BEFORE YOU VOTE ...

... read this. My sentiments, exactly:

"Seven months ago … I organized all of the women in my family for a photo of “Four generations of women for Hillary Clinton.” … Hillary was to be our first woman president, and my now adolescent daughters and I agreed with their cousins and aunts and grandmothers and great-grandmother that it was finally time.

… [BIG BUT]

… "I wish the Clintons well and like many of their friends and allies I hope they don’t think I am betraying them, but I am voting for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary."

"I responded at length:

… You are betraying them, and profoundly.

You are endorsing “I’m Barack Obama, running for President and I approve this message. … Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected.”

You are endorsing the candidate who claims the middle class lost ground during the Clinton years.

You are endorsing the candidate who successfully framed the Clintons on accusations of race-baiting, through an elaborately orchestrated race-baiting campaign of his own.

You are endorsing the candidate who later claimed in passive voice that racial tensions just “bubbled up” between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries … and who preposterously asserted that America can’t make any progress on jobs, health or education without his admittedly incremental contribution to America’s admittedly residual racial divide … who frames his campaign in grossly counterfeit histories of the civil rights movement of the 60’s, the Reagan years of the 80’s and the Clinton/Gingrich years of the 90’s … who inspired you with a speech that claims a Clinton presidency would leave us in racial “stalemate” analogous to the slave state versus free state stalemate at the Constitutional Convention.

You are endorsing the candidate who gave Hillary the finger last week in Raleigh NC.

You are endorsing the candidate who says Hillary represents the status quo, and whose surrogates constantly drum the message that both Clintons entire lives in public service have been motivated solely by self-interest.

You are endorsing the candidate who claims Hillary has been bought by special interests … “bought” for a fraction of a percent of her campaign budget (an amount smaller than lobbyist contributions to his own presidential exploratory committees and FEC-exempt expenditures). That’s the same candidate who with no track record in major-league politics claims he can end politics as we know it simply by restricting a few hundredths of one percent of federal lobbyist budgets.

You are endorsing the candidate whose chief adviser on entitlements tried to resuscitate Bush’s Social Security privatization initiative in 2005 after the netroots and unions joined forces to beat it to death … whose chief health care adviser believes the push for universal coverage is misplaced (along with virtually all mainstream progressive health care concerns) … whose Chicago/DLC/neoliberal chief adviser on trade says “there is nobody more in favor of open markets than me”, and believes our 900-page trade agreements should be reduced to a libertarian two pages each.

You are endorsing the candidate who promises you a whole new world, but avoids describing it or disclosing how he will deliver it — whose entire appeal rests on the premise that special interests and partisan opponents will evaporate when he takes the oath of office.

You are endorsing the candidate whose appeal depends largely on his endorsement of traditional talk radio tropes of the Arkansas Project.

You are endorsing the candidate of make-believe — who looks at governance the way a 12-year-old looks at Playboy — over the candidate who has seen the world as it is, and is prepared to govern there.

If that’s not betrayal enough, we could get into the misogynist double standards, but I think you get my drift. All this betrayals are MINOR compared to the betrayals of hope and trust and progressive possibilities that an Obama presidency would bring … dashed hopes that would immunize two generations against Hope itself, doing for the Democratic/Progressive alliance just as much as Herbert Hoover did for Republicans and Conservatives.

Here’s another betrayal. You’re probably old enough to remember when women beat down the Equal Rights Amendment. If this uncommonly qualified, uncommonly equipped woman at an uncommonly opportune time is beaten down by your double standards, we will not live to see any woman taken seriously for POTUS … and prospects are dim for our daughters and nieces and granddaughters.

But you like the goosebumps and the lines engineered to trigger sentimental tears? So do I, even as I recognize the cheap tricks that cheap tricksters use to evoke them. Fine. Go your way, and I’ll go mine.

Just do me one favor. I’ve done my time, sweeping up after LBJ’s war, and Nixon’s perfidies, and the idealists who brought down Carter and gave us twelve years of Reagan/Bush, and idealists who brought down Clinton and gave us six years of Gingrich/Delay and eight years of Bush.

I will stop Obama before the convention if I can, and after the convention if I have to. If that means supporting McCain, so be it. If that means backing an independent candidate in a key state and throwing the election into the House of Representatives, so be it.

If you do get your Unity Pony — along with the pro-lifers, the Naderites, the Friedmanites, the Lieberman Democrats, the Bloombergers, the theocrats, the Federalist Society and everybody else who thinks Obama is their free ride — just don’t expect me to sweep up after it. I’ll do what good I can in other pursuits, including deep reflection on the defects of media-age democracy that re-elected Bush, and that enabled a major faction of a major party to fall for Obama."