Saturday: A House Divided

I got a call from Quinnipiac this morning.  Whoo-hoo!  I’ve been *polled*.  I’m now just another statistic.  The poll questions didn’t allow for much elaboration.  I answered neither to more than one question.  I went off on a tangent about Frank Lautenberg.  He really ticked me off when he threw his support to Barack Obama.  And I will never forgive Jon Corzine for giving my vote to Obama at the Convention.

The party is at war with itself.  It’s not even a “civil” war.  Those of us who are witholding our votes from Obama have been subject to pressure, ridicule and sometimes threats of violence.  I have never seen a presidential nominee so contemptuous of voters.  First it was contempt for his own party’s base.  Now, it is extending to independent and Republican voters.  If you embarrass The Chosen One, his free PR machine, the media, will dig up details of your personal life to display to the rest of the country.  If you are a supporter of the opponent, you can be subject to beatings.  If you are a woman, you’re nothing more than a brainless vagina.  Obama is responsible for this.  If it wasn’t working for him, he’d call off his dogs.

Back in June, right after the RBC hearing, we made a decision to separate ourselves from the Hillary campaign.  We admire and respect her but we made a choice to stick up for ourselves.  Let us be clear: we are Democrats and Democrat leaning non-affiliated voters.  If any newcomers to this blog have any doubts about that, please visit my Credo in the tabs at the top of the page.  That is what we are trying to preserve.  We believe in the social safety net.

I’ve heard a lot of speculation that Obama is a socialist.  Some of us who have followed Democratic politics for a long time are pretty convinced he is not.  The evidence seems to suggest that Obama is a political opportunist.  He doesn’t run on any particular principle.  He is a chameleon who adapts to the environment of the people who can give him a boost up to the next rung of the ladder.  And he is very comfortable with using un-Democratic means to eliminate his opponents.

As a Democrat, who is presently unaffiliated out of protest, I am very distressed that an organization like ACORN has become a touchpoint of controversy.  It should not be controversial to assiste citizens in registering to vote.  We should all be applauding this.  Even David Iglesias suggests that the reason he and other US Attorneys were dismissed is because of their principled stance against prosecuting groups like ACORN for alleged voter fraud.  Unfortunately, ACORN may have been the tool by which Obama gamed the primary caucuses so the present claims of voter fraud are all too believable.  And now, this organization and others like it, who are assisting the poor, elderly and minority groups in voting, may be compromised in their mission.  Republicans must be absolutely delighted.

They must be delighted that they are about to reap the benefits of the DNC pitting women against African-Americans as well, not to mention the Whole Foods Nation against the working class.  But one thing we can be sure of is that after this election, the Democratic party will never be the same.  Our eyes have been opened.  Those of us in the Obama demographic who are women who voted for Hillary will have a hard time believing that the party has any interest in our issues.  The misogynism that was allowed to be unleashed by Obama’s campaign will haunt us for generations to come if he and the DNC are not held accountable.  If the most powerful woman in the nation can be taken out by a bunch of thugs, what is to stop businesses around the country from discriminating against us?  What will happen to women who compete with men for jobs?  What will happen to women on maternity leave coming back to work?  What will happen to women suffering from domestic violence?  If Obama is president, no one will be held accountable for the treatment meted out by testosterone poisoned men who have been given the green light to take what they want.

I recently spoke to a moderate Republican at a wedding who said that he thought that the reason we ended up with Obama was because the Democratic party had come together at the convention in the name of party unity.  I had to dispel that notion.  No, what actually happened was that the Democratic party took a little more than half of its pie and threw it away.  It suppressed us and called it unity.  But no unity can exist when no attempt is made to acknowledge or honor our will.  Even today, 17 days before the election, the Democratic nominee has made no attempt to reach out to us and the antics of his supporters continue to push us away.

We do have other places to go.  In fact, it is our obligation for us to do something other than acquiesce.  As Edmund Burke said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’ If we allow ourselves to be divided, with the Whole Foods Nation in their triumph cutting the poor, working class, minorities, elderly and women out of the process to become second class citizens, we give our permission to further acts of degradation.  We create a permanent underclass.  And this underclass may never again have enough wherewithal to achieve adequate representation in government to achieve its goals.

This is what Obama represents.   I am very sorry to have to disappoint Senator Clinton but when the pollster asked me if I would vote for Obama, I said “No”.  This is my choice and I take full responsibility for it.  If Democrats don’t all go forward into the future together, they shouldn’t go forward.  We should not allow the privieleged in the Democratic party secede in order to unburden itself from its obligations towards the common good.

What Abraham Lincoln said about the Union could apply to the Democratic party today, “”‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.'(Mark 3:25) I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”