The impatient part of me and the intolerant part of me (they may be different parts) want this thing over, and over now! So I agree with the feelings and sentiments that I think I see in VALHALLA's diary and the posted responses. That diary is called, "Should Obama play hardball with Clinton: Drop out now or no cabinet position?"
I want to scream every time I hear what I consider misrepresentations or worse from Hillary or her surrogates. I cringe when I hear Barack go off into the stratosphere or start explaining things about other people that he has no place explaining. We all know about bitterness.
Olberman pointed out that Civil War battles occurred after Appomattox. That means,
he implied, that "it's over" depends on what the meaning of "over" is. If at Appomattox "over" meant that no shooting would ever occur again between members of the two armies, then the Civil War wasn't over. And for us, the high feelings on both sides of the HRC-BHO divide teach us to expect skirmishes and hard feelings between us.
On Abrams, Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out that there is a lot of bitterness between the two camps and that people need time to come down from the campaign. He said that it would hurt Obama if HRC dropped out precipitously, because Clinton's supporters will need that time. And I think, as an Obama supporter, I need that time.
We've seen that bitterness and intense partisanship here, and I'm been part of it.
So, as tired as we are of this campaign, or at least as tired as I am of it, out of respect for one another, we need to let the process play itself out. That kind of respect is, I think, part of what Barack has in mind as our nation heads into the future. It's also respect for ourselves and our own process. We need to tend to our own wounds and to our second thoughts about wounds we may have inflicted on others.
Only a few primaries ago did I catch onto Howard Dean's 50-state strategy. Now that I'm seeing it in action, for all its faults, I like it. I'm glad that states that often do not really count in primaries are really counting this time. I like it that voters in Indiana and North Carolina got the experience of making a difference in the selection of a nominee for the Democratic party. I hope that they have this experience from here on out.
So I think that we need to be patient with this process and we need to encourage the candidates to take the remaining contests seriously. They should be seen in each of these states. They should sit down with people and listen to them and ask how they see Washington even noticing their needs, much less addressing them. Such an agenda would give Hillary supporters, maybe even Obama supporters, good reason to contribute to her campaign.
There's a discipline to letting things wind down. For me, part of that discipline is sitting patiently as the candidates continue their campaigns. Not easy. If they say things that anger or scare me, I'll have to live with those feelings. I just don't think I have a right to ask for the campaigns to stop so that I don't have to have those feelings.
O'Donnell thought that Hillary was exercising that discipline in her WV appearance today. No attacks on Barack.
In fact, there's a lot that can still be done in the campaigns.
- At the very minimum, the candidates could begin addressing issues that they have with McCane (I loved a blog entry elsewhere that intentionally misspelled his name.) They could begin, or advance, the Party's drafts of campaign points for the GE.
- Maybe they could really debate some issues, less with an eye to getting votes than to addressing the issues (can't ever discount that). How do the two health care proposals differ, really? They could get behind their charges and counter-charges about who'd be in and who'd be out and who'd pay. Dig deep. That would certainly, in my mind, raise the stature of both of them.
Debating the health care policies would be helpful for the national conversation about health care And there should be no risk for either candidate, now that Schumer and Rockefeller have taken health care off the table for the next Congress.
So let's use this remaining time constructively.