My Mistake

When Ohio voted on March 4, I voted for Hillary Clinton. My reasoning was that, with the Republican primary decided, any vote in the GOP primary would be wasted. I decided to join Mitt Romney, kos, and Rush Limbaugh in strategic voting, where I would vote for the candidate who would be easiest for McCain to beat in November. I decided on Hillary.

I was wrong. Hillary probably would be a stronger candidate in the general election than Obama. At that time, Obama was riding a wave. His only negative was his extreme liberalism. He represented hope, change, and chance for America to elect a black President (which is apparently a big selling point for some). He had a decent lead in head-to-head polls against McCain.

Then everything fell apart. He managed to lose both Ohio and Texas. (Had he won just one of these states, he probably could have knocked Hillary out of the race). Worse, Jeremiah Wright surfaced, which revealed that Obama was, at best, comfortable with a preacher who was rabidly anti-American and racist, and at worst, actually agreed with these sentiments. People started scrutinizing his autobiography, Dreams From My Father, which reveals an oddly suspicious and hostile attitude towards whites. (Granted, whites haven’t always treated blacks justly, but is it really fair to whites to say that “[i]t was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time."? I mean, we’re talking about the Eighties here, not the Deep South in the Sixties).

Suddenly, Obama has become a more moderate version of Jesse Jackson. He can no longer claim to transcend race. In Obama’s world, blacks and whites are in a state of perpetual conflict. That is not a winning worldview—most voters want a colorblind country, not one in which everyone is judged according to the color of their skin.