Like a Teacher in Summer: No Class
For quite a while, I referred to the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination as Oblahma and Clintoon as a way of representing my general dissatisfaction with these two choices. Although I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, by 1996 the bloom was off the rose when the president passed policies like NAFTA, DOMA, “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” and a host of other policies that hurt working Americans and broke promises to key Democratic constituencies. Ever since, I have been resisitant (and often outright hostile) to Clintonism and the corporate-loving, soft-right policies of the DLC. So it was easy to call the Clinton campaign “Clintoon” because the whole entourage that accompanies the 42nd President and his wife. The more desperate the 2008 primary campaign became, the more cartoonish the Clinton’s appeared.
For similar reasons, I’ve referred to Obama as “Oblahma”: I support the guy now, and believe the candidate is a velvet glove cast in iron, but for a long time I felt his “let’s all come together and reach out and hug” rhetoric was remarkably free of substance.
However, last night Hillary Clinton was in full-fledged Clintoon mode, delivering what was one of the most graceless and tacky speeches I have heard in sometime. Even my parents, both of who supported Clinton in the New Jersey primary, were appalled. This morning my father went so far as to wonder whether Mrs. Clinton has become mentally ill: it sure sounded like she’d gone round the bend to me, contending that she was the stronger candidate:
Who will be the strongest candidate and the strongest … Who will be ready to take back the White House and take charge as commander in chief and lead our country to better tomorrows?
People in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the territories, all had a chance to make your voices heard. And on election day after Election Day, you came out in record numbers to cast your ballots. Nearly 18 million of you cast your votes — for our campaign, carrying the popular vote with more votes than any primary candidate in history.
Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting. You’re the nurse on the second shift, the worker on the line, the waitress on her feet, the small business owner, the farmer, the teacher, the miner, the trucker, the soldier, the veteran, the student, the hardworking men and women who don’t always make the headlines, but have always written America’s story.
You have voted because you wanted to take back the White House. And because of you we won, together, the swing states necessary to get to 270 electoral votes.
And you know — In all of the states, you voted because you wanted a leader who will stand up for the deepest values of our party, a party that believes everyone should have a fair shot at the American dream, a party that cherishes every child, values every family, and counts every single vote.
…and issuing a list of demands:
What does Hillary want? What does she want?
Well, I want what I have always fought for in this whole campaign. I want to end the war in Iraq.
I want to turn this economy around. I want health care for every American. I want every child to live up to his or her God-given potential. And I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible.
You see, I have an old-fashioned notion, one that’s been the basis of my candidacy and my life’s work, that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their own dreams. This nation has given me every opportunity, and that’s what I want for every single American.
That’s why I want universal health care. It is wrong — that Americans pay 50 percent more for health care than the people of any other wealthy nation, with costs doubling this decade, and nearly 50 million people without any health insurance at all.
It is wrong for parents to have to choose between care for themselves or their children, to be stuck in dead-end jobs just to keep their insurance, or to give up working altogether so their kids will qualify for Medicaid.
I’ve been working on this issue not just for the past 16 months, but for 16 years. And it is a fight — it is a fight I will continue until every single American has health insurance, no exceptions and no excuses.
I want an economy that works for all families. That’s why I’ve been fighting to create millions of new jobs in clean energy and rebuilding our infrastructure, jobs to come to all of our states, and urban and rural areas, and suburban communities and small towns.
And that’s why I sounded the alarm on the home mortgage crisis well over a year ago — because these are the issues that will determine whether we will once again grow together as a nation or continue to grow apart.
And I want to restore America’s leadership in the world. I want us to be led once again by the power of our values, to have a foreign policy that is both strong and smart, to join with our allies and confront our shared challenges, from poverty and genocide to global terrorism and global warming.
These are the issues that brought me into this race. They are the lifeblood of my campaign. And they have been and will continue to be the causes of my life. And your spirit — your spirit has inspired me every day in this race. While I traveled our country, talking about how I wanted to help you, time and again you reached out to help me, to grab my hand or grip my arm, to look into my eyes and tell me, “Don’t quit. Keep fighting. Stay in this race.”
…all delivered in a petulant and bizarrely messianic tone that did nothing to unify the party and everything to undermine the actual nominee with suggestions that she won the popular vote. Note to Team Clinton: the primary is decided by who got the most delegates.
As Christina and I listened to the speech we kept waiting for Senator Clinton, the losing candidate, to say “…and the best way to achieve these goals today is to unify our party and support the winner of the Democratic Primary, Senator Barack Obama.” We never heard those words: instead, we watched the losing candidate try to upstage the winning candidate. And this person wants to be vice-president? She doesn’t even have the class to bow out gracefully, how could she be expected to embrace an office charitably described as “not worth a bucket of warm piss” without constantly upstaging the President? It was a classless and tasteless move. I don’t know what the hell she was thinking.
The difference between the two speeches was stark: where Clinton riled up her supporters with implications that she’s not done yet (she certainly didn’t concede) by arguing that she got the popular vote (which again, isn’t what’s important in the primary), Mr. Obama was gracious in victory:
That is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she’s a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she’s a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.
We’ve certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who’s shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning — even in the face of tough odds — is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children’s Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency — an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be. And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.
There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn’t just about the party in charge of Washington, it’s about the need to change Washington.Ê There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.
All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren’t the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn’t do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say — let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.
It would have been nice to see Hillary Clinton exit the stage gracefully, tactfully, and with the class I always associated with her even if I didn’t support her for President.
For now I am going to chalk this up to obstinance and mule-headedness, and hope that once the pain of loss wears off, that Clinton will exhort her supporters (who are already coming together behind Obama) to swallow their pride and their hurt feelings and back the Democratic nominee.
In short, I want her to start being Hillary Clinton again, and not the Clintoon. “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’”, as the saying goes, and our team simply MUST beat the Republicans to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp in November.
3 Responses to “Like a Teacher in Summer: No Class”
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June 4th, 2008 at 11:42 am
There is no “I” in team, but there’s one in “Bill” and “Hillary.”
June 4th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
And on the same note, I want her supporters to stop with all the “Michelle Obama tongue-kissing Osama Bin Laden” level grade-school cr*p. If that’s not too much to ask.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:19 am
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