Me, My Mother and Hillary Clinton

My mother voted for Hillary Clinton.  Both her kids voted for Barack Obama.  And one of those kids – me – has been volunteering for the Obama campaign since August.  Anyone who has read my diaries over the last year knows how passionately I believe that Barack Obama should be the next President of the United States.

And I have exactly no issues with how my mother voted.  None.  More than that – I understand and respect her choice.  Guess what?  She understands and respects mine.   And my family, chock full of political junkies and campaign activists, has been split on the Democratic primary for over a year without a single nasty word or spilled tear.  No one threw the mashed potatoes across the table at Christmas dinner, despite the potential for high tension over the upcoming Iowa caucus.

So how did we do it?   One simple premise – who you choose to vote for is not a test of your worthiness as a member of the human race.

On one level, I tolerated the primary wars on the blogs without getting too worked up about it.  People are going to disagree, and in this kind of forum, they are going to do it in a fairly no-holds barred style.  That’s not really my style, but I tried not to get too bent out of shape about it.  I just kept my head down when a particularly nasty ratings war broke out, tried to find the things I could support about Edwards and Clinton, and mostly confined myself to talking about Obama.

But there was one kind of attack or insult that I found particularly infuriating.  And that’s a claim that one’s vote in the primary is some kind of personal moral test.   Why is it so hard to confine yourself to saying “I think you are wrong for choosing Joe Biden and here’s why . . .”  Why adopt a rhetorical position that someone who votes for Joe Biden could never be a Democrat, and probably also tortures kittens and shoplifts in their spare time?  The first approach is almost always fair game, even when couched in the far less well-mannered phrasing common to the blogs.  The second is always deeply destructive.

We all know how this dynamic plays out among a small minority of Obama and Clinton supporters – unfortunately.

I’m talking about those who say that by supporting Obama I am – circle one of the following -

(a) a sexist who endorses every patently offensive thing Chris Matthews ever said

(b) a cult member under some kind of weird hero-worshipping spell that prevents logically understanding any relevant political argument

(c) a racist who supports Obama only because he’s black – since I’m white this is presumably the white liberal guilt formulation rather than the Afro-centric unthinking racial solidarity formulation

(d) a vapid and thoughtless political neophyte destined to be steamrollered into a whimpering idealistic little pancake by the VRWC or

(e) any combination of the above.

But I’m also talking to YOU, yes YOU -- those of my fellow Obama supporters who use this forum as a platform to engage in the same kind of personal attacks on a candidate’s supporters or voters.  I’m talking about claims that Clinton supporters or voters are

(a) sexists who support Clinton only because she is female – implying that women are prisoners of identity politics rather than logical thinkers

(b) not “real” Democrats but instead party-destroying power hungry harpies standing in the way of true progressive change and empowerment

(c) opportunistic racists who are busily building up Clinton by circulating every patently offensive viral e-mail about Obama

(d) dyed in the wool racists who don’t support Obama because he is black (and in the case of voters, stupid and uneducated to boot) or

(e) any combination of the above.

I really do think it is a relatively small group of people who are making these kind of completely personalized attacks.  But they can have a much larger impact than their numbers.

You see, the party can hopefully come together after attacks on a candidate.  It won't be easy.  But it is plausible.  The personalization of the attacks worries me, though.  When they devolve into conversations about the supporters and voters, rather than the candidate – how do we get past that?  Worse, these attacks are starting to make supporters fuse their standing and identity with the candidate, so that attacks on the candidate also become attacks on them personally, accelerating the negative impact.  Whose votes are you winning that way?  Insulting someone is not exactly the way to persuade them you are right.

And to sharpen the point about the “racist!” “sexist!” name-calling out there, let me say this:  it is critically important as progressives that we identify and expose prejudice in our political discourse.  But let’s focus on attacking the behavior rather than the person.  A particular statement could be racist or sexist.  Discussing why and how is probably important and relevant. But a person who votes for someone in a primary where these issues have come up isn’t by definition voting on racist or sexist lines.   Avoiding personalizing the attack is more likely to get someone to listen to you and take account of the critique.  And isn’t that what we want?

I'm pretty confident I know why my mother voted for Hillary Clinton.  My mom was one of the few women (and only mother) in her law school class in the mid 1970's.  She went back to school and work after getting married, starting a family and trying to act out a traditional role that drove her crazy, thanks to the feminist consciousness-raising movement.  She has her own lived experiences with sexism in the workplace and she has worked hard as an activist to bring women's issues to the forefront.  So for her, electing a woman as President is deeply personal and important.  And electing this particular woman is important to her, too.  She has been an admirer of Senator Clinton, and her work as an advocate for women, for many years, long before this election.  She finds her a strong and effective politician.  I can find no fault with her thinking, and frankly, even if I could, it is still her choice to make.

Soon we will have a nominee.  And that nominee needs to have the party behind them.  So now is the time to rachet back the rhetoric, and above all to depersonalize it.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone who votes for or supports Hillary Clinton.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with someone who votes for or supports Barack Obama.  We may believe they are mistaken in their choice, and all of us will continue talking about why.  But we are, by and large, talking about people who are still Democrats.  Who are still fellow members of our party and the human race.  People like ourselves, believe it or not.  Is that so hard to remember?

I think one reason my family has no trouble with respecting that line between the person and their vote is because of the example set not just by my mother, but also by my father.  You see, Dad was a Republican.  Hard core.  My parents had quite the mixed marriage.  And once my brother and I got old enough to have serious political identities, we diverged from Dad’s politics, too.  But he loved and supported us no matter what.  Unconditionally.  His wife and daughter made their careers working on issues near and dear to Dad’s political opponents.  And he bragged about our successes.  We all grew up understanding someone might disagree with you and still be worth loving.  Whatever wonderful qualities they have are not erased by who they choose to vote for.  

My Dad died in November of 2003 of a brain tumor – a moment I’ve been thinking a lot about for the last 24 hours.  That left a huge void in our family, even as it ended our partisan split.  But that kind of loss only sharpens, for me, the importance of valuing someone’s humanity the way he did.  I can love that quality about him even though I thought his view on federal tax policy was totally wrong.  I’d give anything to have him around to vote for John McCain.  

So I’m fine with the fact that my Mom voted for Hillary Clinton.  More than that, I’m fine with everyone else who voted for Clinton.  I can’t pretend to know all their reasons, and neither can you.  So let’s lay off the assumptions about those reasons and let our party start coming together.  We’ve got way more important things to do right now.