I am sorry, but Hillary may have swung the wrong door wide open by advocating that she is more experienced than Obama. So what exactly is her experience? How has she done on issues of the utmost importance to America. Take her approach to healthcare, the Iraq war, Iran, immigration, transparency in government, and others. Her latest effort in trying to smear Obama while appearing not to only reconfirms the accusation that her approach to politics is at its core just as dirty as that of most if not all of the viable candidates on the opposite side of the aisle.
Instead of smearning Obama directly with dirt she apparently has dug up on him, Hillary thinks she can get more mileage out of leaking that she has the dirt only to play holier than thou in not releasing it . . . yet. For the time being, Hilliary is content to start the drumbeat of disguised negative campaigning by casting unspecified aspersions on her main challenger to which he is unable to even begin to respond.
As her plan progresses, if Hillary thinks it will get her more mileage by outing the negative publicity or, if she starts to lose and therefore get desperate, she will out it. If Hillary thinks she will get more mileage out of continuing to play holier than thou, Obama flames out, or she is getting enough deserved harmful publicity for her stunt, then she will drop it.
Hillary's thinly-disguised smear against Obama is part of an obvious effort to change the debate from her own record of waffling and bad decisions. Just like during the debate when she tried to go after Obama on health care rather than respond to questions about her record. Funny thing is, part of her record is her own abysmal failure on healthcare. She now says she learned from her failure. I wonder. Part of the problem with Hillarycare was that she went too far in creating an albatross that could never fly. Now Hillary criticizes Obama's health care proposal for not going far enough in forcing all Americans to buy health care, right out of the gate. Looks to me like Hillary's setting herself up for another smashing failure. Looks to me that Obama understands that some degree of gradualism will work better in the face of deep Republican suspicion of Democratic health care reform.
This is not just an isolated instance of Hillary's "experience" in not learning from her most important mistakes. For example, Hillary made a horrible mistake of empowering this President to wage war in Iraq without even reading the NIE (after one of the Democratic Senators most experienced in foreign policy begged her and the other Senators to read it). Her mistake in getting caught up in the rush to war was so grave that to this day Hillary still won't admit it.
Much worse, rather than learning from her mistake, Hillary only a few months ago followed it up by going along with this President's warmongering against Iran by voting to declare part of the Iranian military "terrorists." Let's put aside the truth of the accusation that part of the Iranian military gave aid to terrorists in Iraq. The truth is debated. And its relevance can only be viewed in context, including, for example, that Saudi Arabia exports far more terrorists into Iraq than does Iran. The salient point is, what in the world was Hillary hoping to accomplish by voting with a warmongering President to condemn the Iranian military as "terrorists"?
After empowering this President to wage a premature and disasterous war against Iraq, Hillary voted again for a measure that helps to empower this President to pull the trigger against another country before diplomacy has been exhausted. Only after an outcry by the Democratic public, did Hillary, once again instead of admitting her mistake, "clarify" the intent of her vote to try to render her wrongheaded decision essentially meaningless.
Add to her dumb resolution condemning the Iranian military followed by a letter trying to take it back, her waffling on immigration. As Edwards pointed out that she appeared to change her position on drivers licenses for illegal immigrants in the space of two minutes, her waffling was caught on tape. And she still couldn't make up her mind for days afterwards. What took her so long? It was obvious that she couldn't finally make up her apparently unprincipled mind until she interpreted the polling results of her various positions.
Perhaps worst of all and most damaging to her character, Hillary waffled on transparency. She waffled on timely releasing her First Lady records after claiming her experience as First Lady (healthcare?) makes her more qualified. She waffled on releasing her records in government as the Democrats demand transparency from Republicans who refuse to release their government records. Hillary's position mirrors the heart of the sickness in hypocritical, unprincipled Fox Republican politics. Her position on her records reminded me of Republicans telling our enemies they should not torture captured Americans. Like they are ones to talk. I'm sorry. She should never have had to waffle on her records, or any of these other issues. She should have known better than to take such ill-advised decisions in the first place. Unfortunately, all her experience has shown is that her judgment is poor.
I know this sounds harsh. It's Democrat on Democrat. Democrats, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, speak honestly and openly about their candidates. We have blind loyalty to America as opposed to our party. Murdoch, Bush, Cheney and the Fox Republican Party may continue to eat our innocent unprotected souls for it. I am still sticking to principles. It's all I've got. As for money, tax cuts for the rich, and all the rest, you can't take it with you.
Let us voters do this election right. Let us voters give it everything we have. We want the best, most principled, viable politican as our candidate for President. And in my mind, unless and until Kucinich becomes more viable, Obama is that person. Even if Kucinich becomes viable, he lacks one of Obama's greatest strengths and America's greatest needs - a leader who has the ability to unify our country around fair and good principled policy.
In the words of some of our greatest journalists, good night and good luck.