Hey, guess where I am now?
Answer: In my own little personal Obama office. It’s pretty sweet – lonely (Come make phone calls!) – but pretty sweet.
I was hired yesterday (randomly and suddenly) to be the head of GOtV for Middlebury (town and school) along with another girl from Dems. Is this a conflict of interest, you say? Probably, but whatever. It’s all good.
OK, I’m not supposed to talk about the campaign, so moving on. How about last night? For several reasons I missed the debate, but it doesn’t seem like I missed much, other than Clinton’s “Xerox” comment and her final comment. I also get the impression that people are getting really sick of this whole plagiarism thing. Thoughts?
Some people are saying that Hillary’s final comment was either a sign that she’s coming back strong or that she’s going to lose gracefully. It’s the lose gracefully argument that intrigues me. I went to this lecture on the Primaries and Caucuses the other night by a former poli-sci professor at Midd. He explained the whole primary system (why the Dems have proportional representation, how awesome George McGovern is, yada yada yada) and how much Hillary needs to win by in order to stay in the race. Basically, nothing new. He concluded, however, by saying that Hillary was just like him. A wonk. A political wonk. He praised her years at Wellesley, her law career, her efforts as First Lady, and her time in the Senate. However, he still called her a political wonk. She lacks the charisma and the ability to inspire (save for the whole “first woman president” thing). He made the argument that she would make a great Supreme Court Justice. (At which point, everyone in the room was like “whoa – what a good idea.” I mean seriously people, she would be a fantastic Supreme Court Justice. Now that’s change we can believe in.) He said that wonks just aren’t meant to be president. That seems fair enough to me.
He also mentioned however that the Democratic Party right now is Hillary’s to ruin. She can fight out the whole delegate thing with Michigan and Florida and all the others until the end and potentially win them over – thereby winning the nomination. However, it’s almost a foregone conclusion (at this point in time) that Obama will win the popular vote. Therefore, the professor argued, the amount of time that it will take for Obama supporters to recover from the hurt of their loss, will not be enough time to kill the Republicans. This is where Hillary’s final comments in the debate last night become interesting. Maybe it really was a campaign ploy, but maybe it also means she won’t be ridiculously selfish and screw us all over. Who knows.
- Em
