Okay, I will get right to the chase. Who the heck should I support for the Democratic nomination? I will be a Democrat until the day I die, but I am still on the fence about WHICH Democrat this primary should I support? I am a Florida voter, and I just have the feeling that the primary will still be a toss-up by the time the Democratic primary comes to our state.
More below the orange puff of confusion.
Okay, so, full confession. I am a Hillary Clinton supporter..... or rather I WAS a Hillary Clinton supporter until this week.
What caused me to change my mind? It just was a cascade effect. It just suddenly hit me like a sack of wet socks: Hillary Clinton has been doing an absolutely TERRIBLE job with her presidential campaign!
Seriously, in an age where a Democratic president to succeed Obama has never been more desperately needed nor so easily obtainable, Hillary Clinton has been ruining every chance she has been given to pluck the presidential win like a ripe plum.
How has Hillary Clinton been fucking up? Oh, let me count the ways.
1) Clinton took a ridiculously long time to officially announce her candidacy, and that hurt her. Despite massive amounts of criticism for coyly delaying what people already knew she was planning to do, Hillary Clinton didn't listen. Her delay made her look overly-calculating and more intent on her own agenda than on the frustrations of her supporters.
For all the talk about how different things will be this time around, Clinton’s slow-walk to 2016 hearkens back to the overly-cautious frontrunner’s approach that helped sink her campaign in 2008.
2)
Hillary Clinton has been completely ignoring the media, infuriating those whom she desperately needs to help her connect with the US voting public. Hey, you want to overcome the image you have of being cold and aloof? Don't do this.
She began her campaign by refusing to give interviews or even to take questions for several weeks, and her campaign drew mockery for putting even routine bits of information off the record. "She wanted to start slow," said one adviser. "Maybe we didn't hit the mark right."
Now she gives more interviews and news conferences, but reporters on the Clinton beat complain that they're kept in the dark about travel, that the campaign restricts coverage of Clinton events even when space is plentiful, and that only one of Clinton's fundraisers has been open to coverage -- by one reporter. Reporters have learned about fundraisers from the Hollywood Reporter, and at a July 4 parade in New Hampshire they were corralled with rope to keep them away from the candidate (a technique used on reporters by the Chinese government).
This treatment has made for an antagonistic press corps.
Wow. That is just.... wow. What a bad fucking move. Seriously. As the Rump has shown us, you can utter racist, imbecilic policy suggestions, make crude menstrual jokes, and put out immigration proposals that have
more than a whiff of Hitler.... but you will be ALL RIGHT if you remember to feed the media.
Feed the media! That is the key to any campaign! Hell, even Lindsey Graham can tell you that!
3) Hillary Clinton has stupidly let herself become entangled in that most boring of pseudo-scandals, the private e-mail server. Seriously???!!!? How the hell is this fucking up the Clinton campaign???!!
Hillary Clinton's emails continued to plague her campaign this week, with new signs the controversy is taking a toll on her frontrunner status in the Democratic presidential primary.
The entire thing is too small and too boring and too technical to capture the attention of the average US voter. Clinton should be zooming around the country, giving speeches, promoting the causes of women, minorities, and immigrants, and blasting the GOP
at all their many, many vulnerable spots. If someone should ask her about e-mails (oh, yawn), say "Well, the US government servers has been shown to be vulnerable to hackers, China-backed and otherwise, so using a private server was an extra level of security. Frankly however, the real issues now concerning the average American voter is not the many small technicalities surrounding my e-mails but the many massive problems facing the rapidly-disintigrating middle class...." etc. etc. That's how you handle this.
And yet, Hillary Clinton has not been handling this. She has not been handling this at all.
Here's the thing. I supported Hillary Clinton because with her extensive background as FLOTUS, Senator, and Secretary of State, I could think of no one more qualified to lead the country. Plus I completely fell in love with her when I saw her speech in 2009 eloquently upholding the right for a woman to control her own health. I thought: "This is the woman I want to see in the White House."
But now I am asking this: With strong leads in the pull and the GOP pulling itself apart, WHY THE FUCK IS HILLARY STILL LOSING???!!!?!??!
I originally supported Hillary because I thought she would be the best, most competent person to be president. But the fact that she has been screwing what should be the easiest presidential campaign for a Democrat to conduct is troubling. What with the Rump's unapologetic fascism and Jeb!'s "anchor babies" comment and all of the rest of the GOP getting tarred (deservedly) by the racism, in-fighting, anti-minimum wage brush. . . . Clinton should be soaring. Instead, however, Clinton is plummeting. I mean, for fuck's sake, if you can't handle a campaign this easy to win, you can't handle the presidency.
So who's running a halfway-competent campaign? How about Bernie Sanders? Hell, why not? His support is strong and he has a fantastic team that is efficiently funneling voter energy towards real poll gains and massive, photogenic crowds. Plus, needless to say, I tend to agree with 99.9% of what Sanders has to say.
And yet.... And yet.... every time I'm about to give in to the Bern and lend him my support.... I get a bad taste in my mouth. I just.... forgive me, but I just don't like Bernie Sanders. Every time I want to support him, he turns me off. Let's just look at Sanders' interview in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday.
Okay, let me cut to the chase. Sanders was terrible in that interview. He was humorless, patronizing, and sexist. It was awful. I'll give you a taste.
Do you think it’s fair that Hillary’s hair gets a lot more scrutiny than yours does? Hillary’s hair gets more scrutiny than my hair?
Yeah. Is that what you’re asking?
Yeah. O.K., Ana, I don’t mean to be rude here. I am running for president of the United States on serious issues, O.K.? Do you have serious questions?
I can defend that as a serious question. There is a gendered reason — When the media worries about what Hillary’s hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that’s a real problem. We have millions of people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, who want to know what candidates can do to improve their lives, and the media will very often spend more time worrying about hair than the fact that we’re the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people.
The interviewer, Ana Marie Cox, was giving Sanders an opening to seem relaxed, slightly self-deprecating, and amused. Instead Sanders was shockingly patronizing, calling the female reporter by her first name and scolding her like she was a middle-schooler making fart jokes in class. It made Sanders seem old, cranky, sexist, and curmudgeonly- and not in an adorable way.
When Rand Paul shushed a female reporter, he was justifiably castigated for his sexist actions. When Sanders did something similar, white progressives ignored his actions towards Ms. Cox. Nevertheless, Sanders cranky sexist rant of "Okay Ana... do you have any serious questions?" left me cold. No, I don't feel the Bern.
So who the hell do I support? Suggestions?