The Clinton Cocktail Hour- Never Surrender!

Mark Twain once said, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Actually, that’s a pretty funny quote when you think about it. Is it possible to exaggerate the report of a death? You’re either dead or not dead. It’s no exaggeration to say one or the other. Or are the “reports” greatly exaggerated? Were there an excess number of reports of Twain’s non-death? And if so, why were so many people anxious to report that he’d “bought the farm”, joined the choir invisible, become an ex-humorist?

Likewise, we’ve heard a lot about Hillary’s imminent demise although Peggy Noonan is simultaneously complaining in the Wall Street Journal that Hillary stubbornly refuses to eat her poison mushrooms and stay dead. Even bloggers on our own side are keeping a death watch and counting the delegates to the point where they can pull the sheet up over her campaign’s still warm phone banking lists. She’s like the guy slung over the back of the Holy Grail’s Bring Out Your Dead plague scene. His claims of “I’m not dead yet” and “I’m feeling better. I think I’ll take a walk” are met with “Don’t be such a baby” and a wink and a nod to the cart pusher to put the guy out of our misery.

Well, she’s not dead yet. She’s very much alive and leading in the big states that are left. And as we’ve seen in several states where she’s been slightly behind, the undecideds make up their minds as they pull the voting booth curtain closed. And she usually gets their votes because they know her brand name. It’s got the quality seal of approval.

So, let’s dedicate this Cocktail Hour to a vigorous and lively primary season. Put away your malice and mallets. Buy your friends and enemies a round and let’s celebrate. Everyone is welcome. To the left of the door is Rico, our bartender with flair! Tonight’s featured cocktail is a *Lust for Life*, but you can order anything you like.

Our singer tonight used to sing with her cousins, the Pips, but these days, Gladys Knight is delving into the rich repetoire of the first female jazz singers. Her new CD, Before Me , can be found at iTunes or amazon.com. Here’s a cut from that CD that I think goes particularly well with tonight’s theme:

Trigger words have been known to get in the way of scintillating conversation, so feel free to leave them with our lovely check room attendant, Florence. The waiters will be circulating in a minute with some piggy back dates, baba ganouj topped baby new potatoes and lobster ravioli.

Please drink responsibly and top your wait staff generously.

By the way:  If you don’t have time to share a drink right now, Taylor Marsh has graciously offered to host the party at her site tonight at 5pm PST (8pm EST).

Webby Goodness

Here are some yummy posts that deserve some attention:

• eriposte explains why many of us are Hillary Clinton supporters and happily so in Fighting the Good Fight. Amen, sibling!
• Tom Watson comments on how the Obama campaign is once again reaching for the smelling salts, this time over why byzantine DNC convention rules should not apply to it in Vapors on the Left.
• Christy Hardin Smith upacks the superdelegate issue further at FireDogLake in Poking Holes in the Superdelegate SuperFrenzy. As a sidenote, see another fine product from Scarecrow where he fans the tiny flame of Democratic courage in House Democrats Call the President’s FISA bluff. Now, if they can close their ears to the screeching GOP wurlitzer, maybe we can turn this ship around. Stay tuned on this. Maybe Pelosi is finally feeling her ovaries.
• And finally, some reminders. I’ve read a lot around the web about intimidation of lefty women bloggers from the Obamaphiles and I was cited as an example. I’d just like to say that I could have gone away and felt all terrible about the way I was treated at DailyKos and how vicious I think the Obamaphiles and even some frontpagers are, but I just decided to create my own playground instead of having to ask permission to play in someone else’s. To be quite honest, I felt rather liberated when I was closed out of my DailyKos account. And here’s why I’m not desperately trying to claw my way back in:
  • They’re only pixels on a screen. They can’t hurt you. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” So what if KagroX, that petty dicktator doesn’t like me? Am I going to let his attempts to make me feel unwanted and unpopular destroy my self-esteem? Did he think that by making me feel like a red-headed stepchild that I would rethink my candidate of choice like so many others have just so I’ll find favor in his eyes?  Not bloody likely. He means nothing to me but a collection of little black dots. Don’t let them get to you, ladies. They WANT to drive you away. This may be a little outpost compared to DKos but I’m still here and there are a lot more like me and we’re not leaving. You are in good company.

  More givens:

  • No matter who the nominee is, Karl has a dossier on him/her.
  • No matter who the nominee is, the GOP is going to pound them relentlessly.
  • No matter how good our candidate is, the media Beltway insiders are going to make fun of him/her and act like the 10th grade popular clique.
  • No matter how much the public is disgusted by Republicans, the Republicans will find some wedge issue that panders to self-interest.
  • No matter how much the public wants to vote for our nominee, the game has been carefully rigged to prevent those votes from counting.

  Just so we’re clear, there is a long uphill battle ahead of us. The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight and if they can’t win the White House, they will be busy trying to keep their stranglehold in the senate. Gird your loins.

The Pensieve

These silvery threads form some sort of pattern:

• DailyKos is now asking non-Obamaphiles to pre-admit their guilt (for supporting someone other than Obama) and check a box agreeing that their previous post was Muslim-baiting or racist or some other damn thing, before they are allowed to continue posting. I swear to God, when I went to YearlyKos06, none of this $%#^ was in evidence. It was like one big family reunion. That started to change at YearlyKos07 when Edwards started rolling out the big guns against Clinton. I understand why he did it. It was nothing personal. Just politics. He got caught unprepared when the Obama juggernaut started up ao he went after the base with hard hitting and not always fair anti-Hillary screed. She was the biggest corportaist, triangulating, establishment loving, lobbyist ass-kissing senator that ever lived. That’s when he thought Clinton was his biggest threat. If he had more clearly seen the threat from his right, all of these accusations would have been hurled at Obama, with slight variations, and it would have been a lot more accurate. But nevermind, his supporters were genuine, maybe a little too pure but their hearts were in the right place. Many Edwardians are still struggling and that’s OK. Give them a little breathing room. But Obamaphiles are a completely different breed altogether. So, Kos isn’t even pretending there is anything approaching objectivity with the frontpagers. I think we can be pretty certain that KagroX is the grand poo-bah of Obamamania. (Yeah, I never liked you either, KX) DailyKos is in the grip of something transforming. And not in a good way. At one point, it was taken seriously, presidential candidates spoke to it, Kos was featured on PBS Frontline specials, we gave David Brooks fits. Not anymore. Now it has become the parody that Brooks once claimed it was. It is full of rabid lambs- feckless foaming at the mouth fanatics. How the mighty have fallen. Kos may think we will come back after the primaries but that would be like hanging out with people who now run with a different crowd. One that does some pretty hard #$%^ and drive recklessly and don’t do their homework anymore and are in danger of dropping out of school to work as itinerant gas station attendants. There but for the grace of God go I.
• The same weirdly annoying thing is happening to Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo. Today, he has a piece up about John Lewis retracting his support of Hillary as if this is an earth shattering event instead of further evidence of Barack Obama’s solidification as an African-American candidate. He has now successfully cornered that 15% of the population. His campaign strategy is to try to win large urban areas of the remaining states. Jeez, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what’s going on here. If anything, Lewis’s defection is more evidence of Clinton’s strength as a candidate. Then, there is the title of another piece, “Top Hillary Advisors Repeatedly *Griped* about MSNBC’s Matthews” but if you click on the original post at The Horse’s Mouth, Greg Sargent uses the word “complained”, not “griped”. Complain is something we as consumers do when we want to report a problem. Gripe is what we do around friends and family and sounds a lot like “bellyachin'”. Surely Josh knows these words connote two different things, one more legitimate than the other. Now, I ask you, is this the way a mature, soon to be father of two should behave? As if the news is somehow malleable and can be molded to shape you preconceptions? I thought that was what the mainstream media was all about. Who can you trust anymore if you can’t trust TPM?
• Oddly enough, DailyKos is not in FireDogLake’s blogroll anymore. Yep, and neither is TPM. I can’t hardly say I blame Jane, Christy et al. They got dissed by the big boys even though their coverage of the Libby trial puts them in a class by themselves. They’ve also taken great pains to be objective journalists. That doesn’t mean they haven’t been passionate or that they haven’t made mistakes. But in their coverage of the primaries, they appear to be holding the candisates to higher standards and are avoiding the hagiographic tributes to one over the other. Classy!

One other thing: In the month that The Confluence has been in existence after my tragic exile from Dailykos (Narf!), we have had over 10,000 hits. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d have so many people reading anything I’ve written. If I’d known this would happen, I would have taken more writing classes and paid more attention to sentence structure and editing. But you guys put up with my mismatched subjects and verbs and I thank you for that. I hope that in the NEXT month, a few of you readers will take me up on my offer to collaborate. RonK is a fantastic writer and his posts are very informative so I hope he finishes his touch-ups on the ones he has planned. But there is always more to do. There is a void that needs to be filled and I can’t do it all by myself. So, let me know if you think you would be a good fit here, where politics meets, philosophopsychofeminadatamixology.