An Open Letter to Supporters of Hillary Clinton

I understand your anger and frustration at having come so close to the goal and seeing another pass you by. But in the political arena, we cannot afford to take personally the fact that our candidate did not finish first. Many people have threatened – and sincerely mean it – to stay home or, even worse, vote for John McCain in November. But before you take such a drastic step, stop and think about it. How many times in your life did you vote for a candidate that you were luke warm about? Our problem this year was that we had so many excellent candidates running on the Democratic side, that we bonded with them and now can't seem to bring ourselves to vote for the person we see as the nemesis of our candidate.

I beg of you to reconsider. There is too much at stake in this election to risk letting the Republicans steal the White House from us again. Think of the price:

· How many more of our young people will be killed or maimed in Iraq and possibly Iran?
· What will our quality of life be like when gasoline prices continue to skyrocket while our incomes stagnate?
· How many will die or become chronically ill because they were unable to afford to get medical care or insurance to treat a disease or injury?
· How many more families will lose their homes because unscrupulous loan companies have free rein to charge outrageous rates?
· How many senior citizens will have to choose between their medicine and food? And that's assuming they can, in fact, afford one of them.
· How many of our children and grandchildren will be "processed" through schools that cannot give them a decent education? How many more of them who have the impetus to go on will be denied a higher education because there is no way they can pay the tuition?
· What kinds of changes will our planet undergo because Republicans will not permit regulating companies that pollute our environment?
· Where will the additional money to finance Bush's and McCain's wars come from? China? We already owe them so much that if they decided to call in the loan, they could take over our entire country!
· What will be the next country to inherit the jobs and the companies that helped build our nation? And will they make sure that the products they ship to us will not make our pets and children sick or possibly even kill them?

This is truly a matter of life and death! Some of the above scenarios may not affect you but at least one of them will impact on you personally! Meanwhile, Republicans get stressed out about gay marriage, illegal aliens, the big government of "tax-and-spend liberals" (they'll have a tough time with this one), and not being allowed to buy several guns in one day. Ask yourself: Can you in all good conscience vote for someone who holds dear these values?

Yes, I was an Obama supporter from early on. But I switched to John Edwards then back to Obama again. Was I disappointed about Edwards? Of course, but because we had such great candidates from which to choose, I went back to Obama.

The next question to ask yourself is this: Would Hillary Clinton be happy to know that because of her those things above came to pass? You know she wouldn't be. At the risk of sounding trite, don't cut off your nose to spite your face.