Just a few weeks ago I wrote that I was sympathetic to Hillary Clinton, and would vote for her if she was the nominee even though I am supporting Barack Obama, because the possibility of another four years of disastrous Republican policies and never-ending war was simply too painful to contemplate.
I probably still will vote for her if she is the nominee, as the Republican candidates haven't yet turned into compassionate and decent human beings, but the thought of voting for her increasingly turns my stomach.
I've written about the pathology of the Clintons already, and stated why putting them back in the White House would be bad for the country (though not as bad as putting McCain or Romney or Huckabee in – just bad in a different way), but Hillary's refusal to honor her word with respect to the Michigan and Florida primaries should be a lesson to all of us.
Hillary can't be trusted to keep her word.
My understanding is that all of the candidates agreed they would not campaign in Florida or Michigan because those two states moved their primaries up after the Democratic Party had agreed that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina would be allowed to hold their caucuses and primaries before Super Tuesday. They also agreed that Michagan's and Florida's delegates would not be seated at the convention and so they would have no say in who the nominee was. Obama and Edwards took their names off the Michigan ballot, in the spirit of honoring their pledge. Hillary kept her name on the ballot, so of course, she won.
In Florida, though, the candidates' names all remained on the ballot. Now, Hillary is trying to curry favor with Floridians by saying that she wants the delegates from both Michigan and Florida to be seated and their votes to count. And tonight she is holding a victory party in Florida in anticipation of her win. Some say she is doing this to leave voters with a memory of a Clinton victory rather than the memory of Obama's South Carolina victory before Super Tuesday.
This may be true, but it may also be true that she realizes the race is so close that the only way she can avoid a floor fight with Obama at the convention is to seat those delegates.
What these tactics tell me is that Hillary is not a woman of her word. She changes her mind and goes back on a promise in order to win. And it isn't the first time. The Clinton campaign, or Clinton surrogates, also tried to change the rules in Nevada. After the Nevada Democratic Party had decided to hold caucuses in the casinos to allow the workers there to participate, a lawsuit was filed to disallow these caucuses. Of course, the lawsuit, brought by the union that supported Hillary, was only filed after the union representing the casino workers endorsed Obama. Fancy that!
These reversals may be smart politics, but they are also a sign of raw ambition, with honesty and integrity taking a back seat. And campaign tactics aren't the only place where we've seen Hillary put her ambition before anything else.
We all know that Hillary's vote to support the Iraq War was a calculated political move. She knew she could not vote "no," even if it was the right thing to do because she believed it would kill her chances to be commander in chief. I guess she figured the vote would be far enough away from her 2008 campaign to allow people time to forget. And it appears many Democrats have because she is currently the front runner in a party whose members opposed the war when she supported it.
The American people deserve better than candidates who lie, scheme, cheat, and steal. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and most of all Richard Nixon have manifested such glaring character flaws. Hillary's recent actions in the campaign show us that she is capable of the same.
Andrew Sullivan cites one of his readers who calls Hillary "Nixon in a Pantsuit."
I really hate to say it, but I think Andrew's reader was right.
