Thursday, May 15, 2008

Clinton & Obama

When the Democratic Party primary season began I was a Hillary Clinton supporter. After Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses, I started paying attention to him. Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary found me still supporting her but not as much.

It was the injection of race into the South Carolina primary by Bill Clinton that made me anti-Clinton, and my antipathy to her has only grown since. In the recent West Virginia primary she became the Great White Hope, saying in not so subtle ways that white working class people will not vote for a black man to be president. What Hillary Clinton has failed to mention is that only 35% of the white working class voted for Bill Clinton, that neither Al Gore 2000 or John Kerry in 2004 carried the white working class. The white working class is not going to vote for the Democratic candidate, white or black.

But this is only one of the many examples of the dishonest and pandering campaign Hillary Clinton has run. Equally disappointing is that her ideas are old. She's 60, and she sounds like she hasn't had a new thought in the past 40 years. I say this as someone who is 9 years older than she is, so I know an old idea when I hear it. I listen to her and all I hear is the same ol' tired politics I've been hearing since Richard Nixon was president. If by some miracle she becomes the Democratic Party nominee for president, Americans will have to choose between Old and Older.

Even worse, however, is her pandering to white racism has made us a far more racially divided nation than we were before her march to the White House was stopped by Barak Obama. I cannot ever forgive her for that.

TODAY'S WORD

Bedrabble (bed-RAB-ul): To befoul with rain and mud

There have been sunny days when I've felt bedrabbled!

julius.lester@gmail.com

1 comment:

EnnaVic said...

yay - glad you have comments going. There have been many of your posts where I wanted to comment.

I have been an Obanma supporter since early on. As an outsider (in New Zealand) I think he provides the best hope of a fresh start for the US because, to much of the world, it looks as if you have gone way off track. I listened to a very good debate as part of our annual Writers and Readers festival the other night - I caught the end of it and then tracked down the podcast. Some of it horrified me and it may not be entirely balanced as it is talking to authors and so is a point of view, but it is thought provoking and worth listening to.

The podcast is here.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/writers_festivals