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How Hillary lost my vote (from a whining academic)
Philadelphia Daily News ^ | Apr. 9, 2008 | ANN ROSEN SPECTOR

Posted on 04/10/2008 6:38:12 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

DEAR HILLARY:

I really wanted you to be the Democratic candidate and the next president of the United States.

In order to do that, I needed you to be the person I felt you were capable of being. I knew you were smart, funny and kind to your friends and family - I wanted you to demonstrate fairer play in the political arena.

I identified with you because we have some very important things in common.

I, too, am a baby boomer who came of age when women were just starting to enter the professions. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but, like you and so many others, I believed I had the ability, motivation and the perseverance to be successful.

It has never been easy.

Like so many women in our generation, I was often blindsided by the condescension of men toward women, regardless of our credentials (and theirs!) simply on the basis of gender.

Like you, my father and grandparents were from Scranton, and I spent many days there as a child.

Martha's Vineyard is also my favorite vacation spot. I've been visiting for the better part of 25 years and would own a home there . . . if I won the Powerball.

I know that despite all my educational and professional accomplishments, my proudest achievements are my two wonderful daughters. Chelsea is clearly yours, too. They always knew they came first, as did yours, I'm sure.

From what I can tell, you are an outstanding mother. When I took my older daughter to college, I tried to help her unpack, and as she shooed me out the door, I said, "But Hillary got to help when Chelsea went to Stanford!"

I believed you had a marriage that made sense to you, even if it didn't to anyone else. I have been a couples therapist for 30 years, and I know that marriages are incredibly complex. Every marriage, even a public one, is composed of very private spheres.

No one, not even a therapist who hears the most confidential information, can know the relationship exactly as it is for the people inside it.

A marriage is more than a love relationship - running a family is like running a business. There are products and services that must be managed, and that's not always sexy. At the time most people get married (at least for the first time), they believe that love and romance are enough . . . but they aren't.

It's hard to keep the vow of "for better or for worse" when it gets really bad, but you have - and I'm sure you've agonized over it. But I admire you for your commitment. I've been married for 28 years - and have the scars to prove it.

I believe you are a person of faith. Unlike some politicians who merely cloak themselves in a vague religiosity, you apparently regularly attend services and are a member of a bipartisan Bible group.

I admire your capacity for pragmatic diplomacy. Once you became a senator, you reached across the aisle to GOP members, even though some were especially vile to you and your husband during his presidency.

I DIDN'T HOLD YOUR vote on the Iraq war against you.

If you'd had all the information then that we have now, perhaps you wouldn't have.

If you had voted against it, would you have been able to have a seat at the table with the big boys or been derided as a weak sister who didn't have enough patriotism to put country ahead of politics?

I think it was a no-win situation at the time, and seems only clearer in hindsight.

I believe you felt you could outrun all the boys in this race - if the others were Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd.

You were blindsided by Barack Obama - and felt he needed more seasoning, that it wasn't "his turn." And I stayed with you, rooted for you (even though I've admired Obama for four years).

Perhaps I could have continued to hold on, if only you'd stayed on the moral high ground and told the truth.

I don't expect politicians to deliver on all their initiatives. You are a policy wonk, in a way that - even with all my education - I'm not. I don't expect to ever read or understand every detail in your health-care plan. But I'm almost as old as you, and I know that initiatives don't necessarily translate into law, that politicians have to cut deals or they will get nothing done.

I thought it was unfair that likability was considered so much more important in a president than brains. Perhaps I'd enjoy a barbecue at the ranch with President Bush, but what would we talk about? I need someone who can, at least occasionally, use three-syllable words accurately.

To a great extent, I have to vote for the person of greater integrity, who will try to do the right thing most of the time - and I've lost faith in you. You finally lost me at Bosnia. Your claim to have been there during active hostilities has been roundly disproved, and your explanation that you misspoke or were too tired is, at best, lame.

And I'm sad. I wanted you to be what I think is the best part of you.

But, perhaps even more than that, I don't want John McCain. Don't get me wrong, I wish he (or anyone) had beaten Bush in 2000.

But after eight years of ineptitude, lack of moral rectitude and incompetence, I can't think of any reason that a Republican who has cuddled often enough with the Bush administration should be allowed to continue its missteps.

I will cast my vote in the primary for Obama, and hope that, while not perfect, he can unite the red and the blue into a purple nation.

I tried, Hillary. I just wish you had fulfilled your incredible potential. *

Ann Rosen Spector is a Center City psychologist and an adjunct member of the Psychology Department at Rutgers-Camden.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Political Humor/Cartoons; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: clintons2008; lyingliar
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Is this hilarious or what?
1 posted on 04/10/2008 6:38:13 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

LOL! Another Obama supporter!


2 posted on 04/10/2008 6:39:35 AM PDT by alice_in_bubbaland (Vote Obama! And we'll be picking shrapnel out of our butts for decades!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
I knew you were smart, funny and kind to your friends and family...

These are the only qualifications the left looks for in a President?

3 posted on 04/10/2008 6:42:13 AM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“I have been a couples therapist for 30 years, and I know that marriages are incredibly complex.”

You go, girl! Wow! She really entered the professional world and showed all those MEN! that girls could do it, too.

Good God.


4 posted on 04/10/2008 6:42:19 AM PDT by ProfessorGage
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"I knew you were smart, funny and kind to your friends and family" <---- I stopped reading here.
5 posted on 04/10/2008 6:42:38 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~***Just say NO to the "O"***~~~)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
I knew you were smart, funny and kind to your friends and family

Talk about delusional........I think psychiatrists call it "projection"................

6 posted on 04/10/2008 6:42:52 AM PDT by Red Badger ( We don't have science, but we do have consensus.......)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“Ann Rosen Spector is a Center City psychologist and an adjunct member of the Psychology Department at Rutgers-Camden.”

Figures.

Look how many times “I” appears in this narcisstic rambling.


7 posted on 04/10/2008 6:43:18 AM PDT by L98Fiero (A fool who'll waste his life, God rest his guts.)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

me too!..............


8 posted on 04/10/2008 6:43:25 AM PDT by Red Badger ( We don't have science, but we do have consensus.......)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I puked about halfway through.


9 posted on 04/10/2008 6:44:34 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Another whiny liberal playing the gender card about all her lost opportunities. And then explaining why she’s just gotta vote for Husein. Hey lady! It don’t matter they’re both cut from the same cloth.


10 posted on 04/10/2008 6:45:54 AM PDT by ontap (Just another backstabbing conservative)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Physician, heal thy self.


11 posted on 04/10/2008 6:46:17 AM PDT by NonValueAdded (Who Would Montgomery Brewster Choose?)
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To: L98Fiero

Let me guess:

Frizzy perm, shapeless sweaters, double-knit slacks, man hands.


12 posted on 04/10/2008 6:47:40 AM PDT by relictele
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“Dear Hillary, I’m sorry but a racist communist always trumps a socialist lesbian”


13 posted on 04/10/2008 6:47:49 AM PDT by NewCenturions (I've got a posthumous crush on Dave Guard)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
I said, "But Hillary got to help when Chelsea went to Stanford!"

Oh for Pete's sake. This woman is mentally ill to identify so much with anyone. Then to be so shocked when the real Hill comes through. She sees what she wants to see in Hill.

14 posted on 04/10/2008 6:48:20 AM PDT by YellowRoseofTx
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Waste of posting space.


15 posted on 04/10/2008 6:48:49 AM PDT by Eurale
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
LOL.

Only an academic could look at an AARP-aged woman running around the world with a twenty-something lesbian partner and describe her relationship with her dysfunctional, perpetually-adolescent sexual predator of a spouse as a "marriage" in any sense of the world.

16 posted on 04/10/2008 6:48:59 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (I'm out on the outskirts of nowhere . . . with ghosts on my trail, chasing me there.)
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To: NewCenturions

ROTFLOL!!!


17 posted on 04/10/2008 6:49:10 AM PDT by ontap (Just another backstabbing conservative)
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To: relictele

Don’t forget no neck and gin blossom nose.


18 posted on 04/10/2008 6:50:13 AM PDT by 4yearlurker (So long Myron. Call the Steelers games from heaven.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Perhaps I'd enjoy a barbecue at the ranch with President Bush, but what would we talk about? I need someone who can, at least occasionally, use three-syllable words accurately.

I swear this is the biggest issue libs have against Bush... they claim to be enlightened, but judge this man simply by his inarticulation. They'd rather have a 3rd grade drop out with proper diction, than a PHD with a lifetime of service who stutters.

Libs are some of the most shallow, immature people on the planet

19 posted on 04/10/2008 6:50:57 AM PDT by HamiltonJay
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Perhaps I'd enjoy a barbecue at the ranch with President Bush, but what would we talk about? I need someone who can, at least occasionally, use three-syllable words accurately.

So this airhead is more interested in form than content. If I could sit down and speak with the President I'm quite sure he would have more than enough interesting experiences that I would enjoy hearing about and that if I asked him questions I would be able to understand his responses.

I wonder what this broad thinks about the Amiable Dunce's diary.

ML/NJ

20 posted on 04/10/2008 6:51:03 AM PDT by ml/nj
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