moveon.org is pissing me off

I’m usually a big fan of theirs – love your work, babe – but their latest ‘email update’ is a hit piece on Sen. John McCain, and I just think it’s a little early to be going negative on the opponent, especially when he’s only the putative opponent.

More than that, I don’t need to be reminded that when I step into a voting booth, I vote with my head if it and my heart disagree.

I already know John McCain is a cuddly TV teddy bear with an almost completely douschebag voting record, especially on the war. Really, I do. But just because I may think the amiable drunk who sells me singles at the liquor store is an interesting human being with a compelling life story doesn’t mean I want him calling the shots at the head of our government.

Besides, we already tried that and look where it’s got us.

If, god help me, it ever came down to voting for McCain or voting for Hillary, I’d grit my teeth and pull the level for Sen. Clinton. I hope it doesn’t come to that, in spite of part of me thinking, “How fucking cool would it be to have Bill Clinton back in residence at the White House! It would drive the GOP crazy!”

(I could choke back my Hillary gorge just with the image of Bill Clinton roaming the White House halls again at night, bathrobe and pipe, looking at the paintings of his predecessors on the walls… lingering lovingly, knuckle at his lips, squinting appreciatively in front of his own…)

But I’m afraid Hillary’s scabrous tele-personality – which she just demonstrated again at a live press conference where she worked her middle-of-the-road mojo getting hawkish… on Afghanistan – would keep that happy scene from ever playing out anywhere but my own head.

I’m watching her speak on TV and I just don’t like her. For the same reason I don’t like W’s speaking style; she’s saying little chunks of sentences, broken haphazardly, as she builds her next sentence in her head, while rotely performing the one she has just composed. It’s creepy. Even when she’s reading from a script there are these unnatural, mechanical pauses that – hey, transcript just fine! She looks smart (although dull) on paper, but she comes off like an automaton on TV.

I look at her speak off-the-cuff and all I see is a portrait of pure, naked ambition. I think Hillary has drunk from the well of the Hillary Kool-Aid. She’s all about looking like the next President of the United States.

If Hillary makes it to the general election, our collective left-leaning goose could be cooked because she and Obama would have to tear each other apart in the primaries just to survive, and the loonies on the fringes would really have a field day with her war record. And those are our friends.

I wish the Dems and their surrogates like moveon would spend more of their resources either finding, or crafting, a saleable opponent to the inevitable toothsome, telegenic White Christian Male Republican alternative, and less on snazzy oppo hate mail. The time will probably come when negative campaigning becomes inevitable, but two years out is good money before bad.

Move on.