This year, I had the honor of spending a lot of time to volunteer for Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. I cherish every moment of it, and would do it all again.
We DID make history this year. We became the first major American political party to nominate a woman. Millions of Americans saw her campaign all over the country, win three debates, rack up endorsements, lead the polls for 18 consecutive months, and win the popular vote. I truly believe that at this point the glass ceiling is so tattered and broken up, the next woman will only have to lift her head over it.
But Hillary is not just any woman. Here are the some of the things that made me especially proud of her campaign:
* I’m proud that she was arguably the most qualified candidate in modern history.
* I'm proud that we argued that Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president. Based on his campaign behavior, that was true.
* I'm proud that she was a former Goldwater girl. It shows we can change our minds and convert people who were raised in the other side to ours. Maybe one day we will welcome former Trump boys and girls into our progressive party and cause.
* I'm glad she spent most of her life not in business, nor as a professional politician, but advocating for public interest causes, such as children's rights, legal aid for the poor, education reform, and health care.
* I'm proud that we gave someone who lost the nomination before another chance to succeed at that endeavor. It shows that one loss isn't impossible to overcome. And I'm glad the man she lost the nomination to, who she supported, heavily supported her. It shows that bitterness can be overcome and a good deed being repaid.
* When the Access Hollywood tape came out, I'm glad we had a woman standing up on the stage to call out Trump on just how terrible it, and his reaction to it was. A man would not have been able to speak to that issue as genuinely.
* I'm proud of the platform planks we put out. Not a lot of attention was paid to it, but I read through many of the policies on her website and overall it was pretty good.
* I'm glad the "Bernie bros" got a bloody nose. By this I mean the small >10% minority of his supporters who went off the rails, claiming everything was rigged (no, the DNC leaks did not vindicate them), lambasting groups like PP as the establishment, blaming black voters for voting the wrong way, sending death threats to party officials and superdelegates, etc. Those people deserved to lose.
* I'm glad she argued for gun control. It's bad politics, but the gun lobby is a bit too powerful.
* I'm proud of the theme of her campaign, Love and Kindness.
* I'm proud that she didn't fall into the trap of protectionism, because the jobs really aren't coming back. Again, bad politics but solid substance.
* Yes, I'm proud of Hillary's foreign policy record. I do hate war, but I see in Hillary's "hawkishness" a strand of compassionate humanitarian intervention that can sometimes be a good idea. I think her advice to intervene in Libya was informed by a desire to protect the rebels from being massacred, and I think it saved some lives. And call me crazy, but I think if we had taken out Assad in 2011 or 2012 we would not have ISIS, the Syrian refugee crisis, nor the Aleppo humanitarian crisis. I think she tried to stand up for human rights and democracy in Russia by supporting anti-Putin protests in 2011, and it cost her the presidency.
* Yes, I’m proud of the work that the Clinton Foundation does, which I wasn’t too clear on before the election. Among other things, they stood up to big pharmaceutical companies to deliver lifesaving antiretroviral treatment to millions of the poorest people in the world— even going where other charities had never been before.
So even though we lost, I think we stood for a whole lot of good, good things. Hillary can take pride in (with 2008 ambiguous) never losing the popular vote in any election she's ever run in.
Renewed debate over the Electoral College that will be something coming out of this campaign as well, and I'm glad for that as well.
