Hillary Huckabee and the Writing on the Wall

Written by: Jim Parker on Mar 14, 2008 4:19 PM EDT

Linked to campaigns: Obama for America

If you read my earlier entry, The Politics of Hope and the Politics of Fear (and Loathing), you know that I’ve already stated my revulsion to the divisive, total-war strategy the Clinton campaign employed to carve out narrow popular-vote “victories” in the Texas and Ohio primaries.

In case you’re wondering, that revulsion has only deepened in the days since, as I’ve continued my phonebank work in Pennsylvania and contemplated the damage that HRC’s desperate race-, gender-, and fear-based tactics may inflict on Senator Obama’s candidacy—at least, until she eventually (one can only hope) reads the writing on the wall and ends her doomed candidacy.

Want to add some writing on the wall of your own to express the disdain you may also feel for the Clinton campaign and its vicious, attack-dog politics of fear, loathing, spin, and manipulation?

I just discovered a way to do just that—one that may even serve to give Senator Obama the time and focus it’s going to take for our candidate and party to prepare a coordinated reponse to the onslaught we can expect from Hillary’s “kinder, gentler” GOP counterpart, John McCain (and his party) until election day. 

So if you feel, as I do, that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the embodimentof the top-down, ego-driven, business-as-usual approach to politics that we can no longer support, make your feelings known. 

In fact, here's a link to a petition that I just signed that you may want to sign, too: 

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/obama725/petition.html 

The petition, addressed to the Democatic National Committee, states its signers’ willingness to vote for Barack Obama, but not Hillary Rodham Clinton, in November. It also provides a space for signers to include their own rationales for that stand. Here's what I wrote:

“Hillary Clinton is a divisive, polarizing figure who has consistently placed her own political ambitions above her obligations to the nation and to the party. The desperate “scorched earth” campaign she has unleashed against Sen. Obama is deeply offensive to me and amounts to a political hatchet-job undermining a truly transformation and generational realignment of the American political system to the benefit of no one, except Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

That’s the truth, from my point of view, at least. I used to respect Senator Clinton. But I don’t any more.

To me, her campaign, most notably and regrettably since Iowa, has operated from the exact epicenter of all that’s wrong with our country and its politics, and serves mostly as a blatant example of what Barack Obama has committed himself to ending, via his candidacy: the endless gamesmanship, cynicism, hypocrisy, distortion, ad hominem attacks, and the bankrupt, short-sighted “us-versus-them” mentality that’s defined our politics and divided us all for too long already.

I simply cannot imagine a scenario that would permit me to allow myself to vote for Hillary Clinton, under anycircumstances, should she be able tomudsling and character-assassinate her way to the nomination.

And while I don’t believe that we’re going to lose a single contest from here on out, and I’m committed to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening(Back to the phonebank lists, Jim!), I hope you’ll join with me (and, at last count, 2,652 other Obama supporters) and add your own digital signature to the writing on the wall addressed to our very own “Huckabee,” Hillary Clinton, and members of the Democratic National Committee.

As Robert Kennedy often pointed out, during a remarkably similar campaign in a remarkably similar time: “It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”

Let’s do what we can to help Hillary Clinton see the light.

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