to undermining a sitting United States president. The title of Rush Limbaugh’s TV show, America Held Hostage, struck me as a bit dramatic back in 1993.
I was shocked by the mid-term elections in 1994, with Newt Gingrich’s Republican revival. I never thought people would be so afraid of progress, but Americans hoped to stop the Clintons, and handed the Congress over to Gingrich in the name of his Contract With America (I enjoyed Bill Clinton’s clever Freudian slip that this was a "Contract On America").
I first heard about Barack Obama from an article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek in September 2004. Her thought at that time was that after John Kerry finished his 8 years as president, this new guy could make a run for the White House in 2012.
After the shocking re-election of George W. Bush in November 2004, several of my friends and I were actually clinically depressed for a few weeks. How could that happen? How could the American people fail to hold their leaders accountable? At that time, there was already discussion that Hillary Clinton might make a bid for the White House in 2008. I told my friends about the new guy Barack Obama, and I recommended that they keep an eye on this new guy.
To be sure, I was surprised that Senator Obama made his bid for the White House this year. Having followed him since 2004, I felt that I owned his rookie card. I must admit that I never expected him to be as successful as he has been.
My hope was that he would win a few early primaries. I was at work on the night of the Iowa caucus, hitting the "refresh" button on my web browser every 5 minutes to get the returns from CNN. If he could win New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina, I would be happy with that. I never imagined that the rest of the United States would be similarly taken by him.
Most exit polls have asked "would you be satisfied with either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama if they were the Democratic candidate?" and the vast majority of Democrats have responded in the affirmative – both are fine leaders. I definitely fell into this demographic – I liked both and I would have been happy with either. Although I had an affinity for Obama early on, I was confident that Hillary Clinton would do her best to bring about change in America, and help us recover from the disastrous tenure of George W. Bush. More importantly, I have felt very confident over the past few months that a Democrat would take back the White House this November.
I regret that I no longer belong in this demographic. I no longer feel that "either candidate" would be satisfactory. Hillary Clinton has officially lost my respect and trust. More importantly, she has lost my confidence in her ability to actually make America a better place.
I never imagined how ugly things could have become. My wife sometimes accuses me of being a pessimist. With respect to March of 2008, she’s right. Polls have shown that popular support for the Democratic party is plummeting. We may have already blown a sure thing.
I think it’s time we sat down, closed our eyes, and pictured the following: President John McCain. It’s looking more and more like this is a real possibility. Let's face the painful truth: Democrats have failed to win a plurality in 90% of presidential elections since Viet Nam. Bill Clinton would have never been elected without Ross Perot’s 3rd party campaign. It took Watergate and the end of Viet Nam to give the Democrats their last plurality in a general election: Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Nobody expects that November 2008 will be a landslide either way. It is bound to be a close election. The election will be decided by independent, "middle-of-the-road" voters. Electoral vicotory is dependent upon winning them over. I fear that we are losing them by the tens of thousands with each passing day.
There are various theories as to why Democrats lose the presidency. If we lose this November, then I would say we lost it in March of 2008.
I suspect there are many Democrats who feel alienated, as Geraldine Ferraro did this past week. Are they going to vote for John McCain this November? Probably not, but they might stay home on election day.
And then there’s the swing states of Michigan and Florida. I have a real problem with Hillary Clinton claiming that she "won" these states and that she only wants to make sure that voters there aren't "disenfranchised." I would only respect her argument if there had been an actual campaign there, with everybody’s name on the ballot.
I would say to Hillary Clinton the same thing that I would say to Ralph Nader: it’s okay to attack the democratic front-runner as long as you have a reasonable chance of winning the election yourself, so that you can accomplish something better. Ralph Nader knew that his chances of actually being elected were impossible, but he campaigned that eventually... someday... his 3rd party would become a more significant political force in the United States. But what about now? I have family members without health care, I have friends still in Iraq, and our country is bitter and divided. Can you accomplish anything for us now? I can’t care about your 3rd party goals if you can’t make America a better place today.
Hillary Clinton is willing to convince voters in Florida and Michigan that they have been "disenfranchised," even though the candidates pledged to leave those states alone. She doesn’t seem to mind Geraldine Ferraro convincing women voters that Barack Obama is a threat to feminism. When she’s asked if she thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim, she says "no" with such hesitancy to suggest that she’s hiding her own doubts. Ohio and Pennsylvania are always swing states in November, and she’s making voters there feel very comfortable with doubting Obama’s ability as a commander-in-chief.
I understand that factcheck.org refuted the notion that the Clinton campaign intentionally make Obama "blacker." Even if they didn’t consciously intend to do this, then I would say they were inexcusably negligent.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is presently a serious risk to Democratic electoral victory in November. At this point, she is just another Ralph Nader.
The purpose of elections is to establish legitimacy. There does not appear to be any way that Hillary Clinton can close the gap in pledged delegates. Her only hope is to buck the system and appeal to the superdelegates, asking them to disregard the pledged delegate process.
There is of course, the question of who is actually voting for Hillary Clinton, and why. Whatever happens to Hillary Clinton in the next few months, Americans will be left with doubt about how much support she actually had from Democrats. Would she have won the Texas primary without crossover Republican support, from people who just want to watch the Democrats continue to tear each other apart?
If this were earlier in the primary season, I wouldn’t mind all of this so much. Again, it’s OK to bash the front-runner if you have a reasonable chance of winning the election yourself. Without a reasonable chance of winning by the normal process (ie – pledged delegates), Hillary Clinton should get out now.
The talk of the "dream ticket" is a nightmare for me. I just hope that Barack Obama knows that people love him because he represents a new post-Clinton era of the Democratic party. I’m sorry, but I will lose a lot of respect for Barack Obama if he is somehow on the same ticket as Hillary Clinton.
I just got out of the military, haunted by pessimism for the future of our country. The conservative fringe wants to question his patriotism? I would say that Barack Obama has restored a sense of patriotic hope for me, like I've never had before.
Bill and Hillary Clinton will never be able to inspire nearly as many people. They have a long career of breeding cynicism.
Is it really worth it to have this thing go on, and convince so many millions of American Democrats that they should feel alienated?
There is only one thing the Clintons can do to regain my trust: get out now. If John McCain is elected president this November, and my family continues to be left without health care, and my friends are stuck in Iraq for 100 years, then I will hold the Clintons responsible.