I'm an Obama supporter. I have been since before S. Carolina. It was up until S. Carolina that I believed that I could be happy with either candidate, and would forgive Sen. Clinton's AUMF, vote for Kyl-Lieberman, and that I would suck back the refusal to ban cluster bombs (and that was the vote that's soul shattering to me. Clinton, again, voted with the Republicans on an action that is just incomprehensible). For supporting Sen. Obama, I was met with the criticisms that I'm a kool aid drinker, an Obamabot, a Judas - self-loathing woman owned by the patriarchy, that I'm an idealistic child who can't make rational decisions for myself, and that I'm starry eyed and don't know the difference between pretty words and real action. Those were the insults leveled at me by Dems supporting Clinton - not by Republicans.
Now I continue to read diaries asking Obama supporters if we really want your votes and if we are willing to step up and treat you with the dignity you deserve. Some Clinton supporters seem to be holding their votes over our heads as if we're supposed to jump and reach for them as you pull them increasinly higher. I don't think that's the intent of every diarist, but it's becoming harder and harder to tell the difference. Votes are becoming threats, threats to vote McSame into office rather than Sen. Obama, or threats to simply sit home and watch it happen. Even as more and more Republicans cross over to Sen. Obama's side, some Democratic voters continue to threaten to dismantle the party out of a sense of rage and revenge.
A couple of days ago, after Sen. Clinton's RFK statement, I knew she'd done herself in, and in the worse way possible. She's ripped the facade off of her bare-naked ambition and revealed something unsettling about herself, something many had suspected, but that her comments confirmed for many of us. No, I don't think she was calling for Sen. Obama's assassination, but her words felt, to me, to suggest that she would be more than happy to step in and 'rescue' us from ourselves should anything happen ot him, and that wasn't much better. I twas a horrifying statement - given the more recent examples of June primaries she could have used, instead.
Even still, in a recent diary, I had to reconcile my former support for her (support before S. Carolina, back to her days as First Lady) with what I was currently seeing. I had to reconcile my belief in Hillary CLinton as a woman, and the disaster she'd become as a politician. Believe me, I had my backside handed to me in the comments section and was even called a troll - despite the fact that anyone who posts with me on any other site knows that I've flayed open the anti-Obamaists who've attacked him and misrepresented the man and his positions. I presented what I thought was an objective view of Clinton's strengths and weaknesses and why I was giving up the fight.
Here's what you need to know. I didn't do it for YOU. I didn't do it to curry favor or win your votes. I did it for me. I've been so angry, for so long, as an African-American woman who finally felt like an American (no hyphen) until the Clinton camp ran a campaign that seemed to steal that away from those of us who felt free of racial strife for the first time.
My anger was hurting me body and soul, and looking at the wreck the CLinotns were making of this campaign, the party, and their legacies, I could see that it was killing them too. There's an old spiritual about laying one's burden down. I did that, but I did it for me.
Now that I've told you that, please understand when I say that I'm tired of you asking if we want your votes. If you support Sen. Obama, do it for YOUR own sake, not because you think the way to relieve the bitterness of this campaign is to watch Obama supporters grovel. Realize that if you haven't attacked Obama supporters, some of your compatriots have. There are those Obama supporters who've never said an unkind word about Clinton or her supporters, as well. Don't forget them.
If you vote for Obama, vote because you realize that your financial future is no more safe than that of the Obama(bots) you've come to despise.
If you do, do it because you want your daughters and granddaugthers to have the right to own their bodies (even if decisions like Roe v. Wade don't affect you personally).
If you decided to support him, support him because you want a President who doesn't think that cluster bombing the hell out of women and children is a moral definintion of "casualies of war".
If you do it, do it because you want a President who isn't afraid of telling you the truth and will say what needs to be said, even when you don't want to hear it.
Vote for the man who doesn't see you as the 'white' vote or the 'black' vote or the 'gay' vote, but the AMERICAN vote.
Vote for him because you believe that he cares if your neighbors have good healthcare and that he cares whether they will be able to keep their homes.
Vote for the man who isn't interested in sending your children and grandchildren and maybe even great grandchildren to die on foreign soil for a vanity war.
Vote for a man who won't sell America's future to foreign investors to keep a vanity war going, one we can't afford - just to avoid saying, "I was wrong".
Please don't ask me if I want your vote, and follow that up by asking me what I'm willing to do for it. The answer to that is that I'm not willing to do a damned thing for it. You either believe in the man or you don't. You believe in our shared future or you don't. When I believed there was a possiblity that I'd have to vote for Clinton, I rattled my saber and swore I wouldn't ever vote for her. That was my frustration talking. The reality was that I'd cast that vote for her because no matter how much I despised the campaign she'd run, and despised her seeming contempt for the American voter, she wasn't John McCain, and that's all that mattered to me.