A reminder of what DailyKos is

I’m a bit busy this weekend so I’m just going to repost something I wrote in a comment on Corrente.  But I don’t want anyone to think I spend a lot of time obsessing about DailyKos because I don’t.  It didn’t take me long to figure out four years ago what DailyKos was all about and I have written about it before.  I haven’t been back there for years and I can go months without even thinking about the place.  I don’t yearn to be reinstated.  In fact, quite the contrary for a variety of reasons not least of which is that I don’t want to be associated with what I consider to be an online high control group.

So, here is my reminder of what DailyKos is from Lambert’s post on Allegre’s Writer’s Strike:

Slightly off topic, but following up on the response I had to Hugh above, let’s not kid ourselves about what DailyKos is. It is an enormous focus group. Every now and then a topic will get a lot of attention on the board and that’s the way the operatives and psychometricians figure out what makes lefty types tick. They refine it. They get to know what your trigger words are. They know how to push your buttons so that your emotions circumvent your rational mind. That’s why the racist meme was so effective in 2008. It’s the worst thing you could call a liberal. We react viscerally to that accusation. It’s only the very sane among us who don’t flinch from it and even those of us who know we aren’t racist spend every waking second defending ourselves. If you try to point out what they sneaky ones are up to, you get banned.

DailyKos also love bombs. If you express the preferred thoughts, you get mojo, you get recommended, you become popular. People like you. They want to hang out with you and be your friend. You become a trusted user. You get status. The whole place is rigged to make sure you stay, that you are rewarded for being cooperative and expressing the meme of the day and that they threat of losing your entire online community is real and frightening. No one wants to be exiled. It extends to other blogs as well. I’m sure that Digby is on a short leash as is anyone who signs on to the advertising arm of Kos.

It’s easier to see how this works if you grew up in a religious cult so I had an edge and my shock and horror of being banished from DailyKos lasted about 30 seconds. Then I laughed and started my own blog. I may be a tiny speck of dust in the Oort belt but I am free to say what I like.

But in general, if you hang out in DailyKos or affiliated “blessed” blogs, you will start to short circuit your thought processes. You will start to use buzzwords to explain politically what’s going on and that’s just where they want you. You don’t think about what “neoliberalism” or DLC really mean or how they may have evolved or how to grade the degree to which individuals adhere to a certain philosophy. You are trained to associate a word with a person, the connotation of that word to those persons and that you will be rewarded with good feelings if you do it right and bad feelings if you do it wrong. I realize that neoliberalism means a great deal to some people but I never could understand why. It never did make a lick of sense that so much emphasis is placed on this one word when people rarely fit into black and white categories. But you can be sure that lefty attitudes about the DLC and corporations and Iran and “war hawk” and other buzzwords come from careful seed planting and harvesting on places like DailyKos.

I would avoid any blog that uses a rating system.

 

Cocktail Hour: Resistance September

Update: Bev Hendricks writes that Hal David has died. He was 91. David was the lyricist for many collaborations with Burt Bacharach.  Instead of playing a song, I thought I’d post the lyrics to one of my favorite Hal David songs, Alfie.  Some songs never go out of style and this one is perfect for 2012.:

What’s it all about, alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
Or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, alfie,
Then I guess it’s wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, alfie,
What will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above, alfie,
I know there’s something much more,
Something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, alfie.
Without true love we just exist, alfie.
Until you find the love you’ve missed you’re nothing, alfie.
When you walk let your heart lead the way
And you’ll find love any day, alfie, alfie.

****************************

Lambert says he thinks the problem is malaise.  Atrios says he just doesn’t think the election matters anymore.

I think it’s a case of learned helplessness.

It’s like being half drowned a dozen times. No matter what you do, someone is still going to try to drown you. After awhile, you stop struggling.

And this has been my point all along. We *KNOW* they’re trying to drown us so we should make it really, really hard for them to do it. As long as we still have a vote, we have the power to make the powers that be miserable. We don’t have to eat our poisoned mushrooms. Resistance isn’t useless.

You shouldn’t be surprised if learned helplessness is exactly what they are trying to create. The people who don’t think these things through all the way seem to think that if they vote for Obama this year that the beatings will ease up. They will never ease up until we decide we’re not putting up with it anymore.

If Obama loses this year, the next two years will be pretty tough on us. But it might be of shorter duration than if Obama wins. It’s not even like the Republicans are the only ones into promoting misery anymore. Only that Obama gets away with it because he has a D after his name.

It would have been better if we had agitated for Hillary this year. That would have shaken them up and there is still time.  Nothing is settled until the balloons drop in Charlotte.  But the left has been very well conditioned against her. So, in a way, they’ve contributed to their own demise. The tools to fight this thing were there all along like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.

So, what’s it going to be, left blogosphere?  Are you going to give in or are you going to resist?  Are you going to jump on Obama’s bandwagon, knowing that he’s going to ignore you or are you going to stand up and step away from the party and give it something to worry about?

What do you have to lose?  Let’s put it this way, what do you have to gain by helplessly letting them deep six you?  Get up and resist.  Let the Democratic party worry about what that means.  You are not under any obligation to give up your vote for nothing in return.  When we say jump, they should ask how high.

This year, we need to seriously consider looking after our own interests.  I’ve proposed an organizational model before.  We need to put something like that in motion.  Call it the Federation for Democratic Reform.  It has a catchy abbreviation.  It could be an umbrella group for various left of center organizations.  We need to draft a platform, organize some committees, get some lobbyists and vet some candidates to run for office.  Discuss.

Rico’s tending bar and the drinks are on me.  I’m having a Blue Moon.

If you’re out there and you’re reading and you’ve had enough, play your own resistance song.

Monday: Meanderings

Republican voters: Crazy or The Craziest?

Some thoughts I’ve been having…

First up, last night’s Virtually Speaking featured Joan McCarter from the big orange satan.  Jay and Joan discussed the Republican primary in the first part of the show.  Jay seemed rather incredulous about the way this whole circus is playing out.  I would have to disagree on a couple of points though.

First, it’s not the candidates or the process that is crazy.  It’s the party’s voters that are batshit insane.  I think years of Glenn and Rush have taken their toll.  The dark archetypes of our collective unconscious have been given permission to run amok and the Republican voter’s unconscious, softened by years of angry white male rage and religion, is particularly vulnerable.  I don’t think some of these people are even recognizable to their former selves.  My relatives have gone through a personality transformation.  Towards the end of the Bush years, they were briefly getting better but with the noise machine pulling out all of the stops lately, plus the rotten economy, they’re just not the same people.  So, there’s that.

But more than that is the process itself is starting to take on its own internal logic.  There is definitely method to the madness of letting the Republican primary stretch on indefinitely, or at least until the convention in the summer.  If you don’t believe it, consider that the Republican primaries have driven almost everything else off the front page.  Each day, we’re confronted by candidates trying to outdo each other in pandering to their crazy base.  The Sunday shows are chock full of Republicans trying to make their case.  We’re going to get austerity/deficit reduction messaging continuously until they pick a nominee.  I’d say that was extraordinarily successful strategy and not at all crazy.

Secondly, there’s definitely a note of hypocrisy and paradox on our side of the aisle.  Jay and Joan toyed with the idea that the Republicans would have a brokered convention, and if I were the Republicans, I’d definitely go for this option.  Keep everyone guessing until the last moment.  Make sure your arguments and worldview get the most airtime before the public.  But the hypocrisy is that this is precisely what we denied ourselves in 2008 when the number of delegates separating the two candidates was about as wide as a gnat’s wing.   And not only did we not get a floor fight, we denied the first woman candidate who had ever come that far from even getting a legitimate roll call vote.  (And why was that?  Well, if we had let a real roll call proceed, everyone would have been immediately aware that they were virtually tied.  We couldn’t have that.  It would ruin the narrative.)  I have yet to hear Jay or anyone on Virtually Speaking explain why we should have found that acceptable.  In fact, many Democrats and women, in particular, do not accept it.

Which brings me to another point.  I could have sworn that I heard Jay refer to the Hillary holdouts as crazy and compared them rather unfavorably to Republican nutcases.  Now, I admit that I might have misheard this and I will be probably force myself to relisten to the podcast but I think Jay has been in the echo chamber too long.  While she may not be popular among the Democrats who gave us four years of Obama (thanks for nuthin’ guys), she is very popular among the rest of the country’s voters for good reasons.  She has proven herself to be a capable, competent, well-respected politician and administrator, both domestically and abroad.  She beats every candidate of both parties in polls, which Democrats do not mention.  The people who are crazy are not the holdouts.  It is the segment of the Democratic party who insist on clinging to their pre-conceived notions about her.  But whatever.  What’s really crazy is to go into this fluid, unpredictable election year in the fourth year of a dismal economic crisis without a Plan B.  No, Howard Dean is not an option.  Remember, you have to appeal to all of the voters.

And as Craig Crawford mentioned on Saturday night, the deadline for getting on the ballot on some of the biggest states has not expired yet.  Many of the big Democratic states like California, NJ and Pennsylvania have their primaries late.  In NJ, we don’t get to vote until June.  A lot could happen between now and then.  That lot could consist of endless pounding on Obama’s poor performance in Republican primary debates coupled with a lot of sturm and drang on the deficit.  Obama did not use his bully pulpit well in the past three years.  He squandered a lot of it with trivial photo-ops in the first year to the point that his appearances on TV are now just background noise.  And he’s never been a passionate defender of Democratic values anyway.  Plus, there are a lot of people in the Republican party who cannot wait to vote him out of office.  They are motivated.  What has motivated the Democrats lately?

Let’s not understate the importance of motivation.  There isn’t a lot that people can do about the economy, mostly because their elected representatives are not responsive to their concerns or listening to sound economic advice.  But there is one thing that people can do that will give them a great deal of satisfaction.  They can vote Obama out.  I don’t intend to do this because I’m not voting for either major party candidate.  I’m sure there’s a third party candidate who will get my vote.  But there are millions of people out there who will get a feeling of exultation out of booting him out of the White House and replacing him with a Republican.  They don’t even care what comes next.  He is the Emmanuel Goldstein who is the cause of so much misery to them.  What we’re seeing is the beginning of a three minute hate on steroids.  It’s not pretty.

In other words, the Democrats are going to have a real problem come November and throwing a bone like contraceptive coverage to the wimmins ain’t going to cut it for the millions of women who are out of work.  To think Obama can just skate to the finish line again because the Republican base is f%^&ing nutz is just crazy.

******************************

Lambert has a full report of our trip to Washington with a lot more pictures of the places we visited.  Check it out.  I still have 40 minutes of video, including an “incident” at the National Portrait Gallery, that are trapped on my Flip camera.  Apparently, when Steve Jobs joined the choir invisible, he had not reversed his (untimely) decision to stop supporting PC based apps on the Mac OS.  I have Lion.  Flip won’t download.  Kid has Snow Leopard.  *Might* be able to download to her mac if I can find the fricking rosetta disk.  If anyone out there has a workaround, detail it in the comments.  I mean, a workaround that doesn’t require me to buy or borrow a PC.

Occupy Congress Continued

Thanks to all of you who contacted your Congresspersons and Senators about SOPA and PIPA.  What these bills seem to be attempting to do is two things: promote private ownership of internet content and to sharply censor the non-conformists under the pretense of protecting property. SOPA looks quiescent for now but it’s going to take constant vigilance to make sure it stays that way.  PIPA is still in play, as far as I can tell.

One thing I learned when I was on the board of ed is that politicians will back down and even do a 180 if opposition is noisy and persistent.  This is probably why our political class is quite content to cast the Occupations in a negative light.  They’re noisy and persistent but if they can be made to look dirty and violent, their message doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

I had some connection problems in our room in Washington and on the train on the way back so I wasn’t able to upload my pics or process my video yet.  Then I found out from the insurance claims adjuster that all of the siding on one side of my house needs to be replaced including vapor barrier, weather stripping around the windows and the shutters as well.  The claims adjuster said her own house had suffered some structural damage from the wind storm as well, although nothing this extensive.  We both think the wind came from a different direction since neither of us had ever seen anything like it before.  Anyway, it’s been an interesting week in a Chinese proverb way.  So, I am uploading a few pics tonight to try to catch up.

Some interesting tidbits: we met a ragtag triplet with the letters “SD” on their shirts.  They reminded me of the stereotypical fife and drums trio from the Revolutionary War.  It turned out that they were three of the contingent from San Diego who were thrown off the Greyhound bus in Amarillo, Texas.  That’s not quite accurate.  What *really* happened is that the bus driver pulled over, got out of the bus – and locked them in.  Then he unloaded their baggage and forced them off the bus leaving them stranded in Amarillo.  But here’s the great thing about the Occupation.  The deserted in the desert contacted Occupy Amarillo and Amarillo came to their rescue, picked them up, gave them a place to stay, fed them and sent them on their way to Washington.  That’s a heart tugging story with a happy ending.

Then there was a contingent from Walla Walla, Washington.  They were senior citizens who had become very active in the Occupy movement and had canvassed their neighborhood advocating the protection of Medicare.  They struck some kind of deal with their city officials so that their site remained intact and free of harrassment from the local constabulary.  They say they are getting an overwhelmingly positive response from everyone they have talked to about Medicare.  Another success story of people sticking up for each other.

Then there was the not-so-good stories.  One woman from Portland told horror stories about the Portland police.  It sounds like the whole Portland police force is made up of sadistic automatons.  Their attitude seems to be “crack heads first, ask questions later if they’re conscious”.  She said that she had a concussion from one of her unfortunate encounters and she hadn’t done anything to provoke it except be present.  The police attack without warning and in as brutal a fashion as they can get away with.

We spent much of the afternoon in conversation between the four of us, Lambert, Marsha (CoyoteCreek), DCBlogger and me, and went back to the Capitol lawn at about 6:00pm.  There was a festive mood and music playing.  It was hard to tell how many people were there because there was no lighting except flashlights.  We sat on the muddy ground on plastic rain ponchos and took it all in.  It’s a different mood in Washington than it is in Manhattan.  The police are a lot less menacing and they don’t seem to outnumber protestors.  They ride around the city on bikes in colorful jackets and blue helmets.  They’re, dare I say it?  Friendly.  Really weird.  And also a nice change.  You would have really had to get up into their grill to get your ass hauled away.  In fact, early in the day, one occupier got righteously indignant about all of the fencing around the lawn so he started to tear it all down.  They let him.  The occupiers either rolled up the fencing neatly and moved it out of the way or used it as ground cover over the muddy ground so they could erect their makeshift structures.  There was a staging area, a kitchen and a medic area.  The kitchen served oatmeal, bottled water and fresh fruit for breakfast.

The GA took awhile to get started.  I blame the location.  It’s a wide open space with no natural acoustical advantages.  The voice dissipates quickly.  We tried a double mic and it took several attempts to get it to propagate.  The GA read the agenda and the plan to visit representatives.  Each congressional office building was assigned a color.  To visit your rep, all you needed to do was find the color of his/her building.  We decided to go have lunch at this point since Marsha hadn’t eaten anything all day, so we didn’t participate.  Later, we heard that the occupiers found the offices deserted for the most part.  Maybe they were busy, I don’t know.  But the vast majority of occupiers are old enough to vote.  They are constituents.  They deserve some respect.  I can only imagine what those nice elderly gentlemen from Walla Squared are going to tell their neighbors about their visit to their congresswoman, Cathy McMorris Rogers.  From what they told me about her, they were not impressed with her or the fact that she always seems to be standing behind John Boehner when it’s picture time at the Capitol.

Here are some pictures from our day.  Be sure to check out updates from Lambert, CoyoteCreek and DCBlogger at Corrente.  Also, Lambert hosted Virtually Speaking during the pajama party in our room last night.  Check it out.

Setting up:

Occupy Applique:

The GA tries the double mic:

{Ok, I started to video this with my iPhone and thought I stopped recording when I put my phone in my pocket.  Ha-Ha.  Always double check.  Yes, that is my voice.  I couldn’t always hear what was being said and mostly just caught the tail end of each statement.  Still, this gives you an idea of the challenges of doing a GA on the lawn.  If I were the occupiers, I’d walk down the mall and look for a circular concrete plaza on the right side a couple blocks up.  I think it’s the Naval Heritage Center. It’s a much better space for a GA.  Don’t know what the rules are for occupying it for that purpose but it didn’t look like anyone was using it.  hint-hint}

The Agenda:

Night on the Capitol lawn:

#J17- Happy Birthday OWS. Let’s Occupy Congress!

In Chaplin’s speech, he quoted the Gospel of Luke, which I think is so much better than John 3:16.

“The kingdom of God is in your midst”

I’ve got a ticket to ride.  Gettin’ up at 4:00am to be there when Congress opens tomorrow.  I’ll be meeting with Marsha, Lambert and some of the other Correntians.  If I’m not mistaken, Lambert is also planning a Virtually Speaking broadcast with Avedon Carol tomorrow night at 9:00 EST so be sure to check that out.

If you would like to help defray the cost of the trip, please see the donate button to the upper left side of the screen.  We should have just enough in the PayPal account to cover it but it never hurts to plan for unexpected incarcerations and bail.  Recommended donation is $10.17.  I’d like to say thank you to all of you who have contributed.  It means a lot to me.

So, I will be packing my chargers tonight and turning in early to get up even earlier.

For those of you who want to hear more Charlie Chaplin, here is the entirety of his speech from The Dictator.  He wrote this himself.  Enjoy!

TC Fundraiser for Lambert and Correntewire

As much as I hate to admit it, some of the best work in the blogosphere has come from Corrente in the last three years.  I discovered Lambert towards the end of my stay at DailyKos when he wrote a brilliant essay about something.  I can’t even remember what that something was but I wrote a diary about it, now irretrievable.  I’m not trying to be flippant.  He really made an impression on me.  Damn Markos for archiving the diaries!

During 2008, Lambert was one of the few bloggers who trusted his instincts about Obama and the Democrats and what they were up to.  We haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on many different things but I appreciate the fact that I can go shoot my mouth off at Corrente and he keeps letting me do it.  Ideologically, we’re close on the political spectrum although we’re a bit less crunchy granola than Lambert.

His coverage of OccupyWallStreet has been excellent.  His coverage and participation in conferences to discuss the state of the economy has been exemplary.  He’s got a lot of top notch writers.  And he does it all for free- mostly.

If you’re not a blog site the size of Eschaton or DailyKos or Firedoglake, it’s bloody hard to make a living at blogging.  Not only do you have to create compelling content but you have to be listed in a lot of blogrolls and mentioned occasionally by the people who can send you an audience.  The left has not been kind to the blogs who got it right about 2008.  The Confluence is on only a tiny number of blogrolls as punishment for our sin of being pretty in your face about how stupid the left was.  But Corrente has made peace with the left and even though it gets mentioned more and has more of a political impact than we have, it needs to keep going to become a big player.   And we need blogs like Corrente and The Confluence to present a different perspective on what it means to be progressive and liberal, and what the penalty is for having the courage to dispose of the DNC’s pre-written script.  Preserving the right to be unpopular and not go along with the crowd because you know that it’s wrong is very important.   In the meantime, it costs money to keep the site going and Lambert warm during the cold Maine winters.

So, if you can spare a dime, head on over to Corrente’s tip jar and throw in some filthy lucre to say thanks for doing the thankless job and sticking with it.

You can either make a one time donation here.  Or you can subscribe.

Ok, I’ll go first…

Fantasies and Choices

Lambert has an extended conversation with Amanda Marcotte over whether Hillary Clinton would have made a better president. Amanda and many others, argue that it’s all speculation and we’ll never know and blah, blah, blah, {{rolling eyes at all of the Democratic party loyalists who are, once again, either complicit or getting sucked into spreading the talking points of the people who were so damned wrong the first time}}

Look, it’s very simple:

1.) You were wrong about Obama; we were right. We never expected Obama to be an effective counterweight against the Republicans. That’s precisely why we didn’t vote for him in the primaries. Our whole reason for voting for rejecting him was that he had no idea what he was getting us into and the Bushies were leaving a mess behind. We didn’t want a neophyte for president in 2009. If anyone had a fantasy about the presidency, it wasn’t us. We knew what was coming and Obama’s failure comes as neither a shock or disappointment. We are not disillusioned. We didn’t buy the HopeyChangey stuff in the first place. That is a propaganda ploy that was covered in 8th grade social studies. Were the Obama contingent absent that day? So, why should we listen to your faulty reasoning for a second campaign season?
2.) The campaign really hasn’t even begun yet. There is still time for a substitution, whether it is Hillary or someone else with balls.
3.) NONE of us want to sit through 4 more years of Obama. Period.
4.) Regardless of how primary challengers have affected the electoral prospects of an incumbent in the past, this is a completely different economic and political reality. We are not simply dealing with malaise. This is a Lesser Depression. What we need now is something completely unpredictable.
5.) While speculation about Hillary’s presidency may strike some of the left as intellectual masturbation, it is inappropriate for them to substitute *their* judgement for ours. We want a choice. Choices are what make democracy work. We present choices to informed voters and they decide what they want. Why don’t Democrats believe in Democracy? Or is it that the Amanda Marcottes of the party, who made a huge mistake in 2008, insist on representing themselves as the superior intellects to the rest of us who they persist in mischaracterizing as working class, uneducated women?

Really, who the F^&* does Amanda Marcotte and Rebecca Traister and Jonathan Capehart and ThereIsNoSpoon etc, etc, etc think they are???

You threw a tantrum in 2008 and had to have your way. You bought the Obama brand without question and got all of the rest of us into this pickle. And it wasn’t even like he ran away with the nomination by a landslide. The nomination was a squeaker and he only won because the party changed the rules so it could ignore the will of the largest, most Democratic states in the country. He didn’t run a brilliant campaign. He ran a ruthless one and he bought a lot of superdelegates with the money from the finance industry. And because of the cluelessness of the left activist base, a good chunk of the middle class is suffering with no end in sight. Some of us (yours truly) have lost jobs and livelihoods because you insisted on putting an untried, inexperienced, political cypher in a job he wasn’t ready for. We told you that over and over and over again. He’s not even a real Democrat from what I can tell. And now you guys presume to tell US that we can’t have a choice in the matter of the next presidency?

First of all, that’s not true and never was true. We always have choices. But if you think this argument about fantasies and Hillary Clinton are going to persuade us, you are the ones who are out of touch with reality. Obama is not working out. The management, that would be us, would like to make a change. It is time for the party to get a clue and get him to step down so someone else can have a crack at it, presumably someone who is a real Democrat.

Whatever problem you have with Hillary Clinton, I guarantee you that it isn’t nearly as bad as the problems the unemployed have with Obama right now. No one is *ENTITLED* to a second term. And it is sheer fantasy for the Democrats to try to push a failure on us a second time when there is time to prevent it. The people who are in fantasy mode are the ones who think that Obama’s second term is going to be better than his first. Hillary told us what it was going to be like and she was right:

Amanda and Rebecca and Jonathan are in denial. They’re in denial because they are afraid. They’re afraid because the Republicans could win. The Republicans could win because the economy is really in bad shape. The economy is in really bad shape because Republicans are obstructive assholes and because Obama didn’t know how to deal with them. He doesn’t know how to deal with them because he didn’t have that part figured out before he ran and he doesn’t have a political philosophy. But fear tactics are not going to get Obama re-elected. We’re not buying it, Amanda. The party needs to stop being so craven and scared and replace the guy at the top because we are not voting for him next year.

Suck on that, Amanda.

PS: I can’t remember where I read this but some columnist wrote that there have been suggestions of a write in campaign for Hillary in Iowa. Now, I don’t know if she could be drafted or if she even has an interest. But if she won the Iowa caucuses anyway, that would send a very strong message to the party that Obama does not have the confidence of the voters. That assumes that there won’t be spillover from Illinois. I fully expect that Iowa and other caucus states don’t let the Obama campaign get away with the blatantly obvious fraudulent and unethical practices they did in 2008. For the record, Obots, that kind of behavior is not just rough politics. It’s immoral behavior that deprives voters of their rights and fair reflection. But if you put up with it, you should not be surprised with the guy does the same thing to you.

Friday: Happy Birthday, Katiebird!

Today is Kbird’s 20+ some_multiple birthday. Let’s give a round of applause to a wonderfully subversive blogger who has reached that magical age where she is now a threat to the dominant paradigm.

In the meantime, Anglachel comments on Paul Krugman’s latest column on why it is that Obama has “Every freakin’ advantage a candidate could hope for and the guy cannot win”. It takes me back to a post that Lambert made several months ago that was noted by Paul Krugman (I think we can all see that Paul Krugman is at the heart of this conspiracy now. And I live only 9 miles from Princeton. Coincidence? Cue the Theremin music.)

But seriously, as long as Obama remains a soft and amorphous candidate, some people are going to find him appealing as a Tofu Candidate. You can pour any sauce you like on him and he will take on that flavor. But pin him down and mold him into a real Democrat and poof!, he’s just another ground beef patty. There goes all of his appeal as a transformative figure. I think that’s what is about to happen. Voters are going to start asking him some hard questions and he’s going to have to declare and when THAT happens, he’s not going to be so cool with some constituency.

Well, whatever works.

Once More to the Fainting Couch

Kid Oakland has had another terrible shock that has sent him reeling once again to the fainting couch.  Poor dear. Just a little over a week ago, Kid was making noises about working on some kind of rapproachment with Clinton supporters in the hopes that we would come around and accept Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. But that’s all water under the bridge now that Hillary Clinton has dared to mention Obama’s latest faux pas.

Well, well, well. Isn’t this interesting?

I just got home from a long day and started surfing around the net to see what’s happening.  Via Lambert at Corrente I learned the fascinating news that long-time Kossack and Obama fan extraordinaire, Kid Oakland has had a bit of a rude awakening.  Our friend KO went to the California Democratic Convention and had an encounter with a Hillary Clinton supporter.

There was a moment that gave me pause. I was having a friendly conversation with three SoCal kossacks in the hallway on Saturday when two Los Angeles-based delegates approached. These women, both experienced delegates and friendly Clinton supporters, were happy to chat about what we had in common: blog reading, support for Debra Bowen, curiosity about the Migden/Leno battle and the 2010 governor’s race. One of the women, wearing a Hillary button, went out of her way to compliment our group of younger delegates (wearing Obama buttons aside from me…a press pass guy) for attending the convention. I asked her if she read DailyKos and she replied curtly:

“I’m on strike from that blog.”

That surprised me. I’ve met thousands of kossacks whether at Las Vegas or Chicago or events here in California, and I’ve never once had a negative experience asking if someone reads DailyKos. In fact, I’ve met people who disagree with me vigorously online who were completely cordial and friendly in person….  That’s what struck me with that comment. I think we’ve all got to take a step back and think about that for a second. This was a woman who was cordial and welcoming and yet she felt estranged from DailyKos. The strike shut down the conversation.

Oh really? That surprised you? How very interesting. Kid Oakland is now very very concerned about those Clinton supporters whom the Obamadroids at DK treated so dismissively. Now that he sees they are actual human beings with actual votes and sometimes actual power within the Democratic party, he wonders how they can be brought back into the fold and induced to support the nominee, who of course will be Obama.  Anything else is out of the question.  But, KO wonders, can we do to patch things up with these really terrific people?

But, clearly, Senator Clinton, for as much as the facts on the ground and the party leadership have lined up against her, has the bedrock support of some of the most experienced activists in the Democratic base.

Obama and the Party need every last one of those activists. Dailykos does too. And we need them sooner rather than later. There is so much at stake in 2008. There’s too much at stake to be divided going into Denver. My concluding thought coming from San Jose is this. Obama needs to solidify his coalition. He needs to win over doubting Democrats and include those who have yet to feel fully included. To win, Barack Obama will need every last experienced activist the Democratic party can muster and those experienced activists need to feel utilized and included as respected equals.

Oh dear.  Yes, KO, we tried to tell you and Kos and all the other Clinton abusers that you were pushing things a bit too far, but you just wouldn’t listen, would you?

KO continues:

Senator Clinton is in a powerful position. Her supporters are among the best activists the Democratic Party has. I do not doubt that every last Clinton activist in the party will work for the nominee. The question is when that will happen, not whether they will support the nominee.

Oh really?

Yes, Conflucians, finally, the chickens are coming home to roost. This diary from KO also gives us a clue as to why Nancy Pelosi suddenly realized she’d better not be quite so obvious in her Obama support and flip flopped on her view of the superdelegates’ roles.

As for Michigan and Florida, eriposte has a great suggestion for how Nancy and her pals can help Obama can win without those two uppity states. Imagine wanting their votes counted toward the nomination. The nerve!

All they have to do is pass a Bill in Congress that says FL and MI will be stripped of their electoral votes in November because they broke the “rules” in the primaries! It’s that simple. This way McCain won’t benefit and if Sen. Obama is the nominee, he has a better chance of winning the general election. MoveOn.org and other fine “liberal” organizations, some of the top bloggers, the “progressive” version of hate radio, and so on, can then be completely relied upon to catapult the propaganda about how it is entirely justifiable for FL/MI to be disenfranchised in Nov according to the “rules” and according to the law. In any case, bills like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act are all so quaint and passe – clearly, part of the “excesses” of the 60s that Sen. Obama keeps referring to.

Isn’t that a terrific idea?

All I can say is it’s going be a lot of fun watching the Obamadroids in the DNC and the big blogs trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again now that it’s beginning to dawn on them that they’ve made a serious strategic error. Frankly, I think it’s a little too late. But that’s just me.

 So what have all you wonderful Conflucians been up to today?  And what have you heard?