Tomorrow morning I'll walk to Lapham Elementary School and cast a vote for Hillary Clinton to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, making me a hypocrite, a cynic, or worse. I've spent more time and energy going back and forth on this vote than any I've ever cast. However, the fact that I was going back and forth between Clinton and a protest vote for Chris Dodd, who dropped out after securing about four votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, ultimately made the pragmatic decision clear. Having just decided on my choice this weekend, I have spent the past couple days coming around to the idea that I can be OK with this, and not just resigned to it.

Firstly, my most important issue in this campaign is the restoration of our Constitutional government, and that's what drew me to Dodd way back when, even though I thought he would've been flawed as a nominee and as a president. His leadership in the fight against retroactive immunity for the telecoms who helped George Bush spy on American citizens was a breath of fresh air in a race with four sitting Senators, and three who didn't care to use their positions to effect change while on the campaign trail. My fellow Democrats didn't agree, however, and he basically finished above only Mike Gravel. Clinton has cautiously followed Dodd's lead on this issue, as has Obama, to his credit. But the broader issue of what to do about the Bush Administration's rampant criminality looms large in 2009. It's not just a matter of disavowing signing statements, but of allowing all appropriate investigation into executive wrongdoing over the preceding eight years. After the Nixon and Reagan eras, this largely didn't happen, in the name of national unity; I fear an Obama Administration will follow that same path. I don't know how tenacious Clinton herself would be in pursuing these misdeeds, but I don't think she would enter office with an agenda to sweep this stuff under the rug, particularly if her Attorney General was someone like John Edwards. Having been an eyewitness to the letting go of everything the Reagan/Bush era had to offer, I think she knows the consequences of doing it again.

The reason for this is that the true strength of her experience -- and something she didn't make enough of until too far into the campaign -- is in facing off with the truest scoundrels of our politics for a decade and a half. Clinton knows how they work better than probably anyone else, and she understands that this is a monster with three heads. In the middle, prominent and fierce, is the Republican attack machine. This head alone would be bad enough, and Obama has never given me a signal that he understands its ferocity. But to either side rests the Blue Dog Democrats, functionally cutting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid off at the knees, and the national political press, cheering for Clinton's fall and playing by the Clinton Rules. "The Clinton Rules" is an unfortunate term, actually, because it masks the fact that they're really "the Democrat Rules," and they'll apply as equally to Obama as they did to Gore and Kerry. Again, Obama, who has never faced a contested general election and never been the target of the national GOP, has not shown me that he understands this. Indeed, his experience in the Illinois Senate was much more congenial than anything the national scene has had in decades. That's not because presidents haven't pushed the unity theme enough -- it's because of the tactics of the national Republican Party.

This three-headed monster was introduced to Clinton early in her husband's first term. As she introduced her health care proposal, the three heads struck in tandem. Leading the charge from the Blue Dog Dems was Rep. Jim Cooper, who is now Obama's chief health care surrogate. The alternative proposal offered by Cooper back then was a sop to the insurance industry, who Obama has been clear to point out would be an important part of any health care plan he offers. Meanwhile, he has gone after Clinton's plan from the same angle the Republicans took in 1993. Health care is the lynchpin issue of domestic policy right now, and while Clinton's plan isn't perfect, it looks better than Obama's and it also looks like something she's desperately committed to, while for him it's something that he just doesn't want to get hit too hard over. I don't trust him to deliver on it; I do trust her to at least give it everything she's got.

I also don't trust him on Iraq, which is the one issue where he could've scored the most points with me. Instead of misleadingly going on and on about his opposition to the war in 2002, 2003, 2004, etc., he could've a) not continually voted to fund George Bush's adventure with no strings attached, and b) presented a strong and concrete withdrawal plan. Despite the ads running non-stop here that say "We can end a war," Obama hasn't done either of those things, and has called Congressional pressure for a withdrawal timetable "playing chicken with our troops." Clinton hasn't been good on the war by any means, but Obama has matched her nearly vote for vote since coming to the Senate. Their plans for 2009 are both tentative, and are both not really withdrawal plans. What Obama has succeeded in doing is convincing a lot of people that he's something he's not -- a bold, forward-moving progressive. Despite the soaring nature of his rhetoric, his plans for change don't differ much from Clinton's, and tend to appear a little weaker for the comparison. They also look a bit empty next to the elephant in the room -- that the most important change in this election would be effected by either candidate: the removal of George Bush.

We saw Clinton tonight, and unlike other candidates I've seen and supported -- Al Gore, Howard Dean -- she didn't bowl me over. What she did was solidify in my mind that she understands that the outcome of all this is governing. She outlined an approach to the presidency and the federal government that's predicated on doing good things, not on ambiguous change. When Obama says "change," I don't know what he means. When he says "hope," I don't know what he means. When he says "unity," I do know what he means, and it makes my skin crawl. When Clinton says "solutions," I do know what she means, because she told me. When she outlines an idea of national strength building on the individual contributions of the whole country, that means more to me than "yes we can," "fired up" or "ready to go." And it's earned my vote.