Letters to the Editor
Ballsee
Published Letters: 232 Editor's Choice: 19
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Oh Theo!
[Read the article: Make your own candidate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When it comes to being marginalized politically and legally for being gay in American society and for being to the left of left of progressive liberals, you’ve described and nuanced it exactly right. You’re writing about my own feelings, my own history, my life. I started voting in 1972. Since then I’ve voted for the candidate who became President one time. When it comes to choosing a President, I wonder if you’re not my doppelganger. I took one of those online “Who’s Your Candidate” surveys as well and Kucinich popped up number one, which was surprising. I didn’t know much about Kucinich except that he was a progressive and had recently said something about Martians or outer space beings or living in outer space or something like that. I don’t watch TV and don’t follow the celebrity news and I’d only got a headline or two off the internet about his comments and I recall thinking…”Oh no, another progressive turns out to be goof-ball.” But maybe I misunderstood what he said. I still don’t know what he said and don’t care enough about it to look it up.
Edwards was 2nd on my list and then Gavel and then Obama and then Dodd. Clinton was down the list somewhere. After Kucinich, there weren’t a lot of percentage differences between these candidates’ views and my own. For a couple months before Super Whooper Tuesday, I’d planned on voting for Edwards because due to my long track record in picking losers, I knew Kucinich was a loser, no matter how much he agreed with me. To be sure there were things about Edward’s voting history that wasn’t pure, but he’d done his mea culpas and he appealed to my working class background and I thought he had a realistic shot at he nomination. I thought he was framing the issues in the right way in rich vs. the working class and I just hoped that once in office, after he’d ended this god awful war and set us on a path to energy independence and established universal healthcare and instituted a Manhattan Project on Global Warming, that he’d eventually come around to spending some political capital on ridding us of the stupidity and insult of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, that he’d work to overturn Clinton’s obnoxious and ridiculous Defense of Marriage Act, and generally promote and advocate for equal rights for gays and lesbians to live our lives in peace and dignity with the same rights and responsibilities as the heterosexually inclined, because goddamnit our families matter too. He was going to bring the enlightenment, the civilization, the sanity of the Dutch to the United States of Amnesia. He was going to be my Theo.
Then he dropped out.
When it came my time to be in the voting booth, there were only two choices. I thought about voting for Edwards despite it all. I’d turned it over in my mind several times. I knew I wasn’t going to vote for Clinton in the Primary if for no other reason than Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush and ….Clinton?….is too much. Enough! There are other reasons. So it turned out to be Obama for me. He’s with me on most of the issues and he’ll come around once in office to focusing on my own personal issues once everything else that troubles this Republic is cured. Won’t he? Of course he might not make it. I will hold my nose and vote for Clinton in the General, if she’s the nominee because we just can not afford another four/eight years of Republican rule. She will come around eventually too. Right? Maybe not. I don’t think Obama or Clinton is a Theo. I think you are.
If McCain is elected, I will find a way to do what I threatened to do in 2004. Move to Holland.
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@AlecsMom
[Read the article: Hillary's time of troubles]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]AlecsMom: "HRC's problems are fairly easy to define at this time and they're not going away, now or in the general election. First, many Dems, like myself, voted for Bill twice and felt burned by the lack of progress on what we see as democratic platform issues."
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Exactly. What did Bill Clinton ever do FOR the Democratic Party? He used it to get elected, but afterwards he threw the base under the bus. He supported and advocated WTO, NAFTA, GATT, the redefinition of poverty as being the fault of the poor, Don't Ask-Don't Tell and the first federal Defense of Marriage Act. He pandered to the right at every turn. Just like Hillary has done. I'm convinced that their failed foray into universal healthcare was intended to fail. They could be "for" universal healthcare while in reality being opposed to it. They did with healthcare what the Democratic Congress is doing with the Iraq War. (Read Tiabbi's piece in Rolling Stone) Pretending to be opposed to it while supporting it and the Bush/Cheney regime in every way that matters at every available opportunity.
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To think I used to idollze her!
[Read the article: Blood-and-guts politics]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What kind of drugs is this woman on?
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Where to live?
[Read the article: Help! I'm a prisoner in a big suburban house!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I grew up on a farm where we couldn't see our closest neighbor. And I've lived for 20 years in the middle of Manhattan. I lived in the suburbs a couple times for about 15 minutes, which is all the time I can stand them. I despise them. Like the LW, every time I laid down to sleep I thought I'd never wake up again. Despicable, soulless, centerless, nowheresvilles. They should all be torn down.
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Agreed
[Read the article: Should Hillary Clinton drop out?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let the people vote on March 4th and then we'll see.