Dear Mary Lyon:
Bless you for articulating my dilemna as well. I struggle daily to make an attitude adjustment that will allow me, as a good Democrat, to accept the inevitable and throw my support behind Obama. Especially since I am an African American female baby boomer. But I too am disgusted by the demonizing of Hillary and Bill Clinton, because we did very well during the Clinton years. From the time Obama announced his candidacy, I worried that our party would become so divided we would be unable to unite under the eventual nominee. I saw it coming, and I know we should. I just need some help getting there. I keep reciting the Serenity Prayer and hope that helps me make an attitude adjustment. But for now I am equally torn and disgusted.
My Own Private Hillary
This campaign has me feeling as though I'm totally schitzo. I'm a two-headed monster. No -- double that. It's not merely Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sitting on my shoulders, battling each other for my head, my heart, and my vote. There's also a second war raging within my own head and heart. It's me versus me, and I'm guessing Hillary is struggling with much the same conflict. It's tearing her campaign and her public persona from stem to stern, and it's leaving me feeling as overloaded as the Coen brothers at the end of Oscar night.
Hillary Clinton doesn't seem able to decide which Hillary she wants to be. Neither do I -- about her or about myself. The media in the last few weeks has covered her mainly from the "can this campaign be saved" standpoint. What should she do to reverse what appears to be an increasingly inevitable pro-Obama trend? Should she go negative or positive? Swords or olive branches? In one venue she's reaching out to shake his hand, noting how honored she is to share the stage with him. In another she's shaking a fistful of papers at him like some strident school-marm and hollering "shame on you, Barack Obama!" As of the Democratic Debate in Cleveland, Ms. Congeniality returns, with measured arguments and renewed gentility. He's consistent. She's up and down and sideways. It's making me a bit seasick.
I don't know which way to go, either, Madame Senator. I think I can sense that fire roaring in your gut, the indignation over what you've witnessed over the past seven-and-some miserable years. The progress you and your husband achieved amid great adversity during his presidency has been turned on its head by the arrogant, deceitful wrecking crew that stampeded in after the two of you left the White House. And now, you're seeing the Invincibility Cloak you wore a year ago rendered thread-bare. I can guess how earnestly you believe that you have the ultimate skills to bring to the ultimate job, and how you yearn to contribute them. You genuinely want to do good. It must be awfully hard to take the high road, especially when so many of those surrounding you must be telling you to go scorched-earth. Most of the time any more, I want to go that way, too. To borrow from your spouse -- I feel your pain.
What the battering of the Bush regime has left me with is a deep, roiling anger. It actually goes farther back than that. I've watched since the Reagan era as the Republican juggernaut has gained momentum and gradually shifted the tectonic plates of American politics for the worse. We've been shoved, as a nation, farther toward the strident, the negative, the combative, the hostile, the regressive, the in-yer-face. Perhaps that's why Hillary's fiery campaign persona seems to be so off-putting. Maybe in a small way it's symptomatic of what ails our nation on a larger scale. As a liberal, the viewpoint I hold so dear has been painted with poison, demonized and marginalized -- for far too long by now. Newt Gingrich's little book of words and phrases that he handed out to all his GOPAC pals during the '80s in order to win the language wars and manipulate public perception has done its job alright. It's gone way beyond vilifying my political party to the point of repackaging ME, too, as a bad guy. Gingrich and his friends didn't have me in mind, certainly, but the effect has been the same. I've watched the devolution, and I've taken it very personally.
I want to hit back and hit back hard. I want to hit so far below the belt that even Larry Flynt can't find the nether-regions. I want to be the Princess of Punishment against every individual who steered us down into this national sinkhole, and all their well-meaning but thoroughly gullible and misguided followers -- the "19-percenters" who reliably fall for the fear and smear, year after year. But that's the hurt speaking. At this point, we Democrats should be about conciliation and healing. I recognize that in my higher self. So why do I want to keep with the brickbats? To see them suffer as I have suffered, over the derelict direction the arch-conservatives have taken us? To force-feed them a taste of their own medicine so they'll learn how it feels to be on the receiving end? And would that make any difference?
Hard to say. But I know what SHOULD happen.
Perhaps this really is the dawn of a whole new era -- OUR "Morning in America," when we begin to pull our tortured nation out of the muck of fear, lies, and inner torment. The organized ugliness we've endured for so long has to stop. We Democrats aren't supposed to be cloning it in our own image and likeness -- especially when we seem so adept at proving we're not as good at it as the Republicans are. At this point, I don't think going negative will help Clinton win many converts, nor will it help us as liberals and Democrats if we stay at each other's throats. Perhaps it's time to take a cue from the way Obama is gaining ground as the heat turns up. He keeps his head, almost a zen master as he blocks, bobs, weaves, and deflects Clinton's every incoming jab. I wish I could do that, get over myself and my yearning to lash out and seek revenge. I hope we Democrats can do so as a collective, particularly as we move through the rest of this very key year. We have to remember that Hillary is NOT the enemy, nor are her true believers. Rather, the adversary is the GOP ticket we'll face once we settle on our own nominees.
It'll take me awhile to get beyond the emotional battery I've felt under the "leadership" of the Bush regime and its armies of scheming enablers, wrongdoers and character assassins. They've rendered us all walking wounded, and boy, would a large part of me ever love to return the favor. We need the best of both our two chieftains -- Hillary AND Barack -- and everybody behind both of them to win back the White House not simply for the Democratic Party but for all the rest of us, not just the pirates, the corporatists, the corner-cutters, the cronies, the extremists, the have-alreadys, and the have-mores.
My higher self is still working on taking full command for the sake of this greater gain. I'll be wrestling with this long after we Dems stop wrestling with each other.
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When I was young, back in the 1960s, we used to elect a candidate with a platform and ideas. Now, we elect a Personality. I blame Nancy Reagan, who proved that the nation will elect and re-elect an idiot (and remember him fondly), if he fills out a suit and does not flub his lines.
Gore Vidal was right. We need at least TWO presidents. If the nation could select an Actor President, then we would also have room for the Hillary Clintons of the world.
Hey, I know this author! She's a Writer.
And a Babe.(/inside joke)
Keep 'em coming, CM. Keep publishing them, HuffPo.
There goes true Clinton supporters quietly in the night also. The bashing of Hillary has gone beyond for what is necessary to support Obama. I understand the inner struggle but, would soughting out those differences between your sister and brother cause you to help your brother beat your sister to death?
Very well-said.
The Reactionary wing of the democratic party that support Hillary Clinton are no more intelligent than the right wing idiots of the republican party. They are hiding their real agenda until in their dreams she gets the nomination so they can get back on track to promote war with Iran and other nightmares. They are a very negative force because they secretly agree with Bush's agenda in the world.
And the left wingnut conspiracy theorists who have flocked to Obama don't help us much either....
Hillary represents a wing of the democratic party that I'll be glad to see go (sadly, not with her looming defeat). She represented the cowardice and capitulation, big business and lobbyists, and personal career over integrity. Granted Obama is not much better, but a baby step in the right direction is still progress.
Or maybe one day we can move past the false binaries of American politics and enter an age where we can vote Green, Libertarian, Independent, or Socialist with out being blamed for someone else's failings. What a nice dream...
An advantage of dems is that they DO wrestle with each other, instead of mindlessly going along with a leader or party - sometimes right off a cliff - like the GOP. I have never thought Hillary would be a good president - quite the opposite. Yes - anything is better than Bush. That doesn't mean I have to like her politically (or personally at this point!) I would vote for her against the sick end of the right wing, though. That's as much of a team player I am willing to be for a candidate I don't and can't believe in.
"...the adversary is the GOP ticket we'll face once we settle on our own nominees."
Most of us have already settled on a nominee... if only you and Hillary would hurry up and do the same, we could get started FIGHTING that adversary.
Congratulations on hitting the Bigtime!
You've captured the feelings of many Democrats. I'd be happy with either and I'd be happiest if they can overcome their campaigns and run as a team.
Ms. Clinton, like Edwards and Kerry, got played by this administration. They were dealt a losing hand any way they played it. A Hobson's choice...believe this administration or their base. I could accept that her vote was not a carte blanche approval to invade/occupy Iraq. But what she should have done when she realized that this administration betrayed the American people was to hold them accountable for this crime. Had she lead the charge for impeachment, maybe she'd be leading the race for the WH.
My vote was be for Barack...but it wasn't a vote against Hillary. I really don't care who is the nominee, I just want this national nightmare over in November.
Well, now you can't sit at the cool table with the "hot" kids. Go sit over there and we will make fun of you. That is so much better than actually doing anything. We don't need facts or any of that boring stuff. We'll just make it up and have fun. Screw the world. Our guy is so cool and we are too. Nyah Nyah.
Hey! Sen. Clinton has been a 'witness to the past seven ... horrible years', you say?
She's no such thing; she's an active and enthusiastic member of the team that has trashed our Constitution and our nation. As a Bu$hCo. enabler she's a 'bad guy; in my book. Perhaps even part of the 'enemy'.
I'm furious too. But I know we can't count on the support of Clinton as we head toward what we hope will be a brighter day tomorrow. She's a champion of the status quo.
To: AnninCA
I agree with you - Hillary Clinton was the best candidate in the field.
After seeing the too-close-for-coincidence campaigns, slogans, speeches, catchwords of Obama and Gov. Patrick it's clear to me that both men are the creations of David Axelrod, a shrewd professional political manager.
Hillary is the real deal, while Obama has now become the center of a political cult.
It breaks my heart to see supporters like John Lewis desert her.
There is a column in the current salon.com that presents an analysis of how Obama created the racial divide and then blamed both Clinton's for it.
I can't support a candidate as ruthless as Obama/Axelrod, and I will not vote for him in November.
I'm also disillusioned by the Democratic Party and the sanctimonious likes of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Tom Daschle who knifed Hillary Clinton in the back.
I'changing my registration from Democrat to Independent.
I cannot vote for Obama. Voting Democratic used to be meaningful to me. This year, if I voted democratic I would feel I had succumbed to the invaders. What happened at my caucus still tramatizes me. It was like having a foreign army at my polling place.
And it feels worse because Hillary is so prepared. It is her time. I swear this is some kind of foreign invasion! lol, I have to laugh at myself, but that is really how it feels. Is there anyone out there who can write about it?
Someone work for a new Voting Rights Act so I can feel good about democracy again.
I feel your pain! I am also outraged and want to bash the Republicans' heads (both heads) in! I think we should impeach AT LEAST Bush and Cheney - and not only because it would make me feel good & that some justice might finally be done - but because what they are being allowed to get away with is setting a dangerous precedent for any future president - of either party, frankly. I too want vengeance. My good name and my goodness and fairness of heart and spirit have been dragged through the mud by these righteous moralistic hypocrites for far too long! But I want my fight to be through impeachment. And I want my fight to be in the Congress. I want those spineless congresspeople to treat the Republican majority just a tiny bit like they've treated the Democrats for the last decade.
I want my president to rise above the fray and present a united, rational, confident but not arrogant face to the world on my behalf!
And it is true that Hillary is NOT the bad guy here. And I will be proud to vote for her if she's the nominee. However, it is true that she has been ACTING like the bad guy, as have her supporters - using the Republican tactics of smearing and insulting and petty name-calling of Obama and his supporters - me. I get demeaned enough by the Republicans. I can't tolerate it from Clinton as well. So I'm throwing my support and energy behind Obama with a hopeful heart and an eye on the future!
Dear Mary Lyon -
Thank you so very much for your informational and inspirational comments. I really FEEL what you're saying.
As a trained psychoanalyst AND a human being, I can hear as you speak of the perennial human struggle: Should we give into the gaping atavistic maw of the ID - become like lizards - fighting every enemy (and fornicating every friend) until we've trampled them all
underneath our horned feet like the slithy toves we are?
Or should we be above it all, allowing our ego ideals to blossom - as the wise Chairman Mao once said - until "a thousand flowers bloom".
Of course, that's what the nefarious B. Hussein is doing - or PRETENDING to be doing - as he stands there so prim and proper among those giant crowds of adoring supporters seduced by his web of hope.
A pox on him and his Muslim Confirmation Robes! Let him go be Barack of Arabia if that's what he wants!!!
But you and I know better. There will be blood. We must drink their milkshake, and we must eat their milk duds, too!
No mercy, and no quarter. The evildoers must pay - pay now, and pay later. Our lust for blood WILL be quenched as we throw their babies into boiling oceans full of croaking frogs and screaming vermin.
So don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Our beloved Bill and Hill WILL prevail.
Yes They Can!!!
Sincerely,
Your Friend OTAYPANKY
As I've said before, there is no real Hillary. She's proving it more and more. She doesn't know HERSELF, so she's coming across as a schizophrenic, conniving, loser republiCON.
Barack doesn't need to be told who to be daily by his handlers as Hillary does. His knowledge of himself and the American people comes from him being who he is, and reaching where he's reached, in the face of many, many people and forces who are against him for being who he is.
Right on. Well said.
Put in another way, Hillary, unfortunately, has an identity problem, and takes too much of her "self-definition" from others, rather than sorting it out herself. This is true of many other politicians as well, and I could name here Gore and Kerry, for example, and also Romney and Guiliani and many others.
I think this is where Obama is markedly different. I think he knows himself. And, to understand others, and relate to them well, one has to first understand oneself, and who one is, and is not.
Identity confusion often leads one to unrealistically idealize either oneself, or others, while also, equally unrealistically, demonizing or devaluing others. And this gets into the hate-generating-even-more-hate business, instead of recognizing others as different and valuable in their own right, even when they are very different from oneself in how they see things. One can "talk" to others with whom one disagrees if one has not first devalued them and made them feel very angry and rightly threatened by you.
I think one can't empathize with others if one does first not have a good deal of awareness of oneself as separate and unique.
Sorry this is not stated more fortuitously or more clearly than I have been able to do here. :-(
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Posted February 27, 2008 | 03:24 PM (EST)