When I was 18 years old it was 1992. Bill Clinton came out of nowhere to be the first Baby Boomer candidate to be a viable choice for President. He spoke in a smooth drawl, intelligently about things that mattered to ME! A young voter that had grown up in both Southern California and Idaho. My parents were working class, my Mom had worked multiple jobs to keep us in decent clothes. My Grandfather was a diesel mechanic, my grandmother a factory worker. Me and my sister were the first in our family to go to college. Bill Clinton was an instrument for change - but more than that - he was an instrument for intelligent change, the kind of change that made sense. He struck the ballance between the out of synch liberal politics represented by New England Democrats like Dukakis and the ineffectual remnants of the Carter adminstration as represented by Mondale. He was a new kind of Democrat.
Today, when I hear about the "CHANGE" offered by Obama - its NOT the kind of change that I want to be a part of...its a swing back to a direction that I think is based on principals NOT in synch with my personal value system.
You see, I was a young Republican, a staunch believer in the strength of America's big business economy and the freedom to have less government oversight - not more. I am a social liberal, but not to such an extreme that I need to throw it in the face of everyone around me. As I grew older and came out - I was faced with one option to protect my personal freedoms (at least in theory) - be a Democrat. The prospect, considering the candidates I remembered from growing up, was nauseating.
But then along came Bill Clinton. He represented the kind of Democrat my Grandfather was proud to vote for...he respected the values of the Unions that built this country. He was intelligent without being ignorant of the simple challenges facing middle America. He was an instrument of change that made sense and wasn't change for the sake of change alone.
Today, I am with the millions of Democrats that find what Bush has done to our country to be next to criminal. However, unlike the very slight majority that favors the inexperienced and untested Obama, I am not willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The 90's were not the 80's - they were a time of growth and expansion. I want change today, but I want change that I can have faith in. Faith comes from experiencing a truth. Faith absent of experience is blind faith -- something I am NOT willing to grant Obama under any circumstance.
This election year, I am maintaining my loyalty to the agent(s) of change that meant so much to me when I turned 18. I voted for Clinton in the primaries, I'll vote for Obama if she is his running mate, but I will NOT vote for an inexperienced candidate without the backing of the most politically savvy political couple of our time. I am NOT the kind of extreme-left leaning, elitist liberal Democrat that I see in Obama. When he panders to the people - I don't buy it.
I'm not going to apologize for it.
You may not understand, you may not get it. But you don't see what I've seen, and you probably don't believe what I believe. I'm not your kind of Democrat - I'm a Clinton Democrat.
If the Democratic party goes in another direction, well - I guess that makes me a swing voter - because, to me, I think a McCain presidency couldn't be worse than Bush and, in my opinion, is a better bet than Obama.
I will be voting this year and without Hillary on the ticket, I will be casting my vote for McCain.
