obamarama

I feel weirdly upset about Obama's taking the nomination. weirdly, because Clinton wasn't my candidate, was never my candidate. But there were - are - two layers to this race. There's the one with reality, where both Obama and Clinton are moderate liberals, and then the symbolic one, where they're both wildly radical not because of their policies or their platforms but simply because of who they are. Obama will run a moderate campaign, but he'll be seen as a radical, because the idea of electing a black man to the presidency is for some reason a big whopping deal.

On the symbolic level, I feel terrible about Clinton. She's been treated so badly in this campaign, beat down, dragged through the mud, and all for nothing. She's getting dropped back down into the mud and left there. All that fighting, all those awful things that were said about her, and she's defeated. I don't want to watch a strong woman get beaten down like this. I just don't want to see it. I can't bear it.

I know they'll say, after this, that women just aren't meant to be in politics. I know she'll be treated like the pathetic laughingstock who couldn't even win the nomination, not as a strong politician who just wasn't chosen for this particular thing. I don't want to hear it. She's not my candidate, and she wouldn't be my choice, but some part of me really wants her to win for the symbolic victory - to triumph over all the sexism and smear gossip that has been thrown at her, to prove all the bastards wrong and win the whole thing. I don't want Hillary, but I do want to shove all the cusses' hatred and bile back down their lying throats. Make them eat crow, make them choke on it.

I like Obama - and I know that he's also been treated badly, and that this decision is triumphant. That a black man could get so far. It matters. And in a few days I might be happy and excited about it. But right no I feel sick over Hillary Clinton, and over what I know must and will be said about her not taking the nomination after all.