Thursday: Walk it back, Dr. Dean

There is a reason why PUMA is going viral.

There is a reason why Latinos are threatening to defect to McCain.

There is a reason why Fundraisers are vowing to starve the DNC beast.

There is a reason why perfectly ordinary non-politico, non-blogger voters are approaching me at company picnics to tell me they will never vote for Obama.

Not after the RBC hearing. Not after the screaming for Hillary to get out before the primaries were over. Not after the pressure on her to release her delegates before the convention. Not after the attempt to stifle her voice at the convention at all. Or calling her and her supporters racists. Or bitches. Or stupid, old, uneducated women. Or bitter working class rubes.

It’s called betrayal.

One of the things that got me suspended from DailyKos is that I wrote a diary about how the Obama supporters were behaving like a bunch of jihadis. Maybe that diary had some traction or the behavior is more noticeable now but I’ve heard and read others refer to them in that way as well. The attitude is you will submit or will be crushed. No dissent is tolerated. There is only one candidate and Obama is his name.

And here is where Howard Dean and Donna Brazile are running into problems: The party has never been an authoritarian one. The Democrats are legendary for being unable to corral its members. It is easier to herd cats than control the members of the Democratic party. Party unification for uscan not be a top down decree. This isn’t the Unification Church and Howard Dean is no Reverend Sun Yung Moon.

What we have here is Movement Obamaism, no less destructive to the Democratic party than Movement Conservatism was to the Republican party. It is an amalgamation of different factions that does not have core Democratic principles as its center. What it looks like to the typical Democrat, that loyal party stalwart, is a takeover. I don’t think Obama or his enablers would disagree with this. But they have picked the wrong party. Their analysis of demograhic trends may show younger people as considerably more tractable and more enthusiastic about following RULZ, but these people do not typically join the Democratic party. There is a reason why we have a two party system. The Republicans are into maintaining the status quo, evolving slowly, uniformity, discipline and party above individuality. The Democrats are more like the G*d Damn Independents, free thinkers who come together around their principles, not mandates. Coming together for us can not be forced. It must be based on consensus.

That is not what we have witnessed this year. What we have seen is heavy-handed, Republican inspired authoritarian tactics applied to OUR party. It was as if Dean, Axelrod, et al had a meeting and concluded, “Well, it worked so well for the Republicans, let’s see if it works on the Democrats!” The results have been predictable. The party is roughly split in half with the slightly larger half going to the losing candidate. That is the true Democratic party. Right now, they have been betrayed. They always knew that there was skullduggery but never have they seen it displayed so obviously and against themselves. And the superdelegates who were created to prevent this kind of thing from happening are going along to get along.

The party has betrayed us. It has sought to manipulate us and when that didn’t work, it used brute force. The party and its presumptuous nominee are failures. They miscalculated, cynically using the tools of authoritarianism against us and we will have none of it.

Walk it back, Dr. Dean. Better get Obama to stop ignoring those of us he *thinks* he has in his pocket so that he can be free to pursue the religious right. The number of trolls on our site has increased many fold and the messages are all carefully crafted to elicit the correct response but we’re not buying it. We know what’s going on here. You can pretend we aren’t needed but your messages to us say otherwise.

Better start fixing this problem before the convention because afterwards, our hearts will be hardened and we will follow our consciences in the voting booth. And from what I’ve been hearing, no one this year is inclined to reward a traitor.

This song goes out to all you sweeties. We know what you’re going through. But we’re not going to sign onto Obama without making him earn it. We do not subscribe to the “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” philosophy of the current Democratic “leadership”. Too bad for you. Whether you like it or not, you gotta marry us before we put out.