The Forest for the Trees

Again, I skip out on the whole introduction thing, but I'll get to it soon enough. Today, I'd like to talk out some things that are difficult for me to wrap my brain around. I didn't want to write about Hillary Clinton again, seeing as she's lost, but circumstances force me to. "What circumstances," you ask? Read on.

In the last few days NARAL Pro-Choice America has endorsed Barack Obama. Many women are in a rage. Many women's groups are in a rage. Why? Because they feel that said endorsement is disrespectful to Senator Clinton and the voters. They also feel like the timing was bad, as there are 3 weeks left to go in the primaries. They want to know what the hurry is. Huh?

This is where facts and the ability to interpret said facts becomes important. Firstly, the Democratic primaries started in January. That was 5 months ago. Endorsing after 20 weeks with 3 weeks left is hardly rushing.

Secondly, while a math teacher can be sexist, math itself is an abstract concept, and therefore cannot be sexist. This race has been over, mathematically, for at least 2 months. I remember watching Chuck Todd on MSNBC in March, talking about Hillary's steep uphill climb to the nomination. It's now May, and the mountain is no longer steep, it's absolutely vertical.

Thirdly, NARAL endorses and supports pro-choice candidates. Obama is just as committed to choice as Hillary. Actually, maybe more so, as he has more legislative experience than she does. If you want to play the "present vote" game, I won't play with you until you learn the facts.

So now we come to the parts that I don't understand: Why are so many Hillary supporters so averse to voting for Obama? If you're a Hillraiser, then it stands to reason that you are a Democrat. If you are a Democrat, then John McCain's platform doesn't appeal to you. Both Obama and Clinton have said that their policy positions are 95% the same. How aligned are McCain's with theirs? Not very. So, doesn't it then make sense to vote for the person closest to the person you support?

Even with as much dirty shit as Hillary has pulled, I'd still vote for her enthusiastically over McCain. Seeing her transgressions rightly punished is not worth seeing the country go through another 4 years of fear-mongering and fiscal irresponsibility. I do not think that she will make a better President than Obama, but I KNOW she'll be better than McCain, and that's what's important.


I read this article yesterday:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/you-broke-it-you-own-it_b_101673.html

Actually, I tried to read it, but it hurt my head, and not in the good way that Scientific American does. Mrs. Breitweiser is one of the 9/11 widows so shamefully slandered by Ann Coulter a few years back. She and her fellow widows got the government to form the 9/11 Commission. She is an American hero. and we all owe her a great debt. However, she is a prime example of not seeing the forest for the trees.

The main thrust of her argument is that Hillary is the best, Obama sucks, and everybody who votes for Obama sucks. Also, there's a threat to the delegates who are elected officials. It's pretty fucking pathetic. I don't have the time, patience, or will refute her tirade of baseless assertations, but I'll offer this to Mrs. Breitweiser and those who find themselves in agreement with her:

If Hillary Clinton is more "electable" than Barack Obama, why can't she beat him? She's lost every metric. Delegates. Popular vote. States won. Money raised. Number of donations. Number of donors. She's lost a 20 point national polling lead. She's lost name recognition. She lost the anti-war vote. She lost the African American vote. She lost the youth vote. She lost the establishment vote.

I look at it like this, if she can't beat a black guy with a Muslim name, who happens to be a speech plagiarizing empty suit that no one ever heard of before Iowa and who can't win "ïmportant" states, who also happens to be supported by terrorists at home and abroad, and has an angry Black radical preacher, then how the fuck is she going to beat genuine war-hero, bonafide POW, White, male, John McCain? How is she more electable?

Furthermore, if you are one of those people who won't vote for Obama because you're not convinced that he can beat McCain in the fall, then you are an asshole. A stupid asshole, at that. If you're truly worrying about a McCain Presidency, then you should be doing everything in you power to make sure that such a thing never comes to pass. Instead, you, and assholes like you, talk about how Obama's not going to win, and how all of the Obama supporters will be to blame. Actually, I changed my mind, you're not assholes, you're dumb fucks. Dumb, because you recognize neither the irony nor the self-fulfilling prophecy. Fucks, because if you do recognize these things, you take no action against them., and instead, act like petulant children. Yeah, I know it's not very unifying, but I'm not Obama, and you all really are beginning to piss me off. Besides, if you let some anonymous internet post dissuade you from voting for the good of the country, then you deserve the Imperial Theocracy McCain and friends want to give you.

Do you see the infrastructure crumbling? The ever widening gap between the haves and the have-nots? The foreclosures? The weak dollar? The signs of peak oil? Over 4000 dead troops? Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's? The shitty school systems? The corporate takeover on our everyday lives? No. All you see is that your preferred candidate isn't going to be President. All you can see is trees.