The Ghost of Violet Socks and Cold-blooded Pragmatism

The Ghost of Violet Socks at the Reclusive Leftist lays out a very persuasive argument for not supporting Obama in Archimedes Lever. I encourage you all to scoot over there to read it and here are some tempting morsels:

This has been the problem facing American feminists for years. Long before Hillary ran for President, long before Barack Obama smugly assured the world that Hillary’s supporters would vote for him in a flash, we had a problem. The Democrats weren’t earning our loyalty. They were taking us for granted, knowing that no matter how little they did to earn our support, every year women would still go to the polls and vote Democrat anyway because, remember, the Republicans are even worse….

What we needed, feminists said to each other, was leverage. How could we get leverage? How could we get the Democrats — old and new — to represent women’s interests? How could we create a situation where women’s votes weren’t assumed to be in the bag, but were a prize that Democrats would have to work for?

Voilà. Leverage is here.

It’s here because of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the shameful way she was treated — by the media, by the Obama camp, and, most damning of all, by the Democratic National Party. Even women who didn’t personally support the Clinton candidacy were nonetheless appalled by the Trashing of Hillary. It’s not that she lost; after all, losing is part of the game. It’s that she wasn’t beaten in a fair fight. She was treated like garbage, and she’s still being treated like garbage. (As of this writing, Howard Dean is refusing to let Hillary’s name be on the ballot for the first vote at the convention, a startling departure from the norm. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in this campaign and she earned more primary votes for President than any Democratic candidate in the history of this country. And the DNC won’t even let her name be on the ballot.) The huge swell of anger in the land is the righteous rage of millions of women — women who are armed and more than ready to punish the DNC. Over and over the message is being beamed straight to the powers-that-be on a laser light of pure anger: You don’t get to take our votes for granted anymore. No more.

It’s a glorious situation. It’s what we’ve needed for years. Finally, the Democrats have to work for our votes! Finally, we have leverage!

She’s absolutely right but there I’m going to expand on this a bit. Here is our lever and we may never get another crack at it. Now, the Axelrove’s are busily crafting some nifty psychological warfare to use against us. After all, we *are* women and they know that we have been conditioned to look out for others. We are taught to be altruists. We are told that we fulfill ourselves if we sacrifice for others.

F%^& that $*I).

Are they telling me that if any of the blogger boyz were presented with this opportinity that they wouldn’t pull that lever with all their might? Of course they would. There’s nothing self-sacrificing about Markos Moultsas or Joshua Michah Marshall or Matt Yglesias. They’re all about climbing over us and slitting our throats if we get in their way. They don’t waste their time with guilt and shame and duty. They see what it best for them and they pursue it with a single minded intensity. They are cold-blooded pragmatists.

I happen to be a cold-blooded pragmatist as well when it comes to politics. I’m going to harden my heart. I am not going to let anyone play any mindf^*)ing games with me. If the Obamaphiles didn’t want the Democrats to lose this year, they had a choice. It’s now time they exercise it.

As Lady Macbeth said:
“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!

Let’s not pass this opportunity up. Let’s flex our muscles and pull the lever.

For the record, I don’t care if Obama was raised a Muslim

The story being floated by the Israeli newspaper may or may not be true. It makes no difference to me. My opposition to Barack Obama is based on his and his campaign’s behavior during the campaign and the actions of the DNC in his favor. My opposition to Barack Obama is based on the fact that he can’t hold a candle to Hillary Clinton in terms of policy, experience, qualifications, strength, dedication and sheer guts in the face of overwhelming odds.

I expect Obama will once again run from this accusation, deny it, and throw Muslims under a bus, along with the rest of us who are already there. It’s getting might crowded under the bus these days. But this will not make him more presidential. This will only make him the craven empty suit we know he is.

As a Muslim role model, he sucks.

Saturday: 1 MILLION Visitors

It *could* happen today but you’re probably all planning to weed your gardens or go to the shore or something like that. So, tomorrow for sure.

This morning, I’d like to address something that has been bugging me for a few days now. I haven’t been able to write about much of anything since my access to the page has been disabled at work. I don’t think The Confluence was singled out. The IT Nazis have been disabling everything that has “wordpress” or “blogpsot” or “typepad” in the domain name so as you might imagine I’m restricted to reading TaylorMarsh and TalkLeft. And it was TaylorMarsh that has my dander up this week.

One of the first things she did after she did her 180 was to write her renunciation of everything Clinton. This is fairly typical of people who want desperately to belong to the winning team. I understand the human nature element of it and to be fair, she wasn’t the only one writing pieces like this. But I thought I would set the record straight: Barack Obama did not run a brilliant winning campaign. He was carried across the finish line by his friends.

In fact, Barack Obama is the weakest candidate we have ever presumed to have nominated. Why? Because by February 5, Clinton’s wins had put her solidly in the lead. It was only by sitting on those two states that Obama was able to pull ahead of her. His claims of victory based on winning 11 straight caucuses and primaries in February would have looked like silly boasting had Florida and Michigan been counted properly. By February 5, Clinton had won, MI, NH, NV, FL, NY, NJ, CA, MA, AZ, TN, AR and some other little states. In any other primary year, that would have been enough to secure her the victory in terms of momentum. It wasn’t what happened after February 5 that mattered; it’s what came before.

If Donna Brazile and the RBC hadn’t decided last year to take FL and MI out of contention, Hillary would be the presumptive nominee. No one can credibly argue that with those two states under her belt that the caucus states would have made a damn bit of difference. The public would have looked at those wins though the lens of reality. They were sparsely populated Republican states that didn’t add up to a hill of beans in the end.

The fact that Obama won them is his triumph and will also be his undoing. Because he was unable to seal the deal in the other big D and swing states, he is going to have to fight the same battle for them in the fall. Come to think of it, why should he bother visiting Idaho ever again? It’s a waste of campaign funds to spend more than a few minutes on the tarmac in Boise. No, it’s going to be the Central Valley and Orange County of California where he is going to fight his toughest battles. Or the Ohio Valley starting in Pittsburgh down to Cinncinnatti. Or the suburbs of NJ, not that far from the World Trade Center and the busiest port on the East coast. He didn’t win there before and he’s going to have to bust his tail to win them in November.

And let’s not forget that despite all of his presumed lead, generously given to him by the Rules and Bylaws committee by sitting on Florida and Michigan, Clinton was winning states right up to the last day of primaries. Yep, even when the nation was screaming for her to get out, Puerto Ricans and South Dakotans voted for her. My friends, that is not the sign of a loser. Hillary was a winner in every sense of the word. She ran a brilliant campaign. What she couldn’t overcome was the betrayal of her own party.

I’m off to clean. Brook has invited several of her friends over to swim and she’s sensitive about what 6 months of blogging has done to the state of my house. Later taters.

One more thing:
I was asked to post this and normally I wouldn’t because, after all, “Friends don’t let Friends vote Republican”, but over the past few days, I’ve been wondering if the Democratic party can survive 4 years of Obama. I’m beginning to think that it can’t, or at least, it will not resemble the party of FDR. It will be the center right party composed of Libertarians and Moderate Republicans who didn’t have power in their own party so they parasitically took over ours, pushing the true Democrats out. Anyway, it’s been on my mind a lot lately so even though I do not plan to vote for McCain, I can’t stop any of you from following your consciences in the voting booth. You may prefer to split your vote and go for 4 years of divided government by voting for downticket Dems. The convention is two months away but we must be prepared to carry out a plan to take back our party. The best way time to take it back is before the convention and that’s what we should work on. But afterwards?

Here’s the mail I received from Paulie:

Hi Everyone:

I need to let those of you who may be interested know that there is a teleconference
scheduled for Saturday, June 14th (Bastille Day!) with John McCain for HRC
supporters at 3:30.
Here is the access info to register for the call:
email: teletownhall@johnmccain.com
OR http://cityhall.johnmccain.com

If you can’t participate in the call, but want to submit a question, please send it to MKforhillary@gmail.com

Curious?