http://www.lastchancedemocracycafe.com/?p=1319Honestly, I can hardly believe I’m saying these words — anybody but Hillary. It’s just so Richard Mellon Scaife, so “vast right-wing conspiracy.” You might not have guessed it based upon what I’ve had to say lately, but once upon a time I was a hardcore Bill Clinton supporter. I also always held Hillary in very high regard. I can remember nodding my head enthusiastically when, during the 1996 Democratic Convention, Rev. Jesse Jackson said of Hillary Clinton, we must “protect the First Lady, too, from their mean-spirited attacks.” I was thrilled when she was elected to the senate.
As recently as a few months ago, I was legitimately undecided as to who to support for the nomination.
For those of us who hung with the Clintons through all of the malicious attacks of the 90s, it’s hard to let go. I can remember my growing anger as the media breathlessly covered one right wing smear against Bill and Hillary after another. In fact, one of the first things I ever posted on the web was a rant against the media’s coverage of Clinton’s controversial pardon of Marc Rich...But if it’s been hard to let go of the Clintons, it’s been getting steadily easier as the campaign’s worn on. The 3:00 A.M. ad was bad; the “Commander-in-Chief test” semi-endorsement of McCain was worse; and the seemingly endless “right on the edge” appeals to racial resentments were worse still.
None of this, however, was even in the same league as Hillary’s latest maneuvers in trying to reignite the Rev. Wright controversy in order to draw attention away from her own lies, while, at the same time, her campaign’s been busily distributing right wing propaganda suggesting that Barack Obama may be an anti-Semite...
Barack Obama will almost certainly end up being the nominee of the party, and that’s as it should be. So far, he’s taken Hillary’s best shots and come out — while perhaps wobbling a bit — definitely still standing. He’s inspired millions of new voters in a way no other potential candidate could possibly match. He offers the Democratic Party its best chance of building a lasting new majority (although at the same time he’s also one of the riskiest candidates the party could have turned to).
For better or worse, this is Barack Obama’s year.