TD -

Thanks for your thoughtful post. I was also a 90s Clinton supporter & a NYer who voted for her to reach the Senate.

But she lost me before the Dems nom fight. 1st w/ the war vote and then all of the Lieberman-esque stuff in between.

Even realizing all the now-known-to be realpolitik triangulation (perfected by Bill 1st) that you so accurately describe - even understanding all of that - it made me think of just how many Dems they've actually helped since he's left office & she's been in - & that came up lacking.

And why, w/ this most important war vote - if she's willing to go there - what differs her from a Repub? Her past is not enough anymore - erased by 7 yrs. of war votes, flag-burning votes, votes against hampering Bush's war authority, the Iran Repub Guard/terrorist vote, the Patriot Act and so on. Since she's been my Sen., she's been very thin on a Dem or progressive agenda. My nostalgia still wouldn't get me there.

And so at the start of the Dem campaign - knowing as a NY'er, that her 'inevitable' juggernaut was coming, I still looked elsewhere. I found what I sought in Obama (& Edwards if Obama didn't peek through). My dream ticket was Obama/Edwards or vice-versa.

All the while still thinking well - if she prevails as the nom, I'd still have to vote for her. That is until Edwards left the race & she began her true-self campaign in earnest.

The other day you wrote a very thoughtful comment reply to B. Glad on the movement of the black electorate which echoed my thoughts exactly. It started w/ a drip that became a torrent - from B. Shaheen, to Wolfson, to B. Kerrey, to A. Cuomo, to R. Johnson, to Bill in So.Car. It was then that I decided that I could not vote for her even if she were the nominee.

And now - even after that bile - here we are w/ her 60 Minutes intvw, veritable endorsement of McCain & ads that would make Rove smile. She has thoroughly confirmed my first, worst inklings -that she's soul-less - because she has decided to put self before all else - the party, our November chances and the Dems most loyal voters.

So here we are & I know where I'll never be - pulling a lever for her in Nov.

I can't help but think this is a ploy by Hillary to gain information to devise a strategy to neutralize her opponents. Yes that is the amount of distrust she and Bill have manufactured. I agree with the information in the first post. Principle and integrity is pretty much absent and it's been replaced by distrust. I can't believe the things the Clintons will do to win an election. If Clinton does win the nomination, it will be empty, because McCain will be the benefactor of the Obama supporters which will propel him to the White House. The Clintons are serious about Obama being on the ticket because in their scheming minds they know that is their only hope of holding on to any of his supporters which they really need. But they want him as the figurehead VP. But people shouldn't take the bait. Obama has shown that he should be President on principle alone. But Clinton is not running a slash and burn campaign to be VP. Only the people can stop her because the media are co-conspirators. Amazingly, when people (mainly Republicans)called CNN, the Clinton News Network, I never saw it.

I actually supported Hillary more strongly than I could ever support Bill, esp after Monica, and I proudly voted for her for Senate twice. Like someone above, I anticipated supporting her after my 1st choice, Biden, dropped out. When he did, I turned attention to NH feeling about equally drawn to Clinton, Edwards and Obama, pretty much in that order.

It was, in the grand scheme of things, a fairly small thing that caused me to start really seeing her, not my image of who she was. After that, I could never see her in the same light and in the months (feels like years)since then, I have realized beyond all doubt that she would likely be worse for our country than Geo. Bush has been and certainly devastating for our party.

I've worked on a number of political campaigns before (local, statewide, and presidential) so perhaps what was so appalling to me won't seem important to others. But for me it was the two mailers that she sent out in NH, 3 and 1 days before the primary. --- The one sent the day before dealt with Social Security and said Obama's proposal (lifting the cap) would take money out of the pockets of the 'hard-working middle class' and seniors. I knew that wasn't true, that it would only affect those making over $102,000 (beyond middle class in any ranking) and would only serve to bring those higher-income earners up to the 6% contribution that lower income people are already paying. --- The other, sent 3 days before, dealt with right to choice and said that Obama had failed to support women's rights because he voted 'present' 7 times in the Ill. senate on abortion bills. I also knew that wasn't true because, having had logical questions about those votes myself, I had looked into it and learned that those votes in particular were made in *support* of abortion rights, at the urging of Ill. Planned Parenthood, to help protect moderate legislators in vulnerable districts. (It's complicated but fully explained on Obama's web site.)

Those mailers were such blatant distortions, to my eyes, and so contrary to my view of who Hillary was and what she stood for that I wondered for a moment if her research team had let her down ... but then I learned that the Clinton campaign had stepped in to stop Obama's robocall attempt to right the record on pro-choice ... on the ground that the NH pro-choice spokeswoman identified herself 33 seconds, rather than the required 30 seconds, into the call ... and I could no longer believe that the false attacks had been done out of ignorance. -- The fact that there was a similar letter signed by NH area women's right supporters did give me pause, until I learned that she had lied to them as well about the significance of Obama's votes and, yes, left them with their reputations and integrity in shambles after she strolled out of NH with the victory under her belt. (Washington Post had two good articles on that.)

As I said, these mailers were minor things on the grand scheme of things but to someone who had done campaigning, they said volumes - VOLUMES! - about her ethics and essential honesty, and about her view of the voters: that they are sheep to be lied to and frightened, so they can be herded in the direct she wants. I recognized that approach and pattern of thought immediately: it was George Bush's (Karl Rove's?) in the 2004 campaign. (Perhaps the 2000 one as well, but I wasn't as active in that one so can't say for sure.)

I know - I think we all do - that the 'change' we are most desperate for in this country is to have some honesty and integrity in the person who sits in the White House. Issues are important, but that is the central source of what is wrong. Now that I have seen more and more of her behavior, I believe she may be far worse than GWB. She's certainly more hypocritical, because she's more intelligent; sometimes I think he really believes his distortions. And she's a Democrat, which means her attitude toward the voters is in direct contradiction to her party's beliefs (many Republicans actually do think most people are sheep and ought to be led by their 'betters'). And being a Democrat, she also has the potential of doing to my party what GWB has done to his. She may already be starting on that.

There has, of course, been much more since then, actions more offensive and more harmful and more telling. The worst is what she is doing right now - making the campaign one of scorched earth; dividing the party perhaps beyond repair; weakening its likely nominee; and waiting in the brush like a rattlesnake just waiting to ambush and take him down if the chance arises because that is her only hope of winning. But you asked what made me change from likely support to such strong opposition that I may wind up voting for John McCain, and the turning point were those two, comparatively innocuous mailers.

I'm no fool. I know that it is common, and relatively easy, to emphasize the negative, and give things a 'spin' to an opponent's positions in official campaign literature (like Obama did with the health care and NAFTA literature that led, ironically, to her "Shame On You!!" melodrama). But to deliberatly craft lies that will prey on legitimate fears of those who don't have the time and resources to check things out for themselves, those who will assume that a candidate of their party, a former First Lady, a woman like themselves wouldn't deliberately lie to them. (And where has her 'edge' come from? Women, the less educated, those who are older and therefore more respectful of authority - because we used to have statesmen of both parties running this country.) It takes something cold, calculating and uncaring at the center of the person for them to do that.

I remember feeling like weeping when I first read those flyers and gradually realized that they were truly intentional and intentionally sprung at the last minute to take advantage of not just her opponent but of the voters she is seeking to 'represent.' As time has gone on, of course, I've realized this IS her way, and I feel far more anger - sometimes rage - and, well, fear than I do sadness. But first realizing what is at her core ... what is MISSING from her core ... was, at the time, one of the saddest moments I've experienced in 40+ years of political activity.

So many of the things she says are, well, Freudian. I think that Hillary herself may be the "blank screen" onto which many of us - especially white women of her age, like me - tend to project ourselves, to see our unfulfilled wishes for our own lives and our hopes for our daughters' lives. But she isn't the person we conjure up, of course: she's who she is. Someone with admirable tenacity and many strengths, and even it appears a good worker when she is one of many, but she is not a person who can lead and she should NOT be our country's president.

How The Monster Came Back

The reasons for Hillary’s comeback are made clear in a most pithy and revealing piece written about her by the Matrix-Evolutions Group as was posted on many Obama and McCain blogs.

The Revolutionary Party endorses Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.
This is the most important election America will ever have, possibly the last if Obama is not elected.

The Revolutionary Party derives its politics from an equation for evolution that has been accepted by science for the last eighty years and that we trust as much as religious believers trust Pat Robertson. Mathematics doesn’t lie, at least not as well as Robertson does. Anyway, an analysis based on the equation indicates that the so-called war on terror will inexorably ratchet up to world war level, a pretty horrible thought given a world armed with nuclear weapons. For that reason we support Barack Obama as the only real anti-war candidate.

Hillary? In our opinion, she is the more all round competent candidate and has been upended by Obama to a great degree because he is trim and youthfully enthusiastic. But before Hillary came Bill, which should cause us to stop and think.

The value of our mathematics based analysis lies in its ability to objectively distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. The technical aspects of the analysis make it slow reading for those without a science background, so we will give its conclusions first here and save the detailed reasoning for later.

Put simply, the Clintons are what is known in the political science textbooks as populists, those who achieve political success by playing to the people, to their needs and pains and wants. But there is a difference between patter and delivery. We are all familiar with artificial soda. The Clintons are like an artificial banana split, very likable, but with no real food value.

Recall President Clinton and his first lady. During their tenure America’s favorite political couple sang a song of health care delivery, but delivered rather on prison construction and on the number of police put on the streets. The Pew Report that came out the end of February said that one American in a hundred is locked up in a prison or jail. To put this into better perspective, the report said that America has 7 million people in jail or otherwise under the control of the penal system. This is 16 times more per capita than the communist People’s Republic of China, where, we are told, there is no freedom or human rights. Clinton legislature took America to the highest prison population in the world, a statistic historically associated with police states like Stalinist Russia and apartheid South Africa. This is not to say that America is a police state, of course, for if it were you’d have heard about it on the evening news.

Also notably absent in the media is another creation of the Clintons, the near million homeless people that wander the streets of Sacramento and Las Vegas and our other big cities. This sharp upsurge in homelessness came about inarguably as a result of Clinton legislature that ended LBJ’s war on poverty by terminating effective social protections for out of work people, something many more will become more familiar with as the stock market collapses from the cost of the war and the recession takes hold in full force.

What the Clintons did with prisons and police and welfare protection and NAFTA and failed to do with health care very much pleased the moneyed class and the conservatives. Our technical analysis objectively shows the Republican social and fiscal conservatives to be bad guys because their relationship to the working class and middle class is basically that of master to servant. This fact is also muted by populist politicians like the Clintons whose tax returns, were they to be made public, would show that they are members in good standing of the moneyed class too.

This deep secret of class control and abuse is also kept under wraps by the media, whose personalities are hired and controlled by the moneyed class. Other than the few raisins stirred into in the poison muffin of TV to make it seem fair, media people who don’t keep the secret of class control and the unhappiness of most of us that derives from it don’t last long on their jobs or are not hired to begin with.

The ones who do make the cut endlessly spout the lies of the so-called American Dream in one form or another. The power of the media to control people’s thoughts and actions in conformity with American ideology is difficult to assess for people who get their information primarily from the media, which is most people. This power of media to control thinking was dramatically illustrated towards the end of WWII in Germany just before the fall of Berlin as the Allied and Russian troops converged on the city. Most Germans even in those final moments still believed Hitler’s media propaganda that they were still winning the war.

In our own times, hidden by the media from public sight are facts about life readily observable even by doing something as simple as riding public transportation. Here the observer notes that the common people are unhappy, fear and personal failure showing clearly on their faces and in their behaviors. This effect of control and abuse in the workplace and at school is not made clear from TV where all the media personalities act through their endlessly smiling and bubbly days to show to the audience that America really is a happy place, the steady stream of mass murders in schools, workplaces and malls not able to be kept out of the news notwithstanding.

And much as the ugly facts of our present existence are air brushed out in the media, so also is the future we realistically face. Not made clear is that the dollar is fast becoming as worthless as the paper it is printed on to keep the war going. Or that the stock market and the housing market will soon halve their value giving those who have been spared homelessness and jail to date a taste of these hells on earth firsthand. The Clintons will not care because they are a part of the apparatus that brought us to where we are at in America today.

Hillary should be given credit for being an ambitious and a profoundly adept social climber and a very talented actress, our American Evita. We have no problem applauding her for her personal successes. But she is never going to go against the wishes of the money class that created her and Bill and supported these two as their adorable political puppets. She will not stop this war.

Yes, she says she will, despite her voting for the war. And, of course, there are those of you that think that Hillary would never lie to us. But Bill said he would never lie to us, too. And he said it so well that I yet don’t believe he lied to us about Monica. Monica who? She never existed. That is how good an actor Bill is. And this suggests that his mate is no less of a self-serving liar.

Of course, transgressions are relative. Yes, the flag pin wearing conservatives are more disgusting than the Clintons. Who of us is not totally revulsed by the smell of a public rest room emanating from the Bible squeezing, boy hustling conservative senator from Idaho caught with his pants down? Nobody has caught Bill at something that viscerally gross yet. Still, what character is there in a first family when the head of the most powerful nation on earth sticks a penile object, not even his own, up some college kid’s vagina? If the Clinton presidency were a movie, they would not be playing the Star Spangled Banner in the background during that particular scene.

And to be completely and totally unkind – and very logical -- doesn’t it make you wonder about the guy’s wife? Really, does any intelligent female over the age of 22 think that Hillary actually felt bad about Bill and Monica? Judging from the observable obvious that Bill is no more than Hillary’s showboat, the best educated guess is that is Hillary is lesbian, a married one, not that unusual in modern America. If Hillary was mad about anything with Monica, it was that she didn’t get a shot at her too. Watch one of Hillary’s girlfriends surfacing soon to clarify Hillary’s preference as to penile object.

The smiling Clintons are so phony and so odd in this area that one would not be surprised to find that the unconfident Chelsea Clinton developed as such as a result of some form of child abuse. Chelsea does not look happy. Neglect by the Clintons is hardly to be overlooked as this ambitious pair had better things to pay attention to in their furious political rise to the top than their daughter. And sexual abuse is not to be totally ruled out either given Bill’s sexual tastes.

The best bet to end the war and end our American style police state is to vote for Barack Obama. Not for Hillary, who is sufficiently self-serving and devious that one would not be surprised to see her team up with Huckabee on a national reconciliation ticket to satisfy her political ambition. Hopefully Obama will not be removed by the ruling class by assassination, which they would do if methods to remove him don’t work. These could include much media humiliation or using their federal prosecutors on a leash to try Resko at this most inopportune time or even Resko inventing a story about Barack in order to trade 15 years over his head for two. Or something like that.

I ran for President in 2000 as a write-in candidate and would consider doing it again, if it were necessary to keep the beautiful voice of resistance in play. But only in the event that Obama is derailed by the conservatives, which we very much fear because these people will do anything to retain power, including staging all sorts of political theatre at Barack’s expense and detriment. Or worse.

Dr. and Mrs. Calabria
http://www.matrix-evolutions.com

Please quick tell somebody on Hillary’s campaign staff what is going on with these trashy Obama sites.
Martha Turner

I've been an Obama supporter from the start of this campaign, but I always liked Hillary Clinton. My biggest problem with her was that I didn't think she could get elected. She may be popular in New York, but I'm not sure even George W. Bush is disliked more in the heartland (by different people, of course).

But I never understood it, and I always stuck up for her. In fact, I liked her better than Bill. And last summer, she seemed very presidential - when she was trying to make her nomination seem 'inevitable.' I would have supported her 100% if she'd won the nomination then.

But not now! Her negative campaigning has reminded me of why I dislike the Republicans so much. She's not trying to build herself up, but to take Barack Obama - and the entire Democratic Party - down. And her praise of McCain just about turned my stomach.

I guess I've just come to my senses. She really IS that ambitious, that egotistical, that dishonest, that... Republican by nature. I haven't liked her support of the Iraq war, or much of what she's done in the Senate, but I always made excuses for her. Well, no more. And I'm going to be completely disgusted with the Democratic Party if she ends up ANYWHERE on the ticket, even as the V-P candidate. If we're any different from Republicans at all, we need to end her ambition NOW.

I have never been for Hillary, but I could have voted for her in the GE; until recently. Not any more, no matter what the consequences. Sometimes things can’t get better until they get worse; if she is in the ticket, it would be one of those times. (I won’t ever vote for McCain either.)

Back in ’92, I could not understand why the President's wife, rather than an elected official, was heading the important issue of Health Care. People around me seemed to accept it. I never understood that situation!

Of course, now she had the foot in the door. Nothing else really mattered. Anyhow, I started to become excited about the prospects of this (richest, at least then) country of the world ensuring Health Insurance for all. She failed at this attempt. I have read on this and I do not believe for a minute that it was a "Republican conspiracy," she just couldn’t bring people together to do so. Please read this from V. Navarro:
http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro11122007.html

I will leave aside her childish attacks along the lines of "Kindergarten, plagiarism, shame on you" and such AND her extremely bogus claims of experience and Foreign Affairs doing, AND the fact that she doesn’t inspire me one bit.

I am horrified that she twisted Obama’s “present” votes in the issue of abortion. Reading what she put out, make me wonder about Obama; but investigating further into the issue I became appalled to know that she could go to such reality-distorting extremes.

I am horrified that she won't release her Tax Returns AND when asked about it, she resorts to "Ken Starr" name calling.

I am horrified that she hasn't released the White House papers and has no intention to do so AND that she lies about it.

I am horrified that she is ready to praise McCain as Commander in Chief AND in the same breath, affirm that the other (very accomplished) Democratic candidate is not ready for the job.

I am horrified that she made a mistake voting for the war AND can't call it a mistake. It reminds me too much of Bush's style.

I am horrified about her MLK comment. Aside from any race undertones, this is what I heard her say: -It is the politicians who make things happen for you, the masses. In Democracy, it is not the politicians who are the Middle Man; you the People are.-

I find such a comment extremely dismissive AND a big lie: No revolution in history has ever happened from the top down, without the commitment of the People; definitively not the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. When the People and its leaders have been well organized and/or consistent enough, the authorities have had no other choice than to flee or to concede. Not the other way around as she wants us to believe.

I find her belief system to be wrong: She wants to govern us without us; she thinks she is enough.

That comment was probably the big eye-opener for me. It was then that I started thinking that maybe I could never vote for this politician. Her actions since have continued to point me in that direction.

I must say I was still awestruck at Texas debate when she reached out and patted Obama's hand, cooing "absolutely honored to be here with Barack" with the TV studio back-lit glowing a halo behind them in that you-n-I-against-the-vast-rightwing-conspiracy way, but then the magic was gone the next day when she snapped right into "Swim or Kitchen Sink!" mode.

tdemorsella...everyone is entitled to their own opinion but they're not entitled to their own facts. You stated that you had done a lot of research on the Clintons yet you posted the following...

I also overlooked that other than Bush, no other administration had as many scandals, indictments, or convictions. By 1999, all the controversies, trials, convictions, suicides and accidents of witnesses finally started to get to me...

That's garbage and if you had done all of the reading and research that you claim, you would know better. Your post is replete with so many of the lies spewed by republicans over the years that I find myself wondering if perhaps your so-called reading and research was done at Free Republic?

...and believe he has a record of reaching out to would be foes...

Let's see if I understand the double standard that is built into that statement. Obama is to be admired for his willingness to "reach out" to republicans and the Clintons are to be reviled for "triangulating"? Does that cover it?

As regards your "South Carolina" moment, I had such a moment myself except my SC moment left me wondering if I would be able to vote for Obama should he win. This would sum up my SC moment feeling quite nicely.

Everyone should support their candidates but please stop making things up. Thanks in advance.

Just a suggestion...

Like many of you, I have been repulsed by HRC's actions. I have written to the DNC, Howard Dean and superdelegates. If Hillary manipulates the election pulling in favors with the DLC, and using these scorched earth tactics. We have the power of the purse. I suggest a financial boycott to all those who are paying off favors to the Clintons.

I may have to hold my nose to vote for Hillary in the general (with the Supreme Court hanging in balance, we have to) but I sure as hell won't help her or those who rigged it for her, get there.

SC did it for me.

I will never vote for a clinton again. Admittedly, I live in reliably blue ny, so I have that luxury.

I will volunteer and contribute to her primary challenger in 2012 (she will never be president).

It is blatantly obvious that the Clinton campaign feels justified in their attacks on Obama because he and his campaign staff ,if with a bit less vitriol, employed negative campaign tactics against HRC and because these anti-Obama advertisements are nothing compared to the swiftboat level of attacks which the Republicans have ready to trash him with.

Both points might well be accurate, but it still in my mind does not justify statements which claim the Republican candidate is better qualified than one's fellow Democrat to defend our country.

All the same, as a Vietnam Vet, I owe it to the current generation of troops being physically and psychologically damaged, if not killed, to vote for Clinton, who is far and away, the lesser of two evils from the father of "The Surge" and key supporter of Bush's veto against the anti-torture legislation.

Any of the rest of you who, like myelf, are as disgusted and saddened by the Clinton campaign tactics as the writer of this illuminating comment is, nevertheless, have got to resist the temptation for staying at home or voting for McCain: The dire consequences of that will be, just for starters, a generation of appalling Supreme Court decisions, Bushites and Neocon careerists who retain their backdoor power in a McCain's cabinet and Whitehouse staff, and a new round of military Surges throughout the world from the "Bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran" and "U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years" candidate.