Sunday, crying in the wilderness

Our fearless leader, riverdaughter, is on vacation this week so it’s up to us to pretend that nothing is wrong.  We can do this alone.  Everything will be OK. She has complete confidence in our ability to keep everyone informed and amused while not totally trashing the place.

Riiiight.

Riverdaughter makes it look so easy.  Penetrating insight first thing Every-Single-Morning — she hasn’t taken a full day off in months (if ever.) With one of her first posts (copied here in full) she set the tone for The Confluence showing that she was not just messing around with a vanity blog:

Hillary Cheats in SC by using her gender, Obama camp claims.

Obama’s camp is pre-emptively accusing the Clinton campaign of using Hillary’s gender as an incentive to females to vote for her.

“It’s totally unfair of Senator Clinton to exploit her gender. It put Obama at a disadvantage in South Carolina due to his penis. That is why he lost next week.”, David Axelrod said in advance of Clinton’s victory. When it was pointed out that the Democratic South Carolina primary hasn’t occured yet, Mr. Axelrod responded, “Exactly. This is why we are wasting no time in filing our complaint with the South Carolina Democratic party in advance. This kind of political scheming on the part of Senator Clinton can not stand.”

The Obama campaign has filed complaints in all of the states where the primary or caucus process has resulted in a win for Senator Clinton. They have declined to pursue charges in Iowa even though Axelrod asserts that, in retrospect it is clear that Clinton deliberately lost in order to lull the Obama camp into a false sense of security.

“They are master political schemers. Everybody says so”, Axelrod continued. “Chris Matthews has been following their dirty tricks for years. But I never expected that she would deliberately appeal to females in order to eek out her win next week. She’s crossed the line this time. We intend to file charges of cheating in all of the other states, starting with her wins in NY, NJ and CA on SuperDuperTuesday. “

Axelrod pointed to the fact that Obama had completely sewn up the African-American vote by taking the high road in his accusations of racism against Clinton’s organization. It was a forgone conclusion that Obama would assume the mantle of the most disadvantaged candidate in this campaign. But the polls started to turn in Clinton’s favor when a viral distribution of one of John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s songs from the seventies took the internet by storm.

“She’s already got a former president’s support, years of service and she talks like a policy wonk “, said Axelrod, frustrated. “She should stop using her gender to put herself so far ahead and learn to pack a lunch like the rest of us.”

And right from the beginning comments at The Confluence kept up with her:

oldpro, on January 22nd, 2008 at 9:50 am Said:
Heh heh heh….and Hillary’s response…

“Shut up!” she explained.

(shaking my head)

And so it was that riverdaughter’s The Confluence escorted us through all the ups and downs of this incredible primary season.  I think it’s very possible that she was a P.U.M.A. before PUMAs were cool:

To BiPM and William f Harrison
…. I could never compete with the Great Orange Satan but that doesn’t mean that I have to STFU simply because the Obamaphiles have closed me down on DKos. William f Harrison also has places to go. We’re like water. We seek the path of least resistance. We’re out here. We’re not lurking like we used to and we’re putting our efforts into pulling the party together from the outside. ….. (emphasis mine)

Let’s not focus on missing riverdaughter: this thread is a celebration of the site built by Riverdaughter. Let’s share our favorite posts. AND I’d personally love it if we shared our own first comments — and a bit from the posts that inspired them.