Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Politicians losing direction

Many of you have already heard about John Edwards's recent attack against Hillary. Hillary Clinton, in a town hall meeting Monday, was asked how she keeps going with all of the pressures of the campaign. Her response was "It's not easy." and went on to "tear up" (she appeared to get emotional, but I wouldn't so far as most media outlets are classifying it - you be the judge). Edwards, for no reason I can fathom, decided to attack this moment, to his apparent great detriment (current primary results at 8 PM CST have him with about 17%).

This sort of thing is exactly the sort of politics we need to move away from. Petty attacks, especially against the way someone makes and emotional plea, is guaranteed to turn more people away from you than encourage them to vote for you. What strikes me even more is that Edwards himself uses such emotional pleas in his campaign. Any time he evokes his father's life, or random middle class person he too gets emotional. This isn't a sign of weakness, it is often used to be a sign of connection to the subject you are talking about.

Unfortunately, in Hillary's response to the question she decided she should do similar attacks against her opponents, instead of answering the question. I have yet to see her talk about her position directly, at least in the past couple months, she only talks about what she thinks her opponents aren't.

Please people, give me something to vote FOR. I have enough things to vote against, and all the Democratic candidates share my views on these things, to one degree or another.

1 comment:

Jaelithe said...

As you pointed out, the media has seized on this brief moment of emotion as some sort of breakdown, blowing it way out of proportion. And this absolutely proves in my mind that there is serious media bias against Hillary on the basis of her gender. Edwards teared up in the exact same way during his speech after the Iowa caucus results came out, when he was speaking about his father working hard to give him opportunities, and there was no similar media coverage of that "incident."

I don't agree with Hillary on some important issues, and I disapprove strongly of some of the underhanded tactics her campaign has resorted to, but I still get really angry on her behalf when I see people making such stereotypical comments. It's completely unfair.

I supported Edwards four years ago when he ran in the previous election cycle, but with this comment, I feel he has really crossed a line.

I think female voters in NH agreed with me, because Edwards finished far below his expectations, while Hillary got a bump.