Last night I understood, first hand, what Michelle Obama meant a few months ago when she said that, for the first time in a long time she was proud of her country. Last night, for the first time in years I was unconditionally proud of my country.
This morning the world woke up to learn that one of America's two parties had nominated a person of color -- a little black, a little white, a little brown a little like the world itself.
For the first time in a dozen years I didn't have to blush that the world awaking to learn that my President had been caught in the Oval Office with his trousers around his knees, or that my President had authorized torture, or that my president had launched an illegal imperialist war against a country thousands away that was, while annoying as hell, no real threat to the US.
It was a very nice, though albeit unfamiliar, feeling. I want more that. A lot more. It was like someone had just applied a soothing ointment to a long festering wound.
As I watched Hillary Clinton begin her speech last night I wondered why she had chosen such an unlikely place, a university basement, three floors underground. It was the kind of public venue I'd expect Dick Cheney to select.
Then it became clear. Way down there, under all that concrete and soil, cell phones could not pick up a signal, Blackberries could not receive email down there and there were no TV monitors. All of which meant that the crowd of Hillary supporters, who had assembled hours earlier, did not know and could not learn that Barack Obama had already won the Democratic Party's nomination. And that Hillary had not.
That information blackout insured a lively, rather than subdued, reception for Hillary's speech. It wasn't that I was surprised that the Clintons were, as usual, calculating right down to the smallest detail. I was surprised instead that, even after losing, they were still at it.
That can mean only one thing; that the Clintons are wired that way. They could no more change their conniving, calculating, triangulating ways than a couple of brown bears could learn do their business in a toilet rather than in the woods.
Hillary refused to concede the obvious last night, or to congratulate Obama for his win. Because Bill and Hillary don't see concessions as the honorable or human thing, but rather as just another political asset to leverage, a payoff to barter, sell or use as a negotiating tool.
To Hillary, only suckers are magnanimous.
Then this morning I learned that Clintonite, Lanny Davis, launched a website petition for women who want to demand that Obama chose Hillary as his vice president. Never mind that Lanny Davis is a guy, his web site is called "Women For Fair Politics," (www.womenforfairpolitics.com.)
He wants women to flock to his web site and sign the petition demanding that Obama pick Hillary for his VP. He can call it a online petition drive, but what it really is an attempt to engineer the world's first cyber-shotgun political wedding. Davis claims that Hillary has nothing to do with the petition drive, but if you believe that....
I don't know who Obama will eventually chose for his veep, but it must not be Hillary Clinton... for all the reasons I listed earlier HERE.
I have my favorite. Senator Jim Webb D-Virginia. Webb, more so than any other so far named, fits the vision Obama has expressed through out this campaign. Webb is bi-partisan, having been a Republican, and having served as Navy Secretary in the Reagan administration,. But Webb saw the damage Bush/Cheney Neocons were causing and switched to become a Democrat, ran for the senate and won.
Like Obama, Webb is new to the US Senate. Traditionalists will claim two freshmen Senators on the same ticket would be a mistake. On the contrary. Americans are sick of same-old, same-old. If we wanted that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee this morning, rather than Obama.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
