A Pilgrim’s Digression

I stopped enjoying this election weeks ago. I don’t know when, precisely. But at some point, it ceased being fun, in that way that intellectual, cultural, or social issues can be fun to debate and anticipate.

I think at some point the election became personal for me, and it was at that point I ceased finding any enjoyment in reading the stories about the latest salvos in the Obama/Clinton war. Still, I don’t think I realized how little enjoyment I was finding in this campaign until this morning, when I first began reading about and then watching on TV the reaction to Obama’s statement April 6th about people in small towns being “bitter” about job loss and “cling to” issues such as gun control, religion, and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Clinton has called the remarks “condescending,” as has just about every pundit to comment on Obama’s remarks. Personally, I can think of nothing more damaging to a Democrat than to be tagged with that particular epithet, which makes it all the more reprehensible that Clinton would turn this into an issue. If ever there were an argument to be made that she is hurting Obama’s chances in November, this would be it. If he loses because, like Kerry, he is viewed as just another latte drinking, Ivy League-educated liberal, Hillary Clinton must be held personally responsible for that loss.

Watching her in a press conference in Scranton, Pennsylvania, today, I felt this overwhelming anger towards her. Her smile, so smirky and superior, just grated on my every nerve, and then to hear her–the multi-millionaire–accuse Obama of condescension and feelings of superiority…my blood pressure went through the roof.

I can’t take this much longer. This election is leaving me depressed, stressed, and anxious. I believe Obama is the right candidate for our time, and yet all I see are people in his own party throwing road blocks in his way, at a time when he ought to be free to race ahead to November.

I do not believe Obama should have a free ride, now. Not at all. But he should be taking fire from McCain–not from his own party. Can Democrats not see what they are doing to themselves? They are single-handedly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by letting this primary campaign stretch on. Where is Al Gore? Where is Jimmy Carter? Where are the remaining Super Delegates with the power to stop this and tell Clinton to go home?

If, as everyone seems to think, Obama is going to be the nominee, Clinton is destroying her party’s chances in November by pointlessly continuing to sow doubts about Obama’s electability. I say “pointless” because it seems unlikely that her barbs will achieve the desired end of thrusting her into the nomination. So what does she get out of it? I really think it has become personal for her. She feels that if she can’t have the nomination, then she will sabotage any chance Obama has of winning. That is the only explanation.

Of course, there is always the point of view that she is giving him his trial by fire now, so that he will be toughened to face McCain in November. But I really can’t subscribe to that point of view, not entirely. There comes a point where enough is enough. He’s been taking her punches for months now. It’s time to release him to face McCain.

As I said at the beginning, I just can’t take much more of this. I feel sick inside, thinking about it. I’ve never felt so strongly about a presidential candidate as I do about Obama, and to see him being hacked to death by the Clintons is like watching a loved one being assaulted and being able to do nothing.

In part, my anger and frustration is born of the fact that I really don’t see what was wrong with his statement in the first place, yet everyone seems in agreement that it was “condescending.” The harm I see in it is that, as he has done before, Obama over-generalized. No one likes to be lumped together into a group, whether it be “small town” folks or “typical white people.” Yet I hardly see this kind of faulty reasoning from an over-generalization to be a deal breaker, as far as his campaign goes. Yet I hear pundits on TV talking about how this might be the break Clinton has been looking for, the misstep that will signal to the Super Delegates that Obama is out of touch and can’t win the blue collar vote.

Honestly, there is a part of me that feels like if Clinton wants the nomination so badly that she would destroy this man if she can’t have it, I say let her have it. I hate her. I honestly hate her right now. I think she is a liar. I think she brings nothing to the political arena but the same old politics of personal destruction that she and her husband used to bemoan.

I will never vote for her. But if it comes down to it, I am so tired and sick that I would be willing just to let her have the nomination. I just won’t vote in November. That’s all.