Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Hillary Clinton and Her "Supporters"

Michael Kinsley's essay that appeared in the July 11th 2008 edition of Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1821662,00.html is right on target.

I am getting so tired of Hillary Clinton's supporters threatening to 1) stay home on election day 2) vote for John McCain 3) support some other third party candidate. I find it especially galling that they keep demanding that the 18 million voters who supported Mrs Clinton be heard. I'm not hearing that from John Edwards' supporters or Bill Richardson's' supporters or any of the other Democratic contenders.

What Mrs. Clinton's supporters must realize is the following 1) they lost because they had poor strategy and poor cohesion amongst the campaign leadership 2) they failed to keep Bill Clinton on a short leash 3) if they decide to pout and not support Barack Obama, do they think they will get a better deal in terms of moving a progressive agenda forward from John McCain? If they do, they are sadly mistaken and finally and most importantly, if Mr. Obama loses because of their lackluster or nonexistent support, it will come back to haunt them because many in the party will consider them and by extension Mrs. Clinton a pariah and not want to have anything to do with them because Mrs. Clinton could not exercise effective discipline over these so called "friends".


NB: Portions of this letter appeared in the August 4th Edition of Time magazine

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