Questions for Hillary’s Zealots

As the Democrats convene in Denver to celebrate Hillary Clinton and nominate Barack Obama, a tiny minority of her supporters continues to behave petulantly. They whine, they bluster, they agitate. But what is it about Sen. Clinton’s repeated endorsements of her former opponent that they cannot understand? How do they honor her by undermining him?

McCain Isn’t a Good Alternative

Still more confounding is the threat by some of her supporters to defect to John McCain. His campaign’s latest commercial features a grinning Clinton supporter who praises his “maverick, independent streak” as well as his “experience and judgment,” and promises that “it’s OK, really” to vote for the Republican. Is this the politics of revenge? Is it the cult of personality? Is it just stubborn idiocy? Whatever else it may be, it is not OK. No, it is emphatically not OK to mislead Sen. Clinton’s supporters into lining up behind a candidate whose positions are the opposite of hers, whose judgment on many issues is woefully deficient, and whose maverick independence is no more than a memory.

Sen. McCain, too, deserves to be taken at his word—which makes it all the more astonishing that anyone who claims to have voted for Sen. Clinton would consider voting for him. He has declared his firm opposition to reproductive rights and promised to appoint Supreme Court judges who would restrict those rights. He would continue the U.S. occupation of Iraq and may well expand the war to Iran and beyond. He opposes universal health care and denounces Social Security as a “disgrace” that should be privatized. He dropped his principled opposition to the regressive Bush tax cuts and his support of immigration reform to pander to the Republican right.

Speaking of right-wing Republicans, their encouragement of the intransigent Clintonites is a clue for the clueless. The sudden affection lavished on Sen. Clinton by neoconservatives and other assorted wing-nuts could hardly be more transparent or insincere—or predictable as soon as Sen. Obama, their erstwhile favorite, secured the Democratic nomination.

Pundits who beseeched Democrats to join the Obama campaign as a crusade to destroy the Clintons now demand respect for her. But their insincerity is blatant. They merely want to exploit her most dis appointed supporters, whose eagerness to cooperate in that strategy is mystifying.

Private opinions about Sen. Obama and his chances of victory notwithstanding, Sen. Clinton clearly understands that her own political future, her family’s political legacy and the causes she holds dear will all depend on the vigor of her support for the Democratic ticket this fall. And despite persistent hisses of complaint from both the Obama and Clinton camps during the convention week, she knows there is no upside in recalcitrance and no downside in enthusiasm. As a lifelong advocate of racial and gender equality, she should appreciate the historic moment that she and Sen. Obama have the privilege to share on the public stage. None of her supporters should stoop to tarnish it.

2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.

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