So, over the weekend, Hillary Clinton announced her concession from the presidential race, and urged all of her supporters to turn and support Obama in her stead. Now, I don't pretend to know uber-amounts about politics, and I was absent for a lot of the beginnings of this political drama, but I have caught up enough to know that: 1) I'm glad that Hillary is out; and 2) It seems kind of churlish to suddenly ask her friends to support the person who has been her primary competition for the last several months. All she's done for ages is debate with this person as to why he's an unfit candidate for President, and now she's telling everyone to vote for him. I guess that's how it goes, when you bow out of the race, but seriously, the whole game seems so contrived. Unfortunately, there's not a clear good choice this time around, but I'm pretty sure that Obama would be a veritable political mess in office. No matter what he does, if things turn out sour and people criticize him, everyone will pull the race card, whether or not it has anything to do with the issue at hand. People always say his candidacy has nothing to do with race, but then bring it up anyway! (Especially his wife, oh pur-lease!)
Honestly, I don't think I ever really took Hillary seriously as a presidential candidate. She seemed like a teenager running for student body president rather than a senator running for President of the United States. Some of the Hmong people I talked to about this really had quite a few good points as to why this woman could not run the country, but I won't post them at the risk of igniting a flame of indignation, especially for the super-feminists among you. Besides, Hillary has already basically served two terms as President, it wouldn't be fair for her to get another go!
Here's hoping she doesn't brown-nose her way into a VP spot in the Obama campaign. That's just what we need, Obama AND Clinton in the office...
amen
ReplyDeleteFor the record (because I want to show off some recently acquired knowledge of politics - I've been watching the news a lot), it's not strange at all for Hilary to throw her support behind Obama. It's good politics. She did it for the same reason that Mitt Romney bowed out of the race early and supported McCain - because even though candidates would rather win themselves, they are not so petty as to put personal desire to win above wanting their party to win. (At least this is what I choose to believe - they may be petty at heart, but I do think most of them care more about the issues they profess to support and effecting change where they see problems than they do about just advancing themselves to a position of power. I hope that at least some politicians get into politics because they believe in something.) It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Obama either asked Clinton to be his running mate or adopted some of her policies, because he has to gain some of her supporters if he wants to win. It's the reason JFK asked LBJ to be his running mate, and the reason that (I think) Reagan asked George Bush Sr. to be his. Long battles like this typically lead to a weakened vote for the party, so they are going to do whatever they can to make up for lost time and get everything they've got behind they're candidate. I'm not personally sad that Hilary is out, but I do think that she's a very capable human being - superfeminism aside. I'll be very interested to see how all of this plays out - tensions are running high and it's going to be exciting to see what the winner makes of his (we can say that now I guess) presidency. I can't wait to see what happens.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, thanks for the comment Megan, I can understand that. Then again, if he suddenly adopts some of Hillary's beliefs or opinions, there's always the danger of being called a flip-flopper, changing his views just to get more supporters, especially since there are so many new people who he's eligible to win over.
ReplyDeleteThere are too many things that go along with having Hilary as a president. Too many people making a big deal about the woman thing, another Clinton in the white house, blah blah blah. Plus I really didn't like Hilary's running style.
ReplyDeleteI say anything that protects my religious rights and family, I will vote for, because isn't that why we are here after all?