Why I'm For Hillary (and still love Barak)

Here's my take. I vote on Feb 12, and it may be all over baby blue by then.

However:

1. Until I had to actually earn a living, I loved to fly in the high skies of broad groupings of related ideas, overseeing the globe and the universe, being an idealist, optimist, frowning on the fearful pessimists.

When I started to actually work for a living, I had to abandon my high flying ways and get down into the weeds and look at every detail, every third and fourth order consequence of one or another action. In other words, I became invested in reality.

Hillary is invested in reality.


2 Hillary has been excoriated on her vote on the war. Jeffrey Toobin explained it in great detail in the New Yorker a few months ago and came out thumbs up. She did what she has said she did all along. Many criticize her for failing to admit to a mistake. NO. Holding to the principle that she did the analysis appropriate to the time and making a tough choice (yes, driven by politics, but you can't govern if you can't persuade. It's great to be "right" but better to get things done.). It is much easier to be anti war than to deal with the tough problems of a dangerous world. She says she would vote differently now, had she known then what she knows now. That is very very different from saying she was wrong then with the hindsight of today. Until they invent a future prediction machine that actually works, the best one can do is to do the analysis and make the tough choices. Those who are running against their own records are craven cowards bending with the wind. The principled one is Hillary on this one.

3. One of my favorite lines: don't confuse the arrow on a wind vane with an arrow on a compass. Follow one and you'll go in circles, follow the other and you may get to where you want to go.

VOTE HILLARY.

4. That said, I am thrilled to have such an excellent choice.

5. If Barak Obama is nominated, I will heartily campaign for him (and donate money because campaigning for a Dem in Virginia is a bit like watering flowers in a desert. It takes a LOT of water).

So, enjoy tonight. I am sure that at least twice as many Democrats as Republicans will turn out to vote. That's a tidal wave of change in and of itself.