How Hillary Clinton lost me

I was once one of the biggest Clinton supporters around. Here's how it changed.

I've always been a Clinton fan. Before this race began, I fully expected her to win the democratic nomination, even though I was tilting towards the newcomer, Barack Obama. I was one of those people who saw his speech at the '04 convention and wondered why he was wasn't running for president. When he finally announced, I was overjoyed even though I was certain he couldn't beat Clinton.

Then he unexpectedly won Iowa, and suddenly an Obama win didn't seem so impossible anymore. She won New Hampshire, and we had the makings of a great race between two excellent candidates.

I first soured on Senator Clinton during one of the debates. On more than one occasion she implied that the "boys" were "ganging up" on her. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of politics knows that the underdogs were ganging up on the front runner, which they always do. But Hillary Clinton tried to portray it as sexism. That bothered me, a lot. Her campaign would go on to use the gender card on many other occasions.

Then Obama won South Carolina, and my old hero Bill Clinton suggested that he only won because he's black. After all, if Jesse Jackson can win in SC, it should be a given that Barack Obama can win there. That ticked me off. The Clinton campaign would go on to play the race card (against Obama) on many, many other occasions. They continue to do so to this day.

The occasion is historic since either a woman or a black man will win the nomination of a major party for the first time. It's funny that Obama could run as "the black guy" and play the gender card against Clinton, but he chooses not to. It's also funny that Clinton explicitly runs as the female candidate and plays the race card against Obama at every opportunity.

Then Reverend Wright happened, and Obama had to "reject and denounce" his remarks. But when Geraldine Ferrero said some ugly things, she wasn't rejected or denounced.

After she fell behind behind in the race, she started to play a fun game of changing the goalposts. Delegates are now not as important as the popular vote. When it was obvious she wouldn't win the popular vote either, the she focused on how important big states like New York and California are compared to those puny states Obama keeps winning. Never mind the fact that New York and California will go Blue in November regardless of who runs. Then we had the claim that pledged delegates don't have to vote for the candidate they are pledged to, and would be courted by the Clinton campaign.

It was at this point that I threw my hands up in disgust and renounced the Clintons once and for all. But the freakshow didn't stop there.

We had to sit through Obama's writings from grade school, the NAFTA disasta, Mark Penn's fun meeting, wayy too much Reverend Wright, Clinton's stint as Solid Snake in Bosnia (followed by Bill's awesome defence of the Bosnia incident), and then Bill claiming that Obama played the race card on him!

The story that amused me the most was that of the legendary 3AM ad, showing the wise and experienced senator Clinton picking up the White House phone to handle some sort of crisis. What struck me is that she also claimed that her Bosnia "mis-speak" (or fabrication, depending on how you look at outright lies) occurred because she was sleep deprived from the campaign. So, being sleep deprived from a campaign can cause her to totally make up/imagine something that never happened. But during the presidency (which one can only imagine is more stressful than a nomination fight) she is supposedly more qualified to answer the phone at 3AM?

And when all else was lost, the cacophony over Florida and Michigan was notched up over the last month. This is my favourite stupefying political story of the year, so it warrants some extended coverage:

1 - Michigan and Florida plan to move up their primaries because Iowa and New Hampshire get too much attention even though their populations are miniscule compared to MI/FL (this is something most people agree on).
2 - The DNC tells them not to do it, with the penalty of having their delegates invalidated. Let's remember here that the DNC is the governing body of the Democratic party, and they make the rules about how the party's nominee is selected.
3 - Michigan and Florida do it anyway, and they lose their delegates.
4 - All major candidates know at this point that there's no point in campaigning in either state since there is nothing to be won from them. The DNC asks the candidates not to campaign in FL and MI.
5 - Obama and Clinton both agree not to contest Florida and Michigan.
6 - Obama removes his name from the Michigan ballot (as do all major candidates but Clinton). His name remained on the Florida ballot since it was not possible to legally remove it. Clinton does not remove her name from the Michigan ballot.
6 - Clinton campaigns in Florida (even after saying she wouldn't).
7 - She "wins" both Florida and Michigan, two states she promised not to contest, knowing their results wouldn't count because they had broken the rules.

The Clinton campaign has hammered away on this issue relentlessly because it is their last hope. I was flabbergasted then, and I remain flabbergasted now. It's a sad sight to see the mighty senator from New York reduced to this farcical, idiotic, and cynical exercise in her pathological pursuit for power. It's stupefying to know that there are people who believe that the FL/MI votes should count as they are, never mind that Obama didn't campaign in Florida and he wasn't even on the freakin' ballot in Michigan. Isn't that how they elect people in Cuba and China?

I should be happy that my guy will win this, but I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. I have a new political hero, but I've lost two in the process.