Florida

It’s easy to do the right thing and be on the correct side of the issue in this case even if you don’t stand to gain anything from it. The punishment was unusually harsh, the voters had nothing to do with it and the Democrats really need them in November. But more than that, it’s just a good thing to count every vote, let Floridians have some weight in determining the nomination and to respect their intentions, which were fairly clear. If it turns out that Florida’s votes when added to the mix do not sway superdelegates to vote for Clinton, well, at least they tried. But if they are never counted at all and Obama wins, then Floridians will be left with a mystery. Could counting all of their votes have lead to a different outcome? Deja vu. Not a good feeling when you thought you’d been pre-disastered. What’s worse is that it is at the hands of the “good” party this time. Who can you trust?

Obama made a decision a couple of months ago to not waive the rules and to obstruct revotes. Florida Democrats filed a petition to get at least half the delegation seated. A couple of months ago would have been an optimal time to settle the matter. Obama could have been magnanimous and agreed to seat all of the delegates and take a small hit to his delegate count. Or he could have taken the Florida Democrat’s compromise of half delegate seating. He chose not to do either. Now, I don’t think any solution he proposed short of seating all of them would be acceptable to Floridians.

For a guy with self-proclaimed good judgment, he has boxed himself into a corner. With his lead in the delegate count, he comes off looking petulant. If he’s the presumptive nominee, if he can not lose under any circumstances, where’s the harm of seating all of the delegates? What is he holding out for? Surely he needs to smooth the waters with the voters of this state so the holding pattern is inscrutable. He could be afraid the delegates lend legitimacy to Clinton’s popular vote and he may lose. But the longer he holds out the greater the possibility that he will permanently alienate the voters of Florida. And it won’t look good for him no matter what the Rules and Bylaws committee decides. If he prevails, there goes Florida. If Clinton prevails, Obama doesn’t score any points with them either. If it’s a split decision, Floridians may resent having to still endure a punishment they didn’t deserve when one of the candidates had the power to prevail over the committee and waive the rules.

A leader would just agree to seat them. A man who is confident of winning would just take the hit and make peace. So, are we to conclude that he is not a leader or not confident of winning? Or both? And what is that saying to the superdelegates?

Question For The Day: If Appalachia’s inbred racist hicks …

… explain BO08’s 30-65 loss in Kentucky’s closed Democratic PRIMARY Election — how did Harold Ford possibly rack up 48% of the statewide popular vote for Senator in Tennessee’s 2006 GENERAL Election?

Thursday: And now, a little something about race

Good Lord, the sweeties have been out in force the last couple of days, catapulting the propaganda. And just like any potentially successful organism, the sweetie has adapted to its environment. They tried playing the feminine guilt card on us until we made it clear that we were not the mommy half of the party and were not going to rescue young women from their careless mistakes as long as they still had an opportunity to make a rational choice. So, now they’re turning to race.

One particularly annoying theme from yesterday’s sweetie attack was that Kentuckians pretty much admitted that they were racists in exit polls. “They admitted it! Yes, it’s true. One in five Kentuckians said they were basing their voting decision on race and isn’t it obvious that Obama couldn’t win there and why should we as a party spend so much time and money on a bunch of ignorant people who will not be enlightened? Jeez, don’t you fricking Conflucians get it? Are you still willing to sell out the party for race?”

Damn, those numbers keep getting in the way. If 20% of Kentuckians won’t vote based on race, that must mean that 80% were more than willing to overlook race to vote for the candidate who appeals to them in some other way. THAT means that if Barack Obama had spent some time actually talking to some of the working class voters in Kentucky about what is important to them, he might not have lost the state by a humiliating 35%. So, what are we to conclude from this? If it is true that 20% of Kentuckians are racists, Obama wasted a perfectly good chance to score with a vast majority of DEMOCRATS in Kentucky and this is a conscious decision he is making that has nothing to do with race.

Now, it turns out that Conflucians do not share the characteristics of the typical Clintonista. That is because the stereotypical Clintonista, that stupid, uneducated, working class woman Clinton supporter is a myth. We actually can think our way out of a paper bag. And if you sweeties can’t think more logically than this you are really not going to be very persuasive in getting us to change our minds. We really aren’t interested in voter assisted suicide of the Democratic party because the party leadership and superdelegates are just bound and determined to use Obama’s candidacy as a teachable moment on race.

Race, after all, is an artificial social construct. (For those of you interested in the relationship of evolutionary change and “race”, I highly recommend Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs and Steel. ) It has no meaning in the biological sense. It is merely the regional phenotypic expressions as a result of the organism adapting to its environment. Personally, I’d like for all of us to get over it. But it’s not going to happen this year because instead of Obama raising our consciousness about race, he used race as a weapon against his very own constituents. Gene Lyons had a recent column about how angry and alienated Democrats are about how our party has disintegrated. Those of us who will not vote for him or are seriously considering making a statement, have two major reasons for it: 1.)In comparison to Hillary Clinton, he is embarrassingly unready and 2.) he has used race to divide his own party in the most pernicious way possible. There are other reasons relating to gender as well and I have a message to Gary Hart and Bill Richardson. We are NOT irrational females who have no reason to be mad and it is unlikely that we will come around in the fall. When you are in a hole, stop digging.

So, dear sweeties, go back to the drawing board and see if you can find another reason why we should vote for Obama in the fall. But before you come back here, you might want to get rid of your own prejudices about us.

In the meantime, here is a blast from the past that I think speaks eloquently about what makes Clintonistas tick. We are in solidarity with the common people: