Hillary, Hillary, Hillary: An Open Letter to the Former Future President

Dear Hillary:
What happened? No really, what the fuck just happened to you? I can't for the life of me figure out how a once-promising presidential campaign -- a sure thing for Pete's sake -- turned into a pathetic embarrassment? You've had such a head start in this quest to occupy the Oval Office. I mean, literally, you and Bill have been planning it since at least January 1993 when he became president. Was there a more plausible, natural, inevitable scenario than you following in his larger-than-life footsteps? And Chelsea after you? The Clinton Dynasty. Has such a regal ring to it, doesn't it?

But then 2008 rolled around and something terrible happened. Both you and Bill lost that famous mojo. It started in Iowa, where you were all but certain to win. Everyone, including yourself, anointed you the Queen of the Ball before the dance even began. And then you lost. Some inexperienced kid named Barack Obama came out of nowhere and stole your thunder. And then you sat down and cried. In front of the cameras, and the good folks of New Hampshire felt sorry and gave you their state. And just like that The Comeback Twins came back yet again. Never count out a Clinton, huh?. Ahh, but then came February. Damn February. The junior Senator from Illinois, that pesky Kid, won big on Super Tuesday -- despite your pickups in NY, NJ, CA and a few others -- and later in the month racked up an impressive string of eleven consecutive wins. Ouch. That's when the chorus of "Hillary Should Quit" calls officially began. But you'd have nothing of the sort. This was a battle, and you were in it till then end. And we admired you for it.

March was much kinder to you, as was April and May. You won big key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and trounced The Kid in Appalachia. You even managed to obtain more delegates and popular votes in these three months than The Kid. But the "Hillary Should Quit" calls kept coming, weighing you down and casting an ominous cloud over your campaign. The endorsements kept going to Obama too (Richardson, Edwards, etc) and the superdelegates began to flow to your opponent in anything but a trickle, until he had more of them than you. Many even started to desert you, switching their allegiance. But you pressed on. Even with Bill out there accused of playing the race card and pissing off as many people as he once impressed, especially in the black community. To many, perhaps the "first black president" wasn't so black after all.

Then there were the many boneheaded comments you made. You remember, like the time you basically said that while you and the GOP's presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain, were tough enough and experienced enough to be commander-in-chief, Obama merely had "a speech." Didn't you realize how that irresponsible blunder would come back to haunt the party in November? Or how about the one where you told everyone that the "hard-working whites" won't vote for Obama. Honestly, Hill, with all those fancy degrees and years of elite lawyering, didn't you realize that some things were meant to be privately thought but not publicly voiced? And so the "Hillary Should Quit" calls continued unabated. Yet we were still in your corner.

You vowed to stay in the race and fight until the very last American exercised his or her inalienable right to vote. You vowed to fight for women everywhere. To be a role model for young girls. To show them that women can be just as tough, just as resilient, just as determined, just as ambitious and just as successful as a man. Your campaign was no longer merely about becoming president. It became a lesson for the history books. A paradigm-changing feminist movement. And we applauded your determination and stuck by you.

You parsed and nuanced and molded the process to fit your end-goal of ultimately snagging the nomination from the grip of The Kid by convincing the superdelegates that you had the better narrative. That you were the more electable candidate. Since neither you or The Kid would end the campaign with enough pledged delegates to win, in an effort to make your case even more compelling, you threw as much shit up on the wall as you possibly could in the desperate hope that something would stick, ie that you had more popular votes; that we should re-seat Michigan and Florida's delegates; that only you could win back the Reagan Democrats. At this point, while we continued to support you, we grew a little leery of your motives and a tad weary of your disingenuousness.

No matter how many "Hillary Should Quit" cries we heard, we still believed in you and went along for the ride, no matter how bumpy. We defended you wherever and whenever we could. Like Bill, we made excuses for you, and chalked up your blind ambition and your regrettable gaffes to long days, late nights and the general stress of the campaign trail. We vowed to support your valiant fight till the end, right along with you, no matter how taxing it became.

And then the unthinkable occurred. When asked last week by South Dakota's Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper about all this "Hillary Should Quit" nonsense, you said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don't understand it." Jeez, Hillary, are you out of your fucking mind? Even if you didn't mean it, to suggest that as a justification to stay in the race, Obama could be assassinated before the primary season is over, is perhaps the most shocking, shameful, morally reprehensible thing you could have possibly ever said. How could you? Do you realize that with that one comment you threw away whatever shot you may have had to fulfill your dream of convincing, brainwashing and/or bullying the super D's into handing you the nomination? How could you implode like that? It was a despicable act of desperation and, quite frankly, it was pathetic. With that one reckless opportunistic blunder you not only threw away the campaign, but your legacy as well. A once valiant warrior, you are now just a sad footnote in history. An embarrassment. I suspect you will never recover politically from your monumentally insensitive RFK comment, made in the very same week that Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor.

And so I can no longer support this destructive campaign of yours. It's time for me to say "Hillary Should Quit." You have taken your insatiable hunger for the presidency too far. You've let so many of us down. You will not be president. You will not be vice president. It's time to step aside and let the Democratic Party and the nation heal, ultimately with Obama as our nominee and hopefully our president as well. It's time for something different. You just convinced me that America needs more than politics as usual, especially your kind. I am so disappointed, Hillary.

Comments

[LastLiberalRepublican]

Mr. Ostroy,

Very good essay. I think you have communicated well what many of us are feeling.

I have long pushed the principle that electing the spouse of a living former president is a "de facto breach of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution". Specifically, in regard to Bill Clinton, an obviously gifted but seriously flawed individual, it is just flat unseamly that electing his wife would place this individual back in the White House. Voters seem reluctant to openly consider and discuss the downside of permitting this individual back at the seat of national power.

Hillary has made herself into a total embarrassment as you eloquently describe and Bill has become a race baiter seeking to bolster her support

This 63 year old combat wounded white veteran wants to bypass Hillary and pass the presidency to a qualified younger, albeit black, candidate.

[rkoenn]

A short follow up to my previous post:

And I must also say I am looking forward to a new air in Washington and if anyone has any possibility of doing that I believe Obama is the one. By the way, white late middle aged male (college educated) here who would be more than happy to vote for a black man, white woman, black woman, even Muslim if I felt that person is the person to move this country forward. We certainly need a huge change of direction.

[rkoenn]

Very much my thoughts. I liked Hillary just fine at one point in time. But she is so totally obsessed with winning this nomination that it does seem like she has lost her senses. I have watched as she degenerated in front of the country. The tops in my book are as you listed, last weeks mention of the Kennedy assassination, the white, working class people will vote for me (racist tones), the phone call at 3 AM, me and McCain are the only ones qualified (maybe she should run for veep with him?), and just the way she thinks her nomination was preordained. That is simply far too smug. Don't get me wrong, if somehow she was the nominee there would be no thought necessary to pick her over Bush Jr., but while at one time I very much liked her that has changed significantly because of what has happened in the last 5 months. I certainly hope when she finally admits she lost that she gives her all to defeating McCain.

[RickO]

An exterminator once told me that if you see a single cockroach, it means there are at least another 400 you don't see. It's a tip-of-the-iceberg in bug terms. What you can see is an indicator of something far worse you cannot see.

For Hillary to come out with not one, but two instances, where she eluded to assassination in the past months, one could apply the bug theory and conclude that this is a real subtext to her sometimes inexplicable reasons for hanging on. If you could be a fly on the wall (another useful bug reference) in a Team-Hillary meeting, you might see a whiteboard with a list of reasons to stay in the race. Reason number two, perhaps even number one, is that her opponent could get...you know. How is that then apportioned between pragmatisim and wishful thinking? No one will ever know, but for her to mention it at all--publi­cly--certa­inly leads one to some disturbing conclusions.

[BigMike75]

Thank you Andy, true words from a "sane" supporter of Hillary Clinton. See, I was in your boat long ago, a staunch supporter of the Clintons, but she lost me long before the "Kennedy assassination gaffe", it's just sad that many of her supporters are as equally obsessed with her presidential bid as she is, and thus refuse to see any indescretion or mistake she commits. The very same supporters that have the nerve to call themselves Democrats, but in the same vein profess they will vote for Mccain in the fall if their dear Hillary loses. This nomination race isn't about Hillary, and it never was, it was always about Democrats taking back the White House and fixing this country. It was good to see a refreshing take on Hillarys candidacy from a strong supporter, your frankness was quite interesting.

[newzzzjunkie]

That's exactly right! It is about our country and not about Hillary...­.and that is what she failed to see. Obama is not running for himself, he is running for us. He will unite the people and Hillary will just be a faint unimportant memory. Nice comment by BigMike75 and good article by Andy Ostroy.

[S1m0n]

The belief that Hillary's outrageous comments were accidental slips can't be sustained by the facts: her explanations don't add up, and not one of them was an isolated event. All consist of statements she has made repeatedly, using very similar language.

It's a script, not a slip. She knows what she's doing.

[INDYBIGT]

Exactly what I am thinking. Keith Olberman's BURN recounted five instances when she referred to RFK-in- June, only she left out the direct reference to his assassination in three. The reminder was there anyway. The idea seemed to be to keep beating the drum keeping the image she meant to convey alive. And just in case we didn't get it (stupid poor white Amreicans that we are) she had to spell it out for us one more time. She is truly a contemptible liar, unfit to be dog catcher.

[StephenDedalus82]

"Politics as usual," meaning politics as it always has been (and always will be--the powerful don't step aside without a fight). The RFK thing will be forgotten next week. There will be a new scandal, perhaps involving one of the actual nominees for the presidency. Hope Obama can handle the heat once there's not a Clinton around to obsess the media on a daily basis.

[OtayPanky]

In an earlier post, Andy Ostrow wrote: Ok, so I'm going out on a limb here. I am a Hillary Clinton supporter, but as I've stated in the past, not by much. I support Clinton because I belong to that little-known political party: Realisticrats. Realisticrats never fall in love with a candidate. We fall in love with winning. We start at the end -- the actual election -- and work our backwards from there in choosing the candidate who has the best chance at victory. I don't rally around anyone unless they look, smell and act like a winner.

http://tinyurl.com/5mjm84

===

OK Andy, here's the deal: we are a nation in crisis - and it is not simply a political crisis, but a MORAL crisis.

The cause of this crisis is simple to understand: a lack of principled leadership in BOTH parties for the past 16 years.

You missed the big picture Andy - the gestalt that is driving this campaign - the desire on the part of so many Americans for profound MORAL change - led by the person in the bully pulpit.

But now you got it. Better late than never.

[chriss0114]

If Hillary had any class at all, she would drop out and support Obama with NO CONDITIONS whatsoever. No VP, no nothing. She has a lot to do to help with the healing.

later when all the ruffled feathers are smoothed and she has shown herself to be a member of the Human Race, vs. Clinton Only Race, then she could be a supreme or some sort of senate leader or a cabinet post.

[ramblingjohnny]

Well if she had any class that would have been done by now!

[apoyo]

Many, many, many, many, many, many years hence.

[MelKnee]

Exactly. She needs to campaign vigorously for Obama. She needs to rally her supporters and get them firmly behind Obama.

However, I see her filing multiply lawsuits, complaining and railing about the unfairness of it all. Basically, ensuring a McCain win.

[Lonestarmom]

I appreciate your view...I am a 51 year old, white working woman in Texas who never supported Hillary because I was impressed by Senator Obama's vision of America as he expressed it at a rally in Dallas soon after he became a Senator. I knew then that he was the future of the Democratic Party. I had been willing to let Hillary play out these last few primaries so that she could say she finished but after the last two weeks of her campaigning I say enough is enough! They have reminded me daily what I didn't like about the politics of the past and it is time to move forward with Senator Obama!

[KillTheMessenger]

What happened? Senator Clinton had to run against a real politician with a real message and his machine and was out of her depth. She did not manage to keep up appearances that she was an actual statesman. Instead she put on display that she was nothing more than an insecure, out of control former First Lady. Had she stuck to the role she knew to play well, she would have been a smashing success. Now she is a tragic figure.

[IslandGyal]

Well said; you hit the nail on the head. I don't understand how anyone could continue to support a candidate, who verbalizes, that s/he in the race, in event that the other candidate is assassinated.

[lvdragonlady]

Well said Andy. I am sure many feel the same as you do.

[plebeianswillrevolt]

Kind of a rehash but I appreciate every voice in the choir. DOWN with the haggard Hildabeast and her virulently pathetic phony husband Bubba.

[azimmer1]

Very Well said!!!!