Obama Vs. Clinton

It's getting more and more heated, with more people taking sides. Sully sees it as a "moral and political imperative" that Billary loses:



"The Obama phenomenon rattled them, and their strategy is to quash it, by any means and at any cost. They know that they do not need to win so much as they need to make Obama lose. That's the game-plan. The same emailers seemed unusually convinced that Obama was a closet Muslim and that a black man could never be elected in America. The most depressing tendencies from the right and from the left.


"The more I witness this campaign, the clearer it is to me that it is not only important that Obama and McCain now win; it is a moral and political imperative that the Clintons lose."



The campaign that the Clinton's have decided to run has been utterly disgusting, as gross as Giuliani's has been incompetent. But even beyond that it's become yet another of the many reasons for Democrats to hate Democrats. As a lifelong Democrat, as a believer in the dreams of FDR, JFK, MLK and to some extent even Bill Clinton, I believed that the Democrats were a party of hope, of dreams, and of higher virtues that extended beyond greed, racism, and pettiness. Call me naive, a term I'm sure I am, I always knew that if and when we lost at least we didn't resort to our opponents' methods of pandering and polarization. Yet before we can even get to the main bout the Clinton's have pulled out all of these guns and then some. I understand Billary got a shitty deal in the 90's. Hell, even some Republicans outside of the Rush and Billo faction can realize this, but that's no excuse to sell out your soul for a vote. Some things are supposed to be more important then that. Hope is more important than that.



Right now both sides are in a generational war, and like the war in Iraq it's a war for the hearts and minds of Americans. It's not just about who's going to become the next president--Bush screwed that up too much--it's about direction. In January 2007 it was about making sure a Democrat was in office, but with Obama's entrance the goal was redefined into something that was more grandiose yet vital. In a way it was if he turned back the clock to September 12, 2001 and said what we all wanted to hear: that in these trying times we don't have to be afraid and we don't have to become as brutal as our enemies, that we, like a Phoenix, can spring from the ashes of despair to become something more beautiful and just. That we can, in our founders' words, become more perfect if we believe and work together. And as his popularity has shown this message is something that millions of us have been waiting to hear. If that dream is defeated on it's own merits than so be it. That's what democratic debate is for, to verbally test our ideas and temper them into a pragmatic and workable from. But if, as the Clintons have done and continue to do, that dream is rotted from the inside out with racism, personal attacks, and lies then it hasn't been tested it's been poisoned and left to die in its crib like an infant.

If Hil wins the nomination and McCain is the GOP candidate I'm not going to say that I'll switch sides. I probably won't as the legacy of Bush has given me a near pathological hatred of anything Republican. But I will say this, if I'm in that booth and I turn the lever for Hilary I'll feel that a part of me has died and the rest has gotten older and more bitter. As Langston Hughes wrote, it will be the raisin that dried in the sun.