I’m not shocked, but I am appalled, that your Powers that Be have decided to endorse Hillary Clinton in her candidacy, instead of Barack Obama – especially after many of your columnists have spoken so eloquently on Obama’s behalf, and decidedly against Hillary. Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins and Nicholas Kristoff have presented Senator Obama’s case persuasively, time and again. Yet, the Times publishers have confirmed their paper as the gray lady, hobbling toward obsolescence, tragically oblivious to the most exciting wave of change America has seen in 40 arid years.
Obama has proven repeatedly – if you take a look at any one of his rallies or at who voted for him in Iowa – that he can bring together young and old, black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American, disabled and healthy, rich and poor, male and female. He alone inspires a nation – depressed and defeated by 7 years of George Bush’s unimaginably disastrous blunders – to believe that we can have integrity again, we can participate in our democracy again, we can get past the divisions that have dehumanized this country for far too long. And most importantly, by electing Barack Obama as President of the United States, we will prove irrefutably to the rest of the world that we have heard the cries of our global family and are willing to re-assert our global citizenship with a fresh representative, a worldly and diplomatic leader.
Hillary Clinton is more of the same. Not only has she not once apologized for her vote on the Iraq War, she gave Bush a blank check in Iran – a nation which, it has since been proven, has no designs on a nuclear weapon. She has said that she condones certain “exceptions” to torture. Her head political strategist, Mark Penn, represents Blackwater. She hasn’t taken privatization of Social Security off the table. She set up “plants” to ask favorable questions in her Iowa Q&A sessions. There have been numerous reliable accounts of voter suppression of Obama supporters by the Hillary camp in Nevada. She attacked Obama for saying that Reagan inspired a movement, but one of the reasons the Salmon Press endorsed her is because she listed Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush as two of her favorite presidents. She and her husband have distorted Senator Obama’s record, over and over again, slandering him out of fear. It is that fear-based decision-making that convinced her the Iraq War was a great idea, when Obama was openly, and un-popularly, against it.
Senator Clinton and her husband have proven in recent weeks that they will do anything to get elected, including try to divide and conquer the very bases they pretend to love so well, minorities and women. Their campaign exemplifies division, negativity, dirty politics and the top-down, “I’m-the-decider” type of attitude America so urgently must abolish. Meanwhile, Barack Obama exemplifies unity, grace under pressure, transparent government and civic engagement.
Hillary Clinton was unable to pass universal health care when her husband was President because she did not win public support for her endeavor. Obama’s experience as a community organizer gives him a unique edge in engaging the public. Having attended a Camp Obama myself, I know that his candidacy brought together Americans from every walk of life. The staff and volunteers he chose to run those camps gave each participant tools to be community organizers of our own. Imagine an America in which every citizen assumed agency for his or her community, an America in which we might often disagree with one another, but in which we transcend our differences for the betterment or our children and in which we trust completely that our leader will listen to, and weigh, each of our beliefs and desires. That is Obama's America.
If Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, she will lose against the Republicans because they have too much dirt on her and Bill. You will be kicking yourselves for endorsing her, when America elects another war-mongering, environment-depleting, civil-rights-bleeding Republican as President just because he promises to reduce taxes and revitalize this pathetic economy George Bush is leaving us. And the cycle continues . . .
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