Juicy Tomatoes

Saturday, April 05, 2008

NO MORE MUCK HILLARY

For a while I was saying I got my split lip from being in a bar fight defending Hillary’s honor. Actually it had nothing to do with that. I fell at a friend’s house in Phoenix, but there was a political connection in that during the visit we watched an Obama-Clinton debate where I was sorely outnumbered. The best part was that the Obama supporters included a Republican and an Independent.

But there has been a lot of bloodying in this campaign and it’s starting to create some ugly scarring. Especially if you’re a concerned Democrat. As the two candidates have proven to be on the same side of many issues, they and the media have done everything possible to turn them into rivals. And we’ve wandered into the muck.


The muck is what we were supposed to avoid. The muck is what we need to get past.
One of my daughters has been an active Hillary Clinton supporter from the beginning. She wears the buttons and puts the stickers in her windows and calls foreign states, like Texas, on behalf of her candidate. She spent 45 minutes on the telephone with a man in a border town one Sunday. He told her, to “Please tell Miss Hillary” for him that he thinks the wall going up along the Texas-Mexico border is a bad idea and that the government would be better off spending the money to help war veterans.

As things got contentious between the candidates my daughter emailed the Clinton campaign headquarters of her worries. She said, “Don’t get personal. Don’t get dirty. Get out of the muck.”
But Hillary ignores her.

My daughter’s becoming disenchanted, like a lot of Democrats. Not just with Hillary but with politics and the muck.
How many more bloodied lips can we afford? We need to get over Clinton’s embellished sniper story on Bosnia. And get past Obama’s being AWOL at his early morning committee meetings.
It’s exhausting. And demeaning. And if this keeps up we’ll end up handing over the whole bloodied mess to McCain.

So, here’s my idea. Dump the muck. Right now.
Clinton and Obama start campaigning from here on out as if each one were indeed the Democratic presidential candidate. Challenge the establishment. Challenge McCain. Pledge to each other - you take the high road and I will, too.

Stop campaigning against each other like Rocky rivals and start running against McCain. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Who would be the best to take on McCain. So show us. Tell us what you’d do about the war and jobs and housing and health care. We need a leader not a street fighter.

If this were to happen the media would have nothing to report but what Obama and Clinton each believe they can do for America. Then let the best campaigner win come August. And the other one will continue as a dignified proud statesman or woman. Or maybe even a vice presidential candidate.

And we’d all feel cleaner. And we’d d all be winners. Well, some of us anyway.

Susan Swartz

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