Ugly talk
I have obviously been watching the Democratic nomination race with some fascination lately. Over one year ago, in this post I came out in support of Senator Barack Obama. At the time, I thought it was incredibly unlikely that he would actually secure the nomination. Now it looks pretty much like a done deal. I have been saddened to watch the Hillary Clinton campaign implode over the last eight weeks, because I think she probably has some actual good ideas and some truly altruistic motives. I realized during last night’s Democratic Candidates’ debate that it was truly over when Sen. Clinton tried to introduce some doubt about whether Barack Obama was an amti-semite. An ugly charge under the best of circumstances, this was truly her worst moment, maybe of her entire public career (which is not, as she claims, 35 years long). In these circumstances it was truly pathetic. Senator Obama spent about two minutes denouncnig the anti-semitic ravings of Louis Farrakhan, after which Hillary Clinton tried to mince some words and insinuate that if Obama didn’t ‘reject’ rather than ‘denounce’ the controversial Nation of Islam leader, then maybe we should doubt whether he is or isn’t actually a jew-hater. What tripe. What an absolute embarrasment for her. I’d guess that she won’t understand why people like myself find that insinuation so offensive, but I think that she has demonstrated over the last 8-12 weeks that there’s a lot of things that she doesn’t get. That’s some pretty ugly hate-speech and I’m embarassed for her since she doesn’t have the decency to be embarassed for herself.
Please go away, Senator Clinton. We are tired of you. You need to understand that your role is to assist President Obama in getting his agenda through Congress. If you can’t do that, then please leave the public sphere, and the sooner the better.