Amid all the hoopla over Obama being named the Democratic nominee and Clinton's reluctant but inevitable step-down, I started to wonder how I felt about Obama's win.
In the primary that didn't really matter, I voted for Clinton. I did simply because I liked her for all the reasons everyone else didn't — she's a bitch.
I also voted for her because I settled in the voting booth thinking I would vote for Obama (I mean, it's so hard to resist his charm), but when it came down to actually filling Obama's little box, I changed my mind for some reason. Maybe it was loyalty to my gender or just a characteristic of such (I can never make up my mind, that's a female characteristic, right?), but I started to think about what I knew about either candidate. I realized I knew very little about either one other than they were Democrats, like me, and probably thought the way I did on a number of things. And so, on a whim, I just decided that I liked Hillary better. Because she's a bitch.
Maybe it's wrong to vote for someone based on personality instead of voting records and whatnot, but I don't think I'm wrong in assuming that plenty of Americans vote the way I did. I'm not defending it, but offering my own misgivings as a testament to what really needs to change.
This led to an epiphany of sorts: I realized I had no idea what the hell was really going on in politics. I'm a new voter; as a University of Florida student of legal age to do my constitutional duty, this was my first presidential primary. Since then, I've tried to figure out who I truly wanted to vote for. I even tried to watch C-Span! Now that it's all over and Obama's our guy, I'm wondering if he is the right choice. And with the election moving into the phase where we actually pick the next president, I'm wondering if I'm even a Democrat.
In today's news climate, where we have talking heads coming at us from all directions and corporate media placing profits at the top of the priority list, how does one make an informed decision?
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2008.