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.)