Hillary Clinton's strategy of "throwing everything but the kitchen sink" at Barack Obama in order to wound him, slow his momentum and convince superdelegates she is more electable was starting to have some effect, especially once the Rev. Wright flap erupted (with some secret help from the Clinton campaign perhaps?), but I suspect it will ultimately not work. There are some indications that the speech given by Obama slowed the bleeding, and now I am hearing and reading commentary that calls for us to chill, stop playing gotcha politics with Obama, and speak like grown-ups about race. I will cite some of that commentary in a later post. In this post I wish to speak personally about why I am so disappointed in and even disgusted by Hillary Clinton.
When the Clintons were under attack from the right wing and the media, before the 1992 election when the allegations of infidelity threatened to doom his candidacy, and again during the Monica scandal and the impeachment, a lot of us felt the Clintons were being treated unfairly and we defended them. I personally stood up to my family and my in-laws who were opposed to Clinton's political agenda and scandalized by his moral failings. I condemned the right wing witch hunts against the Clintons, as did so many other Democrats. In spite of what I knew were their failings, I supported the Clintons, thought impeachment was not justified, and condemned those who were obviously and unfairly out to get them.
Now the Clintons are doing to Barack Obama exactly what was done to them. In the wake of the recent Rev. Wright media blitz, Hillary Clinton has been wooing superdelegates, trying to convince them Barack is unelectable because of it. Instead of standing up for him, as so many stood up for the Clintons when they were being attacked, she is doing the attacking. And she is doing it because all she cares about is winning and gaining power.
Many of us stood up for Bill Clinton when others were attacking him. Even when we found out he had betrayed all of us with his lies, we still stood up for him because we felt he had been treated unfairly. We stood up for Hillary, when people were accusing her of being a lesbian, of causing Bill to cheat on her, and later of staying with him for purely political reasons.
Now, when people are unfairly attacking her opponent in her own party, rather than having the grace and dignity to condemn it, she piles on and tries to take advantage of it.
That is why I condemn Hillary Clinton, while I will never again defend or support her, and why I will not vote for her if she is the nominee. I defended her husband even after he betrayed his supporters with his lies about his behavior. I will not defend her when she adopts the tactics that were used against her and her husband, and attacks a member of her own party so obviously, so callously and so unfairly. As far as I can tell, everything Hillary Clinton has ever done, from her work in the Rose Law Firm, to working for specific liberal policies, to staying with a philandering husband, to voting for the Iraq War, has been done for one reason only: to someday win the White House.
Barack Obama got in the way of her life's ambition and she will apparently stop at nothing - not even fomenting racism - to shove him out of the way. For that reason, she must be stopped.
