Things that only true Obamaphiles can believe

Cognitive dissonance is not dead. It just isn’t supposed to be so rampant on our side. But here are some of things that only the true Obamaphile believes:

• Just because Hillary kept a hands-off attitude about the Wright videos, which would have surely helped her on the Wednesday before SuperDuper Tuesday, she will still do absolutely ANYTHING to win.
• He sits on the sidelines and lets FL and MI revote options expire, disenfranchising 2.2 Million voters while she is willing to risk her delegate count to get them seated. But this was just more of her ruthless negativity because as he says, ” “She’s just trying to tear me down, and that’s not the kind of politics we’ve been about,”
• He wouldn’t have to go so negative if she would just drop out. She’s asking for it.
• She has the right to compete. He says it’s Ok.
• She has visited over 80 countries as first lady and has participated in numerous missions on behalf of her husband’s administration. He hasn’t had a single meeting of his Foreign Relations subcommittee and hasn’t had to do diddly for this country in just about his entire adult life. See? They’re completely even. ( Close your eyes and squint)
• She gets caught misremembering snipers in Bosnia while on a visit into a dangerous war zone. He gets caught running Deval Patrick’s entire campaign down to the notable sentences about “We hold these truths to be self eveident” Nevertheless, she is a serial exaggerator and liar in the mold of Al Gore and John Kerry. But he is just collaborating.
• Despite her lifelong committment to healing the racial divide, her win at any costs strategy demostrate overt racism. But his pastor is just a big pussycat who got a little energetic and no, he never noticed that in 20 years of knowing him. He was in the bathroom peeing during those parts of the sermon.
• His wife says for the first time in her adult life, she feels proud of her country. But Hillary is less patriotic, er, just because.
• Hillary viciously hurls the kitchen sink at Obama when she comments that she wouldn’t have stayed with Wright as her pastor. He says that when she’s feeling down, she periodically thinks of ways to attack him. She is not expressing an opinion, she is using one of her periodic attack strategy sessions. He is practicing a higher form of politics.
• She calls for Michigan and Florida to be seated because the nominee can’t be legitimate without them. He sits on MI and FL and his supporters ask WWTSBQ? after she *wins* states. Neither can get the nomination without superdelegates. But he will not have to go this route because he has already won- without MI and FL.
• He has already won but his campaign announces that it is going to go offensively negative on her, becaaause it’s fun to kick a girl when she’s down?
• He says that his supporters will not vote for her but hers will vote for him. She says she will work to make sure the party is united in the fall. But she’s just ingeniously calling attention to her own divisiveness while he is the Unity candidate.
• His supporters are Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models with PhD’s in fabulously creative fields- who look like Markos Moulitsas
• Obama’s PhD swimsuit model supporters will never grow older or cease to be attractive, respected and desired by middle aged male Obama supporters. And someday they will all vote for a woman for president, just not “this one.” (Maria Garcia)
• She wants everyone to vote and every vote to count His supporters are telling the rest of the primary states that they shouldn’t even bother ‘cuz he’s going to win it. No, there is no reason for him to fear the actual vote, why do you ask?

Now, it’s your turn. I gotta go pack. I *hate* to pack..

Things that make you go hmmm. California Democrats meet in San Francisco amid Presidential Stalemate.

“Everytime an Obamaphile sings (WWTSBQ?), an angel gets his wings”

It looks like the more they say that Hillary has to drop out for the good of the party because she can’t win, the fewer Democratic voters will commit to voting for him in the fall. Is that inversely proportional? Yeah, I think it is. If I were Obama, I’d knock it off. It is severely undermining his argument that he is the more legitimate candidate. Heck, he lost that claim to fame when he sat on MI and FL. Obama’s campaign has just expanded on it by arrogantly referring to Ohio voters as “Archie Bunkers”, jumping into the misogynism talk with gusto and by the candidate himself referring to many of us as “typical white persons” (like the melanin challenged among us haven’t *tried* to get a tan. Can I help it if I come from northern European stock?).

But Anglachel once again summarizes it nicely in A Gathering Storm. Here is an excerpt:

This is a lesson both Bill and Hillary Clinton have learned. Big Dog got his ass handed to him his first reelection bid in Arkansas because he came across as too elite and alien to the population, too eager to push his agenda and not inclined to listen to what people told him. In a word, arrogance. You don’t run as a member of the liberal elite in middle America. You cannot be perceived as having contempt for the people whose votes you need. Hillary faced this in upstate New York, plus even more baggage – carpetbagger, outsider, Billary monster, favorite punching bag of the right – and some real Republican opponents. She did it the hard way, by demonstrating her work for the voters of the state, won the first election, then busted her chops for her constituents, and had a blow-out reelection. She certainly has legitimacy in New York.

Back to the race. The rank and file Democrats who have favorable attitudes towards the Clintons and also for McCain look at Obama and see someone running a negative campaign and who appears to disdain the nation. The mix of pocketbook issues with a straightforward and direct love of country is not favoring him with these voters. The more they hear, the less they are inclined to support.

Then we get into the recent events of the campaign. Florida and Michigan are the contests where actual legitimacy for the candidates and thus the eventual nominee will be founded. A 48 state strategy is not viable if those two are not part of the 48. In these places, Hillary voters are being written off, dismissed as illegitimate voices in the process. The insistence on only one aspect of the rules, the penalty, while ignoring the full set of rules that could be used to manage the situation is eroding Obama’s claims to legitimacy because people don’t care about arcane party rules. They want their votes to count. The acts by Obama to prevent a revote have done nothing to increase his standing with ordinary voters, let alone strong Clinton partisans. This does not make him attractive to people who will have to switch their allegiance should Hillary not be the nominee. Conversely, her insistence on having votes counted will earn her greater legitimacy as well as benefit her with extra delegates.

There’s more where that came from. Just go read it. This is the point I was trying to make yesterday. I am so angry that I have been treated as an illegitimate voter because I refuse to drink the Kool-Aid. Obama doesn’t deserve my vote and if I give it him under these circumstances, I risk setting back the accomplishments of females by 40 years as well as ending up with a neophyte whose strings will be pulled by the very same people who tossed me out of my own tribe. Actually, anger doesn’t quite cut it. I am deeply offended and insulted.

So, listen up Superdelegates. This storm is going to be a doozy.

Update: So, Pelosi is starting to feel the pressure from a nonchalant Debbie Wasserman Shultz and from the big DNCC donors who sent her a “Dear Nancy” letter. So, she’s walked it back a bit:

“Speaker Pelosi is confident that superdelegates will choose between Senators Clinton or Obama — our two strong candidates — before the convention in August. That choice will be based on many considerations, including respecting the decisions of millions of Americans who have voted in primaries and participated in caucuses. The Speaker believes it would do great harm to the Democratic Party if superdelegates are perceived to overturn the will of the voters. This has been her position throughout this primary season, regardless of who was ahead at any particular point in delegates or votes.”

Umm, now I don’t know about you but any confidence that this thing is going to end before August troubles me greatly. The public is quite happy to see this play out. Only 22% of either side want their candidate’s opponent to bow out. The leaves a majority content to let this thing go to the convention. Anyway, I don’t think Pelosi is screaming *Uncle* loudly enough. It sounds to me like she’s dug in her heels and I am not happy with this. No, not at all. She’s going to have to try harder. (Jeez, I can not believe I defended her just a few months ago)

Update deux: After watching Obama giving his speech surrounded by Old Glory’s, .commenter Ohio offers this snappy slogan to the Clinton campaign: “Clinton 08: She don’t need no stinkin’ props. “  Now if I can only the image of the fake federale from the Treasure of the Sierra Madre out of my head…

Thursday- That’ll learn ya’

Hola, mi amigos. I’m going on vacation tomorrow to Denver for a week to do that whole Rocky Mountain thing. So, I have a lot to do today to get ready and posting will be light. (HA! I always tell myself this) BTW, if anyone from Clinton’s campaign is reading this and needs a blogger in Denver for the Convention, I have a place to stay for free or vastly reduced cost *hint, hint*.

Update Action Alert: If you think that the DNC is out of it’s mind by not seating the FL and MI delegations and you find this unacceptable for the DEMOCRATIC party to not be practicing DEMOCRACY, then I have a petition for you. 😉 Sign on the line at Seat our Delegates. (Note the “you can’t count on us to vote in November” statement. They aren’t ruling it out. They’re just saying, “Nice chance of winning back the WH in November you got there. You wouldn’t want anything to *happen* to it, eh”)

Anyways, the trolls are thicker than a perilous Hobbitt episode but many of them are incredibly dim. Fortunately, our friends at Corrente have been schooling them so at least they know what the heck they’re talking about. For example:

• Vastleft jumps to the advanced material with Sneaky Chelsea Dodges Questions about, well, you know. Unfortunately, some trolls came to the class on wits unarmed. So, Lambert taught the prerequisite course in irony and The Clenis. It pains me to have to bring this subject up because Chelsea is right, it’s none of our business. But the Beevis and Butthead crowd in the 90’s Washington Press Corps started it and are now passing it down to a new generation and they really need to get their facts straight. Like, as Democrats, they should be ashamed to bring up this sordid episode in the life of the American media. If any one came out of it looking bad, it was them.
  As for Chelsea, we should al be so lucky and as Jackie-O once said, “If you mess up your children, nothing else you do really matters” Kudos to Hillary for doing a remarkable job under duress.
• Tukana schools us on Iraq, the Candidates and the Netroots. Getting out of Iraq is not going to be easy and the candidate that has set unrealistic expectations is going to be in a heap of trouble if he/she can’t deliver after the election but this is going to fall on Barry’s head harder. Many of his younger supporters are virulently anti-war, (aren’t we all?) but don’t realize that things aren’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time. Ahh, the impatience of youth. And this is what they are in large part basing their voting decision on. In the meantime, mortars strike inside the Green Zone.
• BTW, did you tune your tinfoil antenna today to pick up Clinton’s latest directive? Lambert finds yet another fault in Josh Marshall’s reasoning, or, rather, the people that Josh Marshall allows to lower the level of discourse at his site. Look guys, it’s really simple. We *like* Clinton. She’s not perfect but she’s supersmart, committed, tough as nails and she’s the real Democrat in this race. We don’t like Obama because he’s has no record to speak of, his campaign is determined to disenfranchise the votes of Floridians and Wolverines and, finally, he has shown a remarkable amount of contempt for the Democratic base of women and “typical white” people. There’s really no mystery about it. In fact, the only ones who seem to be mindlessly following control signals appear to be Obamaphiles. Their support for their candidate makes no damn sense except in terms of him not being Clinton. That’s the sum total of support for him: he is the anti-Clinton. Anyway, the superdelegates are reportedly holding back and assessing the situation to see if Obama “might prove to be a stronger draw”. Uh, no. The answer would be no. Come on, guys, I have talked to people on the phone who several years ago would have never considered voting for Clinton but they are *eager* to do it this year and it has nothing to do with messing up the Democrats. It’s because they’ve seen enough of her lately to know what mettle she’s made of and they like her. Jeez. Keep those emails flowing. The SDs don’t get it yet.
• Oh, brother, here we go again. The NYTimes reports that all of the innovation in passing around news virally is happening because young people are doing it. Yep, it’s only the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models with PhDs for Obama who do that stuff. That would make us….what, exactly? Jeez, I was using chats, writing html and embedding before these kids were out of diapers. Heck, I remember when Mosaic was the coolest thing since sliced bread. And before *that* we ftp’d each other and thought we were hot spit because we could finger the vending machine at CMU. WE blazed the trail. Gits.