Thursday, May 22, 2008

can she be serious?

hillary clinton has, as they say, jumped the shark.

i realize that a good politician has a certain amount of flexibility and the ability to frame issues in a way that achieve a desired result. and from what i can tell, clinton is a pretty good politician (as are obama and mccain). up to a point, that is a compliment.

of course, i objected to a number of things senator clinton and her surrogates said during the campaign, and i'm not talking about the obvious policy differences i would have with her. in particular, i found the ways that she's tried to move the goal posts and generally change the rules of the democratic primary process, which she agreed to when she was the front-runner, to be disingenuous at best. where were her objections and her influence when these democratic party rules (not the law of the land) were being decided? why did she ever approve of the disenfranchisement voters in michigan and florida (if that's how she wants to characterize it) in the first place? unfortunately, that's the kind of thing that candidates do all the time, and clinton's rivals have been no exception to that trend.

but for clinton to compare her effort to seat the democratic delegates from florida and michigan to the historic fights against racial discrimination at the ballot box and the right of women to vote... and then to compare the democratic primary process to the fraudulent elections in zimbabwe is beyond the pale. it is self-serving and trivializes the real injustices suffered and sacrifices made by men and women who gave their lives to change the world.

at some point, the characterization of her public statements on the nomination process moves from disingenuous to despicable. are we there yet?

1 comment:

BLW said...

thank you for pointing this out with sources and everything. it's about time somebody said something about the way she's been looking out only for herself and playing below the belt. yikes!