I was really going to try to keep the duct tape on until after tomorrow but I find I cannot.
I'm one of those Democrats who has told herself over and over that yeah, if Hillary is the nominee of course I will vote for her over McCain. And I will. But if Hillary Clinton is going to take swipes at MoveOn.org at this juncture, then she has no interest in my support, or the support of the strong organized Democratic base MoveOn represents, during the general election.
That freaks me out.
MoveOn is way too big a creature to need my defense. But I have no doubt that if Hillary pulled a landslide in Pennsylvania and won every single superdelegate vote between now and June, and in a truly stunning upset won the nomination, that MoveOn would spend their considerable clout to get her elected in November.
Not anymore they won't. Sigh.
And I lost it again this afternoon when a Mother Jones columnist illustrated that some young(er) Obama supporters are simply rejecting Hillary because she reminds them of their mothers. Please. As I wrote over there:
I would be grateful if someone would give me "permission" to vote for a candidate based on the issues. Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is a hawkish nightmare. She tells AIPAC that nuclear weapons are "on the table" vis-a-vis Iran? Could I please be "allowed" to vote against nuclear armageddon without being told my feminism isn't seasoned enough?
And the idea that I have to support the tactics of James Carville, Sandy Berger, and Terry McCauliffe in order to show gratitude to my mother? She would spit.
Do we as women want to be taken seriously as strong, intelligent, capable voters? Then we can't make special pleas based on gender with no regard to the issues at hand.
We've had a week of hearing what a wimp Obama is over the ABC debate questions. Clinton argued that the questions were tough, Obama argued they were stupid and meaningless, and all of us agree they were a media travesty.
Yet without irony, one of Clinton's supposed arguments against MoveOn is that their members "intimidated" her caucus supporters. At the same time, Clinton is still running her "if you can't stand the heat" advertisements. What gives?
Hell, the hardcore caucusing Clinton supporters I know would not be intimidated by Sam Kinison:
I hate this train wreck. I just hate it.
And then I have as one of my homepage tabs a random wikipedia page and this one comes up. Pardon me if I'm just pissed off right now.
i was foolish enough to moan that pennsylvania never counted in the primaries.
ReplyDeletenow, i take the moaning back.
the past 6 weeks of up close muck and slime has kicked my bad stomach into rebellion and my teeth clenching at night has gotten
so that i have the jaw ache of a pitbull chewing granite.
i am so ashamed of clinton. i thought so better of her before she got here. we've had 24/7 of spin about obama wanting orange juice at diner stops instead of coffee and clinton doing a shot and beer. the most inane stupid crap.
the media portrays us as gun worshipping knuckle dragging bible thumping morons or elitist over educated socialist snobs.
i can not wait til tomorrow is over.
See. Thorazine is the answer!
ReplyDeletePlay nice? Cuz that's worked out so well before?
REALLY?!?!?
It's all poetic justice if you ask me (and most people usually don't), but we moonbat Kucinich supporters were telling everyone that Clinton (frontrunner at the time) was further to the right than McCain on foreign policy. That was way back when these "debates" were actually interesting.
ReplyDeleteWe complained that ABC, NBC, and CNN were playing favorites, ignoring the issues, and asking gotcha questions. But who really gave a fuck back then? They laughed at Kucinich being asked about UFOs. Now "mainstream" Democrats want me to be outraged that they're getting the same treatment? Fuck them.
If I ever had any faith in the Democratic Party I'd say I lost it back then when Kucinich was being McKinney'd by party leaders. None of this is new. Hillary's always been a fascist hawk and the corporate media has always pushed their own agenda. I don't have any outrage left for people we'd all be criticizing if they had an R in front of their name instead of a D.
I hate it too, I really do. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, for different reasons, I broke my silence tonight as well.
Anyway, back to work for me, posting and commenting over and no salon for me!
Fran is frowning at this end.
I think people might be interested in knowing that my personal hero, Michael Moore, has endorsed Obama.
ReplyDeleteGood news is in short supply this month, so I thought I would share some.
Manila ryce: I share your frustration about the way Kucinich has been treated by the Democratic Party insiders. That is one of the reasons why I gave money to his campaign.
Is it wrong that I am happy that it appears that most folks are starting to feel the same way about HIllary that I have since 2002? She will say anything to get that which she believes she is entitled to. Well, we really aren't a democracy--we're a republic founded on democratic principles--but we sure as hell aren't a monarchy, yet.
ReplyDeleteTo update her husband's '92 campaign slogan:
ReplyDeleteIt's the foreign policy, stupid.
Thanks for hitting it exactly on the head, Blue Gal.
I'm appalled by a term used in that Wikipedia article. "Extrajudicial prisoner." To be clear, the only thing that makes the imprisonment of an individual by any government entity legitimate is the fact that they have full access to court procedures, including habeas corpus hearings. Anything less and they can only be characterized as victims of international kidnap.
ReplyDeleteHey Blue Gal,
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit confounded yet iddly enough not surprised. Hubris is the mighty shaper of power and Hillary is ingesting it by the coffer full!
I have been chosen as one of the MoveOn.org Obama videos in the running via their contest to promote 30 second Pro-Obama ads... Yes. Me and 1,100 other videographers! Yikes! If you would be so kind as to promote mine if you like it the voting has begun and ends April 27th.
Instead of plugging my site on your blog I will instead promote a Pro-Obama link to vote for my video if you and your readers think it is worthy and want to vote for it.
http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-1818-aFW3Xo
Peace,
Mark (thepoetryman)
"iddly"... What the f*#@%?
ReplyDeleteOh. "Oddly". Sheesh...
i've always considered the Clinton's to be the "Republican wing" of the Democratic Party..... no normal Democrat would have held the NAFTA banner, and i think you would still get the "free trade" globalist nonsense from Hillary and that group..... we might from Obama too.
ReplyDeletethe whack at Moveon.org is kind of mind boggling..... is she adopting a Bushy strategy to go for the rightist authoritarian margin?
i don't get it.....
however, if the only Democratic Party candidate running against a Republican was a Yellow Dog, that Dog would get my vote, because a dog could not possibly do as much damage to this Nation as the Republicans have done in their ascendancy.
BG, it was Sen. Clinton who voted against a Senate resolution to condemn MoveOn for running the Petraeus ad. And how did Sen. Obama vote? Oh, yeah ... Obama didn't bother to vote. Since he couldn't vote "present" in the US Senate, he simply decided to not vote at all.
ReplyDeleteAs for Sen. Clinton's description of what happened in some of the caucuses -- it pretty much matches what I heard from some of my friends who were there. And these are women who are not easily intimidated.
And you simply can't compare Clinton supporters with Sen. Clinton. The Senator is one of the toughest women I have ever seen. Few people have the courage she has demonstrated to stand up against direct frontal attacks.
Maybe we need to rethink the concept of "democracy" if it involves people surrounding someone in a caucus setting and shouting at them.
This is why I would like to see states do away with caucuses, and instead hold a primary. A primary gives more people the opportunity to participate, and the person gets to make their decision in the privacy of the voting booth.
And I think some will have a rude awakening when they discover that Sen. Obama is not as "liberal" as the media is making him out to be. There are rumblings from his campaign that he is "rethinking" his Iraq strategy, and not in a way that I think any of us would like.
And if Sen. Obama continues to undermine the Democratic Party's efforts to tie McCain to Bush, what kind of chance will he have in the fall should he become the nominee? All of this has me very concerned, when you factor in how much the media LOVES John McCain.
BAC
Caucuses, like city council meetings, are raucous and uncivilized events. Whenever opposing viewpoints get together in the same room and stakes are high, emotions and tempers and well, you get it.
ReplyDeleteI can understand why some would be uncomfortable in that environment, but I don't think they're going to go away.
I did a google blog search on "Clinton delegate" and "caucus" to see if I could find bloggers who wrote about their experience of being intimidated at a caucus setting. The first one I found was an Obama delegate shouted down by a Clinton delegate.
I just laughed. It's on both sides, of course. And the campaigns would do well to train their delegate candidates to be tough AND respectful as much as they train them to show up for the caucus on time and at the right place.
I think there's a little extra frustration today - I know I'm feeling it - because the results of the Pennsylvania primary are pre-ordained and it's clear that Clinton is just going to spin it into a come-from-behind victory and use it as an excuse to continue the campaign we all want to be over.
ReplyDeleteI think that is an excellent idea, however, from what I've heard I do think that caucuses are limiting and not the best way to select a candidate. I would certainly be willing to work on doing away with the caucus system, and moving to what I think is a more fair way to select candidates -- primaries.
ReplyDeletePrimaries usually have extended hours, which mean more people have an opportunity to participate. The person casts their vote in the privacy of a voting booth, without fear of an employer or partner (and that can run either direction) trying to influence their decision.
Couple primaries, with a paper trail to lessen the chance for voter fraud, and I would hope we would have a system everyone could get behind.
BAC