Good morning, all!  It’s been another busy week in the suburban jungle.  Epiphany was two days ago and we missed it.  But we have had many epiphanies over the past couple of years about the Democratic party, Barack Obama and what they were up to.  We were right more often than not.  We never would have dreamed in a million years that the party would actually have the chutzpah to dump 18 million voters using the FL and MI disenfranchisement mechanism.  But it did.  Everything else that followed from that was entirely predictable.

So, I’m going to open Epiphany weekend for The Confluence.  Over the next couple of days, we’ll dredge up the muck that we saw and from which we made entirely rational extrapolations about what kind of president Barack Obama was likely to be.  You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.  All you had to do is work with the evidence at hand.  It was all right there if you cleared the smoke from your eyes.

Here’s the first post from June 2, 2008 called PUMA Power.  The Confluence has evolved away from PUMA since the election.  We’re trying to find a new definition for ourselves.  For the time being, we are simply The Confluence.

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PUMA Power

Posted on June 2, 2008 by riverdaughter

The Party Unity My Ass un-Party (PUMA) was born yesterday. We already have many new members. But, some of you may ask, what does it mean? How can we make a difference? Before I get to that, I’d like to refer you to one of Anglachel’s latest posts, The Idea of Obama. I think that what Anglachel is describing is a kind of “puppy love” or an infatuation. The situation we have here is precisely the reason why superdelegates were created in the first place. There is a unacknowledged immaturity about the Obama faction that many parents among us will recognize. Here’s the money quote:

The deep problem of Obama’s campaign is that he and his supporters do not want to face the political reality of their own conflicting desires. They both want to sweep to victory in November and they want to purge the party of anything connected to the Clintons, which includes all of the voting contituencies represented by that amazing and talented duo. The failure of the Unity Pony stems directly from that fantasy of majority status without majority support and the political work and compromises that go with cultivating that support. Thus, their model for unity is unanimity through elimination, purging the ranks of the unclean and unbelievers.

They will not acknowledge that Hilalry is a legitimate political actor and reduce her to an inhuman monster and enemy. They will not acknowledge that her supporters have sound, rational reasons for our support, and reduce us to mindless fools and spoils of war. They shift blame for their own choices and actions onto us and expect that we will cater to their whims.

Like adolescents, they insist on making their own decisions and yet expect us to get them out of a jam later. They hate us because of who we are and yet they need us in order for them to get what they want. And the superdelegates are the too permissive parents who are giving in to them because they can’t handle the screaming and guilt trips that will follow if they don’t.

This is where we come in, PUMAs. We will fill the role that the superdelegates have abrogated. It is our job to say “no”. We do not want to lose in 2008. We do not want another four years of Republican rule. We want 4 years of intelligence, competence and courage in a time of what will surely be a very critical time in our nation’s history. Terrorism is still out there. There are two wars going on. Our military is stretched so thinly that our national security is compromised. We have an energy crisis and many families are hurting. Our financial institutions got themselves over their heads. And there is a serious environmental catastrophe at hand in global warming.

Now is not the time to put a love object in office, a weakling who will be entirely dependent on his power elite enablers. Or worse, he may be a dissembler who has barely disguised his contempt for the voters.

There will be a lot of calls for “Unity!”. But let us acknowledge what this really is. “Unity” is a weapon that the party is going to use against us. It is the emotional blackmail of the teenager. “If you don’t let me have my way, it will be all YOUR fault if something bad happens!” “If you don’t get in line, it will be YOUR fault if we lose.”

Don’t give in to this. This is where a parent’s mettle is tested. When the stakes are not high, like staying up too late on a school night, we can afford to let them live with the consequences of their actions. When the situation is critical, we have to be firm. We have to give them choices. We have to tell them that we will not be willing participants in their destructive behavior. We have to tell them that the consequences of their behavior will fall on *their* heads. We have to take away the car keys. Not ground them. Just not aid them in doing what they want. We have to exert our authority.

That goes for superdelegates as well who are failing in their responsibilities. We will hold them accountable as well. If they allow these children to run the house, they will have to live with the consequences, not us.

Barack Obama is a ruthless campaigner who has brought out the worst in the political system but no matter how far he has come, he is a failure. He has failed to live up to core Democratic principles, He has failed to respect the voters. He has failed to disguise his contempt for average, hard working American men and women. And because he has failed in so many ways to appeal to the electorate at large, he will fail the ultimate contest. He will be a failed presidential candidate. We do not wish to be associated with failure while there is still time and an opportunity to avoid it.

We will not be blackmailed into party unity in order to indulge irresponsible people in their fantasies. Our votes belong to us and we will do with them what we feel is best for us, the party and the country.

The tubez are all abuzz over Apple’s upcoming announcement on January 26.  Gadget enthusiasts all around the world are speculating about what Apple’s Steve Jobs is going to pack into the new iSlate, if that’s what it’s called.  There’s an online document of the alleged specs that have us scratching our heads and salivating at the same time.  The screen is either going to be 7.5 inches or 10 inches.  (Whip out your big ten inch, Steve!)  Other fantasy document specs include a 120 GB hard drive, a new OS called Clouded Leopard (Jeez, we should have seen that one comin’) and a built in projector.  OooooOOOOOoooo!  That one has piqued my curiosity.  It kind of makes sense too.  If the screen is only big enough to type on a touch screen, how will you view the content?  Ohhh, project it onto something.  D’oh!

Steve Jobs, if you’re out there, I promise to be your best friend if you let me review one of them big ten inches.  And I’ll be nice.  Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not but there are a lot of gearheads out there who think a WiFi Newton on speed is not really necessary, especially if you have a laptop or iPhone.  I can envision busloads of schoolchildren dumping their lead weight laden backpacks for iSlates.  Maybe there’s a way to turn this sucker into an electronic notebook device for labrats that they can use to jot down how many moles of whatever they used for their reactions and that they can upload to a server later.  And I guess the skeptics haven’t been through an airport in the last 9 years where you have to dump the contents of your carry-ons whenever some authority figure demands it.  Who wouldn’t want the convenience of a neat  device you can carry in your hands that is a little bigger than a Kindle while you listen to your music through your stereo bluetooth as you stand in the Security line reading a document your downloaded from your cloud account or a copy of the NYTimes from the iTunes store?

Now, about that media content the iSlate is supposedly going to deliver in living color.  The newspaper industry is hurting.  What Craigslist hasn’t snatched from the classified section, the internet has downloaded for free.  Of course, the newspapers have brought some of this down on themselves.  Someone at the Times with a degree from Acme Business School made the idiotic decision to charge for the Op/Ed columnists a couple of years ago at the same time that  blogs started teeming with good Op/Ed writers while leaving (what should have been) the news content unguarded on the net.  The real assets of the newspaper business, should they care to invest in them, are the news collecting bureaus around the world.  There’s no substitute for actually being there, as we have learned from the Iranian protest movement and Twitter.

With Twitter, the news certainly looks fresh and has the immediacy of being there but there’s virtually no way to make sure that what is being posted is true and not a plant.  Unfortunately for the Times, there’s no way for us to tell if they’re just reporting propaganda either.  Remember Judy “Gorgeous Glass” Miller and her quaking Aspen friends who were all connected at the roots?  Was that a bizarre story or what?  When the paper that writes the stories becomes the story, it starts to lose credibility.  I know that I dropped my subscription specifically because of Judy Miller.  But it I had a subscription today, I would probably have cancelled it this morning when I found out that Arthur “Punch” (or is it “Pinch”?) Sulzberger, the Times publisher, is friends with Steve Rattner who is trying to primary Kirsten Gillibrand by running Harold Ford Jr. for Senator of NY.   Great!  Just what we need.  Another pandering male conservative Democrat because female senators are so plentiful. I don’t even know Pinch (or Punch) and I already dislike the fact that he feels he can arrogantly use the power of his mighty ink to scuttle Gillibrand simply because his friend Caroline Kennedy didn’t get the plum appointment when Hillary resigned.  It makes him look vengeful, petty, selfish and careless.  Sort of like Arthur Frobisher or some other self-centered and corrupt uber rich person with a conscience that only extends to his own personal wealthy clique.

Would I pay a subscription for the NYTimes on an iSlate?  I guess it would all depend on the content.  I lived for a couple of years without Paul Krugman or had to get his column via backdoor means.  I suppose if Punch (or Pinch) would leave the writing and editorializing to the real journalists and if I could be certain that those journalists weren’t part of some bizzare neocon plan to take over the world, I might cough up a few cents every day to read it on an iSlate.  But I hope that Jobs is busily getting the rights to a bigger movie library to project onto a nearby wall.  I wouldn’t bet my company on the likes of Punch or Rupert Murdoch.  They can’t be trusted.

It has come to our attention that some of the A-list lefty bloggers think we are as dumb as a box of rocks.  Yes, we’re talking about YOU, Big Tent Democrat and Jane Hamsher.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that this is because we were right about Obama and that can’t be possible if we’re really just a bunch of bitter, old, uneducated, working class, sino-peruvian lesbians.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that but it must drive the rest of the lefty blogosphere crazy that we still are allowed to vote while we drool all over our ballots.  Come to think of it, Jane Hamsher is probably in that demographic although she’s trying desperately to pretend she isn’t.  For example, here is a description of Firedoglake that we found yesterday on her advertise page:

“Firedoglake and its associated publications attract a large, affluent, educated audience of opinion makers and engaged community leaders. It also attracts a select audience of legislative decision makers and policy makers in Washington, D. C.”

Um, that can’t be right.  After all, some of US have accounts at Firedoglake and that means that Jane has some poor, uneducated and disengaged couch potatoes leaving their opinions at her site.  Either that or we’re much smarter than Jane thinks so we blend in.  (Ooo, can’t you see Jane’s skin crawl at the very thought that we’ve been getting our dirty fingers on her slick graphics?)

Come on, Jane, no one can stop time.  You didn’t lose your intelligence when you turned 50, although there’s a pretty good chance you lost your keys.  And anyway, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  We aren’t just going to shrivel up and die because the rest of the world finds us inconvenient.  We have a right to be here and to be heard.

Nevertheless, we are only speculating about how old, stupid and bitter we are.  There’s only one way to find out for sure.  We’re going to do a survey.  This is just basic demographics.  No personal information will be collected or shared with any third parties.  We may use the information to analyze for trends or to help us organize or *maybe* to attract advertisers.  We’re not really into advertising because it tends to make us compromise our principles if our livelihoods are dependent on it.  What’s that saying about being paid to not understand something?  Someone go ask Josh Marshall.  If we decide to attract advertisers we would have to be very choosy.  But I digress.

If you want to help us understand our readership, take the survey and help us out.  We’ll share the results with you in a couple of days.

Click here to take survey

Thanks for your help!

BTW, we see you when you’re freeping.  So, don’t bother.

Yep. She was pretty steamed when Joe Lieberman decided not to abide by the results of the CT primary back in 2006. Jane was majorly pissed off. The woman just wouldn’t let up. It was an outrage when Joe Lieberman decided to substitute his judgment for the Democratic primary voters of CT in 2006. Jane was a woman on a rampage with missionary zeal. She would not stand for it. How dare Lieberman, Rape-Gurney Joe, ignore all of those Lamont voters and flip them the bird? How dare Chuck Shumer turn a blind eye to the innocent voters of CT?

Even before the primary, Jane was screaming for Joe Lieberman to do the right thing if he lost.  This is from Jane’s infamous blackface post:

E.J. Dionne repeats a piece of conventional wisdom that irks the hell out of me every time I hear it – if Lieberman loses the primary and runs as an independent it will distract everyone from the true villain, the GOP, and therefore we should just give him a pass.

Balderdash.  Lieberman has been an integral part of the GOP’s bully machine for the past six years, the Democrat useful for his willingness to dicipline his own kind.  Ned Lamont is running a legitimate primary contest and Joe is refusing to abide by the results of that primary.  As Lowell Weicker said the other day, when he became an independent he didn’t screw with the Republican primary first (my words not his) he just left.  Joe is mucking up the Democratic primary and then abandoning the party to attack it from the outside.  How this is the fault of Ned Lamont or his supporters I would very much like to know.

Tsk-tsk, Jane.  You sound bitter.  Odd, I remember defending your blackface post.  I thought it was a clever visual metaphor that perfectly illustrated the offensive nature of Lieberman’s pandering.  We all know now that not only is the definition of racism fluid but that it can also be used as a convenient cudgel to bludgeon your opponents into silence.

But wait!  There’s more.  Because Christy Hardin Smith, who I always liked, was practically joined at the hip with Jane back in 2006.  They tag teamed each other.  Christy was the legal, logical one while Jane lead from the gut.  What was Christy’s take on Joe’s Connecticut for Lieberman third party run for the Senate?

From Christy Hardin Smith in the post Lamont Wins:

Joe Lieberman is on C-Span right now thumbing his nose at the Democratic voters and the Democratic party, and announcing his run independent from the party. He’s saying he wants to “unite not divide.” This speech is right out of the Karl Rove playbook. Word on the street in Connecticut is that Lieberman will be running as an independent with Republican backing. Any doubts that his loyalty first and foremost is to Joe Lieberman, whatever it takes?

The question is: where will the DSCC and the party leadership be on this tomorrow? They had better be out in front and supporting the winner of the Democratic primary.

Jane called to say that Ned Lamont will be down to speak shortly. Here’s hoping that Democrats with some level of respect for their party, and with a healthy respect for the voters in the state of Connecticut, have a strong word with Joe Lieberman between now and tomorrow morning.

And here’s more from Christy from It’s a Win!:

Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic primary. And if he has so little respect for the voters in that primary that he will not abide by the results, then the party leadership must show him the door. To do otherwise would be to sanction cheating Democratic voters of their rightful say in the party process — and would render the party leadership moot.  That is true whether Ned Lamont won by one vote — or by several thousand.

I couldn’t have said it better myself, Christy.

This is almost exactly the problem we faced in the 2008 primary.  Let’s do the math.

Hillary Clinton went to the convention in Denver in 2008 with 1730 delegates.  Barack Obama went there with 1747 delegates.  He had a lead of 17 delegates.  That’s a difference of .97%.

Why did it look like Obama had such a commanding lead before he got to the convention?  It’s because of the way MI was apportioned.  Obama got 55 uncommitted delegates from MI and 4 of Hillary’s delegates.  But they and Florida’s delegates were at half strength.  So, Hillary’s numbers and critical mass always looked less than Obama’s.

But the party knew that it couldn’t go to the convention with Florida and Michigan’s voters at half strength.  That could have been an electoral disaster in November.  So, the Sunday before the convention began, they quietly restored the delegates of those two states to full strength.  Voila!  Hillary and Obama are almost equal in elected delegates.  But by then, the media narrative was set, which was all the DNC really cared about.  Even though Hillary technically won the primaries because Obama should never have gotten the uncommitted delegates from MI in the first place, she lost momentum.  The media put everyone else on mute.  The convention steam rolled right over the Clinton primary voters.

Know how I know?  Because I voted for her in NJ, a state she won by 10 points.  And here’s what happened at the roll call at minute mark 49:00:

Our former governor, who no one showed up to vote for last November, gave all 127 delegates to Barack Obama.  I don’t remember giving up my vote to Barack Obama.  The voters of NJ were not consulted. Hillary didn’t get a single delegate from New Jersey or New York or many other states that voted overwhelmingly for her.  Out of the 1730 delegates she went to the convention with, she got  341 votes at the roll call.

341 out of 1730 delegates.

As Christy said, failure to abide by the results of a primary ” would be to sanction cheating Democratic voters of their rightful say in the party process — and would render the party leadership moot.”

Obama didn’t win MI.  He wasn’t even on the ballot.  Why didn’t Jane tell Obama to stop playing games with the voters and abide by the results of the Michigan primary?

He lost Florida by 17 points.  Why didn’t Jane insist that Obama abide by the results of the Florida primary?

Even Jane knows that what happened at the RBC meeting was shady at best and outright vote theft at worst.  But Jane was OK with it when it happened to Hillary.  The old Jane would have been on fire about what happened to Hillary’s voters.  The 2008 Jane?  Not so much.  Because if Hillary’s voters had been treated fairly and with respect, there’s a good possibility that Obama might have lost.  OMG!  We couldn’t have that.

What did that “class of women” know about politics?  It was Jane’s responsibility to take the burden of self-determination from their slender shoulders and relieve their feeble brains from all of that stuff.

Bullshit.

Jane  has lost all credibility with us now.  Nothing she says or emails or pleads to us will make a damn bit of difference.  She was willing to overlook the smarmy, unethical, nasty, cheating tactics of her party and its Lightbringer who never protested once any of the disgusting things that party did on his behalf.   And for that reason, Jane will continue to fail at moving the Democratic party to recognize her or listen to her complaints or do anything she wants.  She gave it permission to ignore her and any voter who inconveniently gets in its way.

Jane is a world class hypocrite.

Of course, if she threw her blog to Obama just to keep the money pouring in, that would be worse.

I was directed to Jane Hamsher’s comment thread by Wonk the Vote who spotted this clairvoyant Monday morning quarterbacking from Jane Hamsher:

In response to okanogen @ 107

The idea that Hillary would’ve done anything different about health care or anything else is pretty phantasmagorical I believe, but since we don’t know for sure people are free to make their own assumptions.

It was assumed that Rahm would be key in the administration regardless of who won, and the “strike a deal with PhRMA” logic was generated by veterans of the Clinton White House in response to their 1994 health care experience. It’s at the heart of Bill Clinton’s “let’s find a few things we can agree on and pass that, and not worry about this divisive stuff” exhortations in the past few months.

“Shanking off the hangover of the primary” cuts both ways, and I don’t think one side is going to find that any easier than the other.

Ok, let me see if I can pick out the flaw in this comment for Jane.  We will never know for sure what Hillary would or wouldn’t have done because she was never given the chance to demonstrate this to us.  However, using the evidence we had on hand at the time, *Obama’s* behavior was entirely predictable.  In fact, we predicted it.  Over and over again before the election.  Yesterday, Stateofdisbelief suggested that we collect our predictions for an Epiphany Day post, so look for it on or around January 6 where we will present the collected predictions from the 2008 primary and immediate aftermath of the election where we laid it all out about just what kind of president Obama was going to be.

But Jane’s problem goes deeper than just a lack of prophetic power.  She really doesn’t get why people are still mad about the primaries.  Take this comment, for example:

In response to Phoenix Woman @ 5

I had a woman call up and scream at me when I was on CSPAN the other day for all the horrible things Markos and I had done to Hillary Clinton during the primaries, telling me that I had destroyed the Democratic party.

And I’m like, seriously? I know some people you should meet, you guys would have an interesting fight.

Jane, I will tell you why this woman and some of the rest of us are so angry.  It’s because YOU and Markos and Booman and your naive friends who thought you knew what would happen if Hillary was elected decided not to protest all of the slimy machinations of the DNC during primary season.  You heard Donna Brazile divide us into the New Coalition and the Old Coalition and didn’t call her on it.  You listened to the misogyny but didn’t do enough to stop it.  You accepted the results of some pretty rigged committee hearings and some of you cheered for the winning side.  You watched as delegates from Clinton states were forced to vote for a candidate they didn’t represent and you looked the other way.

That last thing just floors me about you, Jane. You went along with the idea that a woman who was a mere 17 delegates behind her opponent, and 17 seriously questionable delegates at that, wasn’t entitled to a genuine roll call and floor vote at the convention. The old Jane Hamsher would have never tolerated such a violation of fair reflection. But the new Obama supporting Jane Hamsher was perfectly OK with it.

And you did this because Obama was your guy.  You wanted him.  And because you wanted him so badly without really listening closely at what he was dogwhistling to the other side, you substituted YOUR judgement for OURS. You supported Obama because you felt you knew what was best for the rest of us.  We waited eight long years to get rid of George Bush and desperately wanted someone we felt was competent to run the country and you and your friends joined in the effort to nullify our votes.  Now, as a result of the decision that you made for the rest of us, we are stuck with Obama.  We got bankers holding on to our money, a health care reform bill that locks us into the insurance industry’s monopoly power, endless war, skyrocketing unemployment and people losing their houses with minimal government interference.  Instead of Clinton III, we got Bush III.  Tell me, Jane, which one would have been worse?

People like me are pretty steamed at you and your buddies.  You took away our choice.  We didn’t get a fair primary season.  We didn’t even get a floor fight.  There was no unity, Jane.  It was all an illusion.  Your guy was forced on many, many Democratic voters because YOU decided that Obama was best for us.  And many people swallowed that because they were convinced that Republicans were worse.  So they voted for a Democrat and they got a Republican anyway.

Jane, how many times do we have to tell you that it wasn’t about Hillary after May 31, 2008?  It was about choice.  Remember Choice, Jane?  The right to self-determination?  The ability to choose your own destiny?  If someone else took that choice away from you, you’d be on their doorstep with a bullhorn and wouldn’t let up.  But because it was YOUR guy who won, it was OK?  What about the choice of the rest of us, Jane? What about CA, NJ, NY, MA, OH, PA, TX, IN, NH, WV, TN, FL, MI and so on and so on? Those big, Democratic states did not vote for Barack Obama in the primaries, Jane. They deserved to cast their votes for the candidate they *did* vote for. I was one of those voters, Jane and I am not letting the Democratic party off the hook for its outrageous behavior towards me and the others. With a primary this close and disputed, the nullification of my vote was unforgivable.

That is why the primary of 2008 isn’t going to go away and why you are going to continue to get angry callers who blame you and your friends for the state of the country under Obama.  You took our choice away.  Your incredibly high handed and self-righteous decision to support Obama and shut down the rest of the party for the supposed good of that party has lead us to this point.

Your predictions about Hillary are irrelevant.

Addendum: This is how a true blue Democrat handles the issue of Choice, Jane.

It’s worth watching the whole thing because Chris Smith really lays out the anti-reproductive services/anti-abortion argument in all its glory and she still makes mincemeat of him without even raising her voice.

Where was Barack Obama when Bart Stupak proposed his amendment? Why wasn’t he all up in Ben Nelson’s face fighting for those young Obot women who voted for him out of fear that Sarah Palin was going to take away their right to abortion? Barack Obama is no Hillary Clinton who can stare down the most obnoxious Congressional anti-abortion foes around. He doesn’t hold a candle to her and her convictions.

Don’t you feel stupid now, Jane? So much for Jane Hamsher, Issues Maven.

Who could have predicted?

Jane Hamsher has taken a lot of heat lately from the likes of Booman, whoever the hell he is (we never read him).  Apparently, he wrote a post directed at the disillusioned party faithful who are now disappointed in President Barack Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress.  We know he must be talking about Jane and other bloggers like BTD because he sure as heck isn’t talking about us.  We were hep to that step and we didn’t dig it a long, long time ago.  We’ve been calling ourselves Democrats in Exile since about May 31, 2008.  Do we regret the fact that we no longer have a party to call home?  Heck no.  We know all about free milk and a cow.

But this is a painful lesson for people like Jane Hamsher, who has now been told by Booman that if she doesn’t stop voicing her discontent at the bill of goods that Obama failed to deliver, she isn’t a real Democrat.  I beg to differ.  Jane has indeed defended her party credentials quite admirably in a post today.  I advise everyone to go and read it in its entirety as well as the comments.  It seems some of the commenters are still confused about who supported Hillary, PUMA, both, either and why.  I’ll try to clarify that at the end.

It’s not my intention to dump on Jane Hamsher.  She really does mean well.  I will always admire her for what she did in CT for Ned Lamont.  It must feel like a real sucker punch to be sold out by her own party on the issue of reproductive rights too.  I remember that Jane feels very strongly about that issue.  FDL was also doggedly persistent on Plamegate and I sat riveted to my monitor throughout the duration of Scooter Libby’s trial.  Jane was barely out of major surgery when that happened.  But it was the quality of the journalism, not just Jane’s incredible resilience, that merited an award for FDL.

But something went terribly wrong in 2008.  Jane, the party loyalist, took the path most traveled and lost her way.  She documents some of the atrocities in her post today.  Most of it consists of pitiful excuses for why Jane stayed neutral during the worst of the primary abuses.  I’m sure she would like for the primary of 2008 to die an ignominious but quiet death somewhere so we can all let bygones be bygones and get on with it.  It’s not going away, Jane.

Some of Jane’s commenters and perhaps Jane herself think the problem with us “bitter” holdouts is the fact that Hillary lost.  When they notice us, if they notice us at all, they think it is all about Hillary.  But a couple of days before Hillary dropped out, I had a conversation with Peter Daou on the phone.  I was enraged by what the DNC had done and not just because of Hillary.  Of course I was angry with how they had betrayed her but I was more angry at how they had betrayed US, the voters.  I told him that it wasn’t about Hillary anymore.  It was about the Democratic party primary voters.

Let me address some of Jane’s excuses for doing nothing during the primary war of 2008.  Jane says that during primaries, it’s all about personalities.  Maybe.  But I have certainly never seen anything quite like the massacre I witnessed on DailyKos or the emnity between the campaigns that was generated by Obama’s people.  It was like the primary was taken over by the smartest guys in the room from Enron.  That was my first clue that something wasn’t cool about Obama.  His followers seemed too “ends justified the means”.  The campaign was very weak about reining them in, which eventually lead to the “Sarah Palin is a cunt” T-shirts. But the aggression didn’t stay on the blogs.  Nope.  It made its way to TV and print.  It was evident at every televised debate.  It got ugly when the accusations of racism were thrown at the Clintons.  I thought it couldn’t get lower than that.  That’s when Obama lost me for good, Jane.

But your site stayed neutral.

Then there is the issue of their voting records.  Yes, they were very similar.  So, I can’t understand why Hillary got branded as a “corporatist” and Obama didn’t.  On what basis was that label applied, Jane?  But it was even more illogical than that.  If there voting records were virtually identical, why in God’s name would you choose to go with a guy who had virtually no face time in the Senate and ZERO experience in the Executive branch? Then there was the whole Lieberman Resolution on Iran which Hillary was forced to vote for, because no one with an ounce of common sense would vote against what amounted to an opinion poll on whether Iran should be punished if they used terrorism.  But Obama was conveeeeniently absent that day.  Huh.   But wait, there’s more.  Remember the MoveOn Petraeus Ad motion that Obama voted present on?  How about all of the Illinois Senate votes on reproductive rights and abortion that Obama voted present on?  Or how about the fact that he rode to the WH on a speech he gave on the Iraq War Resolution but never had to vote on?  It was a missing data point.

But Jane’s site stayed neutral.

Then there were the caucuses that were overrun by bussed in Obama people and the caucuses in Texas where the fraud was documented and reported on at length by the likes of Pacific John, who witnessed it.  There was the RBC hearing of August 2007 where Florida and Michigan were punished.  Two whole states’ voters disenfranchised for no fault of their own simply because the politicians involved had a dispute over timing.

But Jane’s site stayed neutral.

Then there was the RBC hearing of May 31, 2008.  We keep coming back to this but Jane doesn’t get it yet.  The issue was not simply Florida and Michigan, Jane.  The issue was CA, NJ, NY, OH, PA, MA and all of the other big and little primary states where voters did not vote for Barack Obama, sometimes by more than 10 points.  We covered that hearing, Jane.  We had boots on the ground too.  We saw Amy Siskind giving an impassioned speech about what it meant to her to be disenfranchised simply because she voted for Hillary Clinton and didn’t like being called a sweetie.  And then we watched when Donna Brazile had the nerve to call Hillary Clinton a cheater simply because she wanted to keep four of her delegates and leave the rest of the uncommitted delegates at that status.  Clinton’s position, as communicated by her representatives, was extraordinarily fair.  Instead, that same committee gave Michigan’s votes to a man who wasn’t even on the ballot and by doing so, wiped out every other Clinton voter in every other state.  They knew this is what they were doing.  They threw the game to Obama, in front of all of us.

But Jane’s site stayed neutral.

Then we went PUMA, which simply meant that we were going to withhold our votes from the Democratic party because we could not reward this outrageous, undemocratic and fraudulent behavior.  Since the convention hadn’t taken place and Hillary hadn’t officially withdrawn her name from the race, we felt there was time for the party and the party faithful to come to its senses.  We hoped that the party loyalists would put principles before party.  We thought they would be alarmed by the amount of money pouring into Obama’s campaign.  Where was it all coming from?  What did the money people see in a less than one term senator who had almost no legislative experience?  Then there was the FISA vote.  We were glad to see Jane as a signatory on a sternly worded letter in The Nation.  But when we got to Denver to protest the shameful way the party was treating Hillary Clinton and her voters, where was Jane?  I swear, Jane, if you had woken up and smelled the coffee and joined us, I would have followed you to the ends of the earth.  What did a full time working person with a new blog and a ferocious out-of-the-blue insurgency know about organizing and making a scene?  I could have used a Jane Hamsher.  If Jane Hamsher had stood up and demanded a real roll call vote for Hillary Clinton, if Jane Hamsher and her followers had insisted upon fairness and against delegate intimidation, Jane would have little to complain about today.  Jane could have said, “Well, at least I tried.  At least I did *something* to keep the party together.  At least I stood up for principle instead of letting a tidal wave of accusations and incrimination destroy the good intentions of the people who voted for Clinton.  At least I could say I stood up for the working class instead of the bonus class who controls us now.”

But Jane can’t say any of those things because Jane’s site flipped from neutral to pro-Obama as soon as the Convention was over.

This in spite of FISA and primary voting improprieties and Obama meeting with evangelicals and promising them God knows what.  In spite of the overt misogynism of the media that Obama never decried or the fact that the candidate barely called himself a Democrat or that he lobbied for the first TARP bailout bill- before the election- Jane was happy to climb aboard the Obama bandwagon and buy into the scare tactics on abortion to whip the rest of us into line.  We were all supposed to come together in unity and support Jane’s Democratic presidential candidate.

And now Jane doesn’t like her guy or the Congress he rode in to town with. Who could have predicted that he’d turn out to be a corporate loving, weak president with an equally craven Congress behind him?   The nation was in such dire straits last year that only a skilled and experienced politician with a quiver full of well developed policies ready for action could have *maybe* put the country and its financial sector straight.  We got Obama and his billion dollar campaign backers instead.  And BTD is still citing the DLC as the reason why he couldn’t get behind Clinton.  Oh, please.  When Bill Clinton was president, the center was where the left is now.  To centrists back then, the Left was a bunch of tree hugging, Birkenstock wearing, Alfie Kohn loving, Noam Chomsky pacifying vegans.  We’re not the new Centrists, the Lieberman types.  We former Clintonistas, Democrats in Exile, last year’s PUMAs are FDR style liberals.  You would think that Jane and us would have a lot in common.  But Jane has some weird mental image in her mind about who we are and who we support.  We are not Palin people.  We’re not birthers.  We’re not tea partiers.  And we sure as hell aren’t racists.

We are Democrats who were set free from the party or set ourselves free to go our own separate ways.  We put principle before party.  That’s all.  We saw what the Obama campaign and the DNC was willing to do in order to get him elected and suspected that big, corporate money had a lot to do with it.  It was the neo-feudalists flexxing their muscle and we wanted no part of it.  So, yeah, we are not Democrats anymore.  For us, the primaries told us everything we needed to know about Obama.

But one thing you can’t say about Jane is that she is not a Democrat or loyal to the party.  She is the most loyal of them all and she is facing an uphill struggle.

My condolences, Jane.

Something's gotta give

There’s more noise in the lefty blogosphere about how disappointing Democrats are, as well as how Obama failed to measure up.   Natasha Chart is so sick of the pyrrhic victories that she is begging Democrats to just sit on their hands and do nothing for the rest of their terms.  Max Blumenthal’s piece, Obama, the Fallen Messiah, is intriguing.  At least he understands that the left brought this upon themselves:

The liberal left has become so disgruntled that a leading conservative talk radio host asked me recently if progressives were considering a primary challenge to Obama. I laughed and stated my belief that despite his troubles, Obama would win a second term. Whether or not that happens, those former Obama fanatics experiencing a crisis in faith should look in the mirror. They demanded a secular salvation fantasy and participated in the messianization of the candidate who delivered it to them. They now know that Obama is just a politician. What they have refused to acknowledge is that he would not have fallen so hard had they not lifted him so high.

Too funny, Max!  I got kicked off of DailyKos because in my last diary there, I compared the Obama Movement to a jihad on other Democrats.  For that, I was called a racist and other Kossacks still refer to that diary as proof of my insidious racism.  Oooo!  I am so BAAAADDD.  Of course, you can still read the diary on DailyKos and judge for yourself.  I stand by every word I typed.  It was all too true. If that’s the diary that got me banned, I proudly take credit for it.  And then there’s this diary from December 20, 2008, Telltale Signs of Buyer’s Remorse, which accurately predicted even before Obama took office  that he would be a triangulator par excellence to appease the ones who bought him in spite of the world financial crisis and the Democratic majorities in both houses.

We didn’t get change.  Well, no one on this blog actually expected it.  But we do have a lot of inertia, “the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion”.  Because the Democratic party, with an influx of young Republican-esque members, conducted a jihad on the party faithful, there is no force exerting any will on the object, our government.  The Obamaphiles invested all their hope in a messiah who is now clearly shown to be a false prophet.   The question is, what is the left going to do about it?

I’ve been reading a lot of “very serious bloggers” who think that the formation of a third party is laughable and unreasonable, the stuff of fantasy for the naive.

Really?

Because from where I’m perched, the very serious set is floundering.  Jane Hamsher is making deals with Grover “bipartisanship is just another word for date rape” Norquist.  Her strategy skills have gone totally off the rails and she looks desperate and grasping.  The “enemy of my enemy” strategy won’t work, Jane.  Appealing to the squishy  right is a losing game.  You won’t make any headway with them until you can convince them to give up their social conservatism for their own economic good.  Much better to define strong principles and invite others to join you.  Never cede a single millimeter of what you believe or you will look weak and people who are in the squishy right *hate* any sign of weakness.

But there are a lot of other people out there, Democrats, Democrats in Exile, Independents, who make up a large voting bloc and right now have no representation.  We’re talking about 30-40% of state voting populations in places like NJ and CT who want another option and are tired of both parties gaming the ballots.  They are ready for an new movement where they can coalesce their forces and push back.

We’ve talked about it and talked about it.  We need a third party and we need the very serious among us to get onboard.  The only problem is that so many of them have lost credibility that they need to take a back seat.  Is that where the resistance is coming from?  It’s not a serious proposal if they can’t lead it?

They need to get over it.  They need to accept their responsibility for the way things are.  Many of them knew what was happening in 2008 but didn’t want to be ostracized from the Movement.  Isn’t there a quote about propagation of evil requiring men of goodwill to do nothing?

Are they going to do nothing again?  New parties have been created before.  The Republican party was born in 1854.  There is enough critical mass.  All that is required is that a force get behind that mass and move it forward.

The BFF was half awake this morning but he still remembered what he wanted to do today.  His first words this morning were, “Boxing Day”.  In UK countries, the day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day.  This is the day when those of us with stuff give some of it away to our favorite charitable institutions.

Last night, the BFF showed me his Kiva map.  It looked like one of those maps you see in the back of your in-flight magazine.  My jaw dropped.  “Ok”, he said, “Let’s see yours.  What did you say the name of your group was called?”

I’m feeling the heat guys.  We need to put up or shut up.

He also gave me a very nice Christmas present.  This year, we are helping to sponsor a modern dance company from Los Angeles.  They’ll be coming to the NYC area in March and we hope to see them perform.

Then, there’s always the gift of sustenance.  While I was pigging out on roast beast and Yorkshire pudding, there were American’s all over the country who were just getting by.  Food insecurity is a big problem in this country these days.

These are just three recommendations for fulfilling your Boxing Day obligations.  And it is an obligation, guys.  You can’t expect people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if you don’t give them boots.  The money you send to organizations like Kiva will help entrepreneurs all over the world as they put that money to work.  For those of you who want to help a starving artist bring beauty to the world, kickstarter can help you connect.  And if we want to help that young physicist solve the energy crisis someday, let’s make sure her brain is well fed with FeedingAmerica.

Can you spare $25?  These organizations can make your money go a long way.  Combined with other donations, we can make a lot of people more happy and hopeful in the year to come.

Here are my suggestions for your Boxing Day contributions:

The Confluence Kiva Team

Kickstarter

Feeding America

If you don’t have the filthy lucre but you have some useful things to give away, consider Freecycle.

cx4800 recommends modestneeds.org for people facing financial emergencies.

Help me wipe that smirk off of the BFF’s face.

Good Morning, Everyone!

No matter who you are or where you come from, there once was family member of yours long, long ago who woke up on a morning like this one and praised the light for coming back. It is the return of warmth and illumination, the promise of growth, the banishing of fear and the light of reason.

Whatever your holiday tradition, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa or Human Light, we at The Conflucnce hope that it is a happy one, filled with friends, family and the inner joy of just being alive.

C’mon in, guys.  This is a no frills holiday party.  I was super busy today.  Had to go to not one but TWO Ikeas today.  You wanna know why people in NJ are 49th on the happiness scale?  It’s because any time they want to buy anything, they have to compete with 42,000 other people in NJ who want the same damn thing.  My new living room rug is back ordered until February at Crate and Barrel.  And the Newark Ikea had the basement sofa I wanted (I had to wait a whole year after the reno to buy it) but the covers for the damn thing were in Paramus.  Then, I had to drive back to Central NJ, where we are in the middle of everything but close to nothing, through Paramus and Paterson where other New Jersey drivers think there is not enough noise pollution in the world so they must use their horns.  But now I’m home, thank God.  I had to wait about 10 hours before I could pee.  There just wasn’t any time or opportunity.  I’m going to relax, dammit and the first person who gets between me and the keg is going to get his knees broken.

Happy Chrishannukahmas and a very merry Kwanzadan. Put down you shopping bags and take a load off.  Rico’s on the deck out back with Florence.  There’s a keg of some kind of beer or ale type thing out there.  It’s in the snow bank to keep it crisp.  Never Summer I think.  The local beer emporium scored it a 97.  Pretty good.  If you brought anything, just set it on the sideboard in the dining room.  I have one of those orange cheeseballs with the nuts on it that no one wants to admit they really like.  And I’ve whipped up some piggy back dates.

Our musical entertainment comes from the annex up north.  Remember the McKenzie Brothers?  No?  Ok, remember “a beer in a tree”?  Ringing any bells?  Have another Never Summer.  It’ll come back to you.  Everyone sing-a-long now:

Ladies, gents and Shoobies, don’t mess up my living room.  If you want to punch someone’s ticket for being a kool-aid drinking jerk, take it outside.  And take the trash to the dumpster while you’re at it.

Party on, Conflucians.