a rare political plea

I keep hearing reports that a substantial number of Clinton supporters now plan to vote for McCain. I hope that the news is wrong, or that hurt feelings fade; I keep getting the impression that the difference between Clinton and Obama supporters stems much more from the natural high feelings engendered by opposing each other, and not from substantial differences between the candidates. I was hoping Clinton and Obama could both manage to stay on the high road during their campaign, but both campaigns descended to regrettable levels in the heat of battle. I get the impression, from this distance, that the Clinton campaign actually slung a bit more mud than their opponents, but I miss enough news from here that I could possibly be wrong. However, I’ve been able to follow closely enough to make it crystal clear that anyone who claims that either campaign is blameless is deluding themselves. I hope the Democrats can unite and get back on the high road, and Obama and Clinton themselves certainly seem to be working hard to foster healing.

Nonetheless, there are upset people and hurt feelings and some real issues of principle. I’m not callous enough to tell anyone to “get over it”; your vote is a serious decision and anyone who doesn’t take you seriously has no business telling you how to vote. I am doing something I very rarely do: I am going to ask you to change your mind here. Please, please, if you supported Hilary Clinton, if you believe in what she stands for, please, do not vote for John McCain. I still won’t presume to tell you who to vote for; if you can’t bring yourself to vote for Obama, find a third party or independant candidate you can believe in. Work to convinvce one of the several independants who are talking about it to give it a shot. Whatever your conscience dictates. But please don’t vote for McCain. He is not a moderate.

If you want real data, and if you have the time and patience to plow through it, McCain’s voting record is here. If you want to know how various groups think of him, that information is helpfully collected here. Myself, I coundn’t stomach voting for someone who supported the ideals of the Christian Coalition 83% in 2004 (most recent year listed), the League of Conservation Voters 0% in 2007, and the ACLU 33% in 2005-66.

And of course he supported the interests of Planned Parenthood 0% in every year. There’s no mystery here, McCain is against a woman’s right to choose and has said so in so many words. He’s not among the worst in this respect, in that he does make the “rape or incest” exception; still, I’d have thought this would be an important issue to Clinton supporters. As an Arizona State Senator, he made it clear that he supported a state ban on same-sex marriage; he disapproved of the Federal ban, but only as a states’ rights issue.

Why do I care so much? It’s the usual reason: I’m a disillusioned former McCain supporter. I lived in Arizona for ten years. He was my state’s senior Senator. I voted for him; as I’ve written over the years, I believed that while he and I disagreed on many issues, he could be trusted to think them through and vote his conscience, without bending to the pressure of party politics. Even when he did knuckle under on some smaller issues I rationalized that he was only choosing his battles: a Republican Senator can be seriously hamstrung if his party entirely disapproves of him. And then came the torture issue. He stood up and said, “No, this is not what America does. We don’t torture our opponents.” I was so proud … until his party told him to vote for continued torture and after some argument (no waterboarding was involved!), he caved. Here’s the NY Times article on it, in case you forgot that one; here is the Boston Globe’s perspective. He lost me with that vote.

I believe that McCain, as a former member of the military, believes that it is his responsibility to support his Comander in Chief and thus also the party that commander leads. It’s possbible that if he were the CinC, he would act only accoding to his own morals, but I haven’t seen anything to convince me his morals are such as to withstand pressure. So: he disagrees with me – I think with most of Clinton’s supporters – on civil rights in general and women’s civil rights particular, on freedom to choose, on the environment, on the Iraq War, and on and on. He’s a conservative and says so proudly. And I can’t depend on him, after all, to choose his position on each issue based on principle rather than party politics. How could I possibly ever vote for him again?

And supporters of Hilary Clinton, how can you?