An Open Letter

[gfish]

Dear Senators Clinton and Obama,

Please end this now. It's been fun, but it's only going to get more ugly, dumb and embarrassing from here on out. The last week has been bad enough, but Pennsylvania is seven weeks away. You can both do immeasurable damage to the party in that time. Time and money spent fighting each other is fundamentally wasted. It doesn't make us stronger, it just makes the divides between us all that much deeper.

It is now obvious that even Pennsylvania probably won't decide the issue if neither of you is willing to back down. We can't afford to wait until August to name the nominee. That simply doesn't work in 2008, not in a campaign that started two years ago. Anyone telling you this would make the Democratic party looking anything other than weak, divided and ridiculous is either incompetent or a dangerous flatterer. The historical precedent is completely irrelevant to perception.

No matter which of you finally carves out an unsatisfactory victory, backed by superdelegates and obscures procedural votes at the convention, half the party is left feeling disenfranchised. No matter who wins, it wastes the enthusiasm we've seen so far. It turns an entire generation of Democratic voters bitter and cynical. This is not just a single election on the line, but potentially the next three or four.

We need a joint ticket. One of you needs to suck it up and be VP. I really don't care which.

Make a hard decision and impress us all. Be leaders.

Cordially,
Fish

Comments

[zaratyst.livejournal.com]

As Jon Stewart would say "Stop hurting America". I didn't used to mind which, but this crap in the last couple of weeks has made me like Obama more, and Clinton a whole lot less.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Me too. One of the things each campaign has been doing today has been telling people what to expect over the next few weeks.

Clinton campaign--we're going to attack Obama

Obama campaign--we're fighting McCain, not Clinton

Guess which one makes more sense to me?

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree. But I think we need to suck it up as well. A Democrat in the White House is more important than Obama getting the nomination.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

It is, true, but we need a *real* Democrat in the White House. Clinton has been leaning more and more toward using Republican campaign tactics. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have both said they'd vote for her over John McCain, because she has the stronger conservative record--she votes with Bush over 80% of the time, whereas McCain only votes with him 75% of the time. (Obama is at 66%, IIRC.) Heck, McCain apparently said *he'd* vote for her. That doesn't sound like a good Democrat to me.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Although many observers have claimed the reason Limbaugh and Coulter are saying this is because they believe that Clinton, if elected, will galvanize Republican opposition, get nothing done, and so antagonize the country that it'll heal the Republican wounds and win back Congress, while McCain will exacerbate the fragmented Republican situation. (With an underlying message that the country has been screwed thoroughly and the next president's going to get to pay the price.)

[niac.livejournal.com]

At this point, I agree w/ you 100%

[eleventoes.livejournal.com]

"It turns an entire generation of Democratic voters bitter and cynical."

Zod, I can only hope. The shame is that the ascendancy of John "enemy of humankind" McCain isn't doing the same for the red staters.

I keep hoping for the future time when the government has an election and nobody shows up.

[maida-mac.livejournal.com]

A-freaking-men.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

You don't think it's be better to pick someone who's, say, concievably electable as VP? At least then people can pray for an assassination attempt.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Obama has been getting death threats pretty much from day one. Given how the right utterly loathes Clinton, it wouldn't surprise me if she has too. Assassination is all too likely a possibility ... but if, f'rinstance, Obama names Clinton as his VP, that's actually insurance *against* assassination!

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Sure, it discourages half of them, but it encourages the other half.

[adularia.livejournal.com]

Your insistence that someone's just going to be assassinated is getting a little too consistent to be funny.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to make any such assertion here. I rather doubt anyone will get assassinated. My apologies.

I only meant to suggest that people are more likely to vote for C/O plus a moderate than a C/O ticket.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

They both are moderates. Good grief! The true progressives were weeded out of the race months ago at this point.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

As much as I hate to say this, advocating the election of a non-white-male candidate makes you immoderate to the voters in this country, no matter what your other positions.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but America is teetering on the brink of wholesale fascism. Doesn't make fascism "moderate."

By real-world (rest of civilization) standards of democratic political spectrum, they are both moderates.

-B.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I agree.

[bakeme.livejournal.com]

WORD.

[novalis.livejournal.com]

Months of news coverage focussed on the messages of the two Democratic candidates just doesn't seem that bad to me.

[corivax.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I think that 1) media is going to report preferentially on candidates attacking eachother because it's more exciting than policy, and 2) candidates attack eachother on an awful lot of things that aren't policy, like experience and whether one teared up along the campaign trail once upon a time, and 3) people are going to remember those random juicy sorts of things, and the fact that there was acrimony, better than they'll remember abstract policy.

[novalis.livejournal.com]

Sure, but there's a saying that any press is good press, which I think is somewhat true.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Hey. You hush. Go watch your hockey games and obey your mounties and play with your loonies and toonies, and worry about your own Prime Ministers and Houses of Commonses. We'll be appallingly apathetic about our own presidential tickets, thank you very much.

Aboot.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

It's more of an "aboat" sound, I reckon.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

aboot, really.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Listen to it more carefully. (http://www.yorku.ca/twainweb/troberts/raising.html)

[maribou]

It actually depends on what part of Canada you're in. And even what part of that part you're in. The monolithic 'Canadian' accent is a myth.

(FWIW, Wade Davis, who comes from Vancouver, says 'aboat'.)

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Blacklite, for instance (whatever he's calling himself these days) definitely always sounded like 'a boat' to me. So does hsifyppah. I've always been told it was a western canada thing, and that 'aboot' was more eastern.

[maribou]

My personal perception was always that 'aboat' was a coastal thing, and that 'aboot' was more mid-Canadian, or even more specifically Northern Ontarian and Albertan. People in the Maritimes mostly say aboat (and bl spent significant time in New Brunswick, nu?); when I'm tired and the Colorado layers peel off, and the Montreal layers peel off, and the PEI sound comes back, I say aboat as well. Until I started hanging with people from the States, I really never knew they expected me to say 'aboot' ... because that was what the prairie and Thunder Bay kids would say.

Sorry to ramble, but I'm really interested by regional accents.

[spiritdancer]

Hear! Hear!

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

So there are these two prisoners, see...

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Word.

More to the point, McCain can now concentrate on the moderates, while C and O have to fight for the well-left-of-moderate, leaving the winner wide open to 'you extremist' campaigning.

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

Eh, that's all fine and good, but I really have trouble seeing that politically work at this point--Obama has the lead in delegates, and there is a good chance he can carry that to the end. Clinton is unlikely to be willing to be VP, and she's acts like she's doing her best to burn any potential bridges between her and Obama.

Sure, minus the personalities, the politically logical thing would be for Clinton to bow out of the race now and to become Obama's VP running mate--don't see it happening given the personalities though. Last I time I heard them answer the question, Clinton categorical refused to consider Obama as a running mate, while Obama politely hedged.

Strategically, I don't think Clinton is electable in the general election. I also don't think having her as VP is going to make Obama more electable. I don't have a problem with Clinton continuing the primary races, she theoretically *could* overtake Obama, if unlikely, but she needs to clean-up her tactics or you are right, it will damage the general election prospects for whatever the final democratic ticket is. It would have been nice if yesterday's elections had finally cinched Obama's lead, and Clinton would have had an appropriate cue to bow out.

Obama is young, and doesn't have a lot of experience I don't really think that matters much myself. However, I think it matters to the political insiders in the Democratic party, who perhaps feel he hasn't paid his dues. It could also weaken him in the General Election. If the Dems were strategic about it all, they'd have maneuvered Obama to be paired with a more senior politician. But frankly, even if they'd arranged it ahead of time, I don't think Clinton would have been the right one. The Republicans want Clinton to get the nomination because they are confident they can beat her.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

The Republicans want Clinton to get the nomination because they are confident they can beat her.

Yeah. That's pretty much the part that terrifies me most.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

1) You're absolutely right.
2) I wouldn't bet a nickel on their doing the right thing. They've worked too hard for all the marbles to stop now.

My preference for Veep? Hilary.

[tmfkan64.livejournal.com]

President McCain. Hell, I've seen worse. At least he thinks torture is a bad thing, for the most part.

I have to agree though... this is *not* looking good. I know that I'm half-ready to sit this one out if there isn't an ending that agrees with the primary/caucus results.

[cow.livejournal.com]

> President McCain. Hell, I've seen worse. At least he thinks torture is a bad thing, for the most part.

Until it comes time to actually vote on it...

[tmfkan64.livejournal.com]

Yeah. As I said, for the most part...

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

At least he thinks torture is a bad thing, for the most part.
Until it comes time to actually vote on it...

...it's a ridiculously depressing and appalling state of affairs, when "well at least in theory he is against torture, even though he didn't actually *vote* against it, but he *says* he's against it" is the REDEEMING QUALITY of a candidate.

We're like the frogs in the boiling water, that it's come to this. That the thing that makes a candidate stand out as being preferable to the current leader is that he is MAYBE AGAINST TORTURE, SORT OF.

What. The. Fuck.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

So send it already.

[caroltlp.livejournal.com]

What finally convinced me to vote for Clinton was an Obama supporter saying that Clinton could ask Obama to be her VP, which would unite the party, but that Obama wouldn't dare, because people would thing that her husband would REALLY be running the show. So, a vote for Clinton is a vote for party unification and a vote for Obama is a vote for party disintegration.

Yes, the primaries are too spread out. Heard today that a couple of states are considering re-doing their primaries. I'm not sure if that has ever been done before.