Tuesday, February 19, 2008

So Much for the Audacity of Hillary

Hillary Clinton's old-school, slime-your-competition campaign tactics have more than backfired. Not only did she lose her 10th straight primary to Senator Barack Obama -- she has lost the respect of the majority of voters--myself included.

You can't position yourself as a change agent (a position she conveniently adopted from Barack) while propagating the worst of past political practices. What Hillary fails to realize is that the American people are sick to death of such tactics. They not only see through them, but past them: if Hillary resorts to unfair, misleading personal attacks on Obama -- essentially trying to stamp out the positive vision for the future that he engenders -- how will she change anything in Washington, which has been resorting to the same, despicable, distracting tactics seemingly forever with no positive results?

Further, Clinton has resorted to playing the overused fear card, attempting to frighten voters into voting for her by painting an unfounded and unfair scary portrait of Obama as "nothing but words." The longer Hillary campaigns, the more she seems to embrace Rovian principles: namely, win at all costs. So where's the change? Hillary's message is clear: she represents old Beltway politics and "change" is, to HER, nothing more than a plagiarized word from the Obama campaign.

Even Hillary's own political campaign smacks of Bush-think. Valuing loyalty above experience, she has seen her own campaign falter in the same way the loyal but unqualified Bush adminstration has presided over a failed regime. The message? She will most certainly value loyalty over experience in her own administration. God knows, we've been there, done that. As Obama has pointed out,
"The stakes are too high and the challenges too great to play the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result."
Electing Hillary Clinton is no recipe for change.

When people tell me they are afraid that Barack is too inexperienced to be President, I have to laugh. If experience gets us the kind of negative, combative, phony baloney politics that Hillary has been spewing -- the only thing we have to fear is electing someone with her kind of experience.

Hillary has decided to take the same low road she lambasted when Bill was at the receiving end of what she called the "great right-wing conspiracy." She has, somewhere along the line, concluded that, having survived those combative years, she is now entitled to be the nominee of the Democratic Party and that any means--however ignoble-- justify her attaining that goal -- voters be damned. Shades of Bush, folks. Hillary is running for Hillary -- not for the American people. Vote accordingly.

No comments: