i’m (not) with her

Happy Iowa Caucuses!

I don’t support Hillary Clinton, and it isn’t because I am anti-woman. (I think men should be barred from the presidency for about 275 years, so that we have a chance to overcome some of the toxicity of the patriarchy.) I don’t support Hillary Clinton for one not-entirely-simple reason: she isn’t the best candidate. Aside from being a radioactive time bomb of scandals (some real, some manufactured, all guaranteed to make it easier for a Republican to win the White House against her), she is wrong on some very important issues. She is wrong on foreign policy: she’s a hawk dressed in dove’s feathers, and for all her talk about unification and tolerance, for all her touting of diplomacy as the best way, she has a spotty record on foreign policy and has demonstrated poor judgment on issues of war. She is wrong on universal healthcare: it is a right, it is an embarrassment that we don’t have it, and I will not vote for anyone who compromises on my human rights. But finally, and most importantly, she is wrong on race in America, and she is so wrong that she doesn’t even know it. When she met with #BlackLivesMatter organizers and asked them to articulate policy positions for their constituency, my jaw hit the floor. This belies her total misunderstanding of racial power dynamics in America. She’s credited with being smart and knowledgeable about policy, but on this issue, which is so important to me, she’s virtually indistinguishable from Rand Paul, a Republican.

Ultimately, it is a shame that the best candidate – who is also a woman – didn’t decide to run. Elizabeth Warren had the opportunity to help the Democratic Party avoid this unseemly rift, and she instead chose to stay in the Senate. While I am happy with all the work she is doing, I am sorry that we now have to deal with this infighting.