I keep wanting to love her. I keep thinking she's THE ONE to be our first woman president. She has worked very hard for it. She has more diverse experience than anyone in the ring. She's smart, strong, bold, organized, totally not-Palin, connected, powerful. But every time I think, yeah, maybe, I realize it's like a bad marriage where I keep trying to convince myself we're perfect for each other. I look into her eyes and see that she cares about women's equality, in economic as well as social issues. That is awesome. But that is not sealing the deal for me. It boils down to my gut feeling that she is everything we could ask for - in a Republican candidate.
Hillary is what I call a Betty Ford Republican, as was my beloved, strong, smart, bold, powerful mother. Conservative as hell on many issues, but by God she would give her all for women's rights, including the right to abort a fetus she carried, and have equal economic opportunity. My mother - and grandmother - fought for the lives and rights of minorities in southern Indiana, and in north Idaho, land of the Aryan Nation. It's likely Hillary Clinton would do the same.
I don't know if she gives a damn about rural people like me, including farmers, loggers, ranchers, and, yes, gun owners. I do know Bernie does. Even though he's a dang easterner, at least he internalized the rural Vermont mentality. But I WANT to think she might.
Except when it comes to killing people. Yes, she says she's all for gun control. There's that. But has Hillary ever met a war she didn't like? Perhaps I'm missing one or two. Supporting women is awesome. But "war is not good for children and other living things." Neither is the death penalty. No matter how reprehensible a person's crime is, it demeans our own humanity to purposely hold a person in a cell for years, sometimes decades, with no attempt at helping them to redeem themselves, and then strap them down and push poison into their veins to execute them. Or shoot them. Or hang them. Or behead them. Or gas them. Or torture them.
So it came as a gut punch today when I saw this: "Hillary Clinton comes out against abolishing the death penalty" at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....
I need to stop needing Hillary. Like I said, I WANT to love her. But she's really not that into me and my type.
Now, that gentleman from Vermont with the funny hair... I looked it up and found this from last May: "Bernie Sanders on the death penalty: The state shouldn’t be in the business of killing people" at http://www.rawstory.com/.... And then there's this, from his website: "War should be the last option."
I just cannot stomach the thought of campaigning and donating and working hard for the first woman candidate, trying to make her views OK with my own, and then find out she's really nothing like I had made up in my head.
Bernie's the real deal. I don't have to hold my stomach when I support him. I can have my women's rights candidate, and love him, too.