Dear Super Delegates: Find an excuse, ANY excuse

SD’s, this message is for you:

You wanna know why PUMAs exist?  It’s because we are f%&*(ing tired of losing every four years.  Seriously.  I’ve been a Democrat since the 60’s when my earliest memory consists of screaming, “it’s a free country!  I can say whatever I want!” across the playground.  But in all the years I have been elegible to vote, I’ve bet on the winner exactly twice, in 1992 and 1996.  Yep, in all of my adult life, I have seen the DNC and my party squander one opportunity after another.  First there was the competent but brutally honest Mondale.  Then there was the oddly unemotional, dweeby Dukakis.  I actually liked Gore, if not his rhetorical style.  Then came Kerry, who seemed like the honest Abe Lincoln sort, minus the brilliant mind.

In each case, the DNC seems to get caught off guard.  The RNC develops some ingenious wedge issue, points out some stupid little idiosyncracy of the candidate and voile!  $100 million later, the Democratic candidate is toast and we’re stuck with another Republican, raiding and pillaging his way through the treasury.

This year, I swear, Rove did his magic from within the party because we have become our own worst enemy.  Not only have we pitted gender against race with predictable results, but the party seems to have brought out the worst in itself complete with self-righteous, moralizing, values nannies who want to club us over the head with the teachable moment on race.  Do these people even know what party they’re in???  We’re DEMOCRATS.  We don’t DO the racist thing.  If the Dolores Umbrage types wanted to interrupt the most important election of our lifetime to lecture the country on racism, they should have waited until the General Election.  In the primaries, it’s just a frickin’ annoyance.  *We’re* the bright students, remember? Jeez!  Enough of that. I digress.

What’s worse is the way the Deaniacs have taken over the party.  Now, I have to admit that I actually used to hang out with these people.  (BTW, I cancelled my hotel reservation for Netroots Nation if anyone needs to snag one)  But I never understood the fascination that these people had for Howard Dean.  If anyone has ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink!, you’ll know what I am refering to when I say that my thin slice of Howard Dean was that he was and is a dilettante.  He dabbles.  He likes to play politics and theories and he’s an idea rat.  But his campaign in 2004 said to me “failure to stay on task”.  He’s an adult with ADD.  He’s bright at all get out but he can’t follow through.  And what we have with the party is the result of a bunch of nifty, keen ideas and absolutely no leadership.  It’s chaos x 10^23.

In a year when the party is hurting for money, some events in Denver have been cancelled in favor of fundraisers. But the party planning committee has gotten all high-maintenance with a list of food regulations for the catering staff including “no fried foods” and going so far as to specify colors.  Ooo, yeah, there’s some Rush Limbaugh material right there.  Why is it that the one time a delegate can get away from the fam and live it up, the party takes away the tempura shrimp in the sushi and makes extra sure you get your daily dose of beta carotene?  What is WRONG with these people?!  Do they think the bills in Denver are just going to magically pay for themselves?  And now they are renting Invesco Field for the Dauphin of Democracy’s Investiture?

But the biggest insult this year in a year of insults has to be the deliberate attempts to exclude half of the Democratic party from full participation at the convention.  Let me give it to you straight, SD’s, this is a catastrophic strategy and just plain stoopid.  You may not want to admit to it because it’s like finally facing up to the fact that you’ve spent way too much on vacation and you’re afraid to look at your bank balance.  But look you must.  The party is being ripped asunder.  In any other year, Barack Obama would have faded away like Dennis Kucinich.  He’s a great idea but there’s no way he can possibly win.  He just doesn’t have the institutional investment yet.  He hasn’t had time to learn the legislative ropes or form coalitions of his own or work on any policy to achieve expertise.  He’s a big fat zero except that his skin color makes him unique.  But let us not fool ourselves.  The symbolism of his historic candidacy is not going to be sufficient to overcome all of his flaws, not in the general election.  And the reason I know this is because, the party has jettisoned the people it needs the most to make him competitive- the so-called “Old Coalition”.  Do you think we are going to “get over it” before November?  You can have the oldest opponent on the planet, an opposing party that is as discredited as can be and a sycophantic media (for now), but without half of your party, it is going to be a nail biter.  And we’ve seen how nail biter’s have gone in the past 8 years.  Couple that with the fact that the half you pissed off is ready to vote for the other guy and you have another lost election.

Did I mention how PUMAs are sick of losing?

Now, I don’t know what you have against Hillary.  And I don’t know what made you guys think that we were all just going to fall into line like Republicans.  But you’ve gotten a lot wrong this year.  Forcing Obama down our throats during the convention is going to backfire, HUGELY.  In fact, considering the number of votes Hillary got, to have anything less than a knock-down-drag-out floor fight is going to be a disaster.  Forget what David Axelrod, Donna Brazile, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean are telling you.  Throw out the old models of what you expect voters to do in the fall.  You cannot take that kind of risk.  There is too much uncertainty.  And if the general election voters detect that you are not serious about winning in the fall, in a year when gas is creeping towards $5/gal, the war in Iraq drags on, there is a financial crisis looming and a million other things that affect the average Joe after 8 years of George Bush, the party as we know it will be dead.  There goes YOUR institutional power.

Forget what the power brokers tell you or what the Teaparty Ten tell you about how uncomfortable and destructive a floor fight will be.  At this point it is the only thing that will save you.  If Obama can win it legitimately in a fair, open and transparent convention, the party will emerge more unified after the convention.  If the party feels that Hillary is the better candidate, well, Obama either takes VP or an old, cold tater and waits for his turn, as he *should* have done before his ego was inflated to go for it this year.

But as Mark Rubin suggested yesterday, you may feel you are in a bit of a bind.  How do you go against the perception that Barack Obama is the party’s nominee without looking like complete suckers?  Hey, I don’t care what you guys choose as the excuse to knock Obama down and level the playing field between him and Hillary.  FISA sticks in our craw quite a bit.  Why not go with that?  Jesse Jackson made a good point about Obama using Republican campaigning rhetoric by overemphasizing morals to the detriment of economic issues. Maybe one of you might want to call him out for being a closet Republican and start calling loudly for his nuts.  If you start musing publicly about how unlikeable his arrogance is and if you slip in a few words in favor of Hillary in there, where’s the harm?  I don’t care what excuse you use, just find one.

And get rid of Donna Brazile while you’re at it.

Did I mention how PUMAs are sick of losing?