I have condemned her campaign tactics.
I have condemned her resort to racial and Rovian politics.
But I really have never extended my dislike of her campaign and of her past votes on the Iraq War to the person of Hillary Rodham Clinton herself. Indeed, in the past when I have had opportunity to meet her she always seemed nice and personable. Yes, likable. In the candid moments of this campaign, and in the debates, she was in fact warm and funny on occasion.
But as Booman says, she has finally crossed the line, and engaged in tactics so vile and disgusting that I must now question Hillary Clinton as a person. And when I do that, when I evaluate her character and her motivations, I cannot escape the gut feeling I have towards her.
I now hold as much, and perhaps more, antipathy towards Mrs. Clinton that I reserve for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain.
I will let Booman expound on why:
In a conversation with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Clinton presumed to tell Barack Obama where he should worship his God. She suggested that Reverend Wright is guilty of 'hate speech' and compared him to Don Imus.
...
Clinton's decision to question Obama's choice of church is a bigger problem than her personal tastelessness. Her decision is an arrow aimed directly at the heart of the black community. It is one of the worst acts of public betrayal I have ever seen committed by a Democratic politician in my lifetime, and the most shortsighted and toxic decision I can recall.
White Americans may be surprised by their introduction to the style of black sermonizing in the figure of Rev. Wright, but the black community sees nothing particularly out of place in his rhetoric. This may or may not be a political vulnerability in the general election, but a far greater vulnerability is opened up by telling the black church-going community that Rev. Wright is the equivalent of Don Imus and his 'nappy-headed hos'. The suggestion that Rev. Wright was engaged in 'hate speech' of a kind so loathsome as to require leaving his church is deeply offensive. The black community is feeling besieged by the national spotlight on Rev. Wright and the ensuing white backlash. They are looking around for allies, and find Hillary Clinton piling on and throwing them under the bus.
Clinton is not only presumptuous, she is vicious and divisive and hurtful. She should be defending Barack Obama against unfair attacks, and defending and contextualizing the tradition of black sermonizing. In his speech, Barack Obama sought to educate and bring reconciliation. Clinton's response is to throw it all back in his face and suggest that there is something wrong with him for attending his church.
....
This is poison of the worst possible kind. It will destroy the party's electoral viability more swiftly and more surely than anything I can think of.
Hillary Clinton likes to compare herself favorably with John McCain and other Republicans. Yet even John McCain and Mike Huckabee have actually defended Obama against these Wright attacks. The people Hillary Clinton now compares favorably to are the conservative nativist right wing talk show hosts and bloggers who spread vicious lie after lie and smear after smear. Yes, she compares favorably with them, for in act and in deed, Hillary Clinton and the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are now one and the same. They all believe that in order to win political arguments and races, the playing field must be so toxic and poisonous, and the participants so polarized and divided, that no person with a conscience or even a soul would dare participate. And only in that arena, with the remaining participants being likeminded and equally soulless, can these people win.
Mrs. Clinton, I could give a flying fuck who your pastor is. I do know a little about your religious affiliations, and I do find them somewhat disturbing, but I really do not care who you pray with or to. That you have made an issue about who Obama prays with places you on the opposite and wrong side of this issue. It is the right wing evangelical Republicans who demand expressions of the "right kind of religiosity." And that is precisely what you are doing.
I do not care who Obama prays with. I do not care that Rev. Wright was Obama's pastor. What I care about is how a candidate treats people. In my faith, and in my life, actions do speak louder than words. Good works is how you judge devotion. Obama's campaign is the definition of "good works." Mrs. Clinton, nothing you have done in this campaign can be described as good. It has all been about lifting you up, and as the task of doing that gets more impossible and difficult, the level to which you will stoop gets so low that one must consider the mud the sky.
Hillary, you are a soulless person. You have no conscience.
And I can never vote for a person that considers evil a campaign tactic.