Cowtown Chronicles

Okay, so I feel compelled to write something about this, sort of to get my opinions out there and to hopefully spark some discussion or at least some deep reflection on the part of folks who might be considering this course of action because Hillary wasn’t nominated.

Don’t fucking do it.

By declaring that because Hillary didn’t win the nomination you “are thinking about voting for McCain” or “are definitely voting for McCain” or “Obama is starting from scratch with me,” what you’re really saying is “I never gave a shit about what Hillary stood for, or my fellow Democrats, I just wanted Hillary to win the nomination, so to punish the rest of you, I’ll demonstrate my pettiness by talking shit about the Democratic nominee.”

Here’s the thing: Hillary and Bill get it. They don’t like it. I GUARAN-FUCKING-TEE they don’t like it. But they know that if they raise a major shitstorm and don’t fall in line, they’re DONE as party power-brokers. If the kind of shit that Hillary supporters are talking about stirring up happens, Obama loses the general election, and there’s even a HINT that Bill or Hillary or anyone in their organization is encouraging it, the party will crucify them. They won’t be able to get jobs as junior staffers to the lone State Democratic Congressman in South Dakota (or something equally lowly).

Sure, they could just go off in their dotage and retire somewhere that they can happily diddle the maid and pool boy, leaving a demolished Democratic Party in their wake, but that’s not how they work. They’re patriots through and through, and they’ve devoted their lives to the United States and the Democratic Party. They enjoy unprecedented influence and major power broker status, and i guarantee they’re not going to give that up easily.

More than that, and more importantly, is that Bill and Hillary really do care about the United States and all the things they’ve devoted their lives to working for. I can guarantee that no matter how disappointed they are that they lost the nomination, they would be absolutely gutted if Hillary supporters defecting to the other side (or not turning out for Obama) caused him to lose the general election, not to mention the affect it would have on down-ticket races.

Barack Obama is not Hillary Clinton, but he’s a hell of a lot closer than John McCain could ever be.

Please, take the time to be angry and disappointed. Get it out of your system, vent to your friends, do whatever you feel like you need to do. But when the time comes, show Hillary and Bill that you really do support them by putting your effort behind the party and the issues that they’ve devoted their adult lives to.

Now she’s promising she’s going to create 3 million jobs.

Allow me to translate that into “regular folk” language from the original “politician.”

When she says “It’s time for a different approach. I’ll fight for every single job in America — and create millions of new, high paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. We’re trying to run today’s economy on yesterday’s infrastructure — and we’re jeopardizing tomorrow’s prosperity. So I will rebuild America — by rebuilding, repairing and modernizing our infrastructure.”

What she means is: “I’ll put more money into contracts to large government contractors who will hire a few more people to inspect bridges or whatever, but mostly they’ll pocket the cash. My advisers say that if the contractors actually did the work we’d be paying them for, they’d probably need to hire about 200,000 people, and the other 2.8 million will find jobs helping those people do their jobs.”

She makes the same kind of impossible promises that politicians have always made. I think we’re tired of being placated to, which is part of Obama’s appeal. He doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he says he’ll help us figure out how to fix it ourselves instead of promising to wipe our noses for us.