Afternoon Open Thread

It’s a cold and chilly day here in Central PA. Not very “May” like. Days like today make me feel like I’ll never be warm again. We’re going to dinner in about an hour. In the meantime, here are some things to ponder.

Emily’s List founder, Ellen Malcolm, wrote a piece for the Washington Post this morning called Quitters Never Wiin. And it’s true. The Obamaphiles seem to be counting on a strong, persistent demand to get out of the race as the best way of forcing Hillary out. But so what if she doesn’t? Then what? Well, it only means that Obama has to wait longer to wrap it up or not wrap it up at all. And we’re behind her all of the way.

Following up on Anglachel’s and Bringiton’s math, I’d just like to point out another little detail that works against Obama. In the primaries, we see him winning decisively in two scenarios: the state is sparsely populated, has a lot of Republicans and runs caucuses OR the state has a critical mass of African-American voters. In the case of the latter, African-Americans are voting for Obama in overwhelming numbers. They now represent a block for Obama. But even with a block, the difference in delegate counts between Obama and Hillary is pretty small. That means that even with almost every African-American in the country voting for Obama, they can just barely swing it for him and with FL and MI, they can’t even do that. So, what’s going to happen to Obama when that 12% of the population that is concentrated in the greatly non-discriminatory Democratic party now is diluted by independents and the more racially picky Republican party in the general election? They AA population is no longer a critical mass, methinks. Forget ever carrying North Carolina.

This is an open thread.

Sunday: Happy Mother’s Day!

Yesterday was my brother’s 40th birthday. We had a party for him but he had to leave it early. He’s in the Army Reserves and he’s been assigned to 5 months of training in Georgia before he is deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. We’re not really sure if he’ll have any time off between training and deployment so yesterday was the last time we were going to see him for a long time so we celebrated a birthday and mother’s day.

My brother has two little girls. When my little sister and I were kids, we often went through this ritual with my dad who was in the Navy just before he went on 8 month long cruises to southeast Asia. The coming home is the best part. They will have a chance to visit him a couple times in Georgia but it will be a long time before he comes home.
To those Obama supporters who rashly accuse the rest of us about not caring whether John McCain becomes president, think again. Some of us care very deeply about it. The last thing we want to do is hand the nomination over to someone who is likely to lose it, who can’t carry the states he presumably won and who, if he were elected, is going to need a lot of time to figure out what all the moving parts are. I want a person who is ready to lead from day one and who I can trust to stabilize our crumbling military while getting us out of our overextended committments as carefully as possible. That person is Hillary.

In the meantime,

Anglachel reinforces Bringiton’s main idea about electability in Percentages, Preferences and Defections. Oh, My!
Over at Corrente, Bringiton writes about the math and electability in Hillary Clinton Must Be the Democratic Nominee; Do the Math.
And rounding things out is this summary from TheCityEdition called Bamboozling the American Electorate Again, describing the strategy behind the unholy alliance between the Rove controlled media, the Obama campaign and its support machine on the left. This is where the the realy animosity between the Obama and Clinton camps originate. Once again, Karl Rove has figured out how to pander to self-interest, this time on the left. He figured out where our weak point was and he inserted a wedge there. The worst part about it is that everyone has always known we’ve been getting played but instead of rising above politics as usual as Obama’s campaign vowed it would do, it validated what we have always suspected about ambition and human nature- it got down in the dirt with the Republicans in order to take Hillary out. We’ve seen it. We knew it. This piece summarizes the whole shebang. We’ve gotten the weakest candidate as our frontrunner. Yep, people on the left are just as stupid and gullible but this time they did it with their eyes open. Thanks Karl.
(Hey, Obama, what goes around, comes around)

A Tale of Two Counties

Many of you followed with me the campaign here in North Carolina over the past few weeks. I have to say that it was very disappointing for me, but it also was emblematic of the divide that Obama’s campaign/supporters have wrought amongst democrats in NC and across the country. They have forged an unholy alliance between hyper-educated, well-off white Democrats and African American Democrats. It is not as easy to see the rich white vote in exit polls, but the AA vote stands out like a sore thumb. In NC some exit polls had it at 91% Obama to 6% Clinton. In an attempt to appeal to black voters, Obama claimed that the Clintons were somehow trying to pull a fast one on the AA community, saying on the campaign trail:

“They’re trying to bamboozle you. It’s the same old okie-doke. Y’all know about okie doke, right? … They try to bamboozle you. Hoodwink ya. Try to hoodwink ya. Alright, I’m having too much fun here. … “ - Barack Obama

Well you know what? I think it is the other way around. I think Obama and his elitist rich white supporters are the ones bamboozling the black community. I have been asking my partner John since SC, what exactly is Obama promising to the black community? I mean, that’s how politics works, right? You make promises to your constituencies and in turn hope they vote for you. But Obama didn’t promise the African American community anything. All he had to do was push a few racial buttons and the entire (almost) African American community fell lockstep in line. I think they are being used, and a closer look at two counties in NC might give you a better idea of why I think that way.

Durham County and Orange County are two relatively small counties in central NC that together make up the Durham MSA (metropolitan statistical area) according to the US Census. We are considered a distinct metro area from Raleigh, even though it is just a couple miles down the road. Here is a map of the two counties:

You may not be able to tell, but it is geographically not a very large area. I remember when I went to school at UNC they used to ask “How far is it from Heaven to Hell?”, answer-”9 miles”. That’s the distance between the UNC campus in Chapel Hill and the Duke campus in Durham. These counties both voted heavily for Obama, but their demographics are shockingly different. Let’s take a look. First of all, the vote. In Orange County, Obama took 70% to Clinton’s 29%. In Durham, it was Obama 73%, Clinton 23%.

Now let’s take a look at the demographics of the two. According to the US Census bureau, Orange County is 74% white, 21% black, about the average for the state. Durham County, however, is 56% white, 37% black. If you look at the two largest municipalities in the counties the contrast is even starker. Chapel Hill is 78% white, 11% black, while the city of Durham is 45% white, 43% black. Keep in mind that these two cities are contiguous. Chapel Hill sits at the southern end of Orange county and literally bleeds into Durham County where it meets the boundry with the City of Durham. Now take a look at the median house value between the two. (I think this is the best indicator of economic well-being because the large number of students in Chapel Hill skews the other info like median income, etc). In Chapel Hill median household value is $229,000. In Durham it is $126,000, or a little more than half. What I am trying to demonstrate is that while they are very close geographically, Orange/Chapel Hill is much wealthier and much whiter than Durham. Yet they both went for Obama. They demonstrate in a very real way the two components of the Obama coalition in this primary season. It also shows, in my opinion how the one group (rich whites) pays lip service to the other (poor and working class blacks), but whose actions don’t match up to their rhetoric. Let me give you an example.

When John first started working at UNC he told his co-workers that we were looking to buy a house (we still are) in the area. The reaction from all of these “creative class liberals”? Don’t buy in Durham! They went out of their way to describe the city as having “bad schools”, “high crime”, and “bad resale values”. Now we all know what these coded phrases mean: It is a black city, don’t move there. So obviously, they want to form a coalition with African Americans, they just don’t want to live near them. We, on the other hand, felt that it was not only economically a good idea to buy a house in Durham, we would also be doing our part to forge a larger, more diverse community (Oh, but we voted for Hillary, so we must be racist). Let me show you a picture of a house we wanted to buy (somebody beat us, and it was already under contract when we made an offer):

This house, in downtown Durham, was listed at $29,500. It was 4200 square feet. Granted, it needed a lot of work, but we thought it was a steal. Houses like this line the streets of Durham, boarded up, or split up into run-down apartments. When we went to see this house (and many others), many realtors/inspectors thought at first we were buying properties to set up as rentals (they assumed we were slumlords). When they found out we actually wanted to live in the house we were buying the reaction was of shock. Keep in mind that most of these people were white, and from either Orange County or richer, whiter enclaves of Durham. In fact, I called an inspector to come to this house above. Instead of telling me about the condition of the house, he told me point blank that I did not want to live in that neighborhood. When I responded that I indeed did, and that I was paying him to inspect the house, not give me advice on where to live, he continued to try to convince me that we were making a mistake. I got so angry I told him I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him, to just finish the inspection and leave. This is anecdotal evidence, and I have no way of knowing how these people voted, but I would venture to guess that most consider themselves liberal and open-minded, and at least some voted for Obama.

Now, in contrast, here is a listing in Chapel Hill:

I chose this one because it was the cheapest detached house I could find in Chapel Hill on a popular realtor’s website. It costs $158,000, has 800 square feet on less than 1/5th of an acre. Not much house for the price if you ask me.

Just one other note on this issue. We currently rent a house in Chapel Hill. It is your standard split level 70’s style suburban home. It is repeated in various forms throughout our neighborhood and we have seen at least one for sale at $289,000. We happened to find an identical house (same floorplan) in a Durham neighborhood for $69,000. You can’t get a more direct comparison than that.

My point is that while many of the “creative class” whites are tripping all over themselves to vote for a black guy in order to make up for their “white guilt”, their words are not born out in their actions. It doesn’t help that the (mostly) black leadership in Durham is itself corrupt and pandering to the black community (remember the Duke lacrosse case?). The status quo remains, and once again, it is African Americans that get the short end of the stick. In the end the only thing they get out of a Barack Obama candidacy is the color of his skin.

Free Minutes? Free Time? Call West Virginia for Hillary

Hillary needs our help in W. Virginia

Have you heard this story (from a Yahoo Group list)?

I’ve been talking with some people already on the ground in WV and the Obama camp is calling voters, NOT to get out the vote, but to ask for money - campaign donations. The gist of the call is that its not important that they vote, because the election is over, and then they ask for money to help put this primary campaign to an end and move on to the general election. Basically, they are telling voters its over. Then they ask for $400 donations. What the dollar amount is about, I don’t know. Perhaps they are just getting greedy.

Is the Obama campaign targeting voters in West Virginia with misleading telephone calls? If so, this is a very serious problem. It’s commonly acknowledged that Hillary will do very well in West Virginia. But a huge win combined with a huge turnout would sweeten the victory by adding significantly to Hillary’s national popular vote total. And that is what the Obama volunteers are trying to achieve with this cheap trick.

Confluencians Fight Voter Suppression

Let’s do what we can to counter this bizarre campaign scheme.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a lot of plans for the weekend (especially this mother’s day weekend) but, if you find yourself with a free minute or two, consider donating them to Hillary. Even if you can’t fit a full hour in, please try to make 5 or 10 calls sometime today.

I actually hate making out of state campaign telephone calls. But this threat has energized me past that fear. I think.

Hillary Clinton Call Center Tool

Saturday: Keep your head

Conflucians, the haka is getting very intense. There are senators we once respected going on news shows that some of us vowed not to watch for the next two weeks, who are saying insulting things that are designed to discourage us. Like Kennedy implying that Clinton doesn’t have noble American principles. This is just another version of “Our warriors are bigger, badder, meaner than yours” It’s all bluster because the real proof of their fortitude, getting a $%$#load more votes, hasn’t materialized.

Oh, and then there’s Chris Dodd telling Wolf Blitzer that the party will fall into line in November after we’ve all been dosed with Kool-Aid. Well, maybe party members might. But as of two days ago, I am no longer a member of the “Misogynists for Barry” party. So, their assumptions of automatic votes is incorrect. As an “unaffiliated”, they are going to have to bust their balls to get my vote now. They should take nothing for granted. And I would advise the party to not go pinning the blame or responsibility for this on Hillary. She’s been a mensch for the party and I’m sure she would do anything for it. But voters *are* born with free will and Democrats never were like Republicans who blindly follow their leaders. Some of us do not respond well to peer pressure. It means we are less popular than we might otherwise be but we are at peace with our consciences. No, I know what abuse feels like and I won’t take it from a party. They have to get right with me not the other way around. The Dean Democrats are on their own. Good luck to them.

Now, a lot of you are starting to feel helpless, like the forces against you are too strong. Well, that’s the whole point of a haka. But there are things you can do. Here are Riverdaughter’s suggestions for fighting back, reprinted from Thursday:

1. If you live in a state that has already voted, re-register as an “unaffiliated” voter. Tear up your current voter’s registration card and mail it to the DNC with a little note to tell them that if they don’t resolve the FL and MI delegation issue immediately, they can not count on your vote now or in the future. Also, encourage them to push Hillary and Obama to form a joint ticket with Hillary on top as this is the only viable option for averting an electoral disaster in November. They created this rift in the party. It’s their responsibility to unify it. Not ours.
2. Have a news moratorium for the next two weeks. For the next week, turn off every network and cable news program and catch up on your gardening. Watch only C-Span. If you have TiVo or a DVR, the cable and satellite companies do disk diagnostics every night to determine what you’ve watched and they pass this info onto the networks for ad sales purposes. You will make an impact if you abstain for the next week.
3. Save your breakfast, lunch and dinner money and send it to Hillary. She can use the money to buy ads in the remaining states. The Big Boyz have been very effective in discouraging people from donating and volunteering for her. If you send in $10 and everyone reading this does the same, we can help refill her coffers. Also, one day of fasting will give you presence of mind and remind you of what is so important here. There are millions of Americans who are one paycheck away from insolvency, who have to use a food pantry every month to feed their families and these people are going to get written off by the “new coalition”.
4. Volunteer for Hillary in West Virginia and Kentucky if you live in one of those states or one of the surrounding states. Hell, you don’t even need to do much. Just go there and stand at the side of the road with a sign. If you can’t be there, make phone calls for her. Let the country know that you aren’t going down without a fight.

I’m going to be in central PA again today for my brother’s 40th birthday party. Tomorrow, he is off to a training school in GA for five months and after that, he’ll be shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan. This election is very important to me and I don’t want John McCain to be our next president. So, important that if I can do it, I may sneak over to WV on Sunday to hold up a sign at the side of the road. (This very much depends on time and logistics) I am very disturbed by reports that the Obama campaign or someone calling on its behalf are calling West Virginia voters to tell them the primary season is over and asking for donations for Barry’s campaign. But this is typical of Obama’s campaign. They have gotten as far as they have by suppressing Clinton voters in FL, MI, the caucuses and now WV and KY.

Obama is the weakest candidate that we could field this year and the Republicans are licking their chops that the Democrats are going to commit political suicide to appease snobby yuppies and AA voters who make up roughly 12% of the US population and whose strength as a voting block will be seriously diluted in November. If the Democratic party wants to play a stupid game of chicken with the women, working class, elderly, hispanic, gay voters and the REAL creative class voters that have been its loyal base, it had better be prepared to lose in November. Even with all of us onboard, Obama will lose. But maybe the party will learn something from this.

One final thing, Conflucians, there will be a lot of guilt tripping and meanness directed our way in the next couple of days. They are going to want to make us feel like traitors. Don’t give in. Now is the time to “choose something like a star to stay our minds on”. The counter haka only works if everyone sticks together. This is real unity.

It’s not over until the balloons drop in Denver.

also:

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD does a fearsome counter-haka.
Jeralyn writes about Hillary’s Take on the Electoral Map
Anglachel speculates in What if nobody comes to the revolution?

Michelle says: “I want to rip (Bill Clinton’s) eyes out.”

Yep, she really said it.

Then she said she was kidding.  Sort of like Al Franken’s “Kidding on the square”  In other words, she really meant it but she thought she could make it sound funny.

Hahahahah!

Ok, let me try it:

“I want to kick (Michelle’s) ass to the curb”

It was a joke.  Lighten up.

or

“I want to make (Michelle’s) teeth fall out.”

Kidding, KIDDING.  Can’t anyone take a joke?

Ok, you try.

In the Shorts (as it were)

Clinton a 3-1 favorite versus McCain. Obama a 10-1 underdog.

If your eyes are on me, you’re looking at country.*

It seems the MSM is going absolutely bonkers in trying to portray Hillary Clinton’s declaration of the obvious as playing the “race card”.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Now first of all, there is absolutely NOTHING racist in what she said. It happens to be a fact (as were her comments about LBJ/MLK that the Obama campaign used in their own race-baiting game). I suppose that by extension the AP must be racist because they were the ones that reported what she said in the first place.

Now the attention turns to West Virginia and Kentucky and the MSM/Obama nutroots/Obama campaign want to remind us just how racist those Appalachian hillbillies are.

May 9, 2008 — WASHINGTON - First it was Bill Clinton dismissing Barack Obama as just another black candidate winning South Carolina.

Now comes Hillary Rodham Clinton, splashing moonshine onto those smoldering embers by telling West Virginia voters that “hardworking Americans, white Americans” support her, not Obama.

Now isn’t Charles Hurt from the NY Post the clever one? With his headline “Desperate Hillbillies Threaten to Break Up Party” and his first few paragraphs, he managed to insult a former President, the junior Senator from New York, AND 21 million people in 13 different states.

See, it is perfectly alright to use derogatory, inflamatory, and prejudicial language against people, as long as they are poor white people who have a history of being looked down upon and pigeon-holed as “white-trash” and “rednecks”. And don’t even think about comparing them to African Americans. Apparently their fragile psyches (or at least those of the white people who pretend to speak for them) can’t possibly take the trauma.

I know what Appalachia is like. I grew up in Lenoir, NC, which is in Caldwell County in the western part of the state. I went to a High School that kept a box of shoes in the office because so many of my classmates didn’t have any, and they would have to dart quickly into the office in the morning to “borrow” a pair before the other kids saw them. I watched kids get off the bus on what seemed to me a deserted stretch of road and wander up the ravine (or holler, to the locals) to God knows what kind of home. These were not do-nothing lazy “hicks” either. Most of them worked for minimum wage in the furniture factories of Western NC/Eastern Tennessee.

Not only did I grow up in Appalachia NC, I went to college in Radford, VA, and I went to grad school in Kentucky, so for most of my life I have lived and worked in this area. Discrimination continues to be a problem, as noted by many academics:

The model of ethnicity has been applied in this paper to Appalachian natives. The problems suffered by Appalachians in terms of high dropout rates, institutional discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping are familiar to other ethnic minority groups. Yet because the majority of the population in Appalachia are racially indistinct from mainstream Americans, there is resistance to the notion of ethnic difference. This has significant repercussions.

One of the stereotypes of Appalachia is that they are all racist. In fact, people in Appalachia are not any more racist than the white population in general. During the lead up to the civil war, Appalachia tended to side with the abolitionist North. That is why West Virginia exists in the first place:

At the outset of the Civil War the northwestern counties of Virginia overwhelmingly opposed the state’s ordinance of secession (Apr. 17, 1861). Unable to halt Virginia’s secession from the Union, westerners in the state were quick to take advantage of a long-awaited opportunity for their own separation from Virginia. Protected by federal troops, delegates representing most of Virginia’s western counties met at Wheeling on June 11, 1861, and nullified the Virginia ordinance of secession, declared the offices of the state government at Richmond to be vacated, and formed the “restored government” of Virginia, with Francis H. Pierpont as governor.

Appalachian people have a history of poverty, discrimination, unequal access to education and jobs, and being pandered to by politicians. Sound familiar to anyone? In fact, they probably have more in common with most African Americans than the so called “creative class”. They also are typically hard working, committed to their families, and have a rich cultural heritage, also very much like the African American community. In my opinion it is the height of hypocrisy on the part of the white liberal blogger set to embrace one of these communities and reject the other. If not hypocrisy, then it is the blatant using of the African American community to reach their political goals. How very Machiavellian of them.

I want to point out that some of the language we are bound to see in the coming weeks, words like hillbilly, hick, white-trash, bubba, etc. are every much as hateful and bigoted as the n-word, and other derogatory ways of speaking about African Americans. We will see them, I would wager however, on the headlines of every prominent newspaper and MSM website being used with impunity.

I would like to add that my favorite daughter of Appalachia, Loretta Lynn, was not only an extraordinary singer/songwriter, she was also at the forefront of feminism. “The Pill” was banned from a lot of country music stations when it first came out in 1975, take a listen:

(note: I’m not sure what the video is about, but this was the only complete version of the song I could find on You Tube)

*Post title from “You’re Looking at Country” by Loretta Lynn.

Creative Class to Chris Bowers: Cease and Desist

Dear Mr. Bowers.
It has come to our attention that you are defaming the brand name of the “Creative Class”. We have checked our membership databases and can find no entry for Chrisopher J. Bowers. We, the members of the creative class, take our image very seriously and would ask you to please provide credentials to us immediately verifying your qualifications for membership. To qualify, please provide the following information:

Which division of the creative class are you applying to? Some examples of our authorized divisions include, biotech (subdivisions: chemistry, biology, pharmaceutical sciences, genomics, structural biology, fermentation engineering, electrophysiology) telecommunications, art, architecture and design, entertainment, (subdivisions: screenwriting, cinematography, editing, CGI special effects, sound engineering), computational sciences (subdivisions: hardware design, processor design, software, network design and implementation) (Blogging does not qualify), Green Sciences, alternative energy, low carbon footprint architecture (PhD not necessary but desirable.), library and information science, bearded Princeton professors of Economics

Which peer reviewed journals in the authorized divisions have your publications been accepted? Please provide citations.

Please list any patents or “records of invention” that you have achieved or are pending.

Divisions that do not qualify: writers of unintentional self-parody.

It should also be noted that geographical location near one of our creative class centers does not meet the criteria for automatic inclusion.

If your qualifications are acceptable, we will notify you by email. If you do not qualify, we must ask you to immediately cease and desist from referring to yourself as a member of our class. Your statements regarding our attitudes and political preferences are misleading and defamatory. In short, you are giving us a bad name.

One final note: apparently unbeknownst to you, we have now joined the ranks of the working class. This means that we frequently work with our hands as well as our heads. Should you still feel the desire to join our class, this is something you should keep in mind.

You attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance,
“Bubba” Riverdaughter “Bunker”

Are you telling me I’ve turned into a damned, dirty ape? *

We talked about the descent of Chris Bower last night in our open thread but, it’s a trend that goes beyond poor Chris (Donna Brazile kicked us all to the curb on election night on national TV). The Bower’s post defies parody — in fact to assure yourself that it isn’t self-parody — you might find yourself reading the whole thing. Excerpt follows:

So, unless Obama somewhat surprisingly does not become the next President of the United States, the Democratic Party will experience its first changing of the guard since the late 1980’s. What differences will be in store? Here are the three major changes I expect:

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism [sic], to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I dreamt about this damn post all night; stewing and steaming and muttering. I want to be a lady but, I find myself thinking in streams of expletives. Thankfully Anglachel came to the rescue. Her post, Revolution of the Saints, puts The Movement into historical perspective. Then it moves on to compare the two candidates and their vision of the role of the Democratic Party:

Hillary, in stark contrast, is ministerial in her approach. This is a job, it is the most demanding job in the world, and here are her credentials and body of work to demonstrate that she is the most competent and capable to fulfill the needs of the position. Minister in this sense would be both political and religious - someone who tends to the needs and concerns of the beloved community. It’s hands on, sleeves rolled up, get dirty helping raise the barn or negotiate that treaty. Power is present and necessary, wielded for the sake of others, which requires her to explain in as much detail as you want to hear exactly how she will use the authority granted to her. It is straight up attention to material interests.

What I see rising from the other side is clearly of two kinds. Half of Obama’s support is simply racial identity voting. The other half is from the faction of the party that is significantly insulated from the stark world of need and want. There is a love of the other-worldly where the beauty of the idea and the ideal matters more than the base. The political “base” is seen as base - low, uncouth, adulterated, impure, unworthy. They are not among the saved and the saints. I honestly cannot remember a previous time when so many people in the party were reviled for doing nothing except vote for a conventional candidate. These are not Naderites or Wallace supporters. They are middle-of-the-road solid Democrats who voted Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, Carter, and so on down the line. The contempt of the saints for the fallen has always been there, but is emerging without a filter or much in the way of self-consciousness this time. The code we learned to speak in our liberal arts colleges falls to the wayside, and I read claims of being rid of the old evil “white working class” (What of us who are not that thing? What of those of us who are?) in a final conflict to end all conflicts and there will be a purified party to which will flock millions of new, young, untainted followers, ready to be led into the land of Goshen.

Chris Bowers and Donna Brazile have made it clear: A vote for Obama is a vote against the poor. A vote for Obama is a vote against workers. A vote for Obama is a vote against good government. A vote for Obama is a vote against the future of the Democratic Party.
* Title stolen from a comment by Lori at Anglachel’s Journal