Attention Must Be Paid--This Is For You, K

Hillary started this race as the presumptive nominee from the moment she started thinking about running. When was that? Probably in the last few months of Bill's last term. They left office with huge debt, mostly lawyers fees. By the time she actually started the race for real, during her first term as a Senator, she was thinking strategically. She's female, and therefor needed to be seen as Commander In Chief material. Tough, hawkish. So she voted for the Iraq war resolution without even reading the classified material available to Senators. Mistake number one. Actually it's mistake number two for me, since she blew our chance at single payer national health care in Bill's first term. Whatever, just for arguments' sake, I'll let that go for now.

Then after it was obvious to everyone that the war in Iraq was a mistake, John Edwards stepped right up, apologized for his vote, and said it was a mistake. Since we are a forgiving nation, we forgave him. Hillary, knowing her vote was a mistake took months to admit that mistake. It was only in one of the late debates that, when pressed on the issue, she reluctantly said she wished she'd had a do-over. Not exactly an apology, but admission of a mistake. I'd give her half a point for going that far, but she was pissing me off so much by then, it hardly registered. For months she had been trying to wiggle out of taking any responsibility for that colossal mistake. She justified and rationalized and made a right sickening spectacle of herself as a stubborn woman unwilling to say the simple words, "It was a mistake, I was wrong, I apologize." Too little, too late.

Then she came up with the "3A.M. Phone Call" ad that reminded all of us older, film buff voters of the Birth of a Nation association with the Clan. Little white children asleep in their bed, mommy checkin in on them in the middle of the night, and the voice over question, "Who do you trust to answer the phone at 3 A. M.?" Not that scary black man, luring in the bushes, waiting for the chance to slip in and steal one of your precious baby's for God knows what....
If you are young and naive, you might think it was the "terrorists" her ad was referencing. But we older voters saw it for the racist crap it was. Terrorists do not strike a family in a middle-class neighborhood and steal the innocents. Terrorists blow up buildings in the middle of the day, so they can get big coverage on the news. They want all the world to see their work. It was sleazy ad, and cynical, and it was another mistake.

Hillary was so convinced her place as our nominee was inevitable that she and her campaign strategists did not count on her having to campaign after Super Tuesday. Well, not so fast, Hillary. The Clinton Machine did not take Barack Obama seriously. After all, they were the beloved Clintons. Who the hell was he, but an upstart, a nobody, a kid with a slim resume as a one term Senator, and a nice speaking style? Big mistake.

Then there were the lies. for now the only one I'm going to mention is the infamous, sniper fire raining down of the airfield in Bosnia, a place too dangerous to send the President. What the Fuck? There was plenty of file footage of that trip--Sinbad was there, Chelsea was there, no snipers anywhere in sight. She was met on the tarmac by a little girl with a poem to read to her and flowers to present. The was a greeting party. It was relaxed, leisurely. Plenty of press coverage. How stupid was that lie? And when confronted with the evidence, she said, "So...I made a mistake." How arrogant is that? It was not a mistake. It was a lie, told several times in several settings--early in the day, in a prepared speech, at a St. Patrick's event. And then Bill goes out there and says, the press is ganging up on her. "Poor Hillary! She is sixty years old, and she made a mistake late at night, exhausted. Just once. And the press is against her, bla, bla, bla."

And after her blow-out victory in West Virginia, with a population of poor uneducated, openly racist crackers, we have today, John Edwards endorsing Barack Obama, at a packed venue in Michigan. Game, set, match. it's over, babe.