Dipping my toe in the political pool....
I was watching Hillary Clinton's concession speech this morning, and maybe I'm mistaken but what Hillary Clinton said was, "Go out there, support and vote for Barack Obama!"
Of course, there were those in her audience who second-guessed that very clear message and decided to hear what they wanted to hear. I single out, perhaps unfairly, one woman who, when asked why Hillary said that, replied, "She had a gun put to her head."
What?
OK, wait a minute--let's hold on here and think about what you just said.
What you are saying that Hillary is not the smart, savvy, relentless, strong and independently thinking woman that you've been touting all along, but that she is a victim of the Ol' Boys Club, caving into the pressure to endorse an individual she doesn't agree with, and who is, essentially, a LIAR to her supporters because she is saying something that is less than truthful.
And what you're saying is that your heart is breaking because you no longer have the opportunity to support your candidate of choice, who is the self-same individual that you are saying is a spineless, deceitful victim who will lie to save her own ass.
Right.
Now, here's the deal...
I think that the possibility exists that Hillary's downfall was those people who claimed to be her staunchest supporters, because they did her the disservice of losing sight of the issues and, instead, pointed to the least important aspects of her qualifications to be the President of the United States. I think that Hillary's whole campaign, in fact, was smokescreened by the absolute TRIVIA surrounding her person, rather than continuing to focus on the issues and on the good things she was attempting to bring to the table--not just the ones that were pleasing to her feminist supporters.
Oh, and she helped, of course--when the mud started to fly, she was not above lobbing the personal attacks that eventually degraded her campaign, and that, ultimately, gelled the opinion (at least in this house) that her willingness to sling mud was simply an indicator that a vote for her was a vote for four more years of "business as usual".
But, I have to say that, since her concession speech, my opinion of Hillary has gone up about a thousand-fold, because, in conceding to Obama in the way that she did, she made her main point very clearly and concisely. She pointed to the one thing that would have made it very difficult for me to vote against her, and that is this:
Hillary is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep a Republican out of the White House--even if that means endorsing the rival that she has been fighting for months.
There was no gun put to her head, ladies and gentlemen. She's SMART.
And she will be, at the end of all of this, a sitting senator for the state of New York, and a Democrat in the position of president can only HELP her do what she needs to do in order to get her job done. No matter which Democrat is in the White House, the fact that he is a Democrat will mean that she will not spend the next four to eight years fighting to be heard in the same partisan environment with which she's been fighting since she became senator.
She's no VICTIM--she knows what is good for her, and what advantages even her rival is able to afford her.
Please don't denigrate the intelligence and the political savvy of the woman you've supported for weeks and weeks and weeks by claiming that she's a VICTIM of a sexist society and who would expect her supporters to vote for anyone BUT Obama just for the neener neener neener aspect. She is NOT that stupid a woman, and she KNOWS that a vote for ANYONE other than Obama--whether it be for McCain or any OTHER third party candidate--is a vote that dilutes the already dubious power of the Democratic party to defeat John McCain, and which will ultimately lead to eight more years of Republican tyranny.
While I have no doubt in my mind that she really, REALLY wanted to be president, and that she still believes that she would have done a better job than Obama in that position, I also believe that she is not so STUPID as to endorse someone completely at odds with her in order to suck on a few sour grapes, to her own long-term detriment.
Hillary Clinton wants her supporters to endorse the Democratic candidate for president--no matter who that might be--because she believes that a Democrat in the White House will facilitate an improvement over what is. I think she's made that pretty clear, and I'm prepared to take her statement at face value rather than assign to her some disgustingly insulting hidden reason for her endorsement.
She's nobody's VICTIM, folks--she may be a lot of things, but she's not STUPID.
Would that I could say the same about all the people who supported her.
That being said....
There's one point that I want to make really clear, right now, that I think will become even more important over the next few months, and that is that I'm not prepared to lose any friends over either my opinion or my friend's opinion regarding the upcoming election. Because, to be honest, I think that losing friends over political opinions (or, really, opinions of ANY kind) is mightily stupid. That's not how I roll--I'm not prepared to have my heart broken in a battle to be RIGHT, because if my heart is broken, I'll have already lost.
I do not love you for the opinions you hold--I love you because I love you. And disagreement does not equal an end to loving you, as far as I'm concerned. I take a great deal of pride in the diversity of my friends list, and am very happy with the balance of varying opinions and worldviews that happen to turn up here.
I'm not prepared to lose any of you, and I'll tell you now that I will END a conversation, even if it leaves egg on my face, rather than risk an unfriending over a political argument.
I'll play fair--I will tag political posts as such, and I will be liberal with the cut tags on my political posts just to keep from pissing you off. So you have been duly warned, and will continue to be warned.
I'll also warn you that you can unfriend me up one side and down the other, and it's likely that I won't unfriend you, unless you specifically tell me to.
But I don't want to lose ANY of you--and I'm hoping that, in the very long, hard fight yet to come this year, I won't.
Of course, there were those in her audience who second-guessed that very clear message and decided to hear what they wanted to hear. I single out, perhaps unfairly, one woman who, when asked why Hillary said that, replied, "She had a gun put to her head."
What?
OK, wait a minute--let's hold on here and think about what you just said.
What you are saying that Hillary is not the smart, savvy, relentless, strong and independently thinking woman that you've been touting all along, but that she is a victim of the Ol' Boys Club, caving into the pressure to endorse an individual she doesn't agree with, and who is, essentially, a LIAR to her supporters because she is saying something that is less than truthful.
And what you're saying is that your heart is breaking because you no longer have the opportunity to support your candidate of choice, who is the self-same individual that you are saying is a spineless, deceitful victim who will lie to save her own ass.
Right.
Now, here's the deal...
I think that the possibility exists that Hillary's downfall was those people who claimed to be her staunchest supporters, because they did her the disservice of losing sight of the issues and, instead, pointed to the least important aspects of her qualifications to be the President of the United States. I think that Hillary's whole campaign, in fact, was smokescreened by the absolute TRIVIA surrounding her person, rather than continuing to focus on the issues and on the good things she was attempting to bring to the table--not just the ones that were pleasing to her feminist supporters.
Oh, and she helped, of course--when the mud started to fly, she was not above lobbing the personal attacks that eventually degraded her campaign, and that, ultimately, gelled the opinion (at least in this house) that her willingness to sling mud was simply an indicator that a vote for her was a vote for four more years of "business as usual".
But, I have to say that, since her concession speech, my opinion of Hillary has gone up about a thousand-fold, because, in conceding to Obama in the way that she did, she made her main point very clearly and concisely. She pointed to the one thing that would have made it very difficult for me to vote against her, and that is this:
Hillary is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep a Republican out of the White House--even if that means endorsing the rival that she has been fighting for months.
There was no gun put to her head, ladies and gentlemen. She's SMART.
And she will be, at the end of all of this, a sitting senator for the state of New York, and a Democrat in the position of president can only HELP her do what she needs to do in order to get her job done. No matter which Democrat is in the White House, the fact that he is a Democrat will mean that she will not spend the next four to eight years fighting to be heard in the same partisan environment with which she's been fighting since she became senator.
She's no VICTIM--she knows what is good for her, and what advantages even her rival is able to afford her.
Please don't denigrate the intelligence and the political savvy of the woman you've supported for weeks and weeks and weeks by claiming that she's a VICTIM of a sexist society and who would expect her supporters to vote for anyone BUT Obama just for the neener neener neener aspect. She is NOT that stupid a woman, and she KNOWS that a vote for ANYONE other than Obama--whether it be for McCain or any OTHER third party candidate--is a vote that dilutes the already dubious power of the Democratic party to defeat John McCain, and which will ultimately lead to eight more years of Republican tyranny.
While I have no doubt in my mind that she really, REALLY wanted to be president, and that she still believes that she would have done a better job than Obama in that position, I also believe that she is not so STUPID as to endorse someone completely at odds with her in order to suck on a few sour grapes, to her own long-term detriment.
Hillary Clinton wants her supporters to endorse the Democratic candidate for president--no matter who that might be--because she believes that a Democrat in the White House will facilitate an improvement over what is. I think she's made that pretty clear, and I'm prepared to take her statement at face value rather than assign to her some disgustingly insulting hidden reason for her endorsement.
She's nobody's VICTIM, folks--she may be a lot of things, but she's not STUPID.
Would that I could say the same about all the people who supported her.
That being said....
There's one point that I want to make really clear, right now, that I think will become even more important over the next few months, and that is that I'm not prepared to lose any friends over either my opinion or my friend's opinion regarding the upcoming election. Because, to be honest, I think that losing friends over political opinions (or, really, opinions of ANY kind) is mightily stupid. That's not how I roll--I'm not prepared to have my heart broken in a battle to be RIGHT, because if my heart is broken, I'll have already lost.
I do not love you for the opinions you hold--I love you because I love you. And disagreement does not equal an end to loving you, as far as I'm concerned. I take a great deal of pride in the diversity of my friends list, and am very happy with the balance of varying opinions and worldviews that happen to turn up here.
I'm not prepared to lose any of you, and I'll tell you now that I will END a conversation, even if it leaves egg on my face, rather than risk an unfriending over a political argument.
I'll play fair--I will tag political posts as such, and I will be liberal with the cut tags on my political posts just to keep from pissing you off. So you have been duly warned, and will continue to be warned.
I'll also warn you that you can unfriend me up one side and down the other, and it's likely that I won't unfriend you, unless you specifically tell me to.
But I don't want to lose ANY of you--and I'm hoping that, in the very long, hard fight yet to come this year, I won't.