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Edited on Mon Apr-14-08 10:35 PM by MN Against Bush
It takes a lot for a candidate to bring me to the position in which I feel they need to drop out of a race. I believe that in a democracy we should have multiple candidates bringing varied perspectives to any election. We should have candidates discussing the issues and trying to push the others in the race to start addressing important topics.
I supported Dennis Kucinich staying in the race right up until the convention in 2004, and I would have supported him staying in the race until the 2008 convention had he been able to do so. But I can not support Hillary staying in this race any longer.
How was I able to support Kucinich staying in but not Hillary you may ask? The answer is simple, Kucinich was bringing important issues into the debate, Hillary on the other hand is choosing to shift the focus away from the issues and instead distracting us with personal attacks on the man who is virtually certain to be the nominee.
Kucinich and his supporters may have criticized Kerry, but they criticized him on the basis of his stances on the issues in the hope that they could move him to embrace some of their ideas. Constructive criticism is healthy to a democracy, and the Kucinich campaign was right to stay in the race until the end even though it was clear they could not win. Kucinich did not try to portray Kerry and all his supporters as elitists. Kucinich did not try to take any words from Kerry implying that the voters might be angry, or shall we say bitter, in order to make it appear as if Kerry looked down on the voters. Kucinich supporters did not try to dig up dirt on on the priest at Kerry's church so that they could portray him as unpatriotic. Kucinich supporters did not try to claim that Teresa Heinz-Kerry was not sufficiently proud of her country. And Kucinich sure as hell did not try to compare Bush favorably to Kerry.
Instead of personally attacking Kerry, Kucinich focused on the issues. If Hillary were to use a similar strategy I would have no problem with her staying in the race until the convention. Instead though, she has chosen a very different strategy. Her campaign has instead chosen to focus on pointless, absurd, and sometimes downright vile attacks against Obama while distracting our attention away from the real issues.
Instead of debating who is going to do more about global warming, providing health care, or ending the war she has decided the focus of our debate should be on whether or not people in small towns are bitter. She tells us that Obama is out of touch, well I will tell you who is really out of touch. People who think the top concern on the average voter's mind is the bitterness of rural voters are out of touch. People who think that they are going to win the votes of Democrats by telling people that they believe that John McCain is more qualified to be President than the Democratic front runner are out of touch. People who claim that corporate lobbyists work in the interests of “ordinary people” are out of touch.
Hillary Clinton has repeatedly shown us that she is not running a campaign focused on the issues that matter, she is running a campaign out of personal interest. She is not even running to win anymore, she was at one time but she knows the math. We can all see the numbers that show she can not win, and she is not stupid so she can no doubt see those numbers as well. The margins she would have to win each of the remaining states by in order to get the most delegates is impossible to overcome, and there is absolutely no way in hell that she will be able to get a substantial majority of the super delegates to agree to destroy the party by overturning the choice of the voters.
She has already lost the campaign and she knows it, she doesn't seem to be in this to win anymore she seems to be in it out of a personal vendetta against the person that beat her. Instead of talking about the issues she is focusing on attacking the man who has all but clinched the Democratic nomination, and praising the “experience” of George Bush's yes man John McCain.
It is time for her to end her personal vendetta, if she does not want to campaign on the issues that matter then she should not be campaigning at all. Constructive criticism of Barack Obama is fine, and in fact very healthy. No candidate should ever get a free ride. But there is a big difference between constructive criticism and personal attacks. There is a big difference between trying to present yourself as the better candidate, and saying that the Republican is a better candidate than the Democratic front runner.
Hillary has crossed the line, and her campaign is no longer a legitimate Presidential campaign it is nothing more than a hit group that is focused on attacking the soon to be Democratic nominee while propping up his Republican opponent. It is time for Hillary to drop out. Now.
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