Having just read Howard Wolfson's article in The New Republic, I can now rest assured that Hillary Clinton, whom I avidly supported in the primary, is not a cat. We can all put our prurient curiosity away and act like grown-ups because Hillary has decided that it would be "bad for the Democratic Party" if she and Palin were to scratch each other's eyes out for the benefit of all the losers who simply want to see two women go at each other.
Thank you, Hillary, and thank you, Howard Wolfson, for wagging those fingers at us. Thank you both for the comfort this moralistic and, in the end, irrelevant reminder gives us in the face of what is possibly the most significant threat to our real values the country has faced since McCarthy.
I supported Hillary to the very end, thinking all the while I was supporting a woman who, when the chips were down, would always do what was best for her country, even if it meant it was not best for her. If Wolfson is right, and I'm not at all certain he is, I put my money on the wrong candidate and in the wrong primary.
It seems pretty clear that NOW is the time for Hillary to show us that we were not wrong about her. NOW is the time for her to use her intelligence and the devotion to the rights of others she convinced us she had when we gave her all we had to help her win. NOW is the time to come out swinging at a scary demagogue in a skirt who's talking right past Obama as if he were the invisible man.
A woman of substance, the real Hillary Clinton, must take on the faux Hillary Clinton and make it clear that she, Hillary, got 18 million votes because she represented rights and took positions that Palin is committed to undoing. Every single issue Hillary Clinton said she stood for and would fight for, and I know I needn't name them, is now on the chopping block and only she can prevent the axe from falling.
It is going to take the real Hillary to address her pretender. Hillary must challenge Palin on what she purports to be versus what Palin and her record have clearly demonstrated that she is.
No one else has the ability to take on Palin but Hillary. Hillary must once again remind her supporters that it was not her, per se, that we worked our hearts out for, but her ideals and principles. She must remind us all that Palin bears no resemblance to her whatsoever and that if McCain wins, everything that she, the real Hillary Clinton, has spent her life fighting for will be in jeopardy.
I, for one, will never forgive the real Hillary Clinton if McCain and Palin win because I know they cannot win if the real Hillary decides to make this the battle of her lifetime, to prove the real Hillary was, indeed, the real thing.