Letters to the Editor
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ncsteve
I apologize. I mischaracterized your statement. You are correct.
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Why Does It Matter That Hillary Voted For The War in 2002?
So did the majority of Democrats in the Senate. Only 21 voted against, and they were all given inaccurate information. And, we don't know what Obama would've done if he were actually in the Senate and there had been pressure on him to vote for the war. It's easy for a state legislator to run his mouth about an issue like that. If you're wrong and the war turns out great, no one will hold it against you. If you're right, you're a prophet. The fact is, Hillary opposes the war now, wants to withdraw sooner than Obama (whether that's actually a good thing is debatable), and would not, I'm sure, attack Iran with no good reason if elected. So I don't really see the relevance of her vote. Unless you think that it somehow is predictive of what she might do in the future, it can't matter. The point of an election isn't to punish politicians for mistakes they made in the past, although most people, unfortunately, vote that way. If you really believe that Hillary's questionable judgment suggests that she might pull something similar in the future, then fine, use that vote against her when you decide whom to support, but otherwise, it's irrelevant. In my view, her vote was cast under unique circumstances - namely, the mendacity of an administration that went out of its way to exaggerate the risk and distort the intelligence because of a predisposition to invade Iraq that predated 9/11. That obviously wouldn't happen again if she were elected.
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NOW's running off the rails
Whoa, Obama voted present .032 percent of the time in the Illinois Senate!
Given the bias the NOW organization has shown in this race (note NY NOW's rant from Marcia Pappas and the national organization's quiet acceptance of it), I'd have to go with IL Planned Parenthood on this one. Reproductive rights are at the top of Planned Parenthood's agenda. I trust their interpretation of these events. Besides, if Obama helped protect vulnerable Dem state senators--in a strategy that did not negatively affect the laws on the books, as opposed to NOW's sense of grandstanding--what's wrong with that?
This reminds me of the Democratic debate exchange re: the proposed 30% cap on credit card interest rates. Clinton and Edwards derided Obama for not voting in favor of the cap, piling on when Obama said he thought the cap was too high. In fact, Obama's reasoning made perfect sense. If you vote yes on a cap so high it is essentially meaningless, all it does is give politicians the ability to say, "Hey, we capped interest rates!" while actually doing nothing to help anyone and taking the issue off the table at the same time, making an effective cap more unlikely.
The seemingly obvious vote is not always the right one.
On the other hand, voting to authorize military force on the theory that trigger-happy Bush wouldn't actually use any--now that's a vote to regret.
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If NOW were really making a "purist" stance
Then maybe they would be purist about saying it would be better if abortions were rare. Maybe they would be purist about a candidate who said "I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected."
(Quotes from http://www.issues2000.org/Senate/Hillary_Clinton_Abortion.htm)
This isn't about purity. NOW wants a woman in the White House and is willing to lie about a consistently pro-choice candidate in order to acheive it. I also want a woman in the White House (and, at some point, a latina/o, an American of African descent, an Asian-American, an American Indian, a homosexual, a Jew, an atheist, etc.), but I'm convinced Barack Obama is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton.
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Why do Hillary's votes matter?
"The fact is, Hillary opposes the war now, wants to withdraw sooner than Obama (whether that's actually a good thing is debatable), and would not, I'm sure, attack Iran with no good reason if elected."
That's probably true. But, the point is that Barack is being held to task for votes he took, and my point (and others) is that there are many votes done for various reasons. It seems VERY unfair to let Hillary get off on such a major problem while holding Obama responsible for much less major votes.
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Asher Steinberg: "who cares what a state legislator said about Iraq?"
Fine. Let's assume you're right, that Barack Obama could have said anything about Iraq with no consequences.
It's pretty two faced for people, Bill Clinton for example, to argue, "We should all support the Democratic nominee for President, even if that candidate voted for the War in Iraq" and "Your past support for a Democratic nominee for President who voted for War in Iraq proves that you supported the War in Iraq."
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@ Alan Lloyd
Thank you for your response. I will say this, though, in defense of the MA plaintiffs: I don't think they were set up. I know some of the folks at GLAD who represented them. They're a team of very sharp attorneys. I think this started as a simple matter of six plaintiffs who, along with their attorneys, genuinely believed that the Massachusetts state constitution guaranteed them marriage equality (and as it turns out, they were right). They had a genuine grievance against the state of Massachusetts and a right to seek redress of their grievance through the court system.
The problem was, they weren't thinking nationally (not that they should have been obligated to do so). Once they got the remedy they were seeking, Karl Rove, being the evil genius that he is, saw an issue that would split the Democratic party from its gay base of support and turned it into a national issue (Gavin Newsom's antics certainly didn't help). It was only at this point that activists in organizations like GLAD got together with Washington-based political organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and said, "Hmm...maybe we should have some sort of coordination between our legal strategy and our political strategy." And of course, such efforts were stymied even after this "aha" moment, due to the fact that there are many different gay rights organizations and many large egos within the gay movement, all competing for a limited number of contribution dollars.
So, I don't blame the MA plaintiffs for doing what they did--it was their right. I do, however, blame the gay rights organizations, when their supporters stupidly took up Karl Rove's challenge and started demanding movement on "marriage equality NOW," for eagerly taking their supporters' money and following them down this primrose path, instead of saying, "Look, folks, we know you're enthusiastic about this, but we have a lot of fires burning and this is not the fight to fight right now." I mean, basic rule of thumb: Whatever Karl Rove really wants to talk about is *not* a conversation that you want to have at all.
So instead, we ended up in a purely defensive posture for at least a two-year period (which, incidentally, was a huge money-maker for organizations that continually sent us all urgent messages about our need to defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment), and gays across the country got pissed off and refused to support any Democrat who wasn't pro-gay-marriage (which left us with Feingold and I think Kucinich).