Hillary

Readers of my blog will know that I can't stand Hillary Clinton. What might be less clear, is that this attitude only developed during her primary run as president. Prior to that, I really didn't have strong feelings about her one way or the other.

I didn't plan on voting for her - even from the beginning of the campaign - despite the fact that she's a woman. Yeah, I said that right - DESPITE. I think our country would be a better place with a woman as president. We need a different perspective of what a president can/should do that a woman president could provide. Men don't have a monopoly on wisdom. But Hillary is married to Bill Clinton, who has already been president. If she were president for 2 terms after Bush, that would 28 years of the president coming from 2 families. Dynastic families are NOT good for democracy (small D). Don't take my word for it. Read Kevin Phillips' Dynasty. He wrote it about 5 years ago, using the Bush family as an illustration of why this was a bad thing. I read it and was persuaded of the danger of dynastic families. So, nothing personal to Hillary, but I wasn't voting for her. Had Obama been part of a dynastic political family, I wouldn't have voted for him either.

But as the primaries wore on (AND ON AND ON AND ON......) my feeling on Hillary turned from indifference to anger toward her. It's not only what she and Bill said in SC about Obama (and yes I've watched the whole clip on YouTube, not just the clips from MSM). It's the whole attitude of her campaign that somehow she is entitled to be president and the rest of the country should somehow be "grateful" that she's "willing" to be president. In any case, the degree of her (and her husband's) power hunger became very apparent to me and I just can't stand the sight of her anymore. I know that's not fair, but there it is.

I've done my best to keep my mouth shut around people that I know are Hillary supporters - I have friends and family who support her after all. And friends and family are SO much more important than politics will ever be. It also doesn't do any good to have a hissy fit about politics, because no one really listens to your rants. It's just another, more personal, symptom of what is wrong with American politics currently. Why add more to the problem?

But I have to say that Hillary's speech on Tuesday really pissed me off. I really didn't expect her to concede that night, even after I read on the internet tubes that she was going to. It just seemed impossibly mature for someone to do that on the same day that she lost the election. Hillary has displayed many qualities over the years without maturity cropping up even once. I did, however, expect her to display some amount of graciousness in her speech. Show Obama and his supporters some respect.

Expecting anything from Hillary except self-aggrandizement was a big mistake. She displayed a total lack of class or dignity. She also used the flimsy excuse of needing to hear from her supporters about what should come next before she could make up her mind about what to do. Really? Your opponent has reached the delegate threshold for the Democratic nomination - the goal your own campaign manager said was the goal that very morning on morning television - and you can't decide for yourself what to do??? You've been running for president for 17 months and you have no EXIT STRATEGY?!!!??? Your opponent has made it mathmatically impossible for you to capture the Democratic nomination this election year and you need your supporters to email you before you know what to do?

I know that she was being disingenious about this. But is the time for ANOTHER disingenuous president? Haven't we had enough of that already? I know I have.

I've heard, along with everyone else, that she'll be speaking tomorrow to concede. Great. Let's get it over with, so I don't have to see her anymore. That's all I want. I don't have ANY hope that she will make any serious effort to support Obama this election. There's nothing in it for her. If he wins, her chance of ever winning the White House goes down dramatically. And she's proven, getting behind that desk in the Oval Office is the ONLY thing that's important to her.