Why is the party divided?

Teresa is asking for us to share our thoughts about this with each other. There is one thing I have noticed about Conflucians and that is we are rigorous thinkers. We have seen what went on and in our heads, we have sorted through the available data, discarded the shiny distractions and can zero in on the causes of the divide.

So, what is at the heart of this? Is it the DNC’s desire for a statement on Diversity coupled with Barry’s ability to rake in the bucks? And if Diversity, why NOT Hillary? Is there resentment and revenge towards Bill Clinton due to the Monica distraction? Are the Kennedy’s and Kerry’s blaming him for being a victim of vicious Republican tactics? Is it Rovian in nature? Were we infiltrated and set upon each other? Did David Axelrod apply Rovian tactics against his own party? Was it the media, the Villagers, the disgusting MSNBC frat boys and will they ever be appeased?

Put your best guess in the comments

Well, Senator Obama, the ball is in your court now

Did you get the message, Barry? We have principles, issues, causes. We are not yielding one inch. You may have gotten to nomination with the help of your frat boys and your Villagers and your libertarians and your theoretical-liberals-as-long-as-we-don’t-have-to-live-in-the-same-neighborhood-*sniff* fauxgressives and ignorant young college students who don’t remember the nineties. But you aren’t going to win it unless you get down on your knees and convince *US* that you are willing to adopt her causes as your own.

She just told you that you will have to work hard for a change. She just told you to be inclusive. She just told you to accept responsibility.

Can you do it? The beginnings do not look auspicious. You are starting off in the hole and will need to dig your way out of it. It is going to be a long hard climb. You have a lot of apologies to make, fences to mend, voters to respect. You might want to go to Kentucky, Barry. Roll up your sleeves and see how the other half lives. You know, the poor white people who are struggling and have faced intimidation at the hands of wealthy and connected exploiters of natural resources and the lives of those who are dependent on them for jobs. You need to prostrate yourself before those worthy people and ask them to forgive you.

No time like the present, Barry. Better learn to hustle. You only have five months and time’s a-wastin’. We will be watching you. We will not let up our demands. And if you can’t close the deal with *US* by then, then you have no one to blame but yourself for losing the White House. Hillary Clinton kept her promise to us and you. It’s all on YOUR shoulders now. Now, better stop acting like an arrogant, entitled, disrespectful anointed one and start acting like a dedicated public servant.

We are PUMA’s, hear us roar.

The Lady Speaks: Live Blog

Chins up, PUMAs. If she can bear it, so can we.
This is a live blog.
See it on CSPAN. The commentary on CSPAN is coming from voters, not pundits.

Dear Claire, save your breath

After all, you didn’t use it when it would actually, you know, count. From the NYTimes this am we have Clinton Bloc Becomes the Prize for Election Day:

The Obama campaign will fight back, after waiting a respectful beat or two. In conversations with Mr. Obama and his aides, “I’ve tried to make sure that everyone understood that these women have a right to feel frustrated and angry,” said Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an important ally who is one of his leading emissaries to women. “To try to make that less than real is a huge mistake.”

As he declared himself the nominee on Tuesday, Mr. Obama cut a particularly woman-friendly figure on stage, dedicating his speech to his grandmother and affectionately bumping fists with his wife, Michelle.

Indeed, descriptions of those women, along with his mother and daughters, will be regular features of Mr. Obama’s speeches, Ms. Sebelius said. Women will ultimately choose Mr. Obama not because of symbolic overtures, she added, but because of his stances on health care, the economy and education, areas where his positions closely resemble Mrs. Clinton’s.

The key, Ms. McCaskill said, is approaching Mrs. Clinton’s supporters with utmost humility. And, Ms. Backus added, that is not always the strongest suit of the young people who are some of Mr. Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters.

“Not nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh,” Ms. McCaskill said, making a taunting sound. “We need them very, very badly, and we shouldn’t be able to be afraid to say that we need them.”

What is the Obama campaign saying here, Claire? It’s going to gives us a few days to get over it before it launches a new offensive at us? That we’re just another enemy that needs to be subdued? Do you think we don’t have the sweeties psychological warfare all figured out?

Jeez, Claire, where were you before now? I guess it was Ok to let all of the intimidation and caucus manipulation and voter suppression and misogyny go on while your guy was winning. You have allied yourself with a man whose enablers sat on Hillary Clinton’s delegates in Florida and Michigan. You are with the man who cut the voters’ voices in half in those two states and stole four of her delegates. The RBC gave him HER delegates using the most ridiculous rationale imaginable. We saw it. The whole country was watching this travesty that was played out like the antics of a high school student council handing the election over to the popular BMOC.

This isn’t high school, Claire. This is the most powerful nation in the world. The time to speak out, to get your forces under control, to listen to us was before it all went down. That was when it was important to behave responsibly, to act ethically with all voters in mind, to not piss off your biggest voting bloc.

You and the other Obama superdelegates have zero credibility with us. ZERO. We won’t listen to you. We can’t be “reasoned” with. We aren’t stupid people who need to now be soothed. We’re adults. You had your chance to make your case to us and you blew it. You and your media can have a summer long lovefest for all I care. I’m not listening to you. I have more important things to do that make sure your hollow prop of a candidate gets enough votes to push him over the finish line in November.

It’s my vote. You are not entitled to it and I am not giving it up to anyone I can not respect. And I don’t have to listen to you.

PUMAs, I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating: Turn off the media. Watch only CSPAN. Be careful what you read. If it feels like guilt, it’s probably David Axelrod upping the Haka. We have to stick together and not let anyone or anything get under our skin. Remember, this is the guy who wouldn’t campaign in Kentucky because he thought the Applacahian vote wasn’t worth his time of day. This is the guy who took delegates away from his opponent in order to “win”. This is the guy whose enablers have been screaming for Clinton to quit since Iowa. And most of all, this is the guy who LOST CA, NJ, NY, MA, PA, OH, TX, FL and MI. He LOST them. No other Democratic nominee has ever been allowed to fail so spectacularly. We do not reward failure. We do not reward sexism. We do not reward cheating. We do not reward disrespect.
Turn off the media. Turn off Claire McCaskill. Turn off Barack Obama.

Saturday: Cockeyed Optimists

Conflucians, no one deserves to be president more than Hillary Clinton. She has *earned* it. We have seen our former first lady and NY senator evolve into a force of nature this primary season. Every time it looked like she was done for, she found some inner strength to keep her going. In the face of the most soul withering criticism, she stood up straighter, smiled more genuinely, spoke more eloquently, bore it more gracefully.

She has demonstrated to all of us that old adage, “What does not kill you makes you stronger”

Now, she is one of the most powerful people on the earth. She has 18 million of us who voted for her behind her and untold millions who were saving it up for November. We don’t know what she is going to do right now but it is likely that she will bow out and throw her support to a man who can not hold a candle to her. If the rumors are true, the decision to get rid of her is based on the most craven of all reasons- money.

We need to figure out a way of correcting the situation. Hillary may bow out but we do not have to accept the fate that the Dean Democrats have assigned to us. We will find a way to be represented and restore the party to its original mission. The last thing any of us should do is resign ourselves to some predetermined outcome. The next five months are going to be hard for us but if we stick together and use our energy and creativity, we will get through it. Like Hillary, we will become a force of nature.

Remember, Remember the Fourth of November

Remember, remember the fourth of November
The DNC treason and plot
I see no reason, why the DNC treason
Should ever be forgot

and this:

(I will be so crushed if Natalie Maines turns out to be an Obamabot)

Oh Yes! Wait a minute Mr. Postman!

While we are waiting for confirmation of the mysterious “Terry” in TaylorMarsh’s letter writing campaign before we do anything stupid, ronkseattle has a better idea.

Ronkseattle says we should send postcards to the DNC instead. Yeah, mail a postcard to Howard and Donna with the message “I AM ONE OF 18 MILLION!”, along with your voter’s registration card. That oughtta get Howard’s attention. Here’s the address:

Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003

Oh, yeah. 😉

Pass it on.

The RBC Violation of DNC “Sunshine” Rules

The “Magic Number” is still 2025, or 2209. But its not 2118.

That’s because, in violation of the DNC charter, a secret meeting was held, and secret votes were taken — violations of specific Charter “sunshine rules” provisions. A deal was struck among Obama supporters on the committee to completely ignore what is known as the “fair reflection” rule (see note below), and to treat the constituency groups that had provided Hillary Clinton with considerable margins in two states (Hispanic/Latino voters, older voters, women, Jewish voters in Florida, older voters, working class voters, rural voters, and women in Michigan) as “half voters”.

These violations occurred with the direct knowledge and involvement of Party Secretary Alice Germond, and Co-chairs James Roosevelt and Alexis Herman. Because of their knowing and willful violation of Party rules, they should be stripped of all authority in the Party organization, and removed from the DNC entirely. And if Howard Dean or any other party official was cognizant of the violation of the Rules, they too should lose their jobs.

The Democratic Party Charter (Article 9, section 12) states “All meetings of…official party committees…shall be open to the public and votes shall not be taken by secret ballot.” Yet a two hour closed meeting in which business before the committee was discussed was held, and secret votes were taken during that meeting.

Here is the sequence of events:

Friday: Resolved

Our spike in readership continues. Surprisingly few of us have decided to leave us for the Obama camp. We are resolved to see this through.

Let us be clear what this is all about for those of you who wander in here looking for an argument. The problem is the party itself. 2008 was the year that the party abandoned its principles. It is no longer the party of FDR and shared responsibility. Now, it is the party of wannabe rich libertarian Democrats. It is the party of the Ariana Huffingtons who, dissatisfied with their own party, have decided to steal someone else’s. It isn’t the party that nearly elected Bobby Kennedy. It is the party that is about to write off Appalachia. Good riddance, poor working people! You’re on your own now. It isn’t the party that made social security sacred. It is the party that might very well start tinkering with it because the young and well off don’t understand the concept of shared responsibility and insurance. And speaking of insurance, well, don’t expect the health insurance crisis to get any better. That would have called for everyone to be covered and we won’t be going there with Obama.

The problem with Obama and the new Democratic party is that it doesn’t stand for real Democrats. It is yet another strange amalgamation of voters whose self interest was pandered to. In many ways, it is no different than the Republican party of gilded capitalists, religious crazies and neocons. This new Democratic party is made up of young people, libertarians and pretentious status conscious liberals. There is a nasty streak of cynicism in it as well, as if it’s just so outre to consider helping the poor or abiding by any core Democratic principles. The new Democratic party is just too cool for that. They can write some lengthy, detached policy paper about it and pay some lip service but really, the American demographic has evolved and those people on the brink of insolvency, well, they are the Neanderthals that didn’t make the cut. Moving on.

The PUMA movement is not about revenge. It is not about racism. It’s not about being immature. It is about holding the Democratic party accountable for abandoning its principles and the people who strengthened its foundations. It is about not rewarding a Party that uses voter suppression techniques on its own members. We want to belong to a party that respects us and works with and for us. We don’t want to hand over our votes without representation.

It will either represent us again or it will have to be restructured. That is what PUMA is all about. This goes beyond Obama and Hillary at this point. And from the looks of things, we have a lot of members already.

PUMA Power!

Nitecap: Thursday

It’s been a rough week and I’m back at Joe’s. Too many meetings yesterday, nonstop from 8 am to 5. Reports due. I need a break.

I come to Joe’s when I need some down time. The brightest lights are the amber glow over the polished wood surface of the long bar. Joe polishes it nightly with lemon oil and elbow grease. There are dusky niches with little round tables all clustered around a small stage.

I’ve seen this musician before, the slight girl with the long blonde hair. She can really sing the blues. But tonight she’s singing that Sting song that sounds about a thousand years old. I went to England for my brother’s wedding about 12 years ago and remember the golden fields of barley on the rolling English hills near Stonehenge. The older daughter carried the video camera up the path to an ancient hill fort. “Beautiful”, she said in her little girl voice into the camera microphone, “It is lovely all around.”

Set’em up, Joe. I’ll have a Macallans again if you’ve got it. And send a round to my friends, all 18 million of them.