Better late than never.

Senator Hillary Clinton has officially suspended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama. While she was, right up until mere days before Obama clinched the nomination, claiming she’d take the nomination fight right through til Denver, she has realized that unfortunately the steam has run out for her campaign.

Don’t get me wrong. Obviously I’m supporting Obama, as you could tell from my previous posts, but I sincerely believe that either one of them would have made a fine Democratic president, and a breath of fresh air to the whole world in comparison with what the Republicans evidently have to offer policy-wise.  (And it’s because of the effect of the American government on the world stage that I’m at all interested, to be quite honest.  Yes, I’m a Canadian, but I’m a citizen of this planet, and what America does has far reaching repercussions.)  So, honestly, I’m happy that Clinton has suspended her campaign and thrown her weight behind the grassroots juggernaut that the Obama campaign has turned out to be, even if it means a good person who ran a good campaign has lost what could be her best chance at the most powerful position in, likely, the world.

Having said that, I do have to take issue with her having to take the extra time to make up her mind.  It was an error in judgement.  Though I can see where, if you’ve poured 17 months into a campaign for president and you honestly thought you were “inevitable”, and even the media said you were too, to have to admit that the dream has slipped away is likely crushing to one’s ego — but the delay was to McCain’s benefit.  Anything that is to McCain’s benefit should be streng verboten for any Democrat at this point.  Like the title of this post says, though, better late than never.  If she had never officially suspended her campaign, her followers would have stewed in their juices for the next three months and, come the general election, far more of them would refuse to vote for Obama than will now (or worse, vote for McCain out of some misguided feeling that voting for Obama would enable the sexism that they perceive, rightly or not, as coming from the Obama campaign — talking about cutting off your nose to spite your face!).

Both sides’ supporters have been anything but angels.  And both sides are guilty of having allowed ridiculous smears of their opponents to go unrebutted — who would defend their opponent, no matter how baseless and idiotic the smear, especially when rebutting a smear gives specific voice to the claims?  But as far as I’m concerned, the smears came from the supporters and never from the campaigners themselves, so they get a pass. Whatever other issues I took with Clinton’s hanging on by her fingernails until the very last, at least she has proven she’s a fighter.  I hope she keeps fighting from the Senate, and maybe from the President’s chair in a future election.

These allegations that supporters were being used as attack-dogs is patently ridiculous on its face, so hopefully those that truly believed the campaigns were sexist or racist respectively, will come around to realizing that no matter what was said by whom, McCain is the real enemy, and he and his supporters have proven themselves racist and sexist enough to make up for the primaries.

Please, please open your eyes, people.  The world can ill afford another four years of Bush’s failed policies of cronyism and self-enrichment.  The “free market” isn’t free — it costs a great deal, for those who aren’t on top.

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Better late than never.
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