I figure I'd better write this now, a few minutes before the Indiana and North Carolina polls begin to close, because later on I might be too depressed.
I'm a grumpy new Democrat, having changed my registration to "D" from non-affiliated a few months ago so I could vote for Obama in the Oregon primary.
I felt good back then. Now Obama v. Clinton is a game that's feeling way tired, way repetitive, way past its prime. The Democrats need to get it on against McCain, not themselves.
Clinton is really starting to irritate me, though at first (briefly) I was in her camp.
Obviously her supporters are equally piqued at Obama, because I just saw an exit poll where about half of Clinton voters in Indiana and North Carolina said they'd either vote for McCain or not at all come November if Obama gets the nomination.
Many more Obama voters – 70%, I recall – said they'd vote for Clinton if, god forbid, she's the nominee. See, we're more enlightened than Clinton supporters.
And that's another gripe I've got against her. Clinton is relying on winning over the uneducated, the clueless, the rednecks, the embittered, the unemployed.
That may be good politics. But I'll be damned if I want the future course of our county left in the hands of the people least qualified to make that decision.
If they're swayed to vote for Clinton by a promise of a $30 summer driving gas tax bonus, her pandering to the lowest common mental denominator just proves that Obama's call for a new style of politics is right on.
Last night Jon Stewart had a great The Daily Show segment on Clinton's gas tax proposal being dismissed as a screwy idea by so many economists, she couldn't mention one who favored it. Yet she still thought it was a good notion, because economists are elitists.
Stewart showed her face morphing into George Bush's. This sort of non-rational, anti-scientific thinking is just what we've had to suffer through for the past eight years.
And now Clinton wants to bring us more of the same. No thanks.
Hopefully Indiana and North Carolina will start to drive the nails in Clinton's coffin. Her time has come…to go.
It is disillusioning. We have wanted to believe as Democrats (those of us who have been one) were superior, wouldn't be fooled by a Bush and yet here we are seeing one state after another vote for the same kind of tricks. Worse is the number of people who are believing those stupid emails that suggest Obama would be some kind of terrorist if he was elected. The people who benefit from this kind of ignorance are the same ones who are doing all they can to destroy our public school system, creating more and more people incapable of using simple logic to make decisions or do research on their own for what is true. It's worrisome. I hope for the best but when she is successful with some of her latest spiels, it worries me about our country and where it's going. There are so many people who still support Bush with torture or his running us into bankruptcy and seemingly not seeing where it's going to end up with these debts accruing. I think anybody not depressed by it is not thinking. I still hope for the best but I don't know... :(
Posted by: Rain | May 06, 2008 at 04:29 PM
The results from the night are that she is done. She got hammered in NC, and she squeaked out what is basically a tie in my state of Indiana, which is even less impressive for her when you consider the thousands of Indiana republicans who voted for Clinton in order to try to prolong the in-fighting and help McCain. Without that, she would have been beaten, and probably soundly beaten, in Indiana.
There is no path remaining for her to get the nomination. If she still feels that she must continue the campaign, hopefully she will at least try to recover some dignity and run a positive campaign from here on out and stop the negative smears against her own party's nominee.
Posted by: Zack | May 07, 2008 at 07:27 PM