It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Er, scratch that. It’s been used before. But surely, ladies and gentleman, you will have never seen a bigger miscarriage of justice since Bush vs. Gore than the DNC hearing that stripped Florida of its delegates. You may want to procure a strong drink or a xanax (but not both together) before you sit down for the next 80 minutes to view this classic of having every opportunity to avoid Murphy’s Law but diving headlong into it anyway. Here is the egregious piece of footage: Florida Democratic Primary Election Hearing of the DNC
(Didn’t it occur to anyone in that room that this was being recorded for posterity? I’m betting some of them regret having ever encouraged technology.)
And this piece of footage is of Howard Dean on This Week with George Stephanopolous (thanks to Katiebird) trying to justify excluding Florida because it broke the RULZ and wouldn’t have a caucus with a total of 150,000 ballots for all 4 million Floridian Democrats who were eligible to vote. It just warms the cockles of your spleen.
All that is left now it to re-erect La Guillotine and to escort Donna Brazile and pals to it in a trundle of their own making.
Filed under: Democratic Party, Denver Convention, Florida primary, Presidential Election 2008 | Tagged: DNC hearing, Donna Brazile, Florida, Howard Dean, off with their heads |
The Confluence 
I watched about 20 minutes of it and then the video stopped working for me. Do you think Donna Brazille is the one who really made it happen, or was it a group decision? These people are not only stupid but also nuts. They all deserve to be fired, and when Hillary moves into the WH, Howard Dean will be finished along with his syncophantic crew of imbeciles.
What the hell were they thinking?
Are Dean, Brazile and Co. really just GOP moles sent to sabotage our party?
Cuz if they are, they’re doing a hell of a job.
They are just trying to manipulate us simple folk. Screw that!
I just posted this below, but if the DNC wants to penalize FL for the earlier date, I think they ought to rethink it simply based on the reason the democrats in the state legislature voted for the move.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/09/foxnews-sunday-debbie-wasserman-schultz-rejects-brit-humes-framing/
or maybe I’m being too simplistic…
Didn’t Dean say the other day that Brazile was the one responsible for the total elimination of MI and FLA delegates (versus a reduction of 50%?)
BB: This was a group decision, I think. It sounds like there were various excuses given for why they were going to do this but there is no doubt that that is what they were going to do. And I think the suggestion for a caucus for Florida with a total of 150,000 ballots is the key. I think the caucuses had been planned waaaaaay in advance as having the best chance of defeating La Clinton. Recently, the DFA has come out in strong support of Obama. Now, they don’t say, “We are the official GOTV arm of the Obama campaign” but that’s only because they are being coy. Arranging a caucus haka sounds like just the kind of thing Jim Dean’s group would wade into.
SO, here you have a perfect storm of caucuses planned that were going to be flooded by the Anti-Clinton DFA types AND an unfortunate state caught between Republicans and a hard place. Sooo easy to bully them into a caucus. Because, what’s the alternative? Why, no delegates at all. It’s just too tempting. Oh, maybe some of them didn’t realize they were being used. Maybe they were told that their states were being dissed because Florida jumped ahead. But the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Donnal Brazile and others were taking advantage of a nice little opportunity to either get Florida for its own candidate (as long as it wasn’t Clinton) or shutting it out.
Well, the jig is up. Time to cut the crap and reinstate Florida with full delegates. I don’t want to hear about the RULZ anymore.
I am sorry this is off topic, but I hope that it gives you a chuckle amid all this tension.
Today, I remembered an old story of Bill Clinton when he was a new president. It went like this. Bill liked to talk about poll results indicating that two thirds of Americans thought Hillary is smarter than he is. Then he’d say, I don’t know how the other one third has missed it.
bostomboomer: “These people are not only stupid but also nuts.” Donna Brazil nut.
Date Obama & Marry Clinton. Just wanted to get that out of the way and add that I believe Obama is in no way capable of winning this election.
Anyhoo, I’m flummoxed by all this pro-Obama strong-arming from Dean, Kerry, Kennedy, Richardson, Dodd, et al.
Is it envy? Those guys are all failed Presidential candidates (FPCs for short). I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of that fact. Clinton doesn’t have the endorsement of any guys who are failed presidential candidates does she? She has Ferraro, but that’s not quite the same. Other motives: misogyny is also most certainly in play. But that’s only the top layer stuff, I wonder what’s really going on deep down.
Is it possible that the FPCs are considering the long term interests of the party. Perhaps, there’s a belief that the Democratic Party will lose African American support for good, if Obama is not the nominee. Maybe they believe that the electorate is too divided to get behind either nominee, so the nominee may as well be Obama.
*Or is there some even more cynical motivation? Maybe they don’t even want to win the ’08 election. So nominating Obama is a two-fer.
Why would the FPCs want to take a pass on ’08? Maybe they don’t want a Democratic President to be responsible for ending the Iraq war. Ford ended Vietnam, but the Democratic Party somehow still got the blame. Maybe they think the economy is going to totally tank (as Krugman believes) and they don’t want that to happen on their watch. Maybe they want people to see the wheels completely fall off the GOP machine, till we’re rioting in the streets for a change of party. I don’t like this scenario but it’s the only way I can make any sense of their motives.
The Democratic leadership doesn’t want to win in ’08. Any thoughts on this?
I wonder if they decided to strip the delegates in advance so they could have control over those two states’ votes when the time came to actually choose a candidate, so they could be sure skewing the election towards whoever they favoured.
So if Hillary had lost Florida and Michigan they’d have made sure that the votes counted and the delegates seated but as she’s won they’re making sure they aren’t. By imposing the penalty far in advance meant that the DNC gave themselves a say in an election they aren’t supposed to have a say in. Basically the DNC in the form of people like Donna Brazile and Howard Dean have decided to take over the people of Florida and Michigan’s voting rights and use them for their own ends.
Mark Penn is out – anyone else catch the news or was on an earlier post?
riverdaughter–
Thanks for your astute analysis. I think I’ve moved past anger at this point. I’m disgusted with these people, but the solution is to beat them at their own game. It’s clear we are having an effect or the calls for Clinton to quit wouldn’t have been walked back. We can still beat them and get Hillary as our nominee. The more sunlight that is shed on these creepy machinations by the DNC, the more the voters are going to rise up and refuse to be played by Dean and Brazile.
ufa–
Donna Brazile nut. Good one–made me laugh. I totally missed that when I wrote it down.
daria g–
Have you heard any details about the Penn firing?
anne: I believe it’s called a coup d’etat and yes they have done it. And if Mark Penn can be fired, why not Howard?
Anne, I made a similar comment earlier today on another blog. I live in Detroit, and I know darn well that Obama’s supporters wouldn’t have run ads encouraging voting “uncommitted” as a vote for him if they hadn’t hoped to count the votes – until Clinton got a clear majority.
The deification of the rules over justice baffles me. After all, 150 years ago “the roolz” allowed black people to be bought and sold as slaves and Native Americans to be slaughtered or herded onto reservations. 100 years ago “the roolz” allowed women to be denied the vote and landlords and employers to keep poor immigrants in abysmal living and working conditions. As little as 50 years ago, “the roolz” allowed black and other minority groups to be disenfranchised and otherwise discriminated against in many parts of the country.
I always considered it the goal of progressives to bring “the roolz” – i.e.,, the laws – more in line with justice for all people in this country. It seems not this year.
(Do they not realize there’s going to be a huge picket line in Denver over MI/FL if this doesn’t get resolved? For the world to see on CNN? Seriously.)
We need to make our feelings known to the Democratic Party. If you have not e-maild, then please do so.
I think the party has taken women for granted for too long. I will not be appeased. I will not forget.
If Hillary is not the nominee, I will be writing her name in, and I live in PA, a state that the Democrats need.
Pie Hole- You’ve raised perhaps the key reason why so many old-guard pols, including failed presidential candidates, now support Obama. His alleged newness, while in some nominal sense a reproach to them, really is their ultimate ass-covering: the didn’t lose, and mess up the party, because they sucked…they just weren’t new and magical enough! That’s way less embarrassing. Clinton’s success mocks them, in their small minds, and they can’t have that.
Rich, thanks for your response.
But, am I bonkers for suggesting (upstream) that the Democratic establishment may not even want to win in ’08?
don’t know anything much about Penn leaving. bloggers hate him, bloggers happy he’s out – do I care? eh.. I feel like I never trusted the stuff I read about him in the first place and don’t know what is really going on in the Clinton camp. I also seem to notice a big reason blog commenters despise him is that he is not.. very svelte or good looking on TV? and they have built up some story of him being, let’s see, an idiot, strategic disaster, racist, tool, etc. I have no idea what it’s based on. I mean, I’m sure there are arguments against him that are based on something, but I’m sure I never found out what that something was from the blogs.
Pie Hole: I have a hard time believeing they want to deliberately want to lose, although they may have a secret death wish that merits some substantial time in therapy.
No, I think some of them looked back on the past 8 years and listened to the seductive whisperings of the right wing media that Hillary Clinton would unite the right and they bought it. Yes, in spite of all we have learned about how nasty the rightwing scream machine is and all tha we know about the mechanisms it uses to maintain power, they bought it hook, line and sinker. Perhaps there was a bit of “Oh, but she’s just a girl. After awhile, she’ll just crumple from the relentless attacks and we can’t have that image as a standard bearer for our party. How would it look for national defense?”
So, they stupidly latch on to the sexy, charismatic guy with no paper trail. Yeah, that’s the ticket, And he’s so ambitious that we’ll just gift him the coalitions he needs and he’ll OWE us. Wow! The thought of that must have given them all erections that losing their own contests robbed them of. Well, now they have their chance, Kerry and Kennedy can both be secret presidents, Pelosi can finally ditch Steny and Howard Dean looks like a fricking genius for robbing two states, and by extension all the other Clinton states of their strength. he’s a little like Delilah who is cutting off Samson’s hair.
Not really a good idea because we all know how that ended.
another thought is that obama’s inexperience makes him easy to control.. it worked with bush. they may be wanting a front-man who really won’t be making the decisions, as the republicans have had.
they won’t get that with hillary.
Pie Hole: Nah, they think Obama can win, and I think he can win too. To me he’s an unwatchable bag of hot air leavened with unprecedented vanity, but a lot of folks are smitten with him, and many more feel boxed into supporting him because they’ve been told that opposing him is the mark of Every Bad Thing.
daria g: I have to agree with you there. No matter how repulsive Penn was to the Big Boyz, it didn’t make Joe Trippi or David Azelrod any more palatable to me. As for success or failure, sure they overlooked the caucus states. Up until this year, they were sure losers. The Dems are never going to win Utah and Idaho. But Penn nabbed her NY, NJ, MA, CA, TN, MI, FL, OH, TX, AZ and a lot of other states. Most notably the big and swing states. Actually, his job is done. No need for him to stick around.
But was he worse than the others? ehhhhhhh, not so much.
Rich in PA: I don’t think he can win the nomination. I may be an outlier but when it all comes down to it, I think the superdelegates are going to look at the whole thing like a big pensieve and they are going to say, “Hey, I know I said I’d go with Obama, butcha know what? We can’t afford to piss off FL, NJ, MI and NY. No, I don’t think so. They’re going to hate me back home but I gotta give it to Clinton.”
Watch for it. When they see us fuming and as mad as hell over FL and MI, they are going to start looking for excuses to dump Obama. Count on it.
What role if any did moveon’s support play in BO’s campaign? Besides George Soros’ money and influence did his campaign gain any type of grassroots organization that helped his cause?
Riverdaughter, I’m loving this thread. To state the obvious, your response(s) make a lot of sense to me. The DNC big dawg, political-suicide pact is a theory that I want to be wrong about.
So, you’re saying the FPCs (failed Presidential candidates) et al, want to force Hillary out now; before they get to the end-game, where they’ll have to reverse course and nominate her because she has all that support from the big blue states. That explains a lot.
Are you passing that insight around in the general blogosphere? it needs to be heard far and wide.
Question: do you think the Democratic establishment is getting worried that Obama can’ t win?
I’m thinking people should watch the video and then let the DNC know what they think…
this gives ’em a big ol’ shiner… what a mess!
Donna Brazile wax – when the DNC yanks all the delegates off a state in one move.
I just got home from a nice dinner, and I am already about to throw up after watching the DNC video.
Thank Heaven I have BTD @ Talkleft speak clearly and coherently for me:
Amen!
Just came across this great Salon article by Sean Wilentz:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/07/hillary/index.html
If the system made sense, Clinton would be far ahead
He is great.
Am I the only one who can’t get that DNC video to run? It has no play button for me, and clicking on the other buttons does nothing.
litigatormom, it’s a flash video. Do you have flash enabled on your browser? Have you tried it on another browser? I have to switch between IE & Firefox for somethings. Especially since a recent Firefox update — some things don’t work at all anymore.
My browser is IE. I clicked on the help button and it said I needed RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, both of which I have. I know I am going to sound like an idiot, but I’m not sure what a flash player is.
I think that’s completely weird. It says on the pop up window that it’s C-Span Video Player Beta. And that box with the help link clearly says Flash. And there is no sign that it’s using Windows Media Player or Real Player. So that help is useless.
How about this Flash Video Player You could try installing it in case you don’t have it.
Ghost, I liked that story. It was an interesting idea. Funny how all the Heads Exploded on reading it. Did you read the letters? Almost like a progressive blog!
I let my paid subscription to Salon lapse in November. I couldn’t take it anymore even then.
katiebird: Did you tell Salon why? I’ll probably do the same.
I did tell them. Didn’t get any response – and I’ve subscribed since about 6 months after they started the premium thing.
It was last November though so I don’t remember exactly what I said. Were they already in Obama’s pocket?
pie hole: isn’t there a football term called rushing the kicker? Yeah, I think they are trying to lock in Obama before the nomination so that the SDs won’t reneg on him in public. They lock him in before too much messiness makes him look like a bad choice. Oops, too late now, Clinton has already conceded. Well, I guess we’ re stuck with Obama going into the GE. Everybody better rally around. The more urgent they make it, the more we should drag our heels. I want it to go to the convention. The longer the better. And that is precisely why Dean wants to wrap this up by July based on pledged delegate counts. I don’t think I’m the only one to figure this out. It’s Markos’ reason for being these days. The sooner we wrap this up the better. But I freely acknowledge that I have only a small piece of the puzzle. There are still many missing pieces.
hir,
But give this story a read. Sean Wilentz is one of the good guys.
and I’ve subscribed since about 6 months after they started the premium thing.
Same here.
It was last November though so I don’t remember exactly what I said. Were they already in Obama’s pocket?
Pretty much. I started getting annoyed w/ Salon a while back — too much dipping into blogs for content. TT is a dump.
I think that it’s a case of old money marrying new – the gene pool needs some new material and if Kerry/Kennedy can claim Obama as theirs, then their legacy is refurbished as well. They’re all invested in finding ways to burnish their losses. There were two models for running – the Clinton model and the high-minded Dem model. They all rejected the Clinton model but If Obama wins, then they win. Because the high-minded Dem wins. Even though he isn’t terribly high-minded. But she’s Clinton so he must be high-minded. And if Clinton wins, then it’s proof they lost and we can’t have that because they’re high-minded Dems. Unlike the Clintons – one of which has sex on a regular basis. Still. Nothin’ high-minded about that. Anyway, two Clintons in a row winning would be very bad for the people who have screwed our country and party for the past eight years. And proof that they fucked up. And we all know high-minded people like Patrick Leahy (can you believe it? I agree with Dick Cheney on something) and John Kerry don’t fuck up.
Over at Talk Left, the adorable BTD linked to the most pathetic diary from Meteor Blades I’ve ever read on Kos. To quote Bill Murray, the man has no dick. Seriously.It’s this whole self-important Kleenex weight meander about how he’s met Bill, but he’s never met Hillary but he wants her to know that he went to see her speak in LA and she was wonderful although he disagreed with her on some things. But now, sadly, he has to tell her the horrible, horrible truth. Not that he’s a misogynist or anything like that, but he needs you to know, that it’s his unfortunate duty to join the 12,592 other diariests at Kos and PLEAD with her that she must drop out. because, well, obama can’t do it. Oh yes. Oh, the pity of it. He wants to be honest – he has endorsed Obama, but that has nothing to do with this – so don’t go there. He confesses he hasn’t been as diligent in protesting the muck as he should have been and he apologizes for that. But for the sake of the children – YES, THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN – including Chelsea and his own daughter Tiffany Vanilla Cherry Dawn Hot Cross Buns (who are just a year a part, don’t ya know), Hillary must step aside. It’s her duty. Oh, it’s true he likes much of her platform but she’s weak on foreign policy stuff – and Obama, he’s just sooooooo dreamy. Now, if the situ was reversed and obama didn’t have even a 30/70 chance (as Clinton doesn’t now) of winning, he would be calling on him to drop out. Even though he endorsed Obama. And you know what, if Hillary would just leave the contest, EVERYONE COULD UNITE BEHIND OBAMA! Wow! Wow! Wow! And every day Clinton stays in is ANOTHER DAY FOR MCCAIN!!!
Here’s the end:
And where we are is caught in an unresolved contest whose ultimate results – four weeks or four months from now – are all but inevitable. As a fellow blogger by the name of Kid Oakland wrote in a most excellent essay a few days ago, Senator, right now is a Clinton moment. Right now you can have an instantaneously positive impact on the coming general election that will never again be as powerful. You can seize the moment, today, tomorrow, early next week, and give the Democratic nominee an edge in November. Or you can hang in there and hamstring us. Please. Acknowledge what you know to be so. Every day you wait is a day for John McCain.
It’s an entire diary of public masturbation – porn for Obamaphiles. All this flailing, groping around and there is no place for him to go with it. It’s not rotted in anything genuine. Just in this self-serving, anxiety ridden, obviously having no fun, masturbation – honestly, I have no idea what to call it.. I did not know we had so many pathetically scared Democrats in this party. I don’t know what to say about it. And if this post isn’t acceptable, please feel free to delete. I’m just absolutely mystified as to how an adult could ever publish anything so flaccid.
Oh, remember, Meteor Blades has no dick. That’s one thing that i can say with certainty.
I just watched the DNC hearing on the Florida primary.
http://tinyurl.com/6jco3w
Democrats in FL get punked by the Republican legislature, and then Dean, Brazile and Pelosi kick them to the curb. With a history of voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, this act of “punishing” Florida and Michigan seems like a calculated rebuke to those who dared not follow the rules of the DNC. This is the first I am hearing that Nevada and South Carolina were chosen to go earlier based on an afirmative action plan (Nevada for Latino voters and South Carolina for Black voters) So, based on not complying with the affirmative action rule of the DNC (how moving a primary date defies that is hard to imagine) and based on the desire to give candidates the opportunity to conduct “retail politics” in the states before February 5th, Florida and Michigan broke the rules.
I’ve lived in Florida. During the last Presidential election I got three calls telling me that the primary was moved to another date. That was a lie. Who made those calls? I don’t know. I don’t live in Florida now but I can tell you that the polls were open. No one stopped anyone from voting in the Florida primary. People obviously thought their votes were going to count. Otherwise why did the Democratic Party accept the ballots? Same as in Michigan. So we’ve managed to disenfranchise both not only Blacks and Latinos, but everypne else as well in two states where the majority of Democratic voters are neither Black or Latino. Does anyone not get how truly messed up that is?
http://tinyurl.com/3ksfge
“Our nation is a great cathedral of votes — votes not only for Congress and for president, but also votes on Supreme Court decisions and on countless juries. Votes govern the boards of great corporations and tiny charities alike. Visibly and invisibly, everything runs on votes. And every vote is nothing but a piece of nonviolence.”
How ironic that because of Michigan and Florida not being counted either as how they voted, or revoted in a primary. I guess Dean and Brazile believe they can install Obama as the nominee with little if any repercussions. Wow. The only thing that will make this process legitimate is if it goes to the convention.
Re: Meteor Blades: Jesus Christ! I read that post and I literally had to walk away from my laptop. I felt like I was losing my damn mind. Why can’t Obama fucking win this? How the hell would her dropping out help him? Her leaving won’t immunize him against legitimate criticism. Quite the contrary; it’ll hurt him since CDS is the only thing he ever had going for him (No, I refuse to buy the lie that he’s a talented, charming politician because it’s pure media propping that have created that allusion; he’s exposed as a fumbling neophyte when someone dares to ask more than 8 questions).
Calling a candidate to leave in such a dead-heat race has never happened in the history of modern politics. It’s beyond bizarre. It’s disturbing. She’s our only chance in the GE. That they can’t even realize that is all you need to know whether to take any of their bullshit seriously.However, they are doing a hell of a job creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Meteor Blades and Kid Oakland make me want to barf. They didn’t have the guts to stand up and say “no” to the relentless trashing of Sen. Clinton on that site. They could have, but they didn’t. I asked them both to take a stand, and caught MB quietly uprating stronger comments objecting to the baseless accusations that the Clintons are racist, but he never stepped up.
Now they’re wringing their hands and pleading with her to drop out because, well, the scorched-earth tactics of Obama’s team didn’t get it done, so now they’re expressing their sincere concern for the well being of the party and wanting everyone to make up and get along? Hahahaha. I love especially when MB says, this is a Clinton moment. I heard that argument before from the odious Howard Fineman, that if Hillary had the slightest bit of imagination, she’d drop out. She can win their precious respect and admiration by seizing what they say is HER moment, eg, by quitting so their candidate can win? What a joke. How stupid do they think we are?
Somehow I find the nature of this argument more infuriating than any of the personal attacks. It just reeks.
Lori,
You are funny. Now I’m going to have to go over and read that stupid MB post. I was disgusted with him before Ieft DK too. What at sell out he turned out to be!
katiebird, thanks for the link, I will try to install and play the video.
re: Meteor Blades’ diary: MB is clearly hoping that someone from the Obama campaign will read that diary, call him, arrange for MB to spend a day with the Obama campaign, at the end of which he will receive a visit from Obama Himself and will be given the power to fly.
OMG! That Meteor Blades diary is pathetic. I wonder if he will wake up someday and realize how low he has sunk. And check this out:
“For a variety of reasons, Senator Obama may not be able to win. He may stumble on his own, the right-wing smear machine abetted by the media may trip him up, left-over acrimony from within the Democratic Party itself may be his undoing, the votes of racists may be just enough to tip the scales unfavorably. Who can say? I’m certainly not one who’ll suggest he’s going to ride a magic carpet to November 4. But, you know, all those vulnerabilities, except race, are yours as well, and you’ve got misogyny against you. In other words, in the general election, a toss-up.”
Now they are OK with Obama being nominated even if he can’t win. Of course they’d blame in on Clinton even if she did drop out. MB cannot actually believe what he wrote. Hillary is going to be a much stronger candidate than Barack, and she can stand up to the noise machine. He’s already shown that he can’t. I couldn’t read the comments on that diary–too pitiful. The DK crowd has turned into a bunch of whiners. They want to win by default instead of fighting the fight.
Pathetic.
Lori – I loved your comments about Meteor Blade’s post. Before I go to work in the morning, I check the blogs. ( Confluence, Talkleft, No Quarter, Taylor Marsh and a couple of others. ) I don’t know a lot about the cast of characters at kos, so when I read a comment by Meteor Boy and his ilk, I’m stunned.
This morning after I read Meteor Blender’s rambling, incoherent typing, I too had to step away from the laptop. Clearly I am too old (56!) to understand what’s going on in the world.
Lori, thanks a million for helping me with my senior moment. Thank you to ALL of you for being here.
I have found my people!
Reading some of the diarists at Orange for the past many months has been like watching someone have a breakdown. Elements of their personality become magnified, thought processes wander around aimlessly, anger suddenly shifts to whining. Some of the diarists have always been annoying and cloying, but now are truly sounding disturbed. Since almost everyone has left that would talk back and disagree, the echo chamber is starting to go into their heads. As we all know, it is really bad for you if you are never told no. I doubt that any of them read anything that is not Obamaganda, thus they are loosing touch in many cases.
Coup d’etat is right Riverdaughter.
This noise about the rules and the appearance of them shooting themselves in the foot to punish Florida and Michigan is a smokescreen. Who makes the rules? They do. Who enforces the rules? They do. Who can decide to change the rules if they want? They can. They can do whatever they want and they are deciding not to let those votes count in order to let Obama win.
I’m actually watching this race from the UK. I’ve never been so interested in a US general election, mainly because of the level of blatant cheating going on this time. There was a piece on one of our TV news programmes back in November about Obama, this wonderful new candidate who was supposedly appealing to the grassroots (even though it was the media promoting him) and I immediately thought, “he’s the stop Hillary candidate”. Hillary would have a huge advantage in the election being a woman up against whatever old white man the Republicans put up so the only person who was going to be able to mount a real challenge to her would be a black man – so the Democratic powers that be, knowing for years that she was planning on running, found Obama, got him to speak at the opening of the 2004 Democratic Convention in order to seed Democrats’ minds with the idea of a possible Obama presidency and have been clearing his path to power ever since, including stealing Florida’s and Michigan’s votes to help him.
What they don’t seem to have factored in is that there will be a backlash from ordinary voters. Maybe they saw how easy it was for Bush to steal the election in 2000 though, and thought they’d give it a try anyway.
Donna Brazile IS Eric Cartman.
“Respect mah authoritah!”