In a general election I'll probably not vote for Hillary, ... but I'll especially not vote for her if she wins the nomination and convinces Obama to run as VP. The country will be much better off if his talents remain as a strong force in the senate. I would vote against such a ticket particularly in order to save him from destroying his career. There is nothing useful that he can do or she will let him do as VP anyhow.
A Hillary presidency would, in my opinion, be most probably doomed to fail and Barack would become tarnished along with the entire DLC wing of the Democratic party. I don't want to see Barack associated with that disaster.
Clinton cannot lead. Ironic as it seems at first glance, leading requires compromise. By definition, a leader needs followers and not enough of those will ordinarily follow an authoritarian personality blindly. And she seems to me to be as authoritarian as Bush (W) is. Consider the ruthless way she bends the truth in her campaign. That self serving arrogance insults her voters as much as it insults her political enemies. Because it plants false information into their minds for as long as it is in her interest not to correct it. Consider her arrogance while trying to lead the Health Care initiative in 1993/94. She ignored the public entirely. So was that something one can describe by the word "leading"?
Her instincts for leadership are hopelessly warped. I believe a Clinton administration will gain no followers from the other side of the aisle and that she will have less than an optimal number from her own side. And there is no dearth of people like Kenneth Starr and Karl Rove waiting in the wings to throw wrenches that impede whatever she would most hope to accomplish in four years as President.
With Clinton at top of the ticket on the November ballot there will be far fewer new Democrats elected to congress who can help her to lead, (by following in the manner that priests follow). So she would not garner sufficient support to govern without support from the other side of the aisle. This devolves into a vicious circle that would surround her.
It will be hard enough for a potent President to repair the problems this country has gotten itself into after eight years of Bush (W). It will be almost impossible for a less than potent Democratic president to succeed in extricating the country from those problems in only four years. And the lack of success after four years will be punished. The electorate would only sour on future Democrats as easily as it has soured against Republicans today. President Bush has poisoned the chalice. It would be better that McCain have to drink from it than allowing an impotent Democrat to imbibe.
So the question I need to consider now is whether 'tis better to be or not to be a blind, unthinking, loyal Democrat: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?
My first vote for President was for John F Kennedy. And I have never been so proud of my vote since then. I have never voted Republican for President. Before the Republican party made its Faustian Bargain with the Religious Right I occasionally split my vote between Democrats and Republicans further down the ballot: Governors, Senators, etc. The old Republican party once possessed some quite interesting moderates. And I did vote third party for President once, ... John Anderson, (in 1980 I think it was).
I do not believe it to be wise to treat ANY political party in the manner that some people treat their religion. It is bad for the party, for it allows a party that makes mistakes to continue drifting along that same path with impunity, sometimes even with applause. But it is especially bad for one's country and I will always put my country above my party.
The Communist party of the Soviet union would have collapsed long before the ending years of 1980 decade had not so many people treated Communism as their religion. They followed with religious-like fervor, blindly closing their mind to all objective criticisms. They behaved tribally with respect to their participation, even when the party decided to commit political misdemeanors or even crimes.
Consider the central argument of John Edwards' campaign. I paraphrase his message as suggesting, (in more polite terms than mine), that the two parties differentiate themselves to us primarily in their rhetoric. But objectively there isn't a dime's worth of difference between them; when only their actions are considered they both act so as to keep the "apparatchiks" of society secure in their "Dachas". And both are willing to let the proletariat be damned.
The time has come! We badly need for our politics to change. Obama, as president, has a chance of changing the country as consequentially as it was changed in the 1930s, whilst keeping the present political structures as they are now. He has the possibility of becoming a modern day analog to FDR. Clinton's chances of doing anything like that are almost nil.
If Obama fails this year, if he does not receive the nomination, I see only one scenario that can eventually unite us as one country again. But that one will take a decade or more to play out. If necessary, however, I think we will need to start moving toward it as soon as possible.
Both parties have schisms at the present time. For the Republicans the schism is tripartite: social, economic, and imperial. Those are all versions of a neo-conservative ideal, but they have rough edges that render the possibility of a combined message incoherent. For the Democrats there is a progressive liberalism I first saw in John F Kennedy which now riles against a Clintonian DLC.
I personally cannot find sympathy with any of the three legs of the Republican coalition. And while I could usually suffer the ideals of the DLC, (commiserating with them throughout the 1990s), I firmly believe that Hillary Clinton, supported mostly by the adherents within the DLC, cannot solve this country's current problems alone.
If Obama's nomination fails perhaps it would be best that our country's political structures split into five different parties: three from the Republicans and two from the Democrats. Perhaps we must learn how to form temporary coalitions in order to govern. Perhaps we can learn to mimic the parliamentary systems of Europe, at least for a while, until we can regain a new political stability once again.
Who knows which of the three Republican factions would continue calling themselves Republicans and which of the two from the left of the aisle would continue calling themselves Democrats. Those three factions that must lose their names will just have to find new spellings with which to identify themselves.
But as Shakespeare aptly said: "What's in a name?".
It is only for those people hampered by the invasion of religious fervor having crept into their politics that their identification solely by means of party name becomes so important.