It started with the legal fracas (which started over the past week) over people tied to the Clinton campaign making fraudulent robocalls to black voters to falsely convince them that they weren't registered to vote. I was willing to wait to see if this was isolated, but...
samtheeagle has been working for the Obama campaign in Indiana today, with a sharp focus on making sure people who can legally vote can actually do so. Take a look at his posts from today: 5:52 AM 7:55 AM 9:40 AM 11 AM 12:30 PM 8 PM. I should say that this is not a random poll worker; this is an attorney with an extraordinary record of public service and devotion to democracy. He is someone whose opinion on elections I take seriously. And I've heard similar things from other channels.If this is really what happened -- Clinton campaign workers systematically attempting to prevent voters that they see as likely to vote against them, attempting to prevent black voters from voting -- then I think that this campaign has crossed a certain line which I didn't expect that anyone on this side of the aisle would cross. It would represent a deliberate attempt to interfere with the basic operation of democracy for personal gain.
(NB: I didn't say that Clinton personally authorized this, and I seriously doubt that she did. But something doesn't happen on this wide a scale, in a state so closely watched by the candidate, without at least being tacitly condoned from the top. With something this serious, it doesn't really matter; the simple act of having created an environment within a campaign where such a thing would be considered acceptable by field workers on a large scale is, in my eyes, a sign of a deep and pervasive moral failure of the people at the top. If it was with an actual explicit OK, which is unlikely, it would be such a reprehensible act that it doesn't even bear mentioning)
Why does this make me so angry? I know this isn't exactly unique in American history. But the scale of hypocrisy that would be required to do such a thing while preaching to the Democratic choir, while waving the flag of Bill Clinton's "blackness," and the simple fact that a Democrat would be willing to do this even in a party primary, seems to make what would ordinarily be a contemptible action far worse.
I think this is also why I find it worse than watching Middle Eastern politics. I don't expect a Syrian election to be even vaguely legitimate. I expect the US to try to create a gold standard of how democracies are run.
So. I'm going to wait a while longer, to see if this is confirmed by further sources over the next few weeks. If (God forbid) this checks out, and Clinton does win the nomination, then I don't think that I will be able to support her in the general election. Not that I'm likely to vote for McCain, whose policies I think would drag the country even further into the abyss1; but I may simply abstain from the presidential election.
1 Under the Bush administration, our country was led to the brink of an abyss; but under a McCain administration, we would take a great leap forward.
May 7 2008, 14:43:21 UTC 7 years ago
On a side note, with the sort of zeal she's showing to keep "fighting" against all odds, I can't help comparing her to Maryll Streep in Manchurian Candidate, who'd do virtually anything to be the president. And, turns out that I am not the only one thinking so ..
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en%3
September 13 2008, 01:34:27 UTC 7 years ago
September 13 2008, 02:37:07 UTC 7 years ago
September 15 2008, 16:36:23 UTC 7 years ago
The fact that you haven't seen any posts recently has more to do with my being busy than with any filtration. :)