Private Party

We keep getting Obama apologists here who insist that we “get over it”.  They are referring to the primaries of 2008.  We’re not going to get over it but in spite of all of our efforts, the Obama whiners and the DNC still do not seem to understand why the primaries of 2008 were the turning point for many of us newly created independent liberals and Democrats in Exile.  I think the reason for this is because they continue to see this as an internal accounting issue within a private party and it’s no big deal.  It’s just that one candidate who was a Democrat beat another candidate who was a Democrat.  Yeah, things got a little hairy and words were said that were misinterpreted as promises and some voters got screwed but, jeez, it’s two years already.  When are you people going to move on?

The answer is, never.  Or not until the Democrats understand the depth of anger we have in their violation of our trust.  So, let me explain it one more time to the dimwitted out there.

Let’s say that all of the crappy things the party pulled on us didn’t happen during a primary.  Let’s say it happened during the general election and the electoral college in the aftermath of that election.  In this scenario, the following might have happened:

– McCain’s supporters with clout meet with the federal elections authorities to make sure that there are caucuses in the south west and that these caucauses have disproportional representation at the electoral college later.

-McCain buses in his supporters to these caucuses and they use hooligan tactics to intimidate Obama’s voters and rig the caucus results.  Complaints by Obama’s campaign to the federal elections authorities fall on deaf ears.

-McCain takes advantage of some timing issues in Florida and Michigan to make sure that none of the votes count during election night.  BUT, knowing how bad that PR will be in the final analysis, works with the federal election authorities to make sure those votes count during the electoral college proceedings so that the voters in those states don’t cause a fuss and discredit the election results.

-McCain’s backers buy off a lot of electoral college superdelegates and delegates so that when it comes to count the electoral college votes, whole states that went overwhelmingly for Obama are given wholesale to McCain.  When the number of delegates needed for McCain to win is reached, none of the other states that voted overwhelmingly for Obama are allowed to cast their delegate votes.

McCain becomes our new president.

Now, if you think for one minute that anyone in this country would stand for such a thing, you’ve got another thing coming.  It’s one thing to have the supreme court decide an election in 2000 and many Democrats did not get over it.  It’s quite another to see violation after violation of fairness in elections happen right before our eyes by our own side.  No country in the world would respect such an election.  Our democracy would be thoroughly discredited and we would have massive demonstrations in the street.

The only reason Democrats were allowed to get away with it was because the whole mess wasn’t covered by the media to show what really happened.  AND because the Democratic party is a private party.  They can make or break the rules any way they want.  The only problem is that they used state taxpayer money to run their sham primary elections.  Millions of people went to those polls thinking that their votes counted.  In reality, it was a pointless exercise because the outcome was predetermined in some smoke filled room.

Now, I don’t care if the Democrats want to go back to smoke filled room politics.  But they should announce in advance that that’s their plan so I don’t waste my time campaigning and making phone calls and going door to door trying to convince people that my candidate is better.  And I don’t think any state, especially one the size of NJ, should be wasting precious tax dollars running fraudulent elections by people who don’t really give a damn what the voters think.  That money could be used to employ some teachers.

As for the results of the 2008 elections, well, nothing good every grows from a bad seed.  The results, as far as I and many others are concerned, are invalid.  The nomination was rigged for Obama and there is nothing anyone can say that would convince me otherwise.  If the Democrats don’t like it that we feel this way and are holding them responsible for the aftermath, tough.

Get over it.

Monday: Makeover Madness still bugging Maureen Le Fey

The jig is up, media.  The voters are are on to you.  It’s because you’ve gotten lazy.  You don’t even try anymore to mix it up.  It’s the same patterns.  Does Maureen Dowd just phone it in these days?  In 2004, she wrote that John Kerry was the elitist snowboarding, boy toy to a rich heiress.  This year it’s John McCain.  And I can’t believe she is suggesting that Sarah Palin go to Penney’s to buy her campaign wardrobe.

By the way, Maureen, I LOVE your Georgetown home. That custom colored Benjamin-Moore pink paint is gorgeous.   Maureen, you are an inspiration to bloggers everywhere.  Maybe if I cut back on my snarky posts to twice a week, I too can live in such swank surroundings.

$150,000 on clothes is a drop in the bucket compared to the obscene amounts of money that the Obama campaign has been spending on advertisment.  The Obama campaign raked in $150 million in campaign contributions in September and *still* I get half a dozen requests for money in my email box every single day.  Obama bought his own channel on DiSH.  Yep, if I go to channel 73, I can see non-stop Obama 24/7.

The funny thing is, I don’t think it’s working.  If you want to avoid Obama ads, you use your DVR and never go near channel 73.  Just fast forward through all of the hopey changey stuff. Ad time is expensive but I think it’s getting to be less and less effective.  Republicans, on the other hand, have taken a decidedly low tech, inexpensive approach that’s pretty hard to miss.  They have plastered McCain/Palin signs all over my route to work in the morning.  The sheer number is breathtaking.  They must be very busy at night.  I don’t see as many Obama signs.  Or should I say “OBAMA biden” signs.

Well, I guess that’s what you’re stuck with when you opt for public financing.  That lousy $84 billion doesn’t go as far as the $500 million and counting that Obama has spent.  (By the way, where is all that money coming from???)  You’d think you could get more impact with that much filthy lucre.  Like, in a year when the Democrat could. not. possibly. lose. $500 million should put Obama so far out in front that McCain/Palin *could* have just shopped at Penney’s for all the good it would have done them.  But this race is still well within their reach.

Well, you know what they say:

The REAL Story of the Financial Crisis: A Play in One Dishonest Act.

(Happy New Year to all you Joooz out there! May it bring health, happiness and the strength to make it through the tough times ahead.)

Trust Me!

SCENE I: The Oval Office. GEORGE W. BUSH is sitting behind his desk, staring at the ceiling, bored. There are two chairs on either side of his desk; one is a wing chair, and one is a chair that swivels. The back of that chair is facing the audience; light snoring issues forth from it, but we cannot see who occupies it.

BUSH is waiting for HENRY PAULSON, his Secretary of the Treasury, to come in and tell him what to do about the credit crisis. He amuses himself by spinning in circles in his leather executive chair.

A knock is heard at the door.

BUSH: Come in, Paulie! (continues spinning around in his chair)

PAULSON (entering with a smile): Mr. President!

BUSH (stopping the spinning to look at PAULSON): Geez, Paulie, am I glad to see you! (Tries to get up from the chair to shake PAULSON’s hand, staggers and puts his hand on the desk to recover)

PAULSON (indulgently): Now, George, I’ve warned you about spinning in that chair – it always makes you dizzy!

BUSH (petulantly): Then they shouldn’t make it so much fun! (refocusing, gesturing for PAULSON to sit down) Anyway, Paulie, what’s goin’ on in this here economy?

PAULSON (sitting in the wing chair beside BUSH’s desk): Mr. President, we’re in a heckuva mess, I tell you. The credit market is completely frozen. No one will lend businesses money so that they can continue, well, doing business. It’s all because of that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae stuff. They went a little crazy with those subprime mortgages.

Post Debate Thread: Beautiful theories destroyed by Ugly facts

So, who won and why?  I watched the debate with the sound off and the impressions I get from each candidate are:

• McCain- solid, unflappable.  A sure port in a storm.  He shows his thought on his face.  His eyebrows are very expressive.  He is both bemused and impish.  He will stand there an listen to you, taking it all in and have some internal monologue that he will decorate with humor, sarcasm and mischief.  I wish he would look at the camera more to appeal directly to viewers but this may be an artifact of addressing a chamber that is always half empty.
• Obama- youthful, playful, like a young puppy.  He moves constantly.  His opening statement was good.  He looked into the camera and seemed intense and puposeful.  Then in the rest of the debate, he moved around from side to side.  He punctuates his words with head bobs in the style of a preacher, ala MLK or Jesse Jackson.  His style is very reminiscent of African American icons and statesmen, which is not a bad thing, but it is imitative.  He does not have the same solidity of McCain.  One imagines that a slight gust of wind could carry Obama away.

What did I miss?

Debate Live Blog: Thread 2

Join the debate.  What are you seeing and hearing?

To view Conflucian Style, try the following:

1. First, watch it on C-Span where your propaganda filter is minimal.
2. If you have a DVR, set the debate to record and watch it the first time through with the sound off.
3. Then go through the DVR recorded portion, verrrrryyyy sloooowwwlly.  Take as much time as possible to parse every word until you get to its true meaning.

Go!

Debate Watching, Confluence Style

Tonight is the first of the presidential debates and we at The Confluence watch our debates a little differently.  We act like English is not our native language.  That way, you’re not so taken with the flowery turns of phrase.  I was reminded of a chapter in Oliver Sacks’ book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat where aphasics in rehabilitation watched a debate with Ronald Reagan in it and couldn’t stop laughing.  Without language, they were able to detect the subtle signals that the body and face give that indicate deceitfulness.  So, we also pay a lot of attention to body language.  Obama’s disrespect and contempt for Clinton just oooozed from the screen during his debates with her.  He didn’t have to say a word.  So, if you want to watch the debates Conflucian style, here’s what you do:

1. First, watch it on C-Span where your propaganda filter is minimal.
2. If you have a DVR, set the debate to record and watch it the first time through with the sound off.
3. Then go through the DVR recorded portion, verrrrryyyy sloooowwwlly.  Take as much time as possible to parse every word until you get to its true meaning.

Have at it Conflucians!  This is a live blog thread.

Thursday: Fiasco

“There was an air of everyone sort of reaching beyond their own grasp”

Several years ago, This American Life presented one of the funniest pieces in it’s repetoire.  It was the story of a amateur theatre director in a small college town and her great ambitions for a spectacular production of Peter Pan.  All did not go as well but the show *did* go on, leading to the hillarious episode, Fiasco.

“Great chaos and heart-wrenching failure are more likely to occur when great ambition comes into play, when plans are big, expectations are great, hopes at their highest.”

I was thinking of this piece last night as Darragh, Sheri and I were talking on the Lions Share while at the same time, bulletin after bulletin of breaking news showed just how the expertly the Republicans were yanking Obama’s chain.  When Darragh read that Bush himself was calling Obama back to Washington, we all broke into laughter of disbelief at the absurdity of the situation.

“One of the criteria for greatness is that everyone is just about to reach just beyond theor grasp because that is when greatness can occur…. And maybe greatness could have occured.”

My friends, we are witnessing a fiasco.  The Obama campaign is completely out of its depth no less than that overly ambitious theatre director.  It is running the wrong campaign, Obama is horribly miscast and the whole campaign apparatus is coming apart at the seams.  Meanwhile, the GOP keeps boxing the hapless Obama into corners, first with Sarah Palin and now with the financial bailout.  He seems surprised, unprepared and unable tp cope or get himself out of the trap.  And the blows are coming in quick succession.  First, McCain suspends his campaign, Bush gives a speech, McCain urges Obama to reschedule the debates and offers one option after another, finally, Bush tells him to come home like some rebellious teenager on a school night.

“At some point the audience turned and said, “Oh, I realize what’s going on here.  This is a fiasco.””

“Yeah, this is a fiasco.  What’s really interesting about a fiasco is that once it starts to tumble down, the audience wants to push it along… Now, the reason they’re there is to chronicle these embarrassments.”

It doesn’t look good for the transcendent future leader of the free world.  The GOP has mastered the art of war, knows its enemies, uses the element of surprise and keeps the opponent off guard with a volley of actions, all of which lead Obama to look overwhelmed.  Timing will kill you.  If you don’t have time to recover and find your bearings, you quickly lose any advantage.  But Obama should have seen it coming.  The GOP are predators.  They have a single minded determination to seize power and never let it go.  Obama should have been prepared.  He should have done his homework on the economy.  He should have anticipated an attack as soon as early voting commenced and any hope of sending in a relief pitcher was nearly extinguished.

But he’s too busy shaking hands and praying with the faith voters, figuring out how to pander to the ones that haven’t flocked to Palin.  He’s so caught up in his own transcendence, his day dreams of his own magnificence, that he is failing in his ability to direct the production.  What happened yesterday was fascinating, both amusing and humiliating.   He never saw it coming.

“The fiasco itself is an altered state.  All of the normal rules are off…. The reason you go to the theatre, to see a great production, is to be, I think the word used to be, transported.  The idea being that you would be lifted away from your animal nature to a higher more spiritual realm… Of course, what happens here is the exact opposite.”

The laughter is completely inappropriate.  This production is a drama and the scenario is serious.  But what we are ending up with is a farce.  And with our economic livelihood’s on the line, that’s no laughing matter.

The Sense of the Species

I’ve been in touch with various PUMAs lately and I’ve been told that the media pays attention to our various blog posts (BTW, we can be reached at theconfluence08 at yahoo dot com.  We don’t bite- hard.)  It’s time we discussed what is going on in the hearts and minds of some of the PUMAs around the PUMAsphere.

Before we get started, let’s get one thing straight: most PUMAs are over the anger stage.  Now, they are responding with cold blooded pragmatism.  They have one goal- to be absolutely certain that Barack Obama is defeated.  Contrary to popular Obamaphile opinion, the vast majority of us are Democrats.  Some of us are independents.  Even fewer have Republican ties.  We come in all shapes and sizes, working and professional classes, education levels, ages and genders.  Many of us are women but you would be very surprised to find out how many people on our conference calls are men.  We are NOT Reagan Democrats.  We’d really appreciate it if the media would stop trying to pigeon hole us into some model that would fit its worldview or a concept that the Obama campaign has handed them.

One of the things that sets PUMAs apart from other Democrats is our built-in BS detectors.  The other thing is that we were supporters of Hillary Clinton because we saw her as the true Democrat in the race.  We liked her stands on the issues, her ability to reach out to every voter and her grace under pressure.  But the PUMA movement is not about Hillary.  It is about us, the voters.  The Obama campaign, the DNC and the media targetted *US*, Hillary’s voters, for a peculiar brand of derision, disrespect and disenfranchisement this year.  It split the party in half, not based on any class distinctions exactly but more on some “perceived” distinctions.  The Obama supporters think they are “special”.  They are on a quest.  They are projecting their own guilt about race.  In short, they have been manipulated in a way that PUMAs have not.  And the PUMAs know that whatever is behind this split and manipulation of the Democratic party has to be stopped or voting will become meaningless.

We have limited ability to destroy the destructive elements in the Republican party but we *do* have the ability to clean our own party.  It doesn’t particularly matter to us whether the perpetrators are old stalwarts of the party, who seriously misread women who grew up at the tail end of the baby boom generation and aren’t putting up with sexist BS, or whether it is the testosterone fueled bad boyz of the Obama machine, who thought the best way to fight Rove was a Chicago style scorched earth campaign, or whether it was the 50 state strategy of the theoretically liberal, but practically stupid, Dr. Dean.  Their actions during this campaign season have been reprehensible and destructive.  They have deprived our party of almost certain victory and have sown defeat not only at the top of the ticket but now throughout the party.  For this reason, they have got to go.

The most commonly heard phrase at most PUMA get togethers these days is “cut off the head”.  That is, the primary goal is to make sure Obama and his enablers are defeated.  And half measures will not do.  If there is any possibility that a write in vote for Hillary will be given to Obama through state rules and regulations, it is being actively discouraged.  PUMAs are under no illusions as to what will happen if Obama manages to squeak out a win, however improbable that is at the moment.  Therefore, it is safe to say that PUMAs are moving increasigly towards voting for John McCain or nothing on top, depending on how their state electoral vote is likely to go.

No one should misinterpret that to mean that PUMAs agree with the Republican party in any way.  We are Democrats.  We do not share the Republican worldview of government.  However, we do not see McCain as criminally corrupt as the Bush neo-cons.  McCain does have a fairly good working relationship with Democrats.  Even so, our vote is a protest vote and not in any way an affirmation of Republicanism.  Obama trolls can save their breath.  We don’t care if you think we are being “fooled” or that our lack of education is causing us to not see what McCain is or that Roe v. Wade is in danger, yada-yada-yada.  Obama supporters had a choice to nominate a person who would have supported every thing they cared about and they let themselves be manipulated and deceived into thinking she was the devil incarnate.  Well, now you have to live with your choices.

So, that is the sense I am getting.  Many PUMAs are going McCain.  This doesn’t mean everyone.  There are still a band of us who may never be able to push that GOP button but are just as determined that Obama does not get to the White House for the reasons stated above.  Please note that race doesn’t factor into our decision.  This is all about the way the campaign was conducted, Obama’s running away from the Democratic brand, disenfranchisent of our votes, lack of “fair reflection” during the convention, particularly the roll call vote, rampant sexism in the party itself and hypocrisy when it comes to reproductive and abortion rights.

The problem is that we can not get people to concentrate on downticket Democrats. This is the most troubling and alarming aspect of the election season so far and, I, as a lifelong Democrat, I am very concerned about the trend I am seeing.  There are several reasons why downticket Democrats and the Superdelegates that sold us out should be worried:

1. Sarah Palin has re-energized the Republican base, especially evangelicals.  The idea that Obama could ever win these people is ridiculous.  Now, they’ve got one of their own to vote for and they have no need to listen to Obama’s campaign as it attempted to replace US with them.
2. Sarah Palin has energized many feminists.  There are many women who have come to realize that they were held hostage to the Democratic party that “claimed” to be supportive of women’s issues but when push came to shove, they shoved out the one woman who could actually substantiate that claim.  Obama showed himself willing to sacrifice our issues when he courted the evangelical vote.  The Roe v. Wade argument no longer has teeth.  There are already 5 votes on the USSC to overturn it.  No matter what happens at the federal level, abortion is not going to go away and if the parties think that there won’t be millions of women on the street protesting it if someone even dares to take us back to the 60’s, they’ve got another thing coming to them.  Let us acknowledge what Roe really is: a political tool used by both parties to inflame their base.  At this point in time, it is no longer a real player in this election cycle.  It is not nearly as important as preventing a further regression of women’s progress that has happened this election cycle.  Racism is off the table but public repudiation, humiliation and discrimination against women is all the rage this year.  The election of Sarah Palin for VP could truncate that trend and pave the way for a woman at the top of the ticket.  And when THAT happens, issues that are important to women may finally start to get the recognition that more than half of the population deserve.
3. The tactics that the Democratic party has used against its own base has turned off a good portion of that base from voting for ANY Democrat this year.  Many PUMAs and other Democrats are not satisfied with cutting off the head.  Any Democrat that went against the wishes of their voting district and threw his/her weight for Obama at Hillary’s expense will find themselves targets in the future.  Whether or not that future will be this election cycle is debatable but there will be a good number of Democrats who will not stop with voting for McCain.  They will be voting straight Republican where there is an opportunity to punish Democrats who turned their backs on their voters for Obama.

Now, I’ve tried reasoning with some PUMAs that having one party Republican rule like we had from 2002-2006 is dangerous.  It’s very unfair to the millions and millions of innocent citizens who will be held hostage to a Republican government.  They rely on Democrats to protect social security, unemployment benefits, to pass SCHIP, to overturn the ban on stem cell research, to try to end the war, to protect our civil liberties.  Of course, it might be easier to make this argument if our Democratic Congress had actually done any of these things.  The point is that if there is a Republican in the White House, we need Democrats in the House and Senate to counteract aggressive and committed Movement Conservative Republicans.  But in this poisonous atmosphere and with the DNC rules of engagement, one party Republican rule is what we’re headed for.  Some voters cannot reconcile their consciences to vote for candidates who betrayed them at the convention.

So, there you have it.  The Democratic Party made a mess of things.  It thought it could ignore the voters.  It misread women.  It adopted Chicago style campaign tactics in violation of its own stated principles.  It installed an inexperienced, unscrupulous, yet politically naive, less than one full term Senator at its helm at the expense of one of the best candidates it’s had in 16 years.  Voters have had to live with Republicans for eight straight years and were looking for a break.  What we’re getting instead is another Republican party in the guise of a Democratic party.  We can’t have that.  So the PUMAs are going to make absolutely sure that the party apparatus that gave us Obama and his organization is destroyed.  We were hoping to make the next four years bearable by having enough downticket Dems in Congress.  But the party overplayed its hand here as well and has put the entire party at risk.

I realize that it is pointless to ask the party elders to do something about it.  They ignored us before the convention and there is no reason for them to pay any attention now.  But they deny reality at their own risk.  We are not voting for Obama under any circumstances and if there is any calculation that relies on us for his win, then the party is looking at certain defeat.  We can not make this any clearer to you.  When people tell you what they are going to do, you need to believe them.  We can no more vote for Obama than for George W. Bush.  Both are anathema to us.  Obama personifies everything we dislike about the party right now and how the party has been run.  We don’t trust Obama and this is unlikely to change in the next two months.

After the election in November, we are not going away, especially if the powers that be do nothing to prevent the loss of Congress to the Republicans.  The refusal to respect the voters is about to result in the greatest disgrace in the history of the party.  The party has a responsibility to the citizens of the country to protect the common good.  If it does nothing, it deserves all the derision and infamy that future generations will heap upon it.

Saturday: Leavin’ on a jet plane

Good Morning, Conflucians!  Everybody awake?  I’m headed to my local Starbucks for a Vivanno before I hit the road for the Philly airport.  I *think* it’s Philly.  Maybe its Newark.  That’s one of the great things about living in Central NJ.  You have the added excitement of ending up at the wrong airport. (peaking at E-Ticket, whew, it’s Philly)

Lucky me, I have a layover in Indianapolis.  But Wait!  Obama picked Joe Biden as his VP.  That means he might be making his announcement from Delaware.  Take a look at this picture of the two of them together and tell me whether they really want to resemble Bush/Cheney so closesly, er, except for the whole African-American thing:

Change! My Ass.

This was all about making sure the old, white guys continued to run the country.  (Cute.  They sent the text message at 3:00am probably because they aren’t quite done sticking it to Clinton.)  It all makes sense to me know, especially the part about them expecting all the women in the party to just fall in line.  The idea of letting Hillary run things must have just frosted their crockies.  Oh, plus all of the lobbyists must be high fivin’ each other.

Kos, I hate to say I told you so but this is exactly what I would predict would happen back when you threw me off.  Obama made a right turn and threw YOU off.  What you have here is Biden as the man behind the curtain, working with the old, white guys in Congress to party like it’s 1959.  Are you satisfied now?  What else can you expect from a candidate who has no discernable core principles, no CV to speak of and a complete and utter dependence on his congressional backers? Go back and take a look at that pic.  Who is in charge?  We gave up Hillary Clinton for Joe Biden???  Who couldn’t manage to eek out any delegates on his own?

{{sigh}}

The DNC has lost its mind.  Not only have they perpetrated fraud after fraud on the voters this year but they send me an email seeking my help in promoting this stupid meme that McCain doesn’t know how many houses he has.  Tell me they aren’t really this clueless.

It doesn’t matter how many houses McCain has.  It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know about all of them.  The point is, men who live in million dollar mansions (that they purchased with help from a convicted felon) have no right to point to the abundance of his opponent’s living arrangements.  Neither one of them knows what it’s like to live in a Philly row home or a trailer park or a modest three bedroom townhouse or a California ranch. Pursuing this line of attack is a waste of time and effort.

Oh, what do I care?

Who is running the DNC these days?  They are really amatuers.  Someone should keep them away from sharp objects.  They are a danger to themselves and others.

Well, I’m going to hop in the shower and finish stowing my stuff.  I always over pack.  With any luck, I’ll be in Denver by 4:00PM MT.  Er, that’s 6:00PM EST.  There probably won’t be much to report until then unless the Indianapolis airport is more sexy than I thought.  Stay tuned for Gary and Mawm’s great adventure and don’t forget to check out Murphy’s Schedule of Event’s on PUMAPac.

Clarification

In the post below, How Power Works, I am in no way advocating that anyone vote for McCain. Voting for a Republican in this day and age is an anathema to me. Nor am I saying that the state of the economy, Iraq war, Supreme Court are not important to me. (However, I would like to point out to you young, nubile female Obamaphiles who think the world revolves around abortion rights that it was probably not the best strategy in the world to repeatedly call us old women. Because as you know, old women generally do not worry overmuch about unplanned pregnancies and they can usually pay for their daughters to go elsewhere if necessary. So, that whole, has-been feminism thing to make us feel unsexy and uncool probably backfired a bit.)

No, if Obama wins the nomination by excising two states, and by extension NY, NJ, CA, AZ, MA, OH etc, what I envision is this: I am going to go vote this November for Linda Stender in NJ-07 and various and sundry municipal positions. But the top spots will remain uncast until the end. Then, I will stand there in front of the Sequoia eVoting machine, the left hand hovering over Obama’s name, the right hand hovering over the “Cast Ballot” button, and at this point in time, I have no idea what is going to happen. BUT, I figure that the Republicans are unpopular this year and Barack has SOOO much enthusiastic support among the college aged crowd, who will certainly not be too busy studying to carry out most of the GOTV activities, that he probably won’t need my vote anyway.

I took a peek at TPM today and it looks like the Obamaphiles are in full spittle mode, misinterpreting the polls that say that 28% of all Clinton supporters would vote for McCain if Obama is on the ballot. This is not what I am advocating at all. But there is a great deal of uncertainty about what I *will* do, no doubt about that. And the 28% of Democrats who are considering McCain are probably a lot like my mother. She voted for Bush twice, but she is a registered Democrat and this year, she is planning to vote for Clinton in the PA primary. She’d vote for her in the general too except that won’t be possible if the Obama campaign manages to cut out 29 million voters in Florida and Michigan and win on the 48 state strategy.

What puzzles me is how it is that any Democratic blogger would consider this prospect, um, Democratic. Or better yet, think it is a good idea as long as his candidate wins. But there you go, they are not so much pro-Obama as anti-Clinton. In fact, I rarely read anything on their pages that promote Obama’s policies. What they are mostly about is tearing Clinton down.

So, there you have it. My vote is uncertain. As someone in the comments said, Obama is going to have do a lot of ass kissing to get my vote. I don’t know where he will find the time to court the Democrats all over again at that stage of the campaign but that’s *his* problem. In all my years of voting, going back to 1980, I can not ever recall having such a visceral dislike of a candidate. And this feeling was not generated by anything Clinton has said or not said. her campaign has been rather tame. Obama has done this to himself. But in the past, even when the nominee wasn’t my first choice, I learned to like him. Not this time. This time, I will be voting under duress and my left hand may not know what my right hand is doing.

Some good news: It looks like some wealthy patrons of the party have sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi asking her to zip it. Zip it good.

Update: Obama is having a hissy fit over the letter. Demands that Hillary make them take it back. Hmmm, I hope she’s taken a lesson from James Carville’s playbook and doesn’t apologize for anything. For all we know, she had nothing to do with it. Besides, it’s *their* money.  They can do with it what they want.  They can help Nancy get rid of the Republicans that are getting in her way or Nancy can raise funds from some other source and they’ll go to Paris for the spring.