Toxic Endorsements: How I Voted

I started out this election cycle as a strong supporter of Al Gore and didn’t begin looking seriously at other presidential candidates until fairly late in the process. Barack Obama then seemed (and still seems now) to be the least qualified of the bunch. Indeed, the entire rationale for his candidacy (before the hype metastasized into inevitability) centered around two speeches.

I wasn’t a fan of Obama’s 2004 address at the Democratic Convention. I remember thinking at the time–What did he just say? It sounded nice, I guess, but something was missing. Content, maybe. But everyone said it was great. He inspires people. Little did I know that one day it would be deemed a character flaw not to feel a thrill up your leg at the sound of his voice.

Then there was Obama's mysterious antiwar speech of 2003. The one delivered--quite uncourageously--in a hotbed of Chicago liberalism. The one followed by zero action. I didn’t like that one, either.

As the campaign went on, it became clear that we were going to have to choose between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Although their positions on issues were broadly similar, I found Clinton’s approach–particularly on health care–to be significantly bolder than Obama's, yet somehow more grounded in reality. She seemed to possess the courage and deep experience required to actually change things rather than just talk about them. Obama–to my knowledge–has never fought for anything not directly related to his own career advancement. Barring the creation of a more exalted position ("Supremely Grand Potentate Of The Galaxy"), I expect Barack’s presidential re-election effort to begin tomorrow.

In the battle for the nomination, the best person lost. But I’ve been voting for weak Democrats my whole life. Why should this time be any different?

Because–in the apocryphal words of Winston Churchill–there are some things up with which I will not put.

One of those things is a candidate stoking the fires of racism to win an election, which I believe Obama did when his back was against the wall in South Carolina. (Sean Wilentz bravely documented this outrage in the pages of The New Republic. He’ll be paying the price for years to come.) Not only was it a despicable course of action on its face, but it told me that, for Obama, nothing was more important than being president. That’s not change I can believe in.

Another is this.

Finally, and most importantly, I cannot vote for the nominee of my party when I believe that its selection process was rotten to the core. At some point, the powers that be–from Howard Dean to Nancy Pelosi to the corporate media–decreed that Barack Obama was going to win. The candidate who got the most votes was purposely denied a shot at the nomination by party bosses who manipulated the Michigan/Florida fiasco until it was safe to award undeserved delegates to Obama. I’m not voting for their hand-picked candidate. These are the people who have been more than happy to let George W. Bush run this country into the ground for eight years. I don’t trust them.

I can’t vote for Obama. I can’t vote for McCain. I did vote for the Democratic House candidate in my district–but not on the Democratic line. The party doesn't deserve it.

We’ll see how things look in two years.