Hillary, Please Go Away

I'm getting really sick of this.

I didn't hate Hillary Clinton when all this started. Plus, I've always been kind of a champion for women's rights. I've been a fairly typical male in a lot of respects, but I've been out there for women quite a lot in my life, and I don't mean Eliot Spitzer-style. I don't think there is any male who wants to see women achieve equal rights and respect in every area more than I do, and I can say that with conviction. I know that if the United States is around long enough, there will be a lot of capable and talented women holding the office of the Chief Executive. I have felt strongly about this sort of thing long enough that I don't have to consider voting for someone out of sexist or racist guilt. I feel free to consider candidates based on their merits, and I'm confident that neither racism nor sexism will be involved in my decision, including reverse racism or sexism. I'm going to try and pick the best person. Just so you know.

Hillary, please go away. I can't believe your capacity for screwing things up. You've lost, dear. It's over. Better luck next time, and thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts. Please get out of here before you take all the hope and promise of the 2008 Presidential Campaign and turn it into yet another chapter in the total nightmare that has been the 21st Century up to now. To a very great extent, your base has become Rush Limbaugh Republicans who flood the voting booths of open primaries at the behest of their chubby spokesman to prop up support for the candidate they would prefer to face this fall. You have never embraced the really progressive principles of the Democratic side of the fence, preferring instead the big business of backroom deals and cynical posturing. You voted for war, and you voted for tough talk, you lied about NAFTA in a couple of dozen different ways, you have reveled in the politics of fear and of racial division, and you've taken the excitement of a nation and twisted it up in a manner reminiscent of Bush's squandering of global good will after 9/11. This isn't how it's supposed to be, and I venture there's as little real support for you right now as there is for W. I had some hopes for you, despite your reputation as a Centrist, but you're simply proof of how corrupt our system has become.

Drop out of the race. Now! America is sick of you! We're sick of Mark Penn and Ed Rendell and Eliot Spitzer and Geraldine Ferraro and the whole ulcerous corrupt lot of you. We're sick of the way you're playing with Florida and Michigan, the way you skirt around the edges of race, good grief, don't get me started again, just go!

Fortunately, there seems to be precious little chance you're going to win. You've started the worst of these games too late, and the lead is just a little too big. You're not going to get there. At this point, you'd need to win about 62-63% of the votes remaining even to get anyone to listen to you, and only your blindest followers believe you can do that. If you simply planned to compete, fairly and honestly, then I'd say go for it. I love a good competition, and I'd be more than happy to go toe to toe on the issues with you the rest of the way. But that's not what's going on, is it? We're all going to have to start wearing athletic cups the rest of the way over here, even the women, because the frequency of hits below the belt is beyond belief.

Politics just isn't the way it used to be, is it? Time was, when most of these tricks could be pulled off pretty much unchallenged. We'd get maybe a sniff of what was going on in the paper and on the evening news, but that's all we knew. Now, it's a new ball game. Now, the whole filthy game plan is laid out on the internet for inspection, and we can decide what we like for ourselves. Even so, you came awfully close to pulling it off, and you can still do so much damage that even a sorry old loser like John McCain might come out of this thing with the prize when it's all said and done.

I've already done a fair amount of ranting on this topic before I started to write this post. I've been over at Huffington Post, among other places, getting all this off my chest. Here's one I wrote in response to a nice post by Jane Smiley, called I'm Already Against The Next War:

Hillary's right, you know.

You've got to be a little bit crazy to take on the entrenched interests in D.C. Hillary's been there, and she knows how corrupt it really is. When you think of the tremendous power and influence, permeating every aspect of government, military, corporations and the media, it's absolutely hopeless. Unquestionably, the only sensible thing to do is not try to beat them, and to make the best of things by slapping them on the back and trading shots with them on long flights. We're all doomed, anyway. If global warming doesn't get us, a loose nuke will, because we're driving everyone on the planet crazy, and it's going to take a whole lot more than a president to stop us. I mean, get real, people!

The trouble is, I guess I'm a little bit crazy, deep down. I still believe that as long as there are just a few of us who cling to the real principles of democracy, and the highest aspirations of humanity, we are charged to defend those principles and aspirations to our final breath. For the most part, the odds are stacked against us, and try as we might to shake off the Clintons of the world, she is, as Jon Stewart claims, like The Terminator. You think you've destroyed her, but then all the little globs start rolling back together, and she rises up again.

Yes, she's corrupt. She's the perfect candidate for the nation that has taken corruption to its grandest scale, and I can see her extensive experience informing all that she says and does. I am beyond impressed by how well she has learned her lessons. By all accounts, she is indeed the perfect choice to carry this nation forward in the coming years. Except that every sign and signal of nature and the soul tells us that now, and not a moment later, we have to bring our current momentum to a halt, and for once as a nation stop and reflect on what it all means, and for that task Hillary is completely unprepared.

It has long seemed foolish and naive to me to think that we would ever have a chance to turn things around, and then I watched a young man from Illinois last year announce his candidacy before the same courthouse where another young man named Abraham Lincoln once did the same thing. I knew then that he was different, and if the impossible ever had a chance to occur in my lifetime, it would be because of him. In the year since, I've watched him closely. I haven't always been overjoyed, but most of the time my admiration of his abilities has only deepened. I am no blind Moonie-style follower. There are no rose-colored glasses perched on the bridge of my aging nose. I've seen a whole lot of politicians come and go, and I've seen a whole lot of talented careers in a great many fields. The first time I saw Robin Williams on the stage, I knew -- and told my friends -- that he'd be huge. My friends just laughed. The first time Jerry Rice stepped on the football field for the 49ers, I told my co-worker that he would be to receivers what Jim Brown had been to running backs. My co-worker scoffed.

Barack Obama will be to American Presidents what no other politician has been in my lifetime, if he can get through these final hurdles. And in the end, it may still be only a fool's errand, because the deck really is stacked against any serious attempt to turn back the tsunami waves of American money and power, but you've got to at least try. You put your best man (or woman) out there and give it a shot. He may not be the best candidate for the America we've come to know, but he's the best one we have for the America I want to see.

I can tell you all this, Ms. Smiley, because from what I've read in this and other excellent posts you've made, I think you will understand. I can't say this to Hillary and her supporters. They don't know what I'm talking about at all.

"Bill Clinton was the best Republican president I ever worked for." -- Alan Greenspan