An Open Letter To Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
By Vince Leibowitz on Jun 5, 2008 in 2008 Presidential Race ![[Post to Twitter]](/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
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[I'd been planning to do something like this for several days, but never could quite come up with the right words. Bradley over at North Texas Liberal did, and I follow suit today.--VL]
Dear Senator Clinton:
Last night, I got an email from your campaign telling me you would endorse Senator Obama on Saturday in Washington. When I saw that the subject of the email was “I want you to know,” I didn’t even need to read it to know what it was about. I knew that the end was here.
It is difficult to put into words how I feel about your campaign and what you stand for.
On primary election eve, I drove to every polling place in my county and put out your signs. A slight sleet was falling, it was freezing cold (a rarity in Texas in March) and I got lost trying to find one of the far-flung polling places, but I did it because I wanted people in my county to know when they arrived at their polling place that if they were voting for you, they were not alone. You carried my county.
On “caucus night,” I conducted my precinct caucus. We had to keep adding more chairs to the room. Friends and neighbors who I did not even know were Democrats came out to support you. I’ll never forget the elderly woman who came up to me after the caucus and thanked me for “helping,” and telling me she never thought she would live to vote for a woman for president. To her, your campaign meant everything.
Often in your campaign, you said that we are “not invisible to you.” Every day, I see people who seem largely “invisible” in America. The man on the street begging for change; the single parent working two jobs just to be able to feed her children–sans insurance, of course; the high schoolers for whom a college education is financially out of reach. We see these people, but when it comes to helping them on a large scale, our country somehow falls woefully short.
In you, I saw a better nation for myself and the millions of “invisible” Americans. I truly believe that you would have helped our nation live up to its fullest potential. With you, “hope” was not just a slogan, but something we could see on the horizon.
Your campaign was about making the impossible possible. Healthcare for every American, “green” jobs, improvements in education our nation has not seen in the last eight years.
I was never more proud to cast a vote for President than I was to cast my vote for you. What you have done for our party–and for America–deserves more of a “thank you” than I can give.
Sadly, for you and many of your supporters, seeing you in the White House is now a dream deferred.
As much as I would have liked to see you continue your fight in the trenches for the 18 million men and women who voted for you, the action you now take is the one that is in the best interest of all Democrats. It takes great courage and convictions to do what you are doing. It is that courage and those convictions that I admire the most.
I look ahead to all the plans that we made
And the dreams that we had
I’m in a world that tries to take them away
Oh, but I’m taking them back
All this time I’ve just been to blind to understand
What should matter to me
My friend, this life we live
Is not what we have, it’s what we believe.
Thank you for making us believe again. Thank you, Senator Clinton, on behalf of the “invisible” ones.
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