Thursday: Amok Time

The world continues to be in a state of flux.  Stock markets are down again.  It seems that even with all the new cash flowing into the banks, the bankers are reluctant to lend.

The debate last night was “lively”, or so says the New York Times, which seems to be reluctantly giving the edge to John McCain.

Senator John McCain was in a groove early in the presidential debate on Wednesday night, looking Senator Barack Obama in the eye and chiding him over taxes, over his backbone in standing up to Democrats and over the Obama campaign’s portrayal of Mr. McCain as the second coming of George W. Bush.

It looked like Mr. McCain might, just might, raise the level of his game in throwing Mr. Obama off his — Mr. McCain’s essential goal 20 days before the election, as he seeks a comeback in the face of declining poll numbers in battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Virginia.

That’s as far as the praise went.  In the next paragraph, Healy starts up the narrative about how “angry” and “tetchy” McCain was.

But it is some of us in the blogging community that are getting tetchy.  Some of us are starting to lose our nerve.  It’s disconcerting to be a committed, progressive Democrat who absolutely can’t stand her own party nominee.  It makes one question one’s loyalties and commitments.  We’ve witnessed some of our friends going nova in our emails in a most spectacular way.  It seems to be a case of rationalization that if we at The Confluence can’t get behind Barry and are simply stating some uncomfortable truths, that we must not be progressive anymore.  This is not the case.  We aren’t losing our religion.  We’re standing our ground.  We are not rewarding the bad behavior of the party that cut 18 million voters out of the decision making process and awarded the nomination to a man with no experience or qualifications but who has a knack for eliminating his opponents in underhanded and devious ways.

He has ruined Hillary Clinton’s political career. It is time we faced up to this fact.  She could run again but doing it a second time will be very difficult.  A lot of people supported her and donated money to her only to see her undermined by her own party.  It was just too close, too heartbreaking to want to experience that again.  We don’t really understand the dynamics about why the party turned on her in the first place, at least not completely.  Obama decided to run and he wasn’t too concerned whether he was ready or whether Hillary was the better candidate.  He exercised his male prerogative to go for it and the rest of the party fell in line.  The rest of the country may be ready for a female president but it is becoming more and more obvious that the party is not.

This reality doesn’t make me want to give up, however.  It makes me want to deliver a blow to the party in November that is so powerful that they get the message.  It’s wrong to turn on your voters.  It’s wrong to manipulate primary election results.  It’s wrong to allow one of your party loyalists to be trashed in the media by sexism and misogyny.  It’s wrong to allow racism to be used as a weapon.  It’s wrong to allow your nominee to ditch the party brand name to reach out to appeal to evangelical voters.  So much of what has gone on this year in the party is reactionary and corrupt that we can not let it go unchecked or we will lose the only organization we have for standing up for those Democratic principles we cherish.

So, to those of you who are wrestling with your consciences and are looking for someone to blame for your discomfort, don’t point your fingers at us who have the courage of our convictions.  Take a look at the superdelegates who abandoned us, and their own party’s values, for a man who threatens to call them racists if they don’t fall in line.  A man who treats his party and his party’s voters with so little respect deserves no one’s vote.

Heidi Li has a new ad from Democrats for Principle before Party.  She’s closing in on her fundraising goal.  Let’s give her some help.  You can donate here.