This election cycle is the one where one of my oldest-held political beliefs will be tested. I have always held that America will elect a Black man to be our president before it will elect a woman of any color, and a woman will be president long before a Jew of either gender. It is just unfortunate that we have a charismatic man running against a woman who was never charming on her own, and was demonized by the Republican right to the point where she can never recover. Don’t get me wrong, I admire much about Hillary Rodham Clinton. I just don’t think she’s at all electable to anyone outside of the intellectual elite. Even though I could, if I wanted, place myself in that group, I can’t vote for her. I tried, Lord knows, but when push came to shove, she reminded me of too many women I’ve known in politics in my life: hard, calculating, cold and as much a smoke-filled back room playa as her husband. I never drank the Clinton kool-aid, neither pro nor con. I don’t think that they are in league with the devil, and I don’t think that they are the best and the brightest of our generation.
Bill was a great president, and a seriously flawed human being. Hillary may be a better human, but she’s a political hack through and through. I don’t want to vote for another party clone. And therein lies the problem of this election. Who do we have running? We have the Manchurian Candidate (McCain) and we have The Candidate (Obama) and we have… what? What does Hillary stand for other than getting elected? Geraldine Ferraro was a more potent icon of the political potential of women than Hillary can ever be.
Which brings me to the point. Hillary needs to let it go. She needs to walk the walk and let the popular vote decide the process, and not manipulate it to achieve the results she and the other power holders want. The Democratic party needs to embrace the populace, and not just pretend to for the sake of rigging elections. We (speaking for the nation, and why can’t I?) have seen how power brokering and rigging elections works. We’ve seen it for eight years. It has worked us to the brink of another Great Depression, and worked us into a quagmire of a war in the Middle East. It has destabilized our position in the world.
Oh, for a viable third party. Any third party. Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Creative Apathy, or even Very Silly. Sigh.