Superdelegates: This is what November will look like

She’s not going to get over it.

You still have a choice.

Do the right thing.

SHAME! This is a day that will live in infamy.

The DNC Rules and Bylaws committee should be ashamed of themselves. This has been an disreputable example of a kangaroo court, the outcome predetermined and motions written in such a way as to force that outcome.

We have heard the word UNITY used as a weapon of mass destruction, directed at one candidate’s campaign in order to force her into a compromise against her own best interests.

We have heard the RULZ cited as a skimpy figleaf to cover the dishonor of awarding another candidate delegates he neither earned or deserved. Indeed, his intention in Michigan was clear: by taking his name off of the ballot, he set in motion this very outcome. He “flawed” the process and was rewarded for this strategy by a panel whose intent is clear.

The purpose of this meeting was to further level the playing field for a candidate of insufficient qualification. He lacks experience, knowledge, respect for the voters and the support of the voters. Therefore, they will award him points from the other candidate.

He is the affirmative action candidate.

The Republicans will use this meeting today as a warning to voters. They will hold it up as an example. “All politicians are dishonest. All parties are the same. They are indistinguishable. Look at what the Democrats have done to their own voters. What makes you think that you will do any better under them? They took the best, strongest candidate they had and they handicapped her to give you the weakest candidate. Now, watch us destroy him.”

Unity is a hollow word and after today, it is certainly something that the Democratic party will not get. Alice Huffman and Alexis Herman should not pay lip service to such notions. They do not know how deeply the wedge has been thrust into the Democratic body politic by the likes of Donna Brazile and Howard Dean. They have been insulated, content with the process, becalmed by their ability to reach compromise. Regardless, their attempts to unify will not survive the boundaries of the ballroom of the Marriott hotel.

We will support Hillary Clinton to the end. If they want unity, they’re going to have to walk it back and kiss our asses.

One more thing: I would like to thank garychapelhill and Mawm for doing an excellent job of covering the hearing. They have spent their own funds to travel from North Carolina and put themselves up in a hotel in Washington, DC. Please consider a donation to help them defray their travel expenses. I thank you very much on their behalf.

garychapelhill and Mawm’s RBC Adventure Fund

RBC Meeting: Morning Summary and Thanks to Garychapelhill

Use this thread to summarize your thoughts on the RBC meeting. Who made the best case for their state/candidate? Who did more harm than good? What arguments made the most sense, even if they were not favorable to your candidate? Will the outcome be fair to all parties?

Also, garychapelhill has done a wonderful job over the past couple of months capturing the North Carolina primary and the RBC meeting for us. He and his partner, John, have foot the bill for the trip to DC on our behalf. If you would like to thank them and help them defray their expenses (gas ain’t cheap and neither are hotels), any little donation would help so, please consider donating using the button below:

garychapelhill’s RBC Adventure fund:

RBC Meeting Live Blog- Thread 3

This is a continuation of garychapelhill’s live blogging direct from the RBC meeting in Washington, DC. While we wait for Gary to look up from the previous thread and migrate here, feel free to update us with your own thoughts in the comments.

Have at it, Conflucians.

2:30–I see that there is a new thread. Hope I’m not too late. “Disenfranchising voters is not the American way!”. We should have questions coming up and then LUNCH, yeahhh! Question from Hines(sp?) Does Clinton support MI party proposal? No she does not. Does not agree that primary was flawed. Does say that they should not have been allowed to remove their names as Florida disallowed. Hines ask if there should be rules on timing. He says they should rotate the schedule. Hines says the rules are products of years of study, doesn’t he believe in the rules? Blanchard says rules shouldn’t disenfranchise voters. Clinton did not have anything to do with timing, so question “would you do it the same way” is not valid. I know you guys would love it here. I keep hearing people muttering “but what about the rooooolz????” Proposal of another allocation other than actual vote will “be a mountain to climb”. Clinton is pretty much giving him the uncommitted. “but some may switch back, you never know”. He meant SD’s. I haven’t heard anything about this, but is it a foregone conclusion that all SD’s will be restored? Now this guy says that it trivialized 2000 to compare this primary to it. Blanchard says the right of voters trumps all. It is not trivial. Again with the “what about the people who didn’t vote?”. That is truly embarrassing. Oh no, Donna Brazille. She doesn’t consider ignoring voter rights disenfranchisement. Didn’t he already answer that question about whether he supports the MI party plan? Maybe she fell asleep. “My momma said I’ll give you something to take home. to play by the rules”. what a hack. She is getting heckled by the audience.  Ickes is up last.  That’s it for now. We will pick up later, if there is going to be an afternoon session.  Thanks for everyone’s participation!  Now I’m going to eat lunch!!!!!!  We’ll be back at 4:15

RBC Meeting Live Blog- Thread 2

Hopefully, Gary will look up from his posting and see the comments in the last thread and move over here but feel free to keep us updated in the comments as events proceed.

12:30–The state Dem party of MI is up as challenger. Will outline Mich. proposal. Seat entire 157 delegation at full voting strength. 69 for Clinton 59 for Obama. I hope he explains where that # comes from. Now to the proposal. Should seat entire delegation because MI has been punished enough and further punishment puts MI at risk in GE, and it is a must win. No campaign in MI. They were completely by-passed and that’s enormous punishment. Every time McCain visits MI, they never fail to remind them that Dems don’t care about MI. He wants a waiver, as has been granted to other states. OK, now to the numbers. Says it is fair reflection of voter preference. says actual vote was not a reflection of voter preference? They are arbitrarily picking what they think is fair? (Wow, about half of the crowd has left, what’s that all about?). Why do they want to count voters who didn’t vote?? what kind of banana republic do they want to make of this country? He is arguing that Obama should get delegates from voters who voted against him, that is unacceptable. This crap about proxy votes through uncommitted is BS, and his assertion that Obama’s supporters were urged to vote uncommitted is an admission that he campaigned there isn’t it?

Saturday: RBC Day of Reckoning

Please see garychapelhill’s live blog below straight from the RBC venue.

I am still at home. Going to DC today turned out to be trickier than I thought. But fortunately for us, garychapelhill was able to snag guest blogger credentials for the meeting. I think we are in good hands.

Conflucian Slumber Party

Ok, Conflucians, did everyone bring their sleeping bags?  Who has the copy of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”?  Pretty soon we’re going to turn off the lights and tell ghost stories.  I brought my nail polish in case anyone has a foot fetish and wants to give me a pedicure.  Tomorrow’s a big day.  If I get up early enough, I can catch the train from Trenton and be in DC by 9:00am.  But in the meantime, let’s short sheet someone and paint a mustache on the first one who falls asleep.

And here’s a bit of surrealism for those of us who were little kids in the 60’s:

You can sneak in a beer.  We promise not to tell the ‘Grups’.  This is an open thread.

A note about spam filtering

To whom it may concern (you know who you are):
I found 239 comments in the spam filter today. Some of you are having a great deal of difficulty understanding how you ended up here and can not accept it (just walk away, Renee). Others ended up in spam through no effort at all and I have despammed the harmless comments. Still others were the unfortunate victims of a very clever spam filter but deserve it nonetheless. Here are the basic criteria for ending up in the sludge:

1.) You intentionally repeat Obama talking points. Some of these talking points are intended to intimidate and instill a sense of hopelessness in the reader. Others repeat character assassinating memes and self-serving misinterpretations. For example: the RFK remark from Clinton during her Argus interview was mistwisted to imply that she hoped for assassination so that she could step into the frontrunner’s spot. Only the most cynical of political operatives would spin her statement that way and we know it was false. When a meme like this starts to propagate, it is our job to act as weedkiller and stop it from going further. Therefore, the comment gets sent to spam and the commenter’s address is added to the filter.

2.) Your comment contains character assassinating, racist or Republican talking points about Barack Obama. No one here believes he is a Muslim. We don’t believe in racial stereotypes. We don’t reprint rumors about Rezko without proof. There is no reason to take the low road when his campaign is doing such a brilliant job of making him revolting to us just by being themselves. Prejudice is unwelcome here and we don’t tolerate it.

As for censorship, we don’t censor here. Censorship is something the government does to stifle dissent. Your dissent is not stifled. There are plenty of places on the web to post your opinion. But if your comment violates one of the two things above, your comment will be deleted or spammed. If you had nowhere else to go, I would feel obligated to let you post here. Fortunately for both parties, this is not the case.

We appreciate that you have a choice of blogs to register your comment. We encourage discourse violators to exercise that choice. Do not be worry about offending us. I assure you that the insult to our sensibilities will be slight if you decide to go elsewhere.

Friday: Snap out of it! (Plus Friday Fast)

Update: The South Dakota Argus Leader gives Hillary Clinton a glowing, rational and admiring endorsement. Let’s hope it leads to a victory there next Tuesday.

The trance-like march of the party over the cliff continues apace. Jeralyn at TalkLeft posts that WaPo reporter Paul Kane says that the superdelegates don’t care about the polls showing Hillary doing better than Obama against McCain. They still seem to be deluding themselves that we Clintonistas will all fall in line before November after being called white entitled bigots, stupid, unimportant working class and a being subjected to a whole host of misogynistic conversation. Yeah, we totally love that $%^@. We can’t wait until a spike heeled candidate totally dominate and piss on us. It’s what we live for.

But there’s something they seem to be forgetting. Clinton won CA, MA, NY, NJ, PA, OH, TX, KY, WV, AR, IN, MI and FL. Those are either very big or very important states for the Dems in the fall and there is a wee possibility that the voters of those states will feel a tinge of resentment due to the fact that many of them moved up their primaries to Feb. 5 in order to have an impact and now find out that they don’t. And this is the part that is so backwards here and makes me think that the game was rigged well in advance of the first vote being cast: Obama went for the low hanging fruit in caucus states. In fact, he didn’t really have to do much there. His wins were pretty much assured given the demographic he appeals to. The young and idealistic pretentious congregate in college towns where they provide the most critical mass.

I’ve read a lot of stuff on the web in the comments sections about how poorly Clinton ran her campaign. This is part of the circular firing squad that Democrats indulge in after every election cycle when they feel a candidate has failed to meet their exacting standards of performance. But the strange thing is that Clinton’s campaign performed very well. You can’t call the list of states that she’s won anything but a success. In normal primary years, the election would be over by now and she would have had this baby sewn up months ago.

It is *Obama* who has run a poor campaign. He lost all of those states despite the fact that he poured many times the amount of money than Clinton in each one. Over and over again, he couldn’t close the deal with the vast majority of Democratic voters. Primaries in big and swing states are very difficult to win and in each of the ones listed, he lost – decisively. By any reasonable metric, Obama is a failed candidate. He wins only by suppression in caucus states and by DNC assisted suppression of Florida and Michigan. Indeed, the only way he wins is with assistance. He can’t get there without the kindness of others who are willing to grant him votes he did not earn, as in Michigan, reduce the number of delegates he needs compared to his opponent’s requiremtn and award sparsely populated states more delegates than traditionally Democratic and swing states. He is the Affirmative Action candidate.

So, how is it that superdelegates are willing to overlook his failures and all of the voters in those states where he failed? F^&* if I know. But if the superdelegates think we won’t be mad as hell about the outcome, they’re crazy. THEY may not care about the polls. Their constituents may have quite different ideas. They are snatching victory from the jaws of their most successful candidate and handing it over to the candidate who has barely broken a sweat. “Here you go, Barry. Sorry about all of the trouble we put you through. Oh, and ladies? Get over it.”

Not this year, superdelegates. Take it from a scientist: the data never lies. You might not want to believe what it says or you might not understand it. The polls are telling you something you may not want to hear but if you don’t listen to it and pick the wrong candidate we’ll be singing this song to you come November.

For those of you following the Friday Fast, here are the instructions in Friday Fast and Call to action.

Linda Stender: A woman who belongs in Congress

In 2006, Linda Stender came within a heartbreaking 4000 votes to beat Mike Ferguson (R) in my district, NJ-07. Linda is a wonderful progressive Democrat that any of us would be proud to see in the House of Representatives. This year, Mike Ferguson is quitting his seat and Linda has a better chance of succeeding him. She is doing her best to maintain neutrality between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and I respect her for that. But I would like to give you a small sample of what makes this candidate so impressive. This clip from her closing remarks from her 2006 debate against Mike Ferguson goes out to WigWag and hlr and everyone who wants desperately to vote for a true Democrat this year:

If you feel so inclined, please visit her page and make a donation: Linda Stender for Congress