Election time

I'm going to vote for Hillary, even though as a liberal I like Bernie's policies better.  I like his policies, but don't like him very much, and it's vital for the survival of our country that a Democrat be elected in November, and I think Hillary is more electable than he is. And when I say the survival of our country is at stake, I'm not being melodramatic.  The Republicans have gotten so bad, that to elect one as President could actually mean the United States as we know it will cease to exist.

I feel an affinity to her that I don't feel towards him.  I'm about the same age as her, and I feel as if we've been through the wars together.  I've worked in the public sector for many years developing housing for low-income people with disabilities, and I followed the budget wars Bill waged with Republicans in the House and Senate as they fought to zero out the housing and other programs that were the only hope for a decent life for millions of the neediest Americans.  I remember the relief I felt when the final budget numbers came out and he had managed to restore enough funding to keep these programs alive.  I knew that Hillary was his partner in these efforts, and I was one of the many thousands who wrote to her encouraging her efforts to extend health insurance to the millions who had none. And later, it was good to know she was there, encouraging President Obama as he fought the Republicans on the same issues.

And now comes Bernie, looking down from on high, declaring that nothing that has been accomplished by Democrats is good enough. Nothing measures up to his standards. Everything is inferior, lacking in the purity and integrity that he demands.  There's something irritatingly patrician in his manner, like a Roman Senator holding forth on the Senate portico, not willing to come down and mix with the mob.  Closer to home for me, he reminds me of the many politically-appointed administrators in the agencies I've worked for and with in every sector of government. The ones who were unwilling and unable to do the actual work of the agencies, but who were more than willing to criticize the work everyone else was doing.

Do I wish that Hillary weren't so close to Wall Street?  Yes, absolutely.  But Wall Street wasn't always the cesspool of avarice and corruption that it became under Bush.  I have to believe that when it comes time to lance the boil that it has become, Hillary will, as she has always done and Republicans are incapable of doing, put the well-being of all of us above that of the richest and most privileged of us.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.