Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Tonight Hillary did what she needed to do and was expected to do. She gave a strongly delivered speech in which she tried to convince her supporters to drop the bitterness, get over the resentment, and do the right thing.

Enough is enough already, so remaining angry Hillary advocates: please take a cold shower, look in the mirror and ask yourself, "come November will I really not vote at all, or worse vote for McCain?" Really?

Hillary's key passage in the speech:
Those are the reasons I ran for President. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too.

I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?
She pleads with her people to stop thinking of and treating her as if she's some kind of deity or cult leader. She politely requests that they wake up and get over it, that this election is not about personalities but rather the fate of our country. It's much more important than some media-enabled ego war.

In fact, Hilzoy touches on this writing from Denver:
I've been wandering around having random conversations, and by pure chance, all the delegates I've talked to have been Clinton delegates. I have asked all of them whether they will have any problem voting for Obama, or are in any way aware of any of the disunity I see so much about on CNN. In every case the answer is not just 'no', but something closer to 'are you crazy?' The first Clinton delegate I talked to said: "For heaven's sakes, we're Democrats." The second said: "I'm sure some Clinton supporters, somewhere, won't support Obama, but everyone who thinks will." I cannot pretend that the delegates I've talked to are in any way representative, but for what it's worth, they have all reacted to the idea of not supporting Obama by looking at me as though I had come from Mars.
It's very much believable that the supposed deep ill-will Hillary supporters have towards Obama is really not that deep at all. The media lives for stoking and fanning the flames of crap like this, and needless to say the right is doing their job to inflate this supposed schism into pro wrestling type proportions.

Is it completely fabricated? Of course not. Yes, there will be some who remain beyond appealing to, but as Hilzoy makes clear most are not going to let this disappointment adversely affect their ability to reason and think clearly. And to believe otherwise is to insulte the intelligence of the average Hillary supporter, i.e. some hurt feelings = they'll throw their vote away. C'mon.

No comments: