Mike McCready

To read this post on The Huffington Post click here.

I’ve been having a number of conversations with Democrat friends who are avidly supporting Obama’s race for the nomination. I respect that and have said before that while I support Hillary Clinton I have nothing but praise for Senator Obama and will support him if he wins the nomination. What I find puzzling is that some of my fellow Democrats are not just supporting Obama but are actually opposing Clinton.

So what’s the deal? Why does someone have to be anti one of these candidates to be pro the other? Their platforms are practically identical. Come on people!! You can like one of these candidates more than the other but you have got to end active opposition to the other.

In the case of those Democrats who actively oppose Hillary let’s look at two of the objections:

Hillary voted for the war

Well to begin with, no she didn’t. She voted to authorize the President to use force which is not even close to voting “for” the war. Some will never forgive Hillary for voting to authorize the use of force. Well, fine. I respect that. She voted to give a loaded gun to a President who clearly has terrible judgment. That was a bad move and let me just say that I’m on the public record as opposing the war before it began. However, even I can understand and agree with the arguments to authorize the President to use force. Authorization is NOT the same as pulling the trigger. THAT was no one’s fault but Bush’s and there’s no denying that. None of us liked Bush before he got us into this mess but we didn’t necessarily think his incompetence was really this gross and that he would actually likely go down in history as the worst President ever. Hindsight is 20/20. In my opinion, the vote to authorize force wasn’t the sin. The sin wasn’t to trust the President with the gun. The sin was to trust THIS president with the gun. Authorizing force isn’t the same as using it. If you can’t forgive her I can respect that. But we’re on the same team!! She wants to end this war and she will if elected. If you want to end the war you can’t actually oppose Clinton.

Hillary will do anything to get elected

This argument baffles me. This is national politics. It’s the roughest sport in the world. Look at it this way: Hillary is advancing an agenda we all generally agree with. If she can win this uphill battle and get elected that says an awful lot about her ability to get stuff done and we would all be better off if she were President and were advancing our agenda with this same tenacity, determination, drive and courage. I’m not saying Obama isn’t just as strong in all of those areas but I am saying we don’t know if he is. He has not been tested and tried and we have not seen his metal in the same way we’ve seen Hillary’s. We all KNOW what she’s made of. We want those qualities in our President? Given the unprecedented situation at home and abroad the next President will inherit, we need a cunning, strong, tried and tested President at the helm! She’s not ripping the party apart. The party is united around the agenda of both of these candidates and the debate should be about which of them will be more effective at executing the agenda. She’s putting up one hell of a fight and it’s one more reason why she’d be an effective President.

The party is divided between two very good and strong candidates. You do not have to oppose one to support the other so knock that off! We’re all on the same team.

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