Why I am Voting for Hillary Clinton
WARNING: This is long, and rambling, and unapologetically political.
Do you remember the SyFy show Warehouse 13? I have heard it became a really good show, and hey, Felicia Day was even in it for a few seasons. But I could not bring myself to watch it. I wanted to watch it. I wanted to love it. It seemed made for me/us – and then I watched the pilot.
The two main characters are introduced thusly – we have a female FBI agent who has worked all of her life to become an agent. She has focused her life on her job and become the best. And no one likes her. No one wants to work with her. Sure she’s the best there is, but she’s a stick in the mud.
Except, she’s not really the best there is. Because there is this guy – this guy who has never had to try at anything in his life. He is just good. Sure he has a bit of a drinking problem and his boss is not happy about it, but this guy is GOOD. In fact, he is just as good drunk/severely hung over, without actually trying at anything, as our female agent.
If Facebook is anything to go by, I am once again in the minority among my friends. I voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, and I will vote for her again in the 2016 primaries. I do not hate Bernie Sanders. If he gets the nomination, I will vote for him in the general, just as I voted for Obama.
In both cases, my decision is best described by a moment in the 2008 democratic primary debates, when asked how they would get their agendas passes, Obama said he would go and talk to people and Clinton said she would work her ass off.
And for two years of the Obama presidency, talking worked. And then the 2010 elections came, and in 2011, he suddenly got a Congress that was majority Republican, and one that refused to compromise. And suddenly, talking did not work. He had to start working his ass off. He had to give up on getting things through Congress and do things through signing statements, through directing agencies to not only stop prosecuting certain laws, but to also stop defending those laws when others challenged them.
He got things done. Please know I am not dissing the Obama presidency, but he did not get everything he promised us done, and he certainly did not get it done in the way he told us he would. He had to wake up and learn something that Clinton already knew.
Now, in 2016, I see the same sort of things. Sanders has some great policy ideas – policy ideas I completely agree with and support, but he cannot tell us how he is going to get those through Congress. Maybe 2016 will be a watershed year for Democrats. Maybe there will be a huge backlash against Republicans, and he will enter the Presidency with a Congress that is ready to rubber stamp everything he puts out. But while I could hope for that, I do not believe it is what will happen.
Sanders is a career politician, with a long history of serving in the US Senate. If anyone should know how to get policy through Congress, he should. So why does he evade questions about how, exactly, he will get free college through Congress? Is it because he knows that in order to do that, he will have to compromise on something else? And compromise is a dirty word. It is something that Clinton has done, but never Sanders. See his record, he has always believed in what he believes in and he has never had a change of mind or heart and had never ever ever compromised his values. Right?
Clinton knows exactly what she will have to do to get her policies passed by Congress. She knows it will take work and compromise. She has, in fact, compromised in the past. (And if you have ever complained about the hard line Republicans in Congress, and their refusal to compromise, you have no right to complain about the fact that Clinton is willing to compromise to get shit done. Our system does NOT work without compromise.)
Does the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman have anything to do with how I feel? I would be lying if I said it was not a factor. But I also do not feel I should have to apologize for that. Many people voted for Barack Obama simply because he was black, and being there for the first black President meant something to them. Being here for the first female President would absolutely mean something to me. But being female is not the only thing that matters to me. I certainly would not have voted for Carly Fiorina.
And this is where it all ties back to that Warehouse 13 pilot. Clinton has worked her ass off to get where she is. She studied the playbook for how you become President, and she has followed it. She has done everything we have said someone needed to do to become President, gotten all the experience that we have claimed previous female candidates did not have. And yet, wanting to be President is one of the things we hold against her.
Let me be very clear, NO ONE becomes President of the United States without wanting to be President. NO ONE. You cannot draft someone to be President. What you have to put yourself through, what you have to put your family through, you have to WANT to become President to go through it. But we do not hold wanting to be President against Bernie Sanders. We only hold it against Hillary Clinton. And I am sorry, telling my daughter that she can grow up to become President, but only if she does not actually want to be President, that is BULLSHIT.
Clinton has followed the play book. She has worked her ass off to become the only viable female candidate for President we have ever had. And the first time, a mostly unknown, junior Senator, who I had seen tell a reporter that he was not thinking about the Presidency only a few months before he announced his candidacy, came out of the woodwork to run against her, and liberals jumped on the bandwagon.
And this time, a lifelong, career politician, who had never before expressed any interest in the Presidency, decided that this year, the year when his only competition would be Hillary Clinton, was the year to run. And liberals have jumped on the bandwagon.
Hillary Clinton studied the playbook. She chose her dream job and she has followed the steps to get there. When C and I were talking, I framed it like helping a kid achieve a plan for their dream job – what grades do you need to get to get into the college you want to get the major you want to get the internships you need to be hired at the job you want. Hillary has followed the same path all previous Presidents have followed, but somehow, this year, that’s not good enough. We hold her compromises, her change in positions, against her.
C’s response to my analogy was “What if one of those internships is heroin dealing?”. Again, I said that this is the path every other President has taken. Why is it an issue now, with Clinton, with a woman, when it has never been with a man? He asked if Obama held the same kinds of things against her, and I do not think he did. So that was okay, because apparently, if both parties dealt heroin we can ignore it. But, he says this year, Bernie can hold those things against her because he is different.
And that’s my problem. I do not believe it. Perhaps I am just too cynical, but Bernie Sanders is a career politician. I do not believe he has never “dealt heroin”.
Of course, at this moment, we do not actually know. This year’s Democratic primary has been the cleanest, most policy driven federal campaign I have ever witnessed. And that is great. I am not complaining about that, but I think people give too much credit for that to Sanders. Let me be very clear, in my mind, the lack of attacks and going negative in this campaign in no way can be credited to Sanders.
His opponent is Hillary Clinton. The media has been airing her dirty laundry for close to 25 years, ever since the name Gennifer Flowers first appeared in our newscasts. Bernie Sanders has no need to go into attack mode against Hillary Clinton because he knows the rest of the world will do it for him – the media, the Republicans, his own supporters. In this case, he gets to have his cake and eat it, too. Because he can claim to run a clean campaign based only on the issues AND benefit from attacks on Hillary Clinton, without ever being accused of attacking her himself.
No, this campaign is clean because Clinton and her team have kept it clean. They have chosen not to attack Sanders; they have chosen to keep this focused on the issues. If Sanders wins the nomination, do not for a second think the Republicans will continue in that vein. There have not been any major negatives against him not because they do not exist, but because Clinton has chosen not to go there. Again, the man is a career politician. He’s “dealt heroin”, and the Republicans will dig that up.
On some level, I guess that puts me as possibly a somewhat stronger supporter of Sanders than some of his actual supporters. If he gets the nomination, there is very little chance I will be disillusioned by the dirt that gets dug up on him. I do not know if the same can be said for the crowd who believes that Sanders has always believed what he believes, has never had a change of heart or mind, and never ever ever compromised his values.
Again, I know that in my support of Hillary, I am in the minority among my family and friends (not the only one, but still, a definite minority). There are people who simply hate HER. I do not try to change their minds. But I look at her and see that main female character from Warehouse 13 – I see the woman who set her sights on a goal and has busted her ass to get there, who has followed the rules and the playbook set out by hundreds of years of men before her, but all the world sees is a stuck up shrew with a stick up her ass who no one likes – because of everything WE have put her through. She is not liked because she is a woman who played by the men’s rulebook, who knew what she wanted and made sacrifices we do not approve of to get there that we do not approve of.
And every time she gets close to achieving her goal, we find a way to circumvent her, but a progressive way, a way that downplays the fact that she is the first female to ever get this far in our system. Because it was important to elect our first black President. It would be important to elect our first Jewish/non-Christian President – see, we’re still being progressive. It’s not that we do not want to elect our first female President, it’s that we do not want to elect her, because she’s a female who has managed to make it far enough in the system that she could be President.
Because we do not like women who want to be President. We like Elizabeth Warren, but a lot of that like is based on the fact that she does not want to be President (or even Vice President, as far as I can tell). We love the idea that we would have to “draft” her into play, because that makes her fit with how we think women should act. And I call bullshit.
I am not saying you are a misogynist if you do not vote for Hillary Clinton, just like I would not call someone an anti-Semite for not voting for Bernie Sanders. But if your biggest problem with her is that she has acted like the men around her, then yes, I think you need to revisit that.
There is a recent Slate piece, written by an author who I will admit tends to have an anti-Sanders slant, where young people were interviewed about why they disliked Hillary Clinton so much. Here is (part) of what one young woman said “We’ll have plenty of time in the future for women to run, for qualified, worthy women to run. We need to get over this concept of immediate gratification that’s driving this campaign.”
I honestly do not know whether to be thrilled that feminism has come far enough that young women are not concerned about having a female president or to scream at the complete lack of understanding.
Did we call it “instant gratification” when Barack Obama won the Presidency, or did we say about fucking time? Our country has been in existence for over 200 years. Women have had the right to vote for nearly 100 years. But somehow, electing a female President in 2016 would be “instant gratification”?
I cannot even touch the “qualified” comment.
But the idea of needing to be “worthy”, I think that is what gets me the most. Do we honestly ask if our male Presidents are worthy? Is that really something we look for? Because I have never heard it in reference to a Presidential candidate before.
I know what makes a person “worthy” of receiving welfare (unable to work because they were injured in an on the job accident that was clearly the employer’s fault). I know what makes a woman “worthy” of having her rape case prosecuted (white, pretty, did not drink, was wearing “appropriate” clothing). But I do not know what makes a person “worthy” of being President. Because NO ONE is perfect. Every adult old enough to run for President, including Bernie Sanders, has compromised, has done at least one thing they would rather the media and the American people not know of.
But apparently that does not matter. Our first female President must be “worthy”. Because to think an eminently qualified woman who has some flaws would still make a good President is to simply want instant gratification.
I will vote for Bernie Sanders if he wins the Democratic nomination. I will vote for him without hesitation. But I do not see him getting the political revolution he claims will transform government. Which means I mostly see him as disappointing the young people who voted for him, no matter what he is actually able to accomplish. (As a note, I do not see this because as of the first caucus and primary, Republican voters have shown up in larger numbers than Democratic voters. And without a sweeping change in the House and Senate, there is no revolution, unless a whole lot of people suddenly show up with guns – which I guess, policy wise, Sanders might be okay with.)
No, in the primary, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. She has the intelligence, the experience, and the ovaries to get things done. And to put it another way – she is not promising we are going to have colonies on the moon by the end of her Presidency, but she is committed to getting the US to the moon.
So that’s where I stand. I am not anti-Bernie Sanders, but I am pro-Hillary Clinton – faults and all.
