August 26, 2008
HRC gets it
There was lots of good stuff in Clinton's speech, and then there was this:
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 young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?
Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?
NPR had closeups of people in the crowd obviously having big wakeup moments at this point. It doesn't take much of a step to hear "just for me" as "just for yourself". Anyone still nursing wounds from the primary campaign, hearing that moment of that speech, must...must...understand that voting for McCain, or not voting, or not bothering to give money or to pitch in for Obama, is simply narcissistic self-indulgence, trampling the unfortunate and the deserving for the sake of a reckless, heartless misunderstanding of what it means to act on principle. Someone should suffer for the wrongs done to Hillary, but anyone who thinks that will be Obama if McCain is elected either has no heart or no brain. It's like voting for Nader, compounding the careless, heedless pique of a child who punches a younger sibling because Dad turned off the TV with the wilful ignorance of tourists who yell at people who don't speak their language. And just as destructive. If the voter who chooses to act out that way is among the lucky upper middle class intelligentsia for whom the Bush years have been infuriating, but actually not all that personally injurious, all the more disreputable.
Actions have consequences. That goes for actions performed with great earnestness and a cloud of indignant rationalization, and even if the actions make you feel really good and avenged and noble and principled and pure.
Let's have an end to this meme of teaching "them" a lesson by cutting off the nose of A to spite B's face; Hillary nailed it.
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