I've had about all the agony I can stand in this primary season. I'm more than past ready for it to be over. Yes, I know how wonderful it is for GOTV and increased Democratic voter rolls as each primary/caucus passes. But utlimitly at what price?
On a personal level I've already been here before, watching the person for whom I held great admiration, esteem, and just plain adoration for go into a self destruct mode as the nomination slips further and further away. Yeah, I've been here before.
In the primary season during the 2000 election I had comfortabley settled down to watch the two candidates I absolutely loved and admired the most prepare for a wonkfest fill debate schedule. I was expecting a high caliber discussion where issues would be taken apart and reassembled right before my eyes with perspective that would be fresh to me.
Instead, what I got was a slow burn of personality clashes that eventually resulted in one of them committing political suicide before a live audience in a last ditch effort reaching for a nomination that was becoming more distant by the hour. I loved Bill Bradley. I followed his career with eagerness and satisfaction as a person who spoke that liberal language with such eloqence and meaning. But as Super Tuesday approached and as each schedule debate passed my disenchantment with Bradley grew. I began to dislike him. And he was the "true blue liberal" for me. The more I heard him snipping and lashing out at Gore the more I began to detest him. Than I realized why I really began to turn away from him. He was destroying the "Bradley brand" if you will right before my eyes in a messy act of political suicide as he felt the nomination slipping away from him.
The last straw for me was the final debate they had at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. As the heat of the debate build it was becoming nearly unwatchable for me. Then it happened. Bradley suddenly lashed out at Gore over racial profiling. He accused Gore of backing the principle of racial profiling in theory and practice. Gore looked stunned at Bradley for a moment as the audience suddenly turned on Bradley and booed him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I was beginning to feel like the waiter in the Godfather that got splattered with Sollozzo's brains when Michael Corleone assassinated him. I turned the TV off in disgust. I had lost Bradley. Even now whenever I see him on the rare occasion I just want to kick my TV set in.
Here I am again watching Hillary Clinton as she has made me relieve this nightmare all over again. I loved her, especially her husband. When I was a local activist for him I had red faced arguments defending the "Clinton Brand," if you will over the years. I gave them my all in volunteer time on both campaigns. Now, I've been subjected to a bout of dega vu that has become so unpalatable for me I can no longer stand to be an observer. I have to turn her off now. I hate her for killing the brand they had built. Now I'm sick to my stomach thinking about it and writing this post about it. She killed the Hillary and Bill I knew and couldn't get enough of. Now I don't want anything to do with them. My progressive/liberal values mean to much to me.
I'm looking forward to Senator Obama's campaign for the general more for my political sanity than my country at this point. How selfish is that? Thanks Hillary. Now I feel like Sonny Corleone after his stop on the causeway on he way to beat the crap out of Paulie for beating up his sister. Again. God I can feel the bullet holes.
TrumanDem
Truman's Conscience
"The Buck Stopped Here"