"A place called Hope"

As I have said before, it will take an extraterrestrial situation for this blog to endorse a candidate. This is not the place for endorsements. To paraphrase Chris Dodd in Iowa before departing the campaign; it would be incredibly arrogant of me to assume that people would listen to me and my opinion on who they should vote for.

That being said, I am prepared this evening to rant. I am disappointed by tonight’s results. I am a person that believes that change is necessary if we are going to successfully tackle the giant challenges that face us as a nation and as a world. Nothing gets accomplished in the polarized world of right vs. wrong, left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, African American vs. Woman, good vs. evil… the list goes on and on. I reject the old paradigm of bi-lateral politics.

No, I am not going to vote for a third party candidate. I take my civic duties way too seriously to flush them down the toilet on the Natural Law Party.

I hold the Baby-boomer generation responsible for obstructing change today. I am tired of the children of “the greatest generation”. This is a group of people who are still fighting the war between the hippies and the squares, those who went to Woodstock and those that didn’t. They are still debating the Vietnam War, and they are still licking their battles. They are a generation scarred with the wounds from the brutal assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, the impeachment of Nixon, and the loss of innocence in Vietnam. I have a message for you soon to be retiring boomers! Enough already, we know you failed to change the world for the better, but that should not diminish our optimism. It is the unspoken creed of this nation that you shall leave this country improved for the next generation. And the baby-boomers are the first to violate that sacred pact. Where is your Declaration of Independence, your manifest destiny, your suffrage movement, your New Deal, your Brown vs. Board of Education, your Great Society? You failed us. And your bitterness about it is palpable. You have left us a government that is broken and a politics that is divisive to ensure that it is difficult to fix. You are not wholesale useless, but more often than not your generations leaders are all hype and spin.

Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight was canned ham. It was tired, cliché driven drivel. Someone needs to explain that you can’t represent change for 35 years. You get 4 years MAX. I am tired of the war room mentality of this posse. Don’t get me wrong, Bill Clinton was a good President and a great politician. But I want a great President and a good politician. His combative nature of “us against them” divided this country. He doesn’t bare sole responsibility for it. The Republicans were indignant that Bubba was better at playing the game than them and they made him pay for it. They felt that he stole the White House from them and they went after him from day one. But instead of fighting for the hearts and minds of the American people, instead of engaging in a war of ideas; he engaged in a war of ideologies. And we, the people, lost!

Bill Clinton did some great things as President, but he could have done so much more if he could have just kept his eye on the ball. He cared, he represented change in 1992. But anyone who thinks that the ideas of 1992 still represent change are either insane or 632 million years old. I love Bill Clinton and in 2000 I would have voted for him again. I respect the work that he is doing around the world and the efforts he is undertaking to be activist in his post-Presidency. He is, in spite of all his failings, a good hearted and honorable man. But he is also a dirty politician. He hates losing and he isn’t below a cheap shot to win. I understand that they believe in their cause, but to what end. Do they really think they can end the gridlock? Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly are chomping at the bit. It will be the 1990s all over again.

We are gambling that she is as good as him. We already know she isn’t half the politician that he is. She lacks all of the natural talents that made him great. She is dull, unoriginal, uninspired, wonkish, overrated, and utterly bland. She has a tin ear and a lead tongue.

Some might ask if I have a problem with a female President. I do not. I would have no problem with a female President, just not this one. I also feel very strongly that voting on gender is pathetically myopic. I believe you vote for issues and when you realize that the platforms of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are basically identical you then move on to personality. In that regard, Clinton is miles behind her competitors (not to mention John McCain and Mike Huckabee). As I have said in the past; what is the point of electing a female President if she has to strip away her femininity to win? That isn’t feminism. In fact it is incredibly sexist.

Anyone who thought it was going to change this country (including myself) was being utterly naïve. Change is hard, very hard. The status quo is easy and it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

The reason change is difficult is because the young voters of this country are lazy and apathetic (not hard to understand considering their parents). What is it going to take? What’s going to get you up off the sofa? Put down the bong. Pause the Nintendo Wii! Real issues are being decided and you are leaving them up to your parents and grandparents. The bluehairs are the past. My friend believes it will take reinstating the draft (I have never been totally against that idea). The young vote carried Obama and Edwards in Iowa, but then they thought the job was done. They don’t understand the process and that is probably because they never had to take a civics class in High School.

The reason that the only thing that gets reformed is Medicare and senior services is because that is what the boomers care about. In their own viral way, they don’t really care about what resources are left when they are gone. It is up to young voters to stand and be counted and say enough is enough to this obsolete focus on the old at the expense of the young.

The Clintons want you to believe that you can’t change the world just by hoping for it. But remember when they “still believed in a place called hope.” They say we can’t change this broken system without being from the system.

I won’t endorse anyone but I will say: “Yes We Can!”