So I wrote this at the Other Place as a response to Laura Clawson's front-pager on why she was supporting Clinton over Sanders. Had it sitting in my queue for a bit; others were saying it far more eloquently than me.

Then The Deadline was announced, and I decided to take a break. But I wanted to get this out there before it gets deleted by the software, sort of just my own 2 cents.

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I was on the fence for quite a while. When the Daily Kos straw polls came up, I was in the “No Freakin’ Clue” category. I was intrigued for a time with Martin O’Malley — I thought he was a fresh face that would bring some energy to the campaign.

And of course I thought about Hillary Clinton. It would be good to have a woman President for the first time in our history. I felt confident that she wasn’t going to regulate the uteri of my great-nieces, triple-lock LGBTs back in the closet, or turn this nation into a Christian theocracy.

I had qualms though, especially about her foreign policy. The vote for the Iraq War Resolution, and later on Kyl-Lieberman, still rankled. And there was this:

I’m probably one of those old-style “bleeding heart” liberals. And as a Christian, I cannot celebrate the death of any human being. I can breathe a sigh of relief, and mourn the loss of a life that could have been so much greater had different choices been made. But I certainly cannot laugh about it. Plus, Clinton’s pride in having Henry Kissinger as a friend and adviser admittedly scares the crap out of me, as does having her foreign policies praised by the likes of Robert Kagan:

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she was for the most part acting on behalf of President Obama, under constraints that he put on her. There would be no such constraints with her as President. Robert Kagan and Henry Kissinger may feel comfortable with Clinton’s foreign policy — I’m not sure I can.

Clinton’s economic policies also gave me a pause for thought. Her idea to “means test” Social Security, which would turn it into just another welfare program, sounds like the first step in killing it just as my husband and I approach the age where we can start collecting. It’s getting harder and harder for average wage Americans to afford housing in many parts of the country. Young people are putting their lives on hold while they try and scrape up enough money to pay off student loans. And while a $12 minimum wage would be a sizable increase, it would still leave many Americans far short of being able to get by in this country. I go back to what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933:

In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.

Then I took a closer look at Bernie Sanders. I’d heard of him — Mr. Scribe would listen to him on the “Brunch with Bernie” segments on the Thom Hartmann show when he could pick it up on the XM car radio or if he was online. I was interested in what he had to say. And slowly, he won me over.

He didn’t pussy-foot around the subject. He spoke plainly — the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy in this country. We’re all in service to the wealthy and the corporations. But instead of just resigning ourselves to our fate, Sanders offered a different idea — fight back. We’ve seen in the past how people have fought for power, be it the Civil Rights marchers facing water cannons and armed marshals, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn deciding they’d had enough of living in the shadows, protesters proclaiming that we needed an end to the Vietnam War, ACT UP marching in the streets of SF and NYC and elsewhere demanding action on the AIDS crisis, and so many others.

And then I looked at his platform — bare bones at first but a work in progress, expanding and growing to respond to the needs of the country. Education — not just K-12 but beyond. Climate change — investing in fossil fuel alternatives and revitalizing our transportation infrastructure. Strengthening Social Security and reducing prescription drug costs — for us folks on the downhill side of 55 or 60, pretty darn important. Racial justice — not just physical violence (the killing of people of color by out of control police not held accountable for their activities) but political violence as well in the disenfranchisement of thousands through onerous Voter ID laws and other artificial barriers to voting, and legal violence such as the War on (Some) Drugs that saddles citizens with criminal records for non-violent drug offenses that could be better handled as a public health issue, keeping them in their communities and with their families.

I’ve been on this site for 11 years. One of the sayings of this site is that we need to elect “more and better Democrats.” I feel that for me, Bernie Sanders is that “better Democrat”. I don’t care that he didn’t wear the Democrat label for the majority of his career; it didn’t stop him from caucusing with the Democrats in both the House and the Senate, nor did it prevent him from getting committee assignments and chairmanships. Maybe as an “outsider” he’s better able to see where the Democrats have excelled...and where we still have work to do.

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I said in the past that I will probably mark Clinton's name on the ballot if she's the nominee as a protest against GOP insanity. But I'm still on the fence about that. Leaving the line blank is still an option; I did that with the Senate race in 2012 when I couldn't in good conscience vote for DiFi for another term (hoping she follows Boxer into retirement in a couple of years). I don't even know why I'm bothering to tell anyone how I plan to vote -- it should be no one's business but my own, but I guess I'm used to having to prove I'm a "true Democrat" to some folks on the Internets.

Peace.