A Meditation on When National and Local Politics Collide

April 30, 2008

When national and local politics collide or when Clinton supporters and Obama supporters collide it feels like a B-Sci-fi-flick.

I was invited by Mark Leno’s people to join them for a fund raiser, and I went as an observer as I had not endorsed any candidate (still haven’t).

Prior this event, I read Dick Spotwood’s article about how November it will be between Clinton and Mccain, and Mccain will win. I got sullen, cranky, and a little bit resigned to the notion that the democrats are on a course towards disaster. After the event, my friend, Northbayist posted his take on Kathleen Russells’ Op-Ed, where she makes the connection between Obama and Leno.

The original flier for the Leno fund raiser did not have any mention of Obama. It was not until this Op-Ed and similar communications appeared on Obama forums that I became aware of any supposed connection between the two campaigns. It was through that lens I went to the event. I thought that I would be among fellow Obama supporters and we could talk about national politics without getting into a Clinton vs. Obama debate. Those op-eds were distributed throughout the event, so I thought everyone was on board.

I don’t know how it happened, but one thing led to another and I found myself needing to defend why I could vote for Hillary if I HAD to in November, but not work for her campaign.

What I was trying to do is illicit some discussion as to how the Clinton campaign and the Democrats are going to woo Obama supporters who are new to politics and came into the process for Obama not the Democratic Party. These people are not just going to fall into line because Clinton is a democrat. It will be not enough to ask these people to just forget what the Clinton campaign has said and done because it is just politics and everyone does it. People support Obama because they hate “just politics”. It is “just politics” that turn young people and first time voters off.

What they don’t realize is everything was groovy until the Clinton campaign called Obama an empty suit and called his supporters cultists. Until then, we had no reason to engage Clinton supporters. We were too busy growing the party. They started and are continuing to blame Obama and his supporters for the very things they were guilty of. I watched Clinton supporters talk disparaging of the young people, first time voters, and black voters. Then there were the countless lies the campaign told.

Another topic brought up was Michigan and Florida. Obama isn’t disenfranchising the Michigan and Florida votes. It is the Democratic Party rules and these states flagrant disobedience to those rules that made their votes null. Obama didn’t write those rules and did not encourage those states to disobey them. If anything Clinton keeping her name on the ballot (at least in Michigan where all other candidates did not have their names included) encouraged people to not to pay attention to the rules. If Michigan and Florida have their votes counted, the democratic party might as well have no rules, because they are not enforced. If you worry now that you might lose those states in the general election, you should have thought about that when you were weighing how important those states not voting early was.

Another thing I notice generally is that when you bring up Clinton’s vote on the Iraq war, her mishandling of health care, or her support of NAFTA, people will state that if Obama was in Clinton’s shoes at the time, he would have done the same. My response is how do you know that and isn’t that just speculation? I am judging Clinton on what she has done, not what people think Obama would have done in different circumstances. All I have is the knowable and verifiable to judge candidates on.

I don’t support candidates lightly. It takes forever for me to weigh everything about a candidate as this whole State Senate race illustrates. In the case of the presidency, Clinton’s behavior and words led me to Obama. Clinton would have to woo me and give me more than the Supreme Court to get me to work for her. She would need to earn anything more than my unenthusiastic vote against Mccain.

Maybe what I need to have one of those memory-wiping wands over me if Clinton gets nominated so I will forget everything she has ever did.

I will be posting my impressions of Leno and his fund raiser and what I think of that Op-ed later. I really enjoyed myself and really was impressed by Leno and the speakers who were featured.