Trading the Bush Bubble for the Clinton Bubble!

Yesterday, in response to this post on the Hillary Clinton campaign blog, I submitted the following comment. It was, I thought, respectful and honest, and clearly within the rules described for submission. However, the moderators of the site chose not to publish it.

Although I intend to support and vote for Sen. Clinton if she becomes the nominee, I am leaning toward Barack Obama because he has inspired my two teenaged boys to vote with me for the first time. In the past, they have told me that “all politicians are the same,” and suggested that they did not trust politicians who only talk at them, telling them what they should believe, and valuing the politicians’ own experience more than listening to young people like them. I am inspired at seeing my boys care enough about their future to want to vote, and I’m afraid that their enthusiasm will die if Sen. Clinton becomes the nominee.

While refusing to acknowledge mild dissent may be standard practice on campaign blogs (I didn’t test Obama by sending an equivalent comment to him), this incident reminded me of my surprise a few weeks back when I picked up my local newspaper to see that my Congresswoman, Lynne Woolsey, was endorsing Hillary Clinton, after deciding in 2004 that her strong anti-war views justified supporting Dennis Kucinich!

That was quite a jump – from supporting the guy who is ready to rename the Department of Defense into the “Department of Peace,” to endorsing the centrist Senator who has voted in favor of George Bush’s Iraq fiasco at every step, and has refused to admit that any of her votes were a mistake.

And Woolsey’s decision was all the more stunning, after seeing Kucinich throw his second choice support in the Iowa Caucus to Clinton’s rival, Barack Obama!

Did this mean that Woolsey had suddenly abandoned her opposition to the war, or was it something else?

The article about Woolsey’s endorsement went on to offer one feasible explanation:

David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political science professor, said he was surprised by Woolsey's alignment with Clinton, but attributed it to realpolitik considerations

Should Clinton win the White House, Bay Area Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. George Miller of Martinez, would play powerful policymaking roles, he said. But given the Clintons' political style, a Democrat who endorsed someone else might be kept out of the loop.

That would be just great! Hillary Clinton is out there touting herself as an “agent of change” after eight years of “President Decider and his Merry Band of Yes-Men,” but her fellow Democrats in Congress fear she would freeze out the influence of anyone who doesn’t show appropriate loyalty to her!

I look at everything I see from the Clinton campaign, and I’m left feeling that Hillary Clinton is aiming to replace a president who wants to be treated like a king, by being a president who wants to be treated like a queen!