I don't have the same feelings as 2008. "Uniting" is harder than you say that it is. [View all]

I was thinking about this primary season and how it feels very different than 2008. Sometimes, I wish that the Democratic Primary, Democratic voters, Democratic Party officials, and even independent voters, would have kept this primary season restricted to the issues, but it didn't.

Admittedly, I'm voting in a state that will not be in the (D) column in the general election, but there are things that are happening now, in the Democratic Party, that I don't feel people will overlook (at least, as far as I'm concerned, I know I will not overlook).

The person that's slated to be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party (for the first time in my life) is someone for which I cannot see myself walking into my polling place (normally an early voter) for in November and casting a ballot. I've been voting for President since the 2000 election (first presidential election in which I qualified to participate), and even before this primary, I held a gut-wrenching feeling that we would get our nominee wrong, even if we were given the chance to get it right.

I'm not motivated. I'm not excited. I don't feel like phone-banking. I don't feel like knocking on doors. I don't feel like purchasing yard signs. I don't feel like debating. I don't feel like influencing others of my party's position on a lot of issues. I don't feel like we will win this election ...

... because I literally don't have a leg to stand on, and my party (the Democratic Party) decided to take that away from me.

How do I answer the questions about Hillary's failure to safeguard critical information on a private e-mail server?

How do I honestly convince Democratic and Independent voters (particularly environmentalists) that our eventual nominee is against fracking and has the best interests of the environment at heart?

How do I convince the 10%-15% of black voters that are vehemently anti-Hillary that she didn't really mean to call their children "super predators" and that she didn't really support the 1994 Crime Bill?

How do I convince the single mother or the family attempting to survive on minimum wage that Hillary was always for raising the minimum wage to $15?

How do I convince the millennial graduating with thousands of dollars in debt and no job prospects that there will be more jobs created by someone who called the TPP "the Gold Standard" and openly supported "NAFTA" and other free trade agreements?

How do I convince those who are against stupid wars that the person that voted for the Iraq War and wants intervention in Syria will be smart on foreign policy, when almost everything that she's touched (as it relates to foreign policy) has been an unmitigated disaster?

... and there are many other issues that, with a simple Google or YouTube search, can contradict anything I would try to say to convince that voter otherwise of where that nominee's position stands.

It's sad. I can't convince that voter, because I can't even convince myself of that position, without lying to myself. This is where I am. I'm voting down-ticket, but convincing myself (or others) that Hillary is what they WANT in November is something I can't even begin to even conceive happening.

To those who have always been in her camp, other than saying "but do you want Trump in the White House," what will make me want to vote FOR HER (rather than against someone else)?