Lefties don't have a candidate.
Like most hardcore liberals, I had planned to vote for Edwards. I'm a registered Democrat. I live in New York, a "closed primary" state. That left Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
I studied the printed grid inside my mechanical voting machine, a steel beast from the 1950s. New York keeps threatening to replace the classic booths. I hope they keep them forever. Old-school machines have a feature I treasure: you flip a switch to make an "X" appear next to your choice. You're not committed until you pull the lever to open the curtain; you can flip the switch back and go with someone else instead.
I moved the switch to Hillary, to see how it looked. Hillary. Ted Rall votes for Hillary. I asked myself my usual test question: If she won, and I watched her being sworn in next January, how would I feel?
Bored. And slightly depressed.
I thought about the experience issue, her biggest advantage. "I am offering 35 years of experience making change," she says. Though way overstated--35 years of what? being a lawyer?--living in the White House has to have left her with some insights. Unlike Obama, Hillary wouldn't lose her way searching for the restroom. But political dynasties suck. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton would be a sad statement. A nation of 300 million people shouldn't keep turning to the same few families for leadership.
A woman president is a couple of centuries overdue. But issues matter more than affirmative action. I couldn't overlook Clinton's votes to go to war and to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on the never-ending horror show of Iraq. Thousands of people are dead because of her.
Hillary Clinton didn't think Iraq had WMDs. No one smart did. The polls were running for the war, and so was she. She pandered. It was disgusting. But I was even more appalled by her lousy political skills. It ought to have been evident, even then, that (a) the war wouldn't go well, (b) Americans would turn against it, and (c) this would occur before she was up for reelection in 2006. It was obvious to even me at the time, and it took me ten years to get a bachelor's degree.
She was wrong. She had bad judgment. And her September 2007 vote for possible war against Iran proves she still does. I moved the lever left. The "X" disappeared from Clinton's box.
I made an "X" pop up next to Obama's name. "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of..." I wasn't feeling it.
For what will soon have been eight long years, I reflected, left-of-center Americans have endured an illegitimate administration of morons, thieves and bullies.
. . .
"I want the Republicans to feel the way I did in 2004," an Iowa Democrat told The New York Times. So do I. I want them to watch everything they care about disassembled. Take Reagan and Bush's names off the airports, nationalize major corporations, demolish Gitmo, gay marriage--anything that pisses them off.
I want revenge. Obama preaches reconciliation. "I will create a working majority because I won't demonize my opponents," says Obama. The Illinois senator is an interesting politician and might make a good leader. But not yet. Give me eight years of Democratic rule as ruthless and extreme and uncompromising as the last eight years of Bush. Then we can have some bipartisanship.
Oh, and Obama says he wouldn't have voted for the Iraq War. I say he's lying. So do his votes for funding the war since he joined the Senate. His voting record on Iraq is the same as Hillary's.
The link at Rall's website isn't working, but you can find out how he voted here.
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