Okay, so I wasn't as consistent in my Clinton support during the primaries as some others. But I consider that I was a fairly strong Hillary supporter. I initially liked both Clinton and Obama, and it basically stayed that way. In the real world, most of my Clinton-supporting friends have switched over to Obama. Doesn't that make sense? The two are mostly different on stylistic issues. Neither one ran a perfect campaign, but there have been more negative primaries than this. Who cares, Clinton or Obama? Or for that matter, Romney or McCain? The political parties have become so well defined on the issues across the whole spectrum that you know that no matter which candidate emerges, their Presidency will be influenced most strongly by the ideas they run on which are in turn based on the ideas that their party espouses.
Sure, the President will bend a little toward whichever way the wind blows; a Democratic President will sign welfare reform or stay away from the gun issue if the winds are blowing to the right on those issues; a Republican President will propose a global warming plan or close Guantanamo if things are blowing to the left on those issues. But even in the welfare reform signing, the Democratic President will insert clauses protecting afterschool funding and providing money for education as well as limiting benefits; a Republican President will take a more lenient view on torture or invest less money in energy research as well as seeking to cut carbon emissions. The direction of the country is, mostly determined by the party of the presidency, as it has been for most of the past 100 years.
Many older women and Bill Clinton admirers are angry at the insults directed at them during the primaries. Some of them have totally immersed themselves in Obama hatred, others do not seem to be able to let go, so much that I fear some of these people loathe Obama even more than the Republicans do. What sense does this make?
Feminist boomer women have been villainized and treated like shit for decades. They lost the ERA, they went through Reagan, the religious right, Gingrich, Bush, and now attacked by their own party. Yet they have accomplished more collectively than any other generation of women in history. They are a tough crowd. To them I ask: what the f*ck has happened to you in the primary that you haven't endured in the past? Life happens. Suck it up. Look at where your interests lay. Some people don't like second wave feminism because it is seen as too militant, too angry. But the reason why they've lost so many battles despite all their gains is because when second wave feminism hit the mainstream in the '70s, it was also running into the beginning of a 40 year generalized right-wing backlash. And the Republican party was the engine of that conservative backlash. If Hillary's brand of politics has been tarred as uncool or evil so successfully that even liberal Democrats embrace it in 2008, why is that? It is because of decades of conservative work against it that was so successful that even liberals came to accept it. So liberals attacked Hillary because she was 'divisive' and whatnot.
There are two parties in the US, and one stands for egalitarianism, and the other stands for elitism. Choose your side. The Democratic party's success has for the past 200 years been tied to the cause of egalitarianism. This transcends any person, any moment. It goes all the way back to the debates between radicals such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson on one side and Alexander Hamilton and John Adams on the other side in the 1790's. Out of that rose the Federalist and Republican parties; and this yin and yang was resurrected against in the 1830's under the Democrats and Whigs, and finally the Democrats and Republicans. Feminism is an egalitarian movement, because men still control the commanding heights of our society. Womens' success in the long run is tied to the success of egalitarianism, and, the Democratic party. For those feminists who are not backing Obama, I would say, another Republican victory-- a McCain victory, won't solve your problems. It will just make it worse.
Clinton admirers have been in many ways subjected to the same treatment as feminists. Ever since the Jennifer Flowers affair in 1992, the press has indulged in the Clinton scandals. He was criticized viciously from the right when he was President, and his efforts to meet the right halfway were not only not reciprocated, but used as an excuse by the left to loathe him equally in the next decade. Despite this he has been the most successful Democratic President in the last 40 years or more, personally and fiscally, and in terms of average income for lower earning brackets, I think the best President from both parties in the last 40 years or more. To Bill Clinton and his admirers who are pissed at the treatment he received in the primary, I say- so f*cking what? What treatment did Bill get in the primaries that we haven't been through even worse already? What's an overweight bloviating on cable news and some latte liberals compared to staring down Newt Gingrich and the post Cold-War right wing? Nothing. Bill didn't get everything he wanted when he was President, but he still managed to do great by fighting back and overcoming-- and delivering results for the American people.
The Democratic party that Obama inherits is the House that Bill built, and that remains so even though he's won the nomination. It was Bill Clinton who, as one person pointed out to me, transformed the Democratic party from a 43% party to a 48% party. It was Bill Clinton who reintroduced the party to the average Joe and Jane, and who introduced the Democrats to suburban America, where most live, for the first time; the same suburban America that is the basis for many of Obama's primaries victories and hopes in the general election. Obama's party was made acceptable to those people because Bill Clinton reformed welfare so that it wasn't seen as a massive wasteful program for poor urban leeches who didn't work; because Bill Clinton put more cops on the streets and supported the death penalty (and appointed relatively moderate Justices to the Supreme court who, unlike Brennan and Marshall, did not try to put holds on every single death penalty case appealed to the court); because Bill Clinton cultivated relationships with Wall Street and the private sector and showed that strong growth could happen under a Democrat. Today Obama carries the banner of that party, and his success is the success of the House that Clinton built; of Bill Clinton's life's work. His failure is the failure of that life's work.
So I think it is perfectly natural-- more than that, uniquely congruent, that a person who supported Hillary in the primaries; a person who is not overcome by emotion, or desire for revenge, but a person who channels the values that originally drew them to Hillary, for one of the two reasons listed above, would get behind Obama. That does not mean one must feel good about the primary. It is like the relationship between a retailer and a manufacturer. The retailer may not like the manufacturer personally, but the retailer should like the manufacturer for delivering his goods and thus, his profits. The primary is over. Obama now carries Hillary's banner. And in the ways that are important, we need Obama to win just as much as he and his supporters do.