I know that not everyone out there is a Hillary fan, but I loved this moment in the debate last night. I don’t know how much of this is projecting, but this seems to be closer to who she is as a politician than those picky little pot-shots that come out of her campaign. After the debate last night, David Gergen said that there seems to be a theme emerging–not Hillary-the-one-with-experience, but Hillary-the-fighter. He seemed to be suggesting that it may be a little too late, thought. Funny thing is, that is what my wife has been saying since Hillary launched her campaign. She’s a fighter.
I’ve had a couple of email conversations with people who wonder why I’ve been a Hillary supporter. For some, it seems to run counter to my politics. After all, many people associated with “movement” politics are lining up with Obama and he has all the makings of an inspirational leader. He seems to have captured the imagination of some on the left, and certainly given hope to many young and emerging voters. I keep coming back to how my local experiences in APSCUF-KU and conditions on our campus are lining up with this presidential campaign. I put it this way to one person: “I want a fighter, not a lover.” As my wife argued last night, the pendulum has swung so far in a bad direction over the past 8 years, so much damage has been done to people in their everyday lives, that we need someone who can fight to swing it back…THEN we can start from a more even playing field at work on changing the way we work together.
I am very sympathetic to this. I our current vote of no confidence in our university president, some faculty have argued some version of “can’t we all just get along,” or “can’t we just sit down and talk with the president to resolve these issues without going for a vote of no confidence?” Again, both of these statements are reasonable, and even desirable. But they’re also ahistorical. That is, they ignore the years of sitting down and talking. They don’t consider the ways in which this administration has simply ignored problems. They don’t weigh the very real concrete impact of this administration’s policies on the quality of education and working conditions. And, again, I think I understand that position in many ways. So the “reasonable” position only makes sense when we “forget” history.
Anyway, my initial reason for posting was to share this little video from last night’s debate. Here ya go!:
