But I'm Still for Hillary

And here's some reasons.

1. Damage to Obama's Candidacy. Now that that Barack Obama is the candidate of no flag lapel pin (I don't wear one either), the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and bitter white people, he's much more of a normal politician than "a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who has the skill and eloquence to help us raise our eyes and our aspirations beyond individual, personal concerns, beyond religion or region or race or gender beyond our well-founded fears to a shared destiny."

Frankly, I like Obama better now that he's at least knee deep in the muck of American society and politics and thinking about why it's so tough (which is what Obama was doing with the "bitterness" remark). The "raise our eyes and our aspirations beyond individual, personal concerns, beyond religion or region or race or gender beyond our well-founded fears to a shared destiny" idea sounds like pseudo-fascist crap. I'm not just throwing around the "Nazi" word either. Hitler talked a lot about lifting the German people above their "individual, personal concerns" as well.

2. Young People Aren't All That Great. I've worked with college students in Kentucky for most of the last twenty years and I can say with a lot of conviction that young people haven't gotten beyond "baby-boomer/Vietnam/segregation-era hangups" about race, gender, gay rights, abortion, patriotism or any of the other issues from the Vietnam era. The thing I can see that's really faded into cultural irrelevance is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" which was still popular when "Wayne's World" came out in 1992 (and we can all be grateful for that). But the rest of it is still there. Not that things have gotten significantly worse, but anyone who thinks that young people have escaped the evils of the past needs to reflect on school shootings, pornography, violent video gaming, date rape drugs, and the pervasiveness of heavy-duty binge drinking. Just to mention one thing that has gotten worse, college guys seem much more misogynous than they were 30, 15, or even 10 years ago.
It's precisely because of the limitations on her constituencies that Hillary Clinton strikes me as much more "large D" democratic than Obama. That's a good reason to support her.

3. She's prepared. Hillary knows full well that either her or Obama would have to deal with powerful reaction against their persons and their policies once they're elected. The next four years are going to be tough. Withdrawing from Iraq is going to be a bitter pill for the right-wing and the military to swallow and it's going to be made tougher with the general atmosphere of bitterness over the recession, gas prices, the revelation of yet more scandals from the Bush administration, and the general Bush hang-over. Hillary will be ready on Day 1 because she has an idea of just how bad things are going to be. Likewise, the American public knows what it's going to get with a Hillary presidency.

To the contrary, Obama won't be ready because he thinks that he's going to generate something approaching consensus. And the American public won't be prepared for the fact that he's not ready either. Four years of Obama sounds like four years of disillusion that I would rather live without.

4. A False Premise. The only way that an Obama presidency could work is if the activist right-wing was eliminated as a powerful force in American society. Perhaps an Obama victory could lead to people no longer listening to the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters. However, I frankly don't see it.