It’s Time to Step Up and Vote!

Americans, at least those who have not already participated in early voting drives, have the opportunity today—November 8—to cast their ballots in what more than a few commentators have called one of the most important elections in modern U.S. history. It’s historic not simply because it may well result in this country being led for the first time in more than two centuries by a woman president; but also because her opponent has demonstrated a rank disregard for political norms such as disclosing his tax returns and graciously accepting defeat, and an authoritarian antipathy toward not only a free press and civil political discourse, but also shocking disrespect for entire swaths of the American electorate, including immigrants, racial minorities, and women.

Nobody who knows me personally or who has read Limbo over the years should be in any doubt of who I’m voting for this year. My enthusiastic support goes to Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose qualifications for the Oval Office (former secretary of state, former U.S. senator, former first lady of both Arkansas and the nation) are without dispute, and whose temperament and grasp of the issues and tough decisions facing this country over the next four years is far superior to her adversary’s. I didn’t vote for Hillary back in 2008, when she was running for the Democratic nomination against the more charismatic and inspirational Barack Obama. But I have more closely watched her perform on the international and national stage during the last eight years, and been mightily impressed.

Hillary Clinton may not be a perfect candidate for the U.S. presidency: no human being can be. Yet, in the face of often ugly, destructive propaganda from the Republican Party—born amid fevered partisan delusions and take-no-prisoners hatred in the 1990s, when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president, and still infecting politics two decades later—Hillary has maintained a steady and determined demeanor, and been a consistent and assertive voice for such things as human rights, women’s rights, and voting rights. Unlike her bombastic adversary, Hillary believes in the value of science and the dangers inherent in not acting against threats of global warming; believes in the value of maintaining historical alliances with other countries that the United States may need in the event of any emergency; believes that affordable health care should be a right of all Americans, not just those with deep pockets; and believes that the Supreme Court of the United States has an important role in improving our lot as citizens, and should never be held hostage to over-grown schoolyard bullies who contend that only Republican presidents have a right to choose new justices for that high bench.

As The New York Times wrote in its September endorsement of Mrs. Clinton to be the 45th U.S. chief executive:

The next president will take office with bigoted, tribalist movements and their leaders on the march. In the Middle East and across Asia, in Russia and Eastern Europe, even in Britain and the United States, war, terrorism and the pressures of globalization are eroding democratic values, fraying alliances and challenging the ideals of tolerance and charity.

The 2016 campaign has brought to the surface the despair and rage of poor and middle-class Americans who say their government has done little to ease the burdens that recession, technological change, foreign competition and war have heaped on their families.

Over 40 years in public life, Hillary Clinton has studied these forces and weighed responses to these problems. Our endorsement is rooted in respect for her intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service, often as the first or only woman in the arena. …

Through war and recession, Americans born since 9/11 have had to grow up fast, and they deserve a grown-up president. A lifetime’s commitment to solving problems in the real world qualifies Hillary Clinton for this job, and the country should put her to work.

Of Hillary’s Republican rival … well, here’s what The New Yorker said about would-be demagogue and notorious pussy-grabber Trump:

On every issue of consequence, including economic policy, the environment, and foreign affairs, Hillary Clinton is a distinctly capable candidate: experienced, serious, schooled, resilient. When the race began, Clinton, who has always been a better office-holder than a campaigner, might have anticipated a clash of ideas and personalities on the conventional scale, against, say, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Instead, the Democratic nominee has ended up playing a sometimes secondary role in a squalid American epic. If she is elected, she will have weathered a prolonged battle against a trash-talking, burn-it-to-the-ground demagogue. Unfortunately, the drama is not likely to end soon. The aftereffects of this campaign may befoul our civic life for some time to come.

If the prospect of a female President represents a departure in the history of American politics, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the real-estate mogul and Republican nominee, does, too—a chilling one. He is manifestly unqualified and unfit for office. Trained in the arts of real-estate promotion and reality television, he exhibits scant interest in or familiarity with policy. He favors conspiracy theory and fantasy, deriving his knowledge from the darker recesses of the Internet and “the shows.” He has never held office or otherwise served his country, never acceded to the authority of competing visions and democratic resolutions.

Worse still, he does not accept the authority of constitutional republicanism—its norms, its faiths and practices, its explicit rules and implicit understandings. That much is clear from his statements about targeting press freedoms, infringing on an independent judiciary, banning Muslim immigration, deporting undocumented immigrants without a fair hearing, reviving the practice of torture, and, in the third and final [presidential] debate, his refusal to say that he will accept the outcome of the election. Trump has even threatened to prosecute and imprison his opponent. The American demagogues from the past century who most closely resemble him—Father [Charles] Coughlin and Senator Joseph McCarthy among them—were dangers to the republic, but they never captured the Presidential nomination of a major political party. Father Coughlin commanded a radio show and its audience. President Trump would command the armed forces of the United States, control its nuclear codes, appoint judges, propose legislation, and conduct foreign policy. It is a convention of our quadrennial pieties to insist that this election is singularly important. But Trump really does represent something singular. The prospect of such a President—erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and corrupt—represents a form of national emergency.

Sadly, Trump has pulled the entire Republican Party down to his mud-wrestling level, endangering the future stability of our democratic republic and worsening tensions between the two major political parties. The deceptive practices, racism, sexism, petty vengefulness, and general hatreds Trump demonstrates, and which his fellow Republican candidates all across the country have endorsed (either overtly or through their timorous silence), have convinced me that what was once known as the Grand Old Party has fallen on hard times and must be reconceived; in the meantime, it cannot be trusted anymore with the levers of power. Therefore, not only have I voted for Hillary Clinton as president this year, but I’m casting a straight Democratic ticket. I want to be sure that the new President Clinton enters the White House supported by a serious, cooperative Congress that, beginning in 2017, can go back to legislating for the benefit of all Americans, not just Republican scorched-earthers.

Today promises a new era in U.S. history, whether favorable or divisive, depending on the vote outcomes. It’s up to all of us to take part in deciding what sort of country we want: one where voices are raised in optimism and mutual support, or where the angry shouts of right-wing extremists overcome common sense? So cast your ballot thoughtfully, as if your future depended on it … because it does.

READ MORE: “The Imperative of Voting for Hillary Clinton,” by Richard North Patterson (The Huffington Post); “Hillary Clinton Has to Be Gracious to Donald Trump. The Rest of Us Don’t,” by Paul Waldman (The Washington Post).

Clinton Wins the Character Contest

This is a surprise. The Houston Chronicle, one of the largest newspapers in Texas (and a previous backer of Republican Mitt Romney) has just endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.

And in no uncertain terms.

On Nov. 8, 2016, the American people will decide between two presidential contenders who represent the starkest political choice in living memory. They will choose between one candidate with vast experience and a lifelong dedication to public service and another totally lacking in qualifications to be president. They will decide whether they prefer someone deeply familiar with the issues that are important to this nation or a person whose paper-thin, bumper-sticker proposals would be dangerous to the nation and the world if somehow they were enacted.

The Chronicle editorial page does not typically endorse early in an election cycle; we prefer waiting for the campaign to play out and for issues to emerge and be addressed. We make an exception in the 2016 presidential race, because the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is not merely political. It is something much more basic than party preference.

An election between the Democrat Clinton and, let's say, the Republican Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Marco Rubio, even the hyper-ideological Ted Cruz, would spark a much-needed debate about the role of government and the nation's future, about each candidate's experience and abilities. But those Republican hopefuls have been vanquished. To choose the candidate who defeated them—fairly and decisively, we should point out—is to repudiate the most basic notions of competence and capability.

Any one of Trump's less-than-sterling qualities—his erratic temperament, his dodgy business practices, his racism, his Putin-like strongman inclinations and faux-populist demagoguery, his contempt for the rule of law, his ignorance—is enough to be disqualifying. His convention-speech comment, "I alone can fix it," should make every American shudder. He is, we believe, a danger to the Republic.

The paper goes on to applaud Clinton’s opposition to Trump’s “ridiculous border-wall,” her support of the Affordable Care Act and immigration reform, and her serious approach to climate change before concluding:

These are unsettling times, even if they're not the dark, dystopian end times that Trump lays out. They require a steady hand. That's not Donald Trump.

The times also require a person who envisions a hopeful future for this nation, a person who has faith in the strong, prosperous and confident America we hope to bequeath our children and grandchildren, as first lady Michelle Obama so eloquently envisioned in Philadelphia. That's not Donald Trump's America.

It is Hillary Clinton's, who reminded her listeners Thursday night that "When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit."

America's first female president would be in the Oval Office more than a century and a half after a determined group of women launched the women's suffrage movement, almost a century after women in this country won the right to vote. It's a milestone, to be sure. Few could have imagined it would be so consequential.

You can read the whole editorial here.

Trump’s America vs. Clinton’s America

After slogging her way through the three 2016 Republican presidential debates so far, and also last night’s more substantive Democratic face-off, Heather Digby Parton--who writes the political blog Hullabaloo--sums up the radically different ways that Republicans and Democrats look at our modern world in this piece for Salon:

Republican America is a dystopian hellscape in which evil, violent foreigners are trying to kill us in our beds while rapacious jackbooted government thugs try to wrestle our guns from our cold, dead fingers and Planned Parenthood sociopaths are committing mayhem on children and selling the body parts. And that’s just for starters.

Democratic America is a very powerful nation struggling with a declining middle class and economic insecurity at the hands of the ultra-rich, requiring some energetic government intervention to mitigate income inequality, solve the looming crisis of climate change and manage global crises without plunging the nation into more wars. They also must hold off that anarchistic opposition which sees the world as a dystopian hellscape and that may be the greatest challenge of all.

A little over a year from now voters are going to decide which country they want to live in. Let’s hope they choose wisely. The rest of us are going to have to live in it too.

READ MORE: “Sorry, Haters: Hillary Clinton Won the Democratic Debate,” by Amanda Marcotte (Salon); “Hillary Clinton Won the CNN Debate with a Surprisingly Spectacular Performance,” by Josh Voorhees (Slate); “Why Clinton’s Debate Dominance May Change the 2016 Race,” by Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog); “Hillary Clinton Passes Her First Major Test and Momentum Is on Her Side” (NBC News).

“No Way, No How, No McCain”

Any lingering questions in the press about former rival Hillary Clinton’s willingness to endorse Democrat Barack Obama as the next president of the United States should have been dispelled by her rousing speech last night before the Democratic National Convention in Denver. She said, in part:

“[W]e don’t need four more years, of the last eight years. More economic stagnation, and less affordable health care. More high gas prices, and less alternative energy. ... John McCain says the economy is fundamentally sound. John McCain doesn’t think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis. John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. And in 2008, he still thinks it’s okay when women don’t earn equal pay for equal work. With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart.”

The full text of her address can be found here. The video is below:

READ MORE: “Clinton Steals the Show,” by Steve Benen (The Washington Monthly); “Hillary’s Tour de Force,” by Taylor Marsh; “ Hillary’s Best Line: Were You in It for Me?,” by Cenk Uygur (The Huffington Post); “The Democrats Strike Back,” by David Kusnet (The New Republic); “No Way, No How, No McCain,” by Joan Walsh (Salon); “Family Values,” by Robert L. Borosage (The Huffington Post).

“We Now Know Who the Democratic Nominee’s Going to Be, and No One’s Going to Dispute It”

Tonight’s lopsided victory for Senator Barack Obama in North Carolina, and Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin win in Indiana--if she can even hold on to that--have finally brought NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert to the conclusion that Obama is the presumptive nominee. If Clinton concedes in the morning, Obama can finally get on to the business of bringing Democrats together behind his banner, showing up John “100 Years War” McCain for the Republican’t caricature he is, and winning the White House in November. ’Bout time. READ MORE: “Obama Wins; How Does Clinton Lose?,” by Marc Ambinder (The Atlantic); “Hillary Will Drop Out by June 15,” by Lawrence O’Donnell (The Huffington Post).

The Electability Gambit

Since Hillary Clinton managed to pull off a much narrower than expected victory in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary this week, suddenly the American media are questioning Barack Obama’s ability to win the general election battle against John “100 Years War” McCain? Gimme a break. Once more, the media strive to create a horse race where there isn’t really one. As analyst Charlie Cook, founder-editor of the Cook Political Report newsletter, writes in National Journal,

The good news for Hillary Rodham Clinton is that she’s winning a lot of battles. The bad news is that the war is pretty much lost. Sure, she won Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary by a strong 9 points in the face of being outspent on television ads by Barack Obama 2-to-1. She also won Ohio, Rhode Island, and at least the primary part of the bizarre “Texas two-step” primary-and-caucus combination on March 4. But today, she is 133 delegates behind Obama, 1,728 to 1,595, according to NBC News. At this point last week, she trailed by 136 delegates. Since then Clinton has scored a net gain of 10 delegates in Pennsylvania, according to NBC, but has lost a few more superdelegates, so she has made little headway.

If this contest were still at the point where momentum, symbolism, and reading tea leaves mattered, Clinton would be in pretty good shape. Everything she has needed to happen is happening now. Obama is getting tougher press coverage and critical examination. He’s also getting rattled a bit, and he didn’t perform well in the recent debate in Philadelphia. Clinton is winning in big, important places, but it’s happening about three months too late. ...

As long as Clinton is winning, she can’t quit. But even in victory, she isn’t getting any closer to securing the nomination. This political purgatory will continue if she manages to win Indiana but loses North Carolina--hard to drop out but harder to see winning the nomination. If she loses in both states, then her campaign’s donors and creditors, as well as superdelegates and party leaders, are likely to intervene. But that can’t happen as long as she continues to win.

The Clinton folks are now trying to get the media to swallow the ludicrous proposition that Senator Obama is somehow unelectable, even though he’s well ahead in this race. It might work; reporters covering the 2008 presidential campaign have already shown themselves to be gullible, and suck-ups, to boot. How else to explain their willingness to accept the fallacy that McCain is some kind of political centrist, or that he’s a straight-talker, rather than the abject flip-flopper he is in reality?

But blogger and political analyst John Cole dismisses the Clinton camp’s assertions out of hand:

If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

Why is she behind him in every conceivable metric? Why is she behind in pledged delegates? Why is she behind in the popular vote (and don’t insult my intelligence by trying to pass that sheer nonsense the morons at certain pro-Clinton blogs are lapping up)? Why are super delegates flocking to Obama, while Hillary has picked up only a handful in the past few months. Why has she won fewer states? Why is she trumpeting her narrow delegate pickup in [Pennsylvania], when it is less than the number of net delegates Obama picked up in a variety of other states? Why is she behind in fund raising? Why was she unable to turn her double-digit lead a year ago into any actual primary wins? Why, with her starting financial advantage and name recognition, was she held to a tie on Super Tuesday?

Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, further shreds Clinton’s contention regarding Obama’s unelectability in an interview published yesterday in National Journal. When asked whether there isn’t some legitimacy to Hillary Clinton’s argument that only she can triumph against McSame in the must-win big states in November, Plouffe responds:

Well, let me just [address] the big state question--you know, they point to California, New York, Massachusetts. We are going to carry those states comfortably. Yes, she did win Ohio and Pennsylvania in the primary. If you look at polling matchups of McCain versus Obama and Clinton in Pennsylvania, we perform roughly equal. We’ve won a lot of big battleground states--Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington state, Iowa, Virginia. North Carolina, by the way, is going to be a big battleground state in 12 days, so I guess by their definition they need to win there. So this is kind of a ridiculous argument that, you know, they are trying to latch on to.

I mean, I think her electability issues are the following: she’s got a high unfavorable rating. It would be the highest unfavorable rating for any presidential nominee in recent history. Fairly or not, the majority of voters don’t trust Senator Clinton. Those two points are related, obviously: her unfavorable rating, and the sense that voters do not find her honest or trustworthy. And I do think she has limited appeal with independent voters. A Democratic nominee has to be competitive with independent voters. Ideally you’d win them. John McCain has unique appeal with independent voters. Senator Clinton has difficulty matching up with him with independent voters. She’s got less appeal to Republicans, and I also think she’s not going to create the kind of turnout we will in the African-American community and with all voters under 40.

So I think she’s got real limited range here, and we think that we will be just as strong as she will be in the core battleground states like Pennsylvania, like Ohio. But the question is, in Iowa, in Wisconsin, in New Mexico, in Nevada--these are states that have always been very close, that a Democratic nominee has to carry. And we’re doing much better than she is against John McCain.

Once more, it seems the only way that Clinton backers can get ahead in this contest is by trying to tear down Obama. That neither reflects well on her, nor will it benefit the Democratic Party when Obama finally becomes the nominee. A good part of the reason I switched my allegiance from Clinton to Obama is because the senator from New York seems willing to use ugly Republican’t tactics against a fellow Dem. That’s not sportsmanlike, nor is it at all politically smart. It gives McCain material to build on in the general election, and in the meantime it’s damaging both Hillary Clinton’s national standing and--much worse, in my book--the standing of her previously very popular husband, former President Bill Clinton.

It’s time for Senator Clinton to find a graceful way out of this race, to accept the fact that Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate--and most likely the next president of the United States. All she’s doing now is making it easier for Republican’ts to put up a decent showing in the latest White House race, and invite trouble for the Democratic Party, despite McCain being just an older version of George W. Bush. And we all know how electable he would be nowadays.

READ MORE: “Party Fears Racial Divide,” by Jonathan Weisman and Matthew Mosk (The Washington Post); “Dems’ Suspense May Be Unnecessary,” by Elizabeth Drew (Politico); “On Course for Another White Guy Election,” by Thomas B. Edsall (The Huffington Post); “Media Conventional Wisdom Shifting Towards Belief Clinton Could Defeat Obama?,” by Joe Gandleman (The Moderate Voice); “Heading Toward the Danger Zone,” by Bob Herbert (The New York Times).

McCain Wants Hillary as His Opponent

This comes from the notoriously unreliable Drudge Report, but it certainly sounds possible, given what favors Hillary Clinton has been doing John “100 Years War” McCain with her increasingly vicious attacks on Barack Obama lately:

McCain would prefer to go up against Clinton in the general election, insiders reveal.

He has instructed his campaign staff to “chill out” on countering Hillary Clinton’s torrent of claims and promises as primary voting comes to an end over the next 6 weeks.

McCain made the tactical decision to downplay Clinton’s tale of Bosnia sniper fire, leaving some McCain staffers frustrated and perplexed.

Instead, the critical focus has been on Barack Obama. McCain’s official website features 14 press releases taking on Obama since the first of the year, only 3 for the former first lady.

(Hat tip to AMERICAblog.)

READ MORE: “Obama: Clinton Using GOP Playbook,” by David Espo (Associated Press).

“Wanna See My Picture on the Cover ...”

With Senator Hillary Clinton’s race-altering presidential primary wins in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday, there are more than a few bloggers suggesting that she drop out of the race “for the good of the Democratic Party.” And there are even some of her own campaign advisors wondering whether she should go on in her pursuit of the Democratic nomination against the more charismatic Senator Barack Obama. Others, though, insist that it’s still too early to call for Clinton’s withdrawal or to compromise by pushing a unified Obama-Clinton (or Clinton-Obama) election ticket.

Meanwhile, Walter Shapiro, Salon’s Washington bureau chief, suggests that the continuing rivalry will be good, in the end, for Democrats--and immensely frustrating to John “100 Years War” McCain, George W. Bush’s now anointed clone and the Republican’t Party’s own Hubert Humphrey (“Captive to his own partisan support for a disastrous war; too timid to stake out an agenda for change; passively permitting an unpopular president to embrace him as heir; squandering what little was left of his good repute in shabby political maneuvering.”). Shapiro writes:

John McCain announced Tuesday that he would be heading for Florida on Thursday to campaign in West Palm Beach. But the problem McCain faces is that he still has a faceless opponent with the Democratic race far from settled. So, in effect, McCain will be shadowboxing against a vague entity called Obama-Clinton. The result is that (just wait and see) McCain will find it difficult to make news since there is no longer any drama to anything that he does until it becomes time to pick a running mate. The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which monitors media coverage, found that last week the Democratic race generated four times the attention of the Republicans. And that news blackout occurred when McCain still had a nominal opponent in Mike Huckabee.

So rather than fantasizing about a soporific and conflict-free nomination fight, the Democrats should recognize the value of what they have stumbled into. The contest between Obama and Clinton--this battle of historic firsts--has the entire nation hanging on the edge of their seats. Who with any sense of show business would think of pulling down the curtain when the audience is shouting for more? But, then, if the Democrats had any sense of what the public craved, George W. Bush probably would not be in the White House.

Like many people, though, the editors of Rolling Stone magazine hesitate to let this contest play out, to wait and see if Hillary Clinton can sell her (admittedly dubious) argument to American voters that only she can beat the aged McCain in November--and in the meantime allow her to bloody Obama even before the Republican’t hate machine gets him between its teeth. For the first time ever, the music-and-issues magazine is endorsing a contender for the White House during the primary season: Barack Obama. In its March 20 issue, editor, publisher, and Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner opines:

Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.

All this was made clearer by the contrast with Hillary Clinton, a capable and personable senator who has run the kind of campaign that reminds us of what makes us so discouraged about our politics. ...

Obama also denounced the Republican campaign of fear. Early in the campaign, John Edwards took the lead, calling the War on Terror a campaign slogan, not a policy. Obama rejected the subtle imagery of false patriotism by not wearing a flag pin in his lapel, and he dismissed the broader notion that the Democratic Party had to find a way to buy into this entire load of fear-mongering War on Terror bullshit--to out-Republican the Republicans--and thus become, in his description of Hillary Clinton’s macho posturing on foreign policy, little more than “Bush-Cheney lite.” ...

We have a deeply divided nation, driven apart by economic policies that have deliberately created the largest income disparities in our history, with stunning tax breaks for the wealthiest and subsidies for giant industries. The income of the average citizen is stagnant, and his quality of life continues to slowly erode from inflation.

We are embittered and hobbled by the unnecessary and failed war in Iraq. We have been worn down by long years of fear- and hate-filled political strategies, assaults on constitutional freedoms, and levels of greed and cynicism, that--once seen for what they are--no people of moral values or ethics can tolerate.

A new president must heal these divides, must at long last face the hypocrisy and inequity of unprecedented government handouts to oil giants, hedge-fund barons, agriculture combines and drug companies. At the same time, the new president must transform our lethal energy economy--replacing oil and coal and the ethanol fraud with green alternatives and strict rain-forest preservation and tough international standards--before the planet becomes inhospitable for most human life. Although Obama has been slow to address global warming, I feel confident that his intelligence and morality will lead him clearly on this issue.

We need to recover the spiritual and moral direction that should describe our country and ourselves. We see this in Obama, and we see the promise he represents to bring factions together, to achieve again the unity that drives great change and faces difficult, and inconvenient, truths and peril.

We need to send a message to ourselves and to the world that we truly do stand for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And in electing an African-American, we also profoundly renounce an ugliness and violence in our national character that have been further stoked by our president in these last eight years.

Rolling Stone’s full editorial has been made available on the Web, here. Elsewhere in the same issue can be found Tim Dickinson’s profile of Obama’s grassroots field operation.

We’ll see how beneficial this endorsement really is. Rolling Stone did Bill Clinton considerable good, putting him on its cover back in 1992. But similar efforts in 2000 (for Al Gore) and 2004 (for John Kerry) proved ... well, less than decisive.

READ MORE: “Poll: Obama and Clinton Lead McCain; Change vs. Experience Is the Roadmap,” by Gary Langer (ABC News); “Amazing Race,” by Bruce Reed (Slate); “Time to Bow Out,” by Marc Ash (TruthOut).

Sorry, Hillary

For the first time in our lives, my brother and I hope to vote in November for the same presidential candidate: Barack Obama.

This is significant not only because I was originally backing Senator Hillary Clinton in the current race; but because while I have always been a Democrat (and have in fact voted for only one Republican in my life--Norm Maleng, the late King County, Washington, prosecuting attorney), my younger brother, Matt, followed in our family’s footsteps, marking his ballots for GOP presidential candidates for as long as he’s been legally able to vote. He backed Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, then threw his support behind George H.W. Bush in 1988 (and even showed up at a Michael Dukakis rally once in order to heckle the candidate). But his faith in the Republican’t Party waned when the aged former Senator Bob Dole took on President Bill Clinton in 1996. And Matt refused to back George W. Bush at all, saying that the black sheep of the Bush “dynasty” wasn’t up to the task of leading the United States--a conviction that’s proved remarkably prescient. In the current presidential contest, Matt found something he liked in TV star and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson. But when Thompson quit after lackluster showings in the early primaries, Matt looked around at the remaining GOP field--and decided that he’d had enough, that for the first time in his life, he was going to vote for a Democrat instead, first-term U.S. Senator Obama of Illinois.

My mother-in-law has made the same choice. She and I have argued periodically over the years about politics, she being another died-in-the-wool Republican. But not this year. After seeing the mess that Bush has made of the presidency, the economy, and the country in general over these last seven years, she’s already announced that she cannot in good conscience back his philosophical successor, John “100 Years War” McCain. She’d probably never support Hillary Clinton, due to years of GOP propaganda about the supposed evils of former President Clinton; but to her, Obama is a much-needed clean slate, and she hopes to cast her ballot on his behalf in November.

My own conversion to Obama didn’t come easily. In all honesty, I hadn’t expected Clinton to make a run for the White House, knowing as she surely did how fanatical the Republican’ts are when it comes to all things Clinton, how ready the GOP hate machine was to take her on and destroy her. But when she did finally choose to pick up the presidential campaign gauntlet, I stood by her. I was a strong supporter of President Clinton, especially after Republican’ts launched their (ultimately unsuccessful) coup against him in 1998, over the matter of an intern, a soiled dress, and an error of judgment that wasn’t really anybody else’s business but his family’s. And I have always found Hillary Clinton to be a woman of strength, of character, and of conviction. If she thought that her moment had to come to lead the nation, then who was I to argue?

But as the race has progressed over these last few months, I’ve been more and more impressed by Obama--by his confident presence, moving speeches, and the rapidity and sharpness with which he has responded to political attacks. My initial concern about the junior senator from Illinois was that he couldn’t handle the loudmouthed hatred, propaganda, and outright deceptions destined to be fired by the GOP at whoever the Democratic candidate is in the fall of this year. However, I now believe that concern was unfounded. I haven’t seen anything in Obama that reminds me of the foolhardy hesitancy with which Senator John Kerry answered the Swift Boaters in 2004--and which cost him the election against a White House occupant determined to stay in office, even if he had to make Americans frightened for their lives at every turn and suspicious of every stranger in their midst. Obama has hit back fast, and he’s hit back smart, not ugly.

Having originally stood up for Hillary Clinton, I didn’t make a big deal of my possible switch. Friends and colleagues who had supported Barack Obama longer than I had felt the need to excuse themselves in my presence, whenever they said something complimentary of the rising-star Illinois senator. Phrases along the lines of “With all due respect for your point of view, of course ...” And I didn’t let on to many people that I was having second thoughts about my vote. It wasn’t until early February, when Democrats in Washington state held their caucuses, that I had made up my mind. Even then, I think, my wife was a bit surprised to see me holding up my hand in support of Obama. As it turned out, I was in the majority that day: Washington Dems went overwhelmingly for Obama.

What tipped the scales for me? It had little to do with popular sentiment; I’ve never been one to back causes or people simply because others do, or to abandon convictions because they might have fallen out of favor. No, what finally decided it for me was the inevitability of John McCain becoming the Republican’t candidate for president this year. Once thought of as a political maverick, somebody better than the habitually corrupt GOPers with whom he trafficked, McCain has spent the last seven years with his lips firmly pressed against George W. Bush’s sorry ass--despite the fact that Bush and his henchman, Karl Rove, did their best to destroy McCain during the 2000 campaign, even spreading rumors that he had a half-black child. (Shades of the 1920 race, during which it was bruited about that Senator Warren G. Harding was partly African American himself--an accusation that may in fact have been true.) McCain has even come out lately against his own previous position on waterboarding as torture (siding with the right-wingers, instead) and in favor of making Bush’s deficit-increasing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans permanent, despite having opposed such a move in the past--further proof that McCain is just as much a flip-flopper as his former Republican’t rival, Mitt Romney. And although he’s hinted at various times that Bush made a royal mess of his 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCain now not only insists that last year’s so-called “troop surge” was a success (bullshit!), but seems perfectly willing to continue the debacle in Iraq for decades to come, even though it would cost the lives of thousands more American soldiers and destroy the U.S. economy. Of course, McCain’s already admitted that he doesn’t understand the economy any better than George W. Bush did--and look at where that’s gotten us.

McCain’s continued support of a bigoted pastor, his cozy relationship with lobbyists (despite protestations that he’s holier than thou), his willingness to disown any longstanding convictions (his opposition to the execrable Jerry Falwell, his support of campaign finance reform, etc.) in order to become president--those are not the characteristics of a worthy candidate. They’re traits of a desperate and untrustworthy one. And the fact that many Republican’ts who once opposed John McCain vociferously are now siding with him is further evidence, if anyone needed it, that they lack anything like guiding principles. All the GOP wants is power.

Sizing up the coming race, I can imagine that Hillary Clinton would give the Republican’ts a hard fight. She’s a strong campaigner and an extremely intelligent person. In a face-off against McCain, she’d likely win on debating points. The problem is, winning on debating points doesn’t get you into the White House. (Just ask President Kerry.) Additionally, Clinton would be hampered by her having given Bush the same authority McCain did to make incompetent war on Iraq. With Clinton as his general election opponent, McCain would effectively be protected on what even he acknowledges is his weakest flank--his backing of Bush’s endless, disastrous war. All he has to say is, “She voted for the war, too.”

Obama, on the other hand, wouldn’t be in that position. He didn’t back Bush’s bellicosity--if only because he wasn’t in the U.S Senate at the time. And he’s spoken out firmly against the Bush-McCain position, that the Iraq conflict should continue as long as the generals want it. (Since when were generals in charge of U.S. policy, anyway?) Furthermore, Obama represents a fresh face in national political circles. He doesn’t come bearing Hillary Clinton’s ponderous baggage, or her high-negative ratings among Republican’ts. He’s a compelling speaker, with his rich baritone voice--an obvious contrast against McCain’s squeaky ejaculations. But he also has something to say (he and Hillary Clinton are nearly alike, policy-wise), and his optimism is palpable and moving, without being naïve. (I do, though, still think he should trust less in bipartisanship to fix the nation’s woes, than in political strength.) Obama reminds me of nobody so much as Bill Clinton, when he ran in 1992 against the calcified GOP establishment embodied by George H.W. Bush. Clinton’s point back then was that Americans didn’t have to be satisfied with rising prices and worsening employment and despair of things ever improving. A national reorientation was necessary, Clinton said in 1992, and he would help deliver it. I have come to believe that Obama could do the same thing today, help deliver Americans from our presently depressed economy, falling dollar, home-loan bankruptcies, and international disgust with the United States--all of which are legacies of George W. Bush.

As I said before, I have reached this position slowly, logically. I don’t believe that Barack Obama is some kind of saint or the second coming of John F. Kennedy (who was not himself an ideal president). He’s just a man, but a seemingly wise, skillful, progressive, and highly qualified one at a time when America desperately needs competence again in the White House. That Obama is also a black man is a particularly potent symbol, too--a demonstration of just how far this nation has come, and how far it must still go, when you consider the odds against Obama rising to the top of a national ticket.

I can imagine the presidential debates in the fall, with a young, charismatic Barack Obama schooling cranky old white pessimist McCain on why America can’t afford to continue Dubya’s disastrous war policies, dubious economic plans, and arrogant indifference to the rest of the world. It will make great television and energize the electorate.

I feel for Hillary Clinton at this juncture. With the delegate count trending against her, and word that 50 Democratic superdelegates are all ready to endorse Obama (thus cementing her opponent’s lead), she’s got to be hoping to change the game entirely with wins today in Texas and Ohio. Polling doesn’t suggest that anything like overwhelming margins are going to turn out on her behalf, however, and if she comes out of these contests with only one win, or none, she’s going to have a hard time convincing voters to stick with her any further. Especially if she continues to rail against Obama, rather than simply bloodying McCain. Already, polls show that Obama has a significantly better chance of beating McCain in November than Clinton does. Yet she holds on, presumably out of pride and hoping to change the minds of voters and delegates both, wishing for a miracle in Denver in August that would make her the nominee, rather than Obama.

I think that such an outcome, though, would be detrimental at this point to the Democratic Party. When I attended the Washington caucuses in February, I was struck by the fact that so many young people had showed up, excited and ready to back Obama. There was an energy and confidence in the room that I hadn’t felt in 2000 or 2004 (especially the latter). While the Clinton camp touts a recent Pew Research survey that shows a quarter of her primary supporters defecting to McCain in November, if Clinton isn’t the Democratic nominee (contrasted with only 10 percent of Obama’s backers saying they would support McCain), I suspect that’s a consequence of heated feelings at this stage, rather than a reflection of what those Dems would actually do in November. Both Clinton and Obama would make fine presidents, and either would be a far superior choice to stay-the-course warmonger McCain. Every committed Democrat knows that, and I doubt that outcome-swaying numbers of Clinton supporters would entrust their futures to McCain in the end. However, I do worry that denying Obama the nomination through some backroom dealing would deflate the interest of those young people who showed up to back Obama, finally believing that their votes mean something.

Much rides on today’s big Democratic contests in Ohio and Texas. If Obama wins both, it will be very hard for Hillary Clinton to stay in the race. If they split the wins, commentators (and right-wing zealots like Rush Limburger) will encourage Clinton to keep competing, if only because they like the excitement--and damn the consequences to America’s future. As hard as it is for me to say, having been a Clinton backer for so long, I hope that Obama comes out of these primaries with decisive backing, enough that Clinton realizes it would be a waste of time and money to continue her pursuit of the presidency. (Her smartest move might be to drop out of the race and throw her support behind Obama--after winning from him a promise to place her on the U.S. Supreme Court, or in some similar position where her influence could be felt.) I think it’s time for the Democrats to choose a nominee and firm up their backing against McCain in the fall. For the first time in my life, I look forward to voting for the same presidential candidate as my brother.

READ MORE: “The Cold Price of Hot Blood,” by Gary Kamiya (Salon); “McCain’s Age May Figure in Choice of a Running Mate,” by Michael Cooper (The New York Times); “McCain: The Way Out of This Hole Is to Keep Digging,” by Robert L. Borosage (The Huffington Post).

Call It for Hillary

Wow, what a night! Against the recent odds--and despite the overconfident predictions of media pundits--Hillary Clinton pulled out a win in the New Hampshire primary election, beating Democratic challenger Barack Obama by the narrowest of margins (39 percent to 37 percent). This throws the race back up for grabs, and makes those folks, like The New Republic’s Martin Peretz and Democratic consultant Donna Brazile, who had previously declared that former President Bill Clinton was a drag on his wife’s candidacy, have to rethink their positions.

So now Obama has a win in Iowa, and Clinton has one in New Hampshire. (John Edwards came in third, of course.) Given the strength of both the Democratic frontrunners, it’s possible that we’ll see more of these back-and-forth victories for a while yet. New Hampshire enjoys being a maverick, when it comes to choosing U.S. presidents, and it’s unlikely that other states, such as South Carolina and Nevada, will follow its lead slavishly.

Expect the same sort of unsettled contest on the Republican’t side. John McCain, who won tonight and also won New Hampshire against George W. Bush in 2000, is unlikely to be as warmly treated elsewhere. As far as GOPers are concerned, he’s on the wrong side of the fence regarding immigration legislation, and his Bush-lockstep approach to the Iraq debacle (he told an audience in New Hampshire last week that it’s fine with him if the United States remains in Iraq for the next century!) will turn off fellow Republican’ts who are tired of wasting lives and money in the cause of Bush’s bellicosity. And McCain’s woes only become greater if he actually has the chance to face the general voting public. His pro-war stance won’t endear him to independentss, who largely side with Democrats on the Iraq mess; and it will probably be those independents who once more hold the final cards in November. In other words, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee ought not to be folding up their tents just yet.

It’s a real horse race now.

READ MORE: “A Clinton Wake Becomes a Revival,” by Jim Tankersley (The Swamp); “An Inconvenient Resurrection,” by Marty Kaplan (The Huffington Post); “McCain: The Last Man Standing in New Hampshire,” by Mike Madden (Salon); “Goodbye Hillary. Oh, Wait ...” by Steve Allan (Noir Writer); “New Hampshire Polling Fiasco Not Unique in History,” by Sam Stein (The Huffington Post); “First Woman to Win Seriously Contested Prez Primary,” by John Nichols (The Nation).