Why Hillary Should Not be VP to President Obama
60
The Bad Dream Team
Last night, for the first time in the history of the world, a black man became the presidential nominee for a western nation. Not only that, he seized this nomination with the dollars and hard work of thousands of ordinary people who felt so strongly that America needs a major change--No, more like a complete surgical makeover--that they forked over money they don't really have to make absolutely sure he would seize the nomination. His rallies remind me of when the Beatles first came to America, that's how excited people get about him.
America hasn't seen this kind of response to a political candidate since, well, since ever. For the first time since I was a young person (and that was a long, long time ago), young people actually care passionately about politics.
And consider this: Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic Party's 2008 Presidental nomination will take place 45 years to the day from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech given at the 1963 March on Washington, at the very apex of the Civil Rights Movement. Anyone who doesn't tear up contemplating that fact has got to be asleep, unwell, or insane. Frankly even now as I think about it, it's all I can do not to blubber like a baby.
Meanwhile, in a dark underground cavern somewhere in Gotham City, Hillary Clinton was preparing to release the flying monkeys. Whipping select feminist fans into a delusional frenzy, she reiterated her popular-vote victory (using the new Clinton math, which certainly is about "Change!" as it changes every week), imploring devotees to visit her website (where money can be left instantly by charge or debit card), and loudly proclaiming an entitlement to a VP invite that she will then A) accept while covertly looking for a Sons of the South hit squad, or B) set on fire while shrieking "Never!" and cackling insanely.
Listen, I used to teach feminist philosophy at a state unversity.
And even I want her to shut up.
A Marriage Made In Hell
Have you ever been in one of those relationships where, after a brief and pleasant whirl, you descend into this purgatory of stupid, repetitive fights that go nowhere and make you want to drop to your knees and pray for deliverance? You know the kind of fights I mean; the ones that, if you had a little tape recorder on you at all times, you could just flip a switch and check out while the tape took care of your side of the battle? These relationships go nowhere, and if we are smart and a little bit lucky, we get out of them ASAP.
I don't know about you, but that is not the kind of relationship I want going on at the level of Presidential politics, at least not now, not with all these new and huge, terrifying challenges facing our country, and what's more, it is completely inconsistent with Obama's message of "Change We Can Believe In." While Dream Team fans point to a solid undefeatable base of both Obama and Clinton supporters against an already dottering, impotent McCain, there is a lot more at stake here than 'electibility'. Change. We want CHANGE. Hello? Earth to Planet Clinton? Put away the death ray now, pretty please?
Americans made it clear in the last Congresssional election that we wanted change and we wanted it pronto. We didn't get it, not nearly as much as we clearly, unanimously, asked for. We're still in Iraq. We'll be in Iraq for the next 40 years unless we leave. We don't have even a glimmer of a health care program yet. We wanted that too, said so loudly, don't have it. Hillary was able to not get it for us back when Bill was in office, and here we are, years later, still not having it. Last week, even with health insurance, I got an emergency room bill for $8793.67. I MAKE $12.17 per hour at 55 with two college degrees, and I can't ditch that crappy job on literal pain of death. My patience is wearing thinner than my thrift-shop summer wardrobe. Do I think the Clintons deserve a do-over? I do not.
What's more, the Clintons have a much-deserved reputation for stirring up more mud and mess than all the hogs in Arkansas. I'm not judging or blaming them, I'm just stating a universally recognized fact. It doesn't matter if other people are at fault for it. Remember how many millions and millions and millions of dollars were wasted on trying to detect semen on a polyester dress and turn that into a major political crisis? We need that money for more important things right now.
For a few years after the 2004 election, before Hillary was actively running for President, Bill was beginning to look like an American Statesman. He was looking smart and wise and eloquent, largely because our President is so, so, so not any of those things. But then, Hillary began the campaign, and Bill started spouting the kind of off-the-cuff, offensive conversational crap you'd expect to hear between "Pass the barbeque sauce would ya darlin'?" and "That sure is some fine cornbread, how'd you get so pretty?"
And he can't seem to shut up. It's as if Bill Clinton has contracted a fatal case of Colloquial Diarrhea, and no one, not even Hillary, can cure him.
People complain about Obama's smooth, eloquent style. He's too smart, some people say. Well, I'm beyond ready for smart. I say, bring on the smart, bring it on in truckloads and trainloads of highly-educated, blazingly brilliant super-smartness and bury all the stupid lobbyists and stupid representatives in Washington in it. And all you people who voted for George Bush, not just once, but twice? Do I even have to say what I'm thinking out loud for you?
Girls Only Conclusion: Can We Talk?
In the early 90s I graduated with a master's degree in Liberal Studies. I wanted to write about America and spirituality from the standpoint of change, (conversion), so I picked what I thought was a nonthreatening little dilletante degree program at my state public university, and got down to the matter of writing what I needed to write. I naievely thought that a university would be a supportive place to study and write about a difficult topic. You know, just like Washington is a supportive place to study and pass laws that actually help the American people.
That's where my mind was. It was my personal golden age of intellectual near-innocence.
It didn't last long.
Academic feminism was in its heydey back then, and in no time at all my innocuous little thesis had became a touchstone for academic hornet fights about the place of women at that particular university, and where I belonged while writing it and who I belonged to. Flattering it was not.
After lots of offensive noise, I was shoved off into the "Women's Studies" department, even though my thesis was about the philosophy and psychology of spiritual conversion, because it contained some stuff about women, and because I was a woman, and because everyone who taught there was fighting, and so on and so forth.
The head of the Women's Studies department welcomed me with open arms even though I did not want to be there and strongly protested that I was writing about a topic that was of general interest. Her response was stern and unequivocal: "There has never been a famous woman philosopher because philosophy is a boy's club. Every woman philosopher is expunged from the canon. They won't let you in now. They'll never let you in. But we'll let you in."
You know, that really didn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy and sisterly. It made me mad. (It still makes me mad.) What's more, at the very same time the egghead (white) girls were feuding with the egghead (white) guys up in the Ivory Tower; within feminism intelligent black and Native American women were balking at the whole 'sisterhood' label, noting that in feminist texts 'we' always seemed to refer to the experience of white academic women, and seemed not to take much heed of their issues, which were much more racially charged. Indeed, when I graduated and was hired to teach in the WS department, I could not find a single general Women's Studies text that was not worded this way. So I didn't use a general text. After a year and a half, I quit.
I'm not saying feminism is bad or that it's over. What I am saying instead, is that the last wave of feminism was initiated largely by very accomplished white academic women who had many legitimate beefs about their mistreatment and unequal status within academia, and who had the platform and the right to air their complaints.The feminism of the Hillary camp is that kind of feminism: a retrograde feminism that harkens back to the 90s and all that internal hemorrhaging over race and cultural difference.
But this is 2008: We should not have to rank issues by race and gender and split into camps over them, just as I should not have had to write a general-interest spirituality paper while cloistered away in an academic ghetto, simply because people who (all) made way more money than me were embroiled in political infighting. That's what most people would call discrimination, and while it doesn't even touch what blacks have endured in this country, I did get enough of a taste of it to know it tastes like poison. We can't afford to divide ourselves that way anymore. We need everyone who has a good idea, whatever color or gender or planet they inhabit.
Right now, in the United States, we have very serious economic, environmental, and diplomatic problems with global consequences, problems that require a degree of unity we haven't seen in here many decades. Frankly, the oft-repeated insinuation that women who support Barack Obama are defecting from the feminist camp strikes me as mean-spirited, short-sighted, off-topic, and false. I don't see Michelle Obama running around in a frilly apron. She's an attorney for chrissake.
It's not Obama who has a problem with American women, it's the American press that has a problem with American women. In a word, we're all different. We're individuals. We don't vote as a mindless block anymore than American men do. We don't divide ourselves into feminist/nonfeminst camps. Most of us have matured to the point where we just are who we are, individually, as people. It's time for that to happen with race in this country too. It's past time.
And thank God, with this nomination, it is happening. So please, Hillary. Go home. Yes, it was a heroic campaign, waged well and waged hard, but this time is not your time. Go home. Write a book. Pay off your campaign debts.
Call off the flying monkeys.
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Comments
Good hub, with lots of good information. Just as a historical note, both Haiti and Jamaica are part of the Western World. Haiti has had elected black presidents and Jamaica has had and currently has elected black Prime Ministers.
A definite thumbs up. I came in disagreeing (Ok, I still disagree on the Wicked Witch bit, funny as it is), and now, I'm not so sure.
"And consider this: Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic Party's 2008 Presidental nomination will take place 45 years to the day from Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech given at the 1963 March on Washington, at the very apex of the Civil Rights Movement. "
I wasn't award of the timing and now I feel completely overwhelmed. Grinning and tearing up sort of overwhelmed. This is just fantastic.
"What's more, at the very same time the egghead (white) girls were feuding with the egghead (white) guys up in the Ivory Tower; within feminism intelligent black and Native American women were balking at the whole 'sisterhood' label, noting that in feminist texts 'we' always seemed to refer to the experience of white academic women, and seemed not to take much heed of their issues, which were much more racially charged....The feminism of the Hillary camp is that kind of feminism: a retrograde feminism that harkens back to the 90s and all that internal hemorrhaging over race and cultural difference."
This is what really has me questioning my own assumptions. I was all for the joint ticket. Somewhere in the requests, someone asked for a Hub explaining the differences between our two major U.S. parties. Clearing away all the rhetoric, I've been left with "We Dems are kinda stupid. The Reps know how to stick together, no matter how divided they may feel, and they WILL back their nominee. Meanwhile, we have groups forming of women who will vote against our nominee because they didn't get their way. Poor babies!" So in the big picture, I thought it was best to give them their pacifier of the VP post. We're going to lose (yet again) with a divided party.
But you've got me rethinking all that.
Holy cow! As I'm editing the typos and buffing up the language on this, I look and OMG there's three comments already! Thank you!
Thank you Safety First, for that correction--You are certainly right, I retract my mindlessly repeated factoid about Obama being the first Western black candidate--I was just uncritically mouthing Chris Matthews' election coverage banker. Thanks.
An Again--Thank you for your thoughtful comment. It's such a difficult issue and I often feel like you do about the self-destructiveness of the Democratic party. You're also right--the Wicked Witch thing is a cheap shot but I can't help myself, I do think it fits and I also I think it fits with what I was trying to point out about 90s feminism--plus it was tons of fun to write. My apologies in advance to everyone it offends. I've been kinda witchy myself on more than one occasion and more than one level, so I don't see the epithet as universally negative like many people do--More like, you know, time to call a witch a witch. Only a witch could call another witch out. So I felt compelled to do it.
Ohhhh pg--I love to read your meaty political rants. They are wonderful, and it doesn't hurt that I totally agree with your point of view:-) You know at the beginning of this campaign I thought that Hill and Bill as a package would be a good thing,but as all the warts of the disfunctional duo have been displayed, I have totally changed my mind. I became an "Obama Mama" in February. Now the dirty pool politics they have been indulging in makes me want to take a shower and the over 50 women who are taken in my it make me mad and sad. So many of them are projecting their own anger and disappointment and their own sense of victimhood onto Hillary and have no clue how they are being duped.
From this point on, Hillary is only going to hurt herself. The heavies in the party have already turned from her and if she doesn't stop and urge her supporters to support Obama, she will go down in flames and not have anything. She's been a good senator and still could have a brilliant career ahead of her, but she is going to ruin it all for herself-- and for Bill too( his halo is tarnishing fast). I've talked to women who are so outraged that they would vote for McCain rather than Obama and I just don't get it--talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.......
But enough--don't worry, she's not gonna be VP. It won't happen and if she doesn't change course she's gonna end up totally sidelined and probably divorced from Bill. Whew--a rant of my own here:-) Bravo pg--great hub.
Thanks robie2!
You are dead-on about many of Hillary's over-50 fans projecting their own sense of victimhood onto her, and how painful and pathetic that is to watch. That was my point exactly, and you said it in a single sentence while I ranted on and on to make my point... you are awesome! Sometimes I do need to rant, and this was one of those times. It helps me clear my head.
It's funny. I started out leaning towards Obama but as the race went on I started to listen more to Hillary, and when she got all wistful (the press called it crying but she did NOT cry, she just got a little gushy) about how much was at stake, she almost won me over. Then Bill started opening his big ugly mouth, then she got meaner and meaner, and now, sadly, I think much less of both of them than I did before she ever ran. I do think she's a brilliant politician and a good senator. I wouldn't mind seeing her in Obama's cabinet. But VP? Not after this campaign, no way.
If Hillary fans vote for McCain they will be among a bitter little cadre of losers who fade into oblivion while the rest of the country moves into a better era. I do believe Obama is going to win by a landslide. I don't think he can be stopped at this point. If anyone tries to so much break one of his nails I'll personally track them down myself and lock them in a little room with Dick Cheney and only one gun.
Quite an articulate and well-delivered hub. The jury waits for a lot of America on who the next president will be. I have yet to step on either side of the fence. With moral issues on one side and practical issues on the other, the battle for me will inevitably end up in compromise of some sort. -- I agree 1000% that Hillary will never get the VEEP nod. Even though a President and VP may not be on the same page politically (or otherwise) all the time, this pair couldn't be in the same room without weapons drawn. Your writing is excellent. I hope you continue to pursue it.
Wow, thanks Rob! I love to write--it keeps me semi-sane. This election promises to be riveting. I'm pretty jazzed about it, finally. Whichever side you come down on, I doubt you'll be bored by this race. What a cast of characters!
Sooo...the Dems should just cancel the convention in Denver....still two months away? And while we're at it, why not just cancel the election in November and have the Big O take the oath of office RIGHT NOW. Or better yet, during Juneteenth. (If you know the date of MLK's "Dream" speech, then you should know the significance of Juneteenth too...)
My point being, next January 20th is still a LONG way away. NOBODY has been *officially* nominated by either party YET...not even McBush. Lots of things could happen between now and then.
btw, I intend to come back and read this hub a year from today, just to see if you're all as happy with the new prez (whoever that may be) as you are now before any candidate has been actually ELECTED.
Hi JamaGenee. Thank you for commenting. I didn't expect applause from everyone who dropped by, but it is nice of you to promise to drop by twice--and a year from now no less. Talk about reader devotion. Holy cow.
Happily, we still do live in a country where we can both have strong opinions and express them without either of us ending up in Gitmo. Hope that keeps up. (o:
I hope you're right about Obama. Me: I'll reserve my judgement. We had the same thing about change here in the UK with Tony Blair, who turned out to be even worse than his predecessors. And the fact is the US is committed to a continuing presence in Iraq regardless of who happens to be in the White House. Check out the new embassy in Baghdad. It's a military fortress, designed for continuing imperial occupation for the next 100 years at least. As for your comments on feminism: brilliant! My observation about this is ask who gained most from it. Cherie Blair and Hilary Clinton, to name but two.
Hi CJStone. Thank you for stopping by! I know what you mean about reserving judgement on Obama---I'm conscious of which straw I'm clutching at and why, so I figure that's something. Because I tell myself I know my heart may be broken, I give myself license to wallow in one last puddle of hope. If I don't do this, I will become so cynical and bitter I'll make Ralph Nader look like Mary Sunshine.
Iraq. What can I say? Sometimes I think the US really IS 'the Great Satan.' This is a real crappy time to be American. All we ever get to do is apologize, and ineffectively at that.
I fear that economically we are headed for a time very much like the time Britain went through in the recent past--you know, where all the women are out working crappy jobs and all the men are unemployed drawing a government check if they can.
Hi pgrundy, ok that does it for me. I've just come by my newsagent's and the Sun, Rupert Murdoch's first British newspaper - the first he owned outside of Australia, and possibly the worst newspaper in the world - has endorsed Barrack Obama on its front page. That says something to me. me: I never believed the Blair hype either, so I never had to suffer any disappointment. If i were you I'd keep a nice sceptical distance from the whole noisy shenanigans. Accept it for what it is, another, less sincere, form of showbiz
Oh no! Cursed by the praise from Murdoch the Dark Lord of Horrible Journalism! Yes I know of his evilness, I know it well.
I got this way over Kerry too--I was convinced he'd win by a landslide, that the American people had learned their lesson. It took me months to recover from that and not just me either, lots of people fell into quite a dark funk. I see your point.
I share CJStone's caution. Obama and Clinton are both media magnets, although in different ways, and our perception of each is colored accordingly. From the beginning, she's been portrayed as the good-old-boy DC insider (very amusing, from a feminist point of view), he as the fresh new voice of change.
Political campaigning is showmanship, as in, let's pitch the revival tent in the holler, plaster the flyers all over town (appealing to that town's needs and wishes, of course), and rake in the dough on Saturday night. So, about the arguments where *you descend into this purgatory of stupid, repetitive fights that go nowhere and make you want to drop to your knees and pray for deliverance*, that's all for show in a campaign, and both are guilty of behaving this way. If Obama and Clinton *marry*, there won't be any of that in the White House. They just have to have this fight so that one of them can come up top dog.
I remember the first American TV appearance of the Beatles, on the Ed Sullivan show in February of '64. I sat on the couch, knees pressed together with toes pointing inwards, elbows glued to my thighs, finger nails clawing at my cheeks, and screamed and cried all at the same time. My boyfriend's mother went to the kitchen for a cold cloth to calm me down. We know this behavior as teen hysteria.
I don't share your passion, but I admire it. I wish I could get worked up about one or the other, but both of them are already looking like Halloween masks to me.
Brilliant hub, as usual.
Thanks Sally's Trove, I think a lot of people share your views. We've been burned more often than not, and it is a hell of a lot of hoopla and spectacle. I'm just at a point personally where I NEED to believe things can get better and a politician can actually care. Come 2009 when JamaGenee checks back in on me maybe I will be in bed with the covers over my head, refusing to come out. It could happen. For now I'm going to give it one last hurrah.
pgrundy, I'm a member of the "it's gotta get better" club...I keep thinking we can as a country bounce back from our troubles. I am discouraged tho' and attempting to hide it bravely. You and Sally said it perfectly.
I remain an optimist, though perhaps more out of habit than reason.
sigh....come on America flush out the garbage and lets solve some problems...I don't care who's on the ticket...(well, underneath I want Hillary and I'm not sure exactly why...it's like the thief you know or the thief you don't know??) I just want some trust and sanity in government -- or is that too big a contradiction? Are they all corrupt? Will they all say this or that just for power and election? If so, then we are doomed. Did I say that??
Pgrundy: As usual a thought provoking hub! I was leaning to having Hillary as a VP, as in my mind it would increase Obama's chances for winning, but now I am thinking she probably wouldn't be very supportive of him during his presidency, that is if he wins (I am hoping he does).
And... $8793.67 for your care for just a few days, it makes my head do a little exorcist style spin... I broke my elbow about 6 years ago, that was exactly 2 days after my insurance benefits were over, and ended up with a $15,000 bill for the three months of hospital visits and was refused a treatment because I couldn't pay; what nightmare, the hospital finished breaking my elbow as I had incompetent interns taking care of me as I was going to the clinic instead of a private doc . Phil (my mate) helped me to pay off this debt when he met me, he insisted in helping me, and I mean insisted, so I accepted but I have paid him back a good portion. I have good insurance nowadays, but I pray that our next president resolves this serious problem in the USA. No one should have inferior health care because they can't pay.
Hi Marie! I'm so sorry you had to go through all that with your elbow. I should be more worried about my (first) bill I guess (got one for the ambulance yesterday--$823--this is in addition to the hospital, and others will coming right along for tests and bloodwork and the cardiologist and oh my god...) But at this point it's all so insane it's hard to take seriously. They might as well charge me a million dollars. We are still paying back Bill's 14 hour ER visit (he had a gallbladder attack last year) in $30 monthly installments and now it's down to $700 something. I guess I'll have to do that too, but it's nuts.
My eldest daugher, who is also insured and has female problems and now, a nerve disorder, had to declare medical bankruptcy last year. Their bills for her illness and their son were more than could be paid back in a lifetime, except maybe by Bill Gates.
And the kicker is, the care is USUALLY horrible. I was treated well in the hospital, but they sent me home saying my tests were clear but to follow up that same week with a cardiologist and my GP. Right. Sure. Couldn't even get into my GP so the GP's office got me in to see some fool who, without even reading my tests or particularly caring about them, prescribed me Klonopin for being 'too stressed' and told me it was mild and harmless. I got to the pharmacy, and they're all like, whoa, be careful on this stuff, don't drive, watch for this that and the other thing, so when I got home I looked it up and its the most abused prescription drug in America right now--very powerful sedative and muscle relaxant. Tried one and just sat there drooling like a schizo. Yeah, that'll help me at the bank.
Still haven't seen a cardiologist. I'm afraid to.
I was for Hillary for part of the campaign but got disgusted with her after the sniper fire in Bosnia nonsense, and it went downhill after that. I just want us all to get health care, good jobs, and get out of Iraq, not necessarily in that order. After that, they can all go back to being crooked beasts again if they just have to be that way. The Democrats will win, I can feel it--but they'll have to fight for it.
I had been prescribed Vioxx for the swelling of my broken elbow, also researched it and found it could create psychiatric disorders... can you imagine? Didn't it take after I spent $$$ in the purchase and insisted on a substitute. Two years later Vioxx was off the market.
And, yes the Bosnia silliness made me lose trust in her... a shame.
pg - you did it again! thanks for this hub! i'm over 50, i have to say i never thought hillary would be a good one -- too much baggage.
and? it's time for some new blood in the white house! i can't say i'd call Obama an African-American, but, what the heck? if that's what he is labeled as, fine with me.
many moons ago down yonder at NAS Pensacola, I had a gal come in to clean and do laundry while I worked. Her name was Jean Brooks, an African-American. I'd give her a ride home each of the 3 days she came in, and, the first time I took her home, she sat in the back seat of my car. I asked, "Jean? Why are you sitting back there?" She replied, "This is where I am supposed to sit." I countered, "Not in my car! You sit right here up front with me!" That was the beginning of a most wonderful friendship with a most dear lady. Jean is gone now, and I miss her still.
Maybe I'm a an ole yankee farmer girl schmuck, but I've never judged people by the color of their skin, color of their hair, sexual orientation, and still cannot understand why everyone must be "labled". Each of us is a person, and each of us deserves to be treated as such. But, Hillary for Prez? She's out of that contest now, and, I can't say I'm disappointed.
Go, Obama, Go!
Hi NJoG,
I just hope he wins! Lately McCain has been catching up to him a bit in the polls. I can't believe after the past eight years that anyone would vote for McCain. I may have to move to Toronto in November. Thanks for your comments!
pgrundy: I may not agree with you but I always enjoy hearing what you have to say! Awesome hub, I'm still holding out for the Obama/Clinton dream team, but what can I say, I'm young enough still to be naive! ;)
Thanks Nicole! It still could happen. He hasn't announced a running mate yet, so until he does, you may still get your wish! Thank you for commenting.
working
solarshingles says:
4 months ago
Pgrundy, I totally agree with you that there is never going to be a good team between these two, too strongly opinionated individuals. They are both strong leaders and the President is only one. (why to have somebody to stab you in the back at all times)