I'd rather lose with Obama than win with Clinton

A lot of people may not like the title of this diary, but this is where the Clinton campaign has driven me.  Why?  One word: The Dishonesty.

Listening to Clinton today on NPR cooly and calmly spout the absolute nonsense that the vote in Michigan was fair turned my stomach.  I expect Bush to tell me that up is down and black is white.  I expect the GOP to sow fear and division as an election strategy.  I expect my party to do better.  I know politics is a rough and tumble game and harbor no illusions of the brutality that is to come in the general, but we need to move beyond the lying and divisiveness, and Clinton, clearly, either cannot or will not do that.

I say this for what I believe to be the good of the party.  A divisive Clinton victory in the primaries (and do not kid yourself, she will not win the popular vote, not win the pledged delegate count, if she is the nominee it will be by overturning the will of the voters) runs the risk of driving away a generation of young, committed democratic voters.  A Clinton victory, even if she beats McCain, will consign the party to a 50%+1 strategy for the next 20 years.  I want more from my party, I expect more from my party.

Do we really want a nominee who has spent the last several months disparaging every state that she didn't win?  Do we want a nominee who is willing to praise the Republican candidate at the expense of her own party? If the Democrats nominate Clinton after the way her campaign has behaved (and I had the utmost respect for her before this campaign started) every cliché about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory will be true.

I believe we have an opportunity here to change the map, to truly move the country beyond the Bush/Rove divide-and-conquer mentality and to attract new voters to the party that can help advance the liberal agenda for a long time.  I might be wrong, but I would rather lose trying to make a real change than settle for more of the same.

I will close with a quote:

Now, since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our [Republican] friends have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America.

But we don't.

--Former President Bill Clinton's remarks to the Democratic National
Convention at the FleetCenter in Boston, Mass. -JULY 26, 2004

Now who's doing the dividing?

UPDATE: To be clear I am NOT saying I won't vote for Clinton if she is the nominee (although I am not saying I will either).  What I am saying is that I would rather lose trying to achieve real and lasting change then win with more divid-and-conquer 50%+1 strategy which I think will be detrimental to the party in the long run.