Dear Senator Clinton, and to some extent, former President Clinton,

Despite the inevitable drubbing I will receive from my mother and uncle, I have decided that if you somehow wrest the nomination away from Barack Obama, I will not cast my vote for you in the general election.

I was asked on Newsgang Live on 4/30 whether I would vote for you, and I answered yes. The ensuing discussion has stayed in my head for 36+ hours now, and as the news cycles have inexorably progressed toward a whole lot of nothing this week, the following truths keep coming back to me:

A vote for you is a vote for Bush/Rove political conduct.

A vote for you affirms that dirty campaigns win.

A vote for you suppresses all of the new Democrats who truly believed they could transform politics by raising their collective voices.

A vote for you sells out progressive politics.

A vote for you validates the covert racism you’ve encouraged and even promoted during this campaign.

I can’t do that. I remember voting for your husband in 1992, captivated by his message and promise. I remember the anger I felt when his (and your) agenda was stalled over and over again by the focus on external, irrelevant, personal issues. I watched as the country marked time for 8 years, I watched Ken Starr dance while Capitol Hill burned. As my frustration mounted, so did my disappointment, because every time we’d be at the brink of success, your collective skeletons jumped out of the closet.

Now you have become the very thing that stalled President Clinton’s agenda.

You snark your way down the campaign trail, claiming you’ve been fully vetted by the opposition when anyone with half a brain knows they’re just holding it back for the perfect time and place.

You change accents like you change your shoes. Depending on whether you’re stomping in mud with your hiking boots or dancing around the race issues in spiky heels, you wear the accent and the message that fits that moment, proving you’re as phony as a three dollar bill while pretending to give a damn.

I’m having trouble forgetting the “Screw ‘em” comment made about Southern Democrats while you were convening at Camp David to lick yours and your husband’s wounds after the mid-term elections turned your Congressional majority into a minority.

I’m having difficulty forgetting your coy little “as far as I know” remark when asked directly about whether Barack Obama was a Muslim, and if you were standing in front of me today I’d call you out as the bitch that you are for kissing Bill O’Reilly’s ass while wearing your Jeremiah Wright-eousness like a cloak of inpenetrable armor.

I want a woman to be elected President in my lifetime. But the woman I want in the White House is one who doesn’t have to become a Republican in order to win the Democratic nomination. The woman I want in the White House stands toe-to-toe with her opponents and refrains from personal attacks, backstabbing, press flurries about nothing, and swiftboating in order to win.

The woman I want in the White House is the same kind of woman I am raising my daughter to be. Respectful. Smart. Creative. Passionate. Compassionate. Fair. Honest.

You are not that woman.

This is a horrible decision to make. But if you steal this nomination, I will not vote a straight Democratic ticket in November. I will not remain a Democrat. I will change my party affiliation to Independent.

For the past three months, the DNC has asked me for donations. I have chosen not to give anything to them and will continue to choose that until the nomination is decided. At that time, I will either choose to donate or choose to withdraw.

The outcome is in the hands of the remaining states to vote, the superdelegates, and the leadership of the Democratic party.

Make no mistake. This is not sour grapes thinking. It is the only way I know to put pressure on the Democratic party to abandon the wrong-headed politics of the past.

It is the only way I know to send the message that smear campaigns do not sit well with all voters who are not old-thinking white men and women who make decisions based on race rather than merit, or who are smart enough to see through them.

It is the only way I know to teach my children that their voices count, now and in the future.

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