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Just wrote a whole post about the health status of various Kennedy siblings, scornful of a reporter's reference to two existing Kennedy sisters, only to realize I was completely wrong and Jean Kennedy Smith is still alive and kicking. This is embarrassing given that my mom and I were literally talking about this four days ago. My brain is apparently disintegrating. Also, I should have gone to bed at 2 a.m. and it is now 3 a.m. I am apparently far too hyped up about the primary and the revelatory powers of Facebook. *thud*
Feb. 5th, 2008
Let's set aside a couple of things that I believe I've already expressed here and elsewhere -- that Barack Obama's 11 years as a legislator and six years as a community organizer are just as relevant as Hillary Clinton's seven years of experience as a legislator and eight years of experience as First Lady, that I have firsthand experience with being represented by both Obama and Clinton and think Obama did a much better job of it, that Hillary Clinton has chosen her votes based on political expediency rather than the public good (even more so than most politicians do), that America and the world have suffered greatly for her votes on the Iraq war and are poised to suffer even more based on her recent Iran vote, that the idea of 24 or potentially 28 straight years of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton is repellant to me for reasons I can't really rationally explain except that it just LOOKS icky, that even though I dream of a day when America will finally have a female president I refuse to simply vote my identity..let's instead talk about the two points that seem to be overriding everything else in the liberal blogosphere today, two points with which I thoroughly agree:
The Pragmatic
"Given a certain ceiling on Clinton's appeal (due largely to years of unhinged attacks from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"), her campaign seems well prepared to run a 50 percent + 1 campaign, a rerun of 2004 but with a state or two switching columns: Florida, maybe, or Ohio...[T]here's the question of coattails. In many senses there's less difference between the two presidential candidates than there is between a Senate with fifty-one Democrats and one with fifty-six. No Democratic presidential candidate is going to carry, say, Mississippi or Nebraska, but many Democrats in those states fear that the ingrained Clinton hatred would rally the GOP base and/or depress turnout, hurting down-ticket candidates." -Christopher Hayes
The Philosophical
"Since faith is already on the ballot, I'm going to vote with a spirit of optimism and reconciliation. I don't know what will happen in December, but I'm voting for the ticket that will draw a new generation into politics. Someone like me isn't like to change anybody's mind, and no doubt whoever gets nominated will sometimes disappoint me and others. But for whatever it's worth, I'm voting for Barack Obama." -RJ Eskow
These two concepts go hand in hand. Hillary is an establishment vote, straight up and down -- but she's a highly divisive member of that establishment. Polls show, and have consistently shown since this race began, that 50% of American voters hold an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton. I simply don't see how someone can be elected president when 50% of the country hates her from the get-go. Whether that hatred is logical or not, it exists. If John McCain is the Republican nominee, I don't believe that Hillary can win. If eight years of the Bush administration can't get a Democrat elected president, the party will have failed utterly, and I doubt that the Democratic majority in Congress will hold two years later. Hope and change may be stupid meaningless buzzwords, but a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the status quo. Barack Obama may not deliver on his inspirational rhetoric, but if there's a chance he might, I'm going for it. I encourage all of you who are voting today, my friends in California, New York, Massachusetts, Utah, Alabama, Missouri, New Jersey, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Connecticut, Arizona and New Mexico (wow, that's a lot of you -- I think I hit all the voting states I have friends in), please consider voting for Barack Obama.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program of Britney Spears not wearing pants, rambling about Muppets, and exciting stories about my cat chasing her own tail. Thank you.
The Pragmatic
"Given a certain ceiling on Clinton's appeal (due largely to years of unhinged attacks from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"), her campaign seems well prepared to run a 50 percent + 1 campaign, a rerun of 2004 but with a state or two switching columns: Florida, maybe, or Ohio...[T]here's the question of coattails. In many senses there's less difference between the two presidential candidates than there is between a Senate with fifty-one Democrats and one with fifty-six. No Democratic presidential candidate is going to carry, say, Mississippi or Nebraska, but many Democrats in those states fear that the ingrained Clinton hatred would rally the GOP base and/or depress turnout, hurting down-ticket candidates." -Christopher Hayes
The Philosophical
"Since faith is already on the ballot, I'm going to vote with a spirit of optimism and reconciliation. I don't know what will happen in December, but I'm voting for the ticket that will draw a new generation into politics. Someone like me isn't like to change anybody's mind, and no doubt whoever gets nominated will sometimes disappoint me and others. But for whatever it's worth, I'm voting for Barack Obama." -RJ Eskow
These two concepts go hand in hand. Hillary is an establishment vote, straight up and down -- but she's a highly divisive member of that establishment. Polls show, and have consistently shown since this race began, that 50% of American voters hold an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton. I simply don't see how someone can be elected president when 50% of the country hates her from the get-go. Whether that hatred is logical or not, it exists. If John McCain is the Republican nominee, I don't believe that Hillary can win. If eight years of the Bush administration can't get a Democrat elected president, the party will have failed utterly, and I doubt that the Democratic majority in Congress will hold two years later. Hope and change may be stupid meaningless buzzwords, but a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the status quo. Barack Obama may not deliver on his inspirational rhetoric, but if there's a chance he might, I'm going for it. I encourage all of you who are voting today, my friends in California, New York, Massachusetts, Utah, Alabama, Missouri, New Jersey, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Connecticut, Arizona and New Mexico (wow, that's a lot of you -- I think I hit all the voting states I have friends in), please consider voting for Barack Obama.
We now return to our regularly scheduled program of Britney Spears not wearing pants, rambling about Muppets, and exciting stories about my cat chasing her own tail. Thank you.
Britney makes me so, so, SO sad. That girl is really sick, and no one is taking care of her. No one has taken care of her for years, or maybe ever -- because she's just a gravy train. A very mentally ill gravy train.