Driven to Obama
As many of you know, I’m not a big supporter of either of the Democratic candidates for President. The fact is my guy was Edwards, and he dropped out, so I’m left with what I like to call the Clintoon and Oblahma.
Having lived through the Bill Clintoon (th-th-th-there go your jobs, folks), and jumped off that bandwagon in 1996 after NAFTA and the PRWORA, it was still more difficult than I expected to support Obama.
I honestly don’t get the soaring rhetoric about his “soaring rhetoric”: I’ve heard some of his speeches and they strike me as fairly standard political mumbo-jumbo. “Change!” “We are the power!” Whatever dude, whatever works for you.
However, there is no way I can support Clinton. not after her husband’s policies, which she claims as part of her 35 years of experience, and thus promises to continue. Not after the failures of the DLC, which lost elections and hurt Americans, and who a Clinton restoration will return to power.
Today it got a lot easier. Surfing the blogosphere, I read one too many stupid, inaccurate, and downright offensive posts about Obama and his supporters. It included all the ingredients sure to make me want to pick up my computer and hurl it across the room. Cultist and his followers? Check. False comparisons Check. Right wing frames that are easily disproved with 5 seconds on google? Check. Dismissing his supporters as freaks, lunatics, and ignorant selfish children who don’t know any better? Check and double check. Obama supporters are sexists? Check.
So I emailed BMT poster Luam, co-chair of Philadelphia’s Obama campaign. “My annoyance = your guy’s gain” was the subject. I’m volunteering some time to phone-bank, and may knock on doors as well. I probably won’t give money (that’s in short supply these days, and I have a 4 year old boy to feed, clothe, and entertain), but I think the legwork will make up for that. I’m certainly going to get a bumper sticker and a poster for my living room window.
And it’s all out of spite. If the Clinton campaign and its supporters want to tell me that I don’t count, that the campaign that promises to more closely meet my demands is the equivalent of Ken Starr, that Rove-style dirty tricks (ie, NAFTAgate in Ohio) are OK, that tearing down her opponent in a way that helps the Republicans is fine strategy, and that actually having some tiny little last remaining hope for change is foolishness, well that’s their business.
My business is to say “DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE ASS ON THE WAY OUT” and work to make sure the candidate I don’t support loses, and loses big time. You want to tell me I don’t count? To turn a certain someone’s chant upside down, “No, you can’t.”
I’m going to show you I DO count, just to spite you. And yes, I can do that very well.
Oh, and by the way, that speech the Clintoon likes to mock? Here it is.
October 2, 2002
Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.
My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don’t oppose all wars.
After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.
So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?
Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?
Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.
The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.
Mrs. Clinton, you and your supporters can shove THAT straight up your entitled narcissist asses. And when you’re done?
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March 11th, 2008 at 5:50 am
She really did herself a 24-hour-news-cycle solid by inviting Obama to be her running mate. Because if you pretend you’re winning, you’re winning, right? Delusion or just plain arrogance? Man, it’s going to take a lot of booze to make the next eight-odd months disappear. I am so completely sick of this garbage.