Polls, Shmolls - Still Proudly Voting Hillary
Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 05:03:10 PM PDT
This is a vote I will never, ever regret. I'll be proud of it until the day I die. I'll be proud of it regardless of who wins California on Tuesday.
My journey has been a strange one: I began with a visceral dislike of this woman, searching for the great hope of a star candidate that could beat her in the primaries.
I went to an Obama rally in Oakland, California last spring and boy was that the best-looking, sexiest, most wholesome looking crowd I'd seen in ages. Young families, kids in strollers, people of color, white people.
And then Obama arrived and spoke. He was...fine. No real complaints. Didn't leave me with a feeling of certainty. Didn't leave me jazzed. I think I had more hope looking at the crowd beforehand than I did after listening to the candidate. He stuttered and stammered a bit. And he said the word "I" a lot - coming from the Howard Dean people-powered politics movement I don't subscribe to "the great man theory" and I didn't like Obama's speech that day. But there was time for him to improve. It wasn't his best day.
Then I watched the debates. Man was Hillary solid in those debates. She was presidential. She owned the room. "But she had high negatives" I thought to myself. I was probably one of those people that gave her high negatives.
My dislike for her started to wear off.
I started to see the star quality in this woman, and read about her college friends who tried to talk her out of marrying Bill and moving to Arkansas. She had a promising future and they felt she was throwing it away by being a political wife.
I read lots of profiles of the two candidates. Obama's poetic life story, grabbing the disparate patches of his life and stitching them together into his own identity quilt was so compelling - and I oddly could identify with that struggle.
Obama's time as president of the Harvard Law Review was marked as one in which he was a peacemaker. He didn't fight for any particular agenda. He didn't move the review in one direction or the other. Hmm...
He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.
Well we certainly are a fractious country right now and that could be a plus. But would he be a leader or a marriage counselor? Is his mission for us to all get along? Is there anything else? One thing I didn't like about Bill Clinton was his need to be liked. Was Obama another need-to-be-liked candidate? We need toughness right now, Harry Truman and not Sally Field (no offense Sally.)
I heard Hillary unveil her universal health care proposal - many Edwards supporters say she stole his best ideas. Well I want our candidate to steal the very best of everybody's ideas on health care. If Obama is our candidate I pray he steals Hillary's (or John Edwards') health care proposal. I believe more than anything else, a solid health care safety net will have a ripple effect of snapping this economy back into shape.
Her delivery unveiling that health care proposal was stellar. She varied the speeds in her words, lowering and softening her voice at times. She said if you have insurance that works for you right now, you don't have to change. "She gets it" I thought to myself. She gets what derailed her attempt in 1993 at reforming health care. And she wants to go down in history as the one who reformed it for this country. Paul Krugman's columns lately on the need for mandates to balance the risk pool and lower the risk premiums only further solidified my conviction.
On national security, I know others don't see it yet, but I've grown to see her as a commander-in-chief who conveys confidence in tough times.
I watched her interview with Charlie Gibson, and she spoke of the values her father and her mother instilled in her - it was stark and pragmatic: "if we were going to play football, we all played football. I was expected to compete." "Life's unpredictable, there is no security, you have to be able to stand on your own two feet, you can't expect anyone to take care of you." Harsh, but realistic. And strong.
She had fantastic promise as a high school student - but Yale did not accept women for undergrad admission in her time. She wrote to NASA as teenager asking what does it take to work at your institution? Only to hear that she had to be a man. Whoa.
I hear from people in upstate New York who did not like her when she was a carpetbagging senate candidate but who are now CRAZY about her. She has performed as a Senator - exceeded their expectations.
I did more research, read more Obama profiles and read more about Hillary.
Obama is a lovely man with a lovely wife and an absolutely lovely and interesting life story. But I don't see him as somebody who puts himself on the line. Somebody who is willing to be unpopular. He says he'll tell us not just we want to hear. But I do see his health care proposal, and his statement on immigration in the last debate, as just that. He doesn't want to upset us too much. I find him to be a bit righteous and - at times - mildly dour. Should he win the nomination, I hope he'll flash those great choppers a bit more.
Hillary bounded onto the last debate stage with a blast of energy and a sunburst of strength.
I do see the times ahead as pretty (can I say it?) dark and challenging. I've had enough of Dubya's "optimism" and the hagiographic essays of Reagan's "morning in America" message. I want a president who is made of steel, who can steer us through the rough waters ahead.
And I don't see a woman with the kind of commanding presence that Hillary has - I don't see another one coming along any time soon. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'm prepared for any outcome but I'll never regret voting for this champion, this star - Hillary. I'll take any flame and ridicule you throw at me for my Super Tuesday choice. This is an amazing Democrat, an amazing American and yes an amazing woman who will go down favorably in history, rightly so.
