Ok, Let’s Nip This Meme in the Bud Right Now

Damn, Hillary Clinton!  The race is virtually tied (and with MI and FL *actually* tied) and she has the unmitigated gall to want to continue to let people vote.  She wants to drag this out to the convention.  And now Kos, doing his best Natalie Imbruglia impersonation,  is blaming Hillary for ripping the Democratic party asunder.  Oh, woe is me!

HI, Will!  I don’t even know you yet but I am inventing PUMA, right this every second.  Party Unity My Ass.  See?  It’s like Back to the Future. Isn’t this cool?

How awful it is to allow the remaining states add to her win column.  Of course, those states count as long as they don’t count according to Obamaphiles.  Yeah, see, if your vote actually means something, it must be smothered.  We can’t have voters determining the election.  Like MI and FL can be seated as long as they sit on their hands and don’t make a fuss.  Better to be seen and not heard.  Causing a scene is soooo gauche.  Why do they want to be rude and disruptive?  Can’t they see Obama is trying to wrap this baby up?

Kos and the Official Obama Blog of the 2008 primary season are terribly worried that this dragging things out is just prolonging the inevitable and will make Clinton pathetic.  I dunno.  I find it fascinating.  It’s like watching the “Butterfly Effect” in action.  Who knows what little gust of ill wind will finish one of the two off?  But anyway, getting back to that inevitable coronation, er, nomination for Obama, I think Kos might have forgotten those of us who already voted for Clinton.  Yeah, those of us in NY, NJ, CA, MA, OH, OK, AZ etc depend on MI and FL in our column or none of our states count.

Let that sink in a sec, Kos.  The RULZ as presently dictated, not only disenfranchise   FL and MI but every other big state and swing state that voted for her- decisively. I would hate to piss us off if I were Barry, because that would be very divisive, in a rather huge and unpleasant way.  I’d much rather piss off Wyoming and Utah.

But there’s still time.  Yep, because August is  5 months away and as long as the result is still a tie, a very likely scenario, the superdelegates can go to the convention and select the candidate best suited to run against John McCain in November.  If we don’t rush it by demanding that the supers pick one NOW!, then if it turns out that the GOP war machine starts going  negative on either candidate, the other could step in to the frontrunner’s place.  If I were Kos, this is precisely the scenario I would want if I wanted to win in the fall.  The strongest candidate at the time of the convention would be the nominee.  That’s not divisive, Kos.  That’s saving your bacon from being the dimwitted blogger you turned out to be.

As for divisions, this can be solved rather easily: 1.) seat the delegates from FL and MI as is.  That will make the voters of these states hate the Democrats less. 2.) Stop being the anti-Clinton supporters.  That will make the rest of US not want to put your nuts in a vice.  And 3.) Get behind Hillary because she’s the best qualified candidate, unlike Barry who has nothing going for him right now except for the fair weather friends in the media. That should be the only criteria for nomination, who is the best presidential material.

And stop trying to rush things.  Your strategy is obvious and irritating and it makes you look pathetic.

Who We Are: Roll Call

I’ve frequently wondered about religions that exclude certain groups. With the world in the condition it’s in, doesn’t God need all of the help he can get? Why single people out and tell them their services or good will are not required? Aren’t we all in this together? Isn’t it each of our responsibilities to be our brother’s keeper?

But to be a positive force for good, a person has to be *for* something. That is what sets Hillary Clinton supporters apart from Obama supporters. Our support is based on criteria that we have constructed, developed and evolved over our lifetimes. It is shaped by overcoming obstacles, experience and knowledge. We all hope but our futures are not contingent upon some cosmic lottery. We determine our futures based on applying our knowledge, wherever we may have acquired it, and hard work. Hope is not our goal, it is simply our optimism based on experience, that we can overcome if we “cherish friendliness towards all and emnity towards none”, if we make more bonds than burn bridges, if our small acts of good outweigh our acts of selfishness and destruction.

Politically, my credo can be stated as: I believe in shared responsibility. I believe in encouraging all to take risks and protecting those who may fail so that they may try again. I believe in social justice, fiscal responsibility, a healthy planet, privacy and the wise use of our national strength.

I believe that Clinton supporters come to support her because they know she needs all of us, not just some of us. That our collective knowledge and diligence are the heart of what made America great and will again. That the working class gives birth to the educated. That we pass our ethics and sense of fairness onto our children. That we are the American experience born of poverty, exiled from our native lands, “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, who planted our roots in this soil and who belong here with just as much right to say how it is run as any other class or group.

We support her because she needs us as much as we need her.

Now, who are we? I’ll go first:

I am the grandaughter of a bus driver, a union steelworker, the daughter of a Navy nuclear maintenance specialist and an intelligent mother who only attended college for a year. I worked my way through school and graduated with a degree in Chemistry. I am the first in my family, on either side, to finish college. I am proud of my roots, my grandparents who worked hard to overcome prejudice and were lifelong Democrats. I love my aunts who despite their native intelligence, never went to college, who are hard working, well-read and wise. I support Hillary because of the quality of her presentation and her committment to the people I come from and the person who I have become.

Your turn now…

Who am us, anyway?

[Update] Let’s make this an Open Thread….

Anglachel’s post, Bunker Mentality, started started a wonderful conversation (don’t miss it):

The Stevenson contingent has no narrative, no political frame adequate to address the coalition that has formed around Hillary. They are left grasping at what this person represents to people who do not fall into the educated (male) wine-track or the uneducated (male) beer-track. On the other hand, I’m not sure anyone else has a clear concept of this new constituency either. What does it mean that an upper Midwest born, New England educated white woman who lived for several decades in Arkansas and now calls New York home is sweeping border state primaries and also cleaning up in Florida, California and Massachusetts? What part of the Democratic imagination is she setting on fire?

She is creating a new coalition of voters, more diverse than the pundits are really aware of. It is different than the powerfully Southern draw that Bill had, but, given her strength in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, southern Ohio, roughly the Appalachian areas plus Oklahoma and Texas, there is definitely a Southern component. It is too easy to write it off as race due to the tremendous appeal that Obama has for AA voters, because it assumes only “Bunker” and “Bubba” stereotypical motivations (race hatred) for her supporters, and not that a large portion of people who would otherwise gladly be counted on her side are motivated by salutary racial pride to support another. Racism and ethnic prejudice exist in this country, but I refuse to reduce the political decisions of the majority of my fellow Democrats to destructive racist motives, whether in Hillary’s favor or in Obama’s.

(Title stolen from The Firesign Theatre)