Posted by Care4all:
Also, as an adult voter, I thought all of this Hope and change CRAP was just that, crap...and simply NOT TRUE, because it was apparent that Obama WAS THE INSIDER and NOT Hillary as all thought.... He has the Kennedy family, Kerry, Dean, all the insiders of the political Democratic Arena, on his side...it ain't hillary that is the insider, but Obama....and as I have asked many times, WHAT IS IT that makes Obama the Candidate of Change?
Care, I was thinking about this, and wanted to get back to you. It's an valid and interesting question.
At least, this is my take. I’ve never personally assigned much significance to the hype about hope and change. Those are campaign slogans. Rhetorical devices.
I’ve tried to remain a relatively dispassionate observer of the squabbles between Obama partisans and Clinton partisans. The candidates I liked were Edwards first, Dodd second, and Kucinich third. So, I was never emotionally invested in either Clinton or Obama. I think I’ve previously addressed to you my distaste with some of the dirty politics and campaign tactics that have been employed. Appalling.
Here’s my reason for voting for Obama in my state’s primary; and it’s got nothing to do with “hope” or “change”. I actually don’t think there’s much difference between Obama and Clinton on the domestic policy front. I voted for Obama because he was against the war. That’s first and foremost. I also think he might be better on foreign policy, and in transforming our relations with the world. Clinton has been too belligerent with respect to Iran for my taste, and I’m not sure I trust her to get out of Iraq as quickly as Obama has promised. She hemmed and hawed for too many years about whether her war vote was a mistake.
Third, I think Obama has the potential to be transformational in terms of the way the Democratic Party moves forward from here. He’s shown a real talent for transforming the way money is raised, and for the way politics can be run from the grass roots at the state level, as opposed to being run by some command and control war room in DC or New York. I really like the fact that he’s found a way (to a significant extent) to bypass the standard sources of dirty political money. That could be a positive development. Possibly making the party more beholden to small cash individual donors, and not fat cat bigwigs. I don’t personally think Obama is a true, ideological progressive. But, I think once you take money and power out of the hands of Wall Street fat cats, and put that power in the hands of average Americans, the political dynamic of the country ultimately moves towards the progressive or populist side of the spectrum. I think that’s a given.
So, that’s pretty much why I voted for Obama: the Iraq War, foreign policy, and political transformation of the Democratic Party. The “hope” stuff just doesn’t sway me; I recognize it for what it is: rhetoric. Lastly, I think Obama did run a cleaner campaign. At least from what I've seen. That's admirable; but it doesn't ultimately determine my vote. I know Obama has played some hardball too, and I'd be the first to tell you that the media has been very misogynist towards Clinton. I've always noted that, and commented on that. But, I still feel like Obama played cleaner than Clinton. I just get the sense that he doesn’t personally like to play that dirty. Which is cool; a lot of politicians play dirty. But, I hear you loud and clear with regard to your thoughts that partisans from both campaigns have said and done some toxic and divisive stuff.
Now, I think Clinton’s policies are actually nominally better on a few domestic issues. At least on paper. And Care, I think I would actually vote for her against McCain if she were the nominee. Even though some of the campaign tactics she’s done have really pissed me off. I nevertheless think I would feel compelled to vote for her simply on issues pertaining to the courts, to Roe v. Wade, and to global warming. I don’t think I could stand by and watch McCain hand the courts over to some anti-choice, anti-civil rights, Federalist Society hacks. And I know I couldn’t stomach watching him make some fake, half-assed, ineffective policy choices on climate change.
But, I would be MUCH happier voting for Obama, for the reasons I stated above. Even though he was like my fourth or fifth choice, out of the Dem nomination candidates.
