Monster: Samantha Power is my New Hero

I have to admit that I didn't know anything about Samantha Power before she called Hillary Clinton a monster. Although she and the Obama campaign are slightly embarrassed by it, I'm glad she did. Before I say why, I just want to say that the video clip above is not about her remarks. It's from a fund raiser in Boston for the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. I prefer to use it, at least first, to show people that there's more to her than a slip of the tongue about someone who deserved it. It demonstrates why she should be considered a hero, what she said about Hillary notwithstanding.

Also, before I talk about Hillary and the remark, I will say something further about who Samantha Power is. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning author for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She's a professor who works with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She's an activist and a strong voice for ending the genocide in Darfur. She's an intelligent woman with a fortunate name, because she is powerful. And from what I can see, at least for me, she's a lot more likable person than Hillary Clinton.

Now I can talk about why she's my hero. She may not have meant to say it. It slipped out. She tried to take it back. Tried to make it off the record, but it was too late. And later she resigned and she apologized. Still, in view of all those things, she said what needed to be said. She was a real human being in a real moment who felt something and said it. She's not the polished, practiced and careful politician who weighs every word that comes out of her mouth. She is someone who is obviously passionate about the things she believes in. She's the anti-Clinton.

Why did it need to be said? Because Hillary Clinton recently crossed the line. Before she crossed the line she had been fighting dirty. Fighting dirty since Barack Obama first surprised her and won the Iowa Caucuses. Both her and her surrogates, including her husband, have race baited, mocked, outright lied and damned Obama with faint praise ("as far as I know").

But when she as much as endorsed the Republican nominee over the leading Democratic candidate in this race, she crossed a political line that should never be crossed. Not only did she give John McCain ammunition against Obama should he become the nominee, words that McCain can attribute to her, a Democrat, but she did so while advancing an argument that she could not win if she by some miracle turns out to be the nominee. She simply does not measure up to John McCain on the argument of experience. But Obama beats them both on the argument of judgment.

What she said is disloyal to the Democratic Party and it shows her to be someone who would rather win than do what's best for the party as a whole. And I am wondering since she said it where have the so-called leaders of the Democratic Party been? Why hasn't anyone, with the possible exceptions of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow in the press, and those of us who are Obama supporters, cried foul? Even the Obama campaign itself has not reacted as strongly as they should have. That's why what Samantha Power said, needed to be said. Thank god for that slip that made it into the press. While the press and the Obama campaign are coming down on her, I want to be at least one voice out here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, standing up for her. Amen and right on. Hillary Clinton is a indeed monster and she's hurting the Democrats chance of winning in November.

A lot more of us should stand up for her and we should let the party leadership know that we will not stand for the kind of disloyalty to the party that Hillary Clinton has demonstrated. I said before and will say again, if a miracle occurs and she's the nominee, I would find it very hard to vote for her. Even if she included Barack Obama on the ticket. I would have been happy to see her go on to fight until the convention and would have voted for her if she won. But not after running this kind of race.

Ok, the clip below is about the remark (I won't call it a gaffe). And I picked it because no matter how wrong he usually is, every once in a while Tucker Carlson gets something right.