Ok, first: I'm not going to ask anyone to change candidates. I hope this thinking plays into your final decision on polling day, but I'm not asking anyone to jump ship. Clinton boosters have their reasons, I'm sure. Those who have followed her career more closely than I probably see in her advocacy for women and children, and in her voting record, something very important - more important than "change" - at least the types of change that interest me most.
Edwards partisans - bless you. I was a Deaniac 4 years ago, and I watched the establishment candidate waltz in and take without effort what all of us tried so hard to give to our grassroots man. I had no interest at all in helping someone else beat Kerry. Howard Dean or bust... I did eventually switch to Clark when Dean was no longer viable, and then to Edwards... but my heart was out of it and I didn't give a dime or a minute to either of those other candidates. Maybe a bad move on my part... I don't know.
What I see now is a challenge to Obama's mantle of change - and I just want to be sure folks are keeping a larger perspective on this, and not writing him off improperly in this regard. Edwards is change - possibly the biggest change candidate of the top 3. I'm not disputing that. Whether he is viable is up for him, his campaign, & his voters to decide - not me. If you decide that he isn't, then please consider Obama as the change candidate when deciding where to move your support:
OK... let's look at some criteria for what makes a "change" from the current administration, or from politics as usual, and how Clinton and Obama stack up:
Judgment on use of force: Clinton wasn't the only democrat that excercised poor judgment in the run-up to the Iraq war, but she has been one of the staunchest of those who defend that mistake, and she has shown an inability or unwillingness to judge rightly when Bush is looking to escalate violence by voting for the Kyle-Lieberman amendment. This shows astonishingly poor judgment on an issue of extreme importance. I don't trust my kids' lives to a Clinton administration - even if she says she wouldn't have started that war. Maybe not, but if she could not show better discernment than she already has, one is left only "hoping" that she doesn't do something just as reckless when push comes to shove. I would not have wanted her behind the wheel during the Cuban missile crisis. Obama took a stand against the war even when it was politically inexpedient.
There's a variant interpretation to Clinton's actions that has been suggested to me, but which I don't want to accept: that they were not policy mistakes but political calculations - that as a woman candidate, she had to "project strength" this way. If she is willing to play politics with the lives of my kids and the lives of innocents overseas for an election, who could trust her as a President? Let me stress - I don't take this interpretation - I take the interpretation that she has used poor judgment here.
Either way, whether it was from stubborn wrong-headedness or from something worse, her position is far closer to the current administration's position and to politics as usual. Obama represents change on this count.
Respect for the electorate:
Obama engages and reaches out to the electorate, respects the views of voters - even those who disagree with him. He uses organization to empower people to help one another and themselves, and does so with remarkable results. Clinton? Not so much. When she was still "inevitable", she ran a campaign straight from the Bush Administration's playbook - planting questions in the audience at appearances to insulate herself from criticism, then trying to prevaricate about it when she got caught. She's discovered that won't play in the primary, but will she remember that in the White House? She has run a negative campaign, trying to suppress turnout for her opponents instead of build a case for herself. She mischaracterized Obama's position on abortion rights badly in NH - maybe one of the reasons she won with women voters there. She has been dishonest with us - showing that she doesn't truly respect us. Maybe it's that she has been on the receiving end of this kind of crap so long that she has forgotten that there are other ways to play the game. I can forgive it - but I can't support it.
Obama has run an above-board campaign. Despite a couple of "gotcha" moments where we learned that "Fedarl lobbyist" means "federal lobbyist", "paid means paid", and so forth, there is no evidence he intentionally misled us about anything. He has shown nothing but respect to the voters he wants to represent - a clear change from our current administration, and a clear change from politics as usual.
Constitutional knowledge:
I'm sure Hillary Clinton knows the Constitution well enough to uphold it - and I believe that she will respect it enough. So this isn't a huge difference between them, but the current administration uses it as toilet paper, and Obama uses it as a textbook. That's real change.
Rhetorical ability:
Again, not a big one, because Hillary Clinton speaks eloquently. She is a good communicator. Still, Obama shines in this regard, and it is a change from the current administration - a huge one.
One other matter:
Yes, I'm going to beat that dead horse again. This is a matter on which Obama is the "most" change candidate - even more so than Edwards, but it's also one that is sometimes counted as a negative - an assessment with which I personally disagree. That's for you to decide - I think it is a positive and enhances his progressive positions... if you feel differently, then you are certainly welcome to your position. I'm not here to convince you of that - just to show the magnitude of change represented by an Obama candidacy. It goes back to the question of "respect for the electorate". It is a matter of asking for, and governing from, a popular mandate. It is, in other words, reaching out to voters outside the traditional Democratic voting bloc and asking for - if not their votes - their support on issues they can agree with us on. I know staunch anti-choice folks, personally, who are also troubled by global warming, by economic unfairness, by abuse of the justice system, by war. These are folks who might vote 3rd party before voting for a Democrat (and might not...), but who will get on board and work to help us on these issues. They will follow a credible leader from the "other side" when he asks them to pressure Congress to pass a good energy bill or to support a sensible tax policy. I know these folks, and I'm not kidding. We may be worlds apart from them on some issues - but on others, they can help us, and they can help build a strong mandate for change in a lot of areas. Bush's approach has been to govern to the 32% and tell the rest of us to go #@*%! ourselves. We've taken it while policy after policy, action after action was rammed down our throat without the least care about our cries of distress. Wide swaths of the public have been cut out of the system because they didn't line up well enough ideologically with their platform. We can't fool ourselves that we are truly representing the American people just because the platform we are hammering through their resistance is a better platform. Obama's approach - to gain the trust of the people, and to govern with their consent - is night and day removed from the old way. Clinton and Edwards? I'm sure that they won't be the tyrants that the Bush administration have become, but they don't seem to understand this the way Obama does. Edwards has been very above board with Democratic Primary voters (unlike Clinton), but will he give the same respect to the Democrats who didn't vote in the primary? To independents? To sincere republican voters? What about in the Senate and House? Will Hillary reach out on bipartisan legislation without treachery? I'm thinking back to the NCLB act ... what would we say about it now if Bush hadn't just "reached out" to pass the standards while shivving the funding side of it in the back? Was that respectful of the enormous number of Americans who wanted to see real reform of American education? Can't we do better than that? Do Clinton and Edwards understand that bipartisan operations in good faith are key to keeping people engaged in the process?
That's it. There are other differences among the candidates, but none apply so directly to the question of change (whether you think we need it or not) than these. I believe we need it, and need it quick. If you agree, but are supporting another candidate - please push your candidate in this direction, please consider Obama - as first or second choice.