Fit To Print

Morning In ‘Merica

June 12th, 2008

I wanted to say some things after Hillary conceded. But a lot of what I wrote seemed like rehashing stuff I’d said before, or that had been said by others a thousand times since her concession. So I ditched most of my rehearsed speech, but I’m gonna dust off some of the old clichés and piece together a couple odds and ends in honor of the next president of the United States… Rudy Giuliani!

Even back when Hillary was Senator Inevitable, there was a substantial amount of discontent among progressives in the party over the idea of her as nominee. I’m not sure if those doubters ever would have had a loud enough rallying cry — and possible Obamalternatives may never have entered the race — if Hillary’s stance on Iraq hadn’t given them the substantial issue to make their case on. But as sure as a preposition ended my last sentence, party activists were not happy with Clinton for going along with the single biggest blunder of the single worst Administration in the history of America.

I’ve remarked before that it took a perfect storm for Obama to win the nomination. Hillary’s war vote opened up space on her left, peaceniks in Iowa had the first say in deciding if Barack should be taken seriously, infighting and money mismanagement in Hillaryland coupled with insane fundraising and a better understanding of required delegate math in Obamaville helped him offset her victories in big states with blowouts in caucus states and Obama strongholds, and so on.

However, as I’ve also said previously, and I will be saying again many, many times before November; these are all ancillary reasons for why Barack Obama is going to be on the ballot this fall. He’s also an amazing candidate. And we can thank Clinton for toughening him up, but I think history will help show that this election was won by Barack more than it was lost by Clinton or McCain or anyone else.

I was excited about Gore as president in 2000. I’ve always liked him better than Bill, and we share the same favorite issue; the environment. But what he’s done out of office would not have been possible as president, and it seems now that the best thing about a Gore presidency would be that George W. would still be smirking at a mirror in Texas. Similarly, I liked Kerry and thought him the most liberal choice in 2004 (I like Dean more now than I did then), but his biggest draw was that his last name wasn’t a synonym for a woman’s a shrub. And as Dubya has pissed away Bill Clinton’s balanced budget savings and last-minute attempts at forest conservation, it looks like Bubba’s biggest accomplishment was being elected as a not-Republican during some lean years for Dems.

I guess that is a long way of saying I’m glad we finally have someone to vote for, not just something to vote against.

Entry Filed under: Politics