No way, no how, no Obama

From the convention floor after Hillary's speech, Anne Price-Mills, an African-American woman and a delegate for Clinton, summed up why she's still in Hill's camp and uncommitted to Obama (with emphasis):

Tell me, why is this so important to you? What does this moment mean to you?

ANNE PRICE-MILLS, HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTER: Hillary Clinton proved to me tonight that she would have made an excellent president. She was presidential tonight. She's the evidence that women have come so far and to let gender be a hindrance, to let a phenomenal, an intelligent, a powerful, a moving, a motivating person not move us into the next generation, not move us into the future that we deserve, not move us into the green economy that we deserve, not being able to address the concerns that we deserve, and now everybody just want us to suddenly shift.

You just saw it yourselves. You saw it yourself; you know that was a presidential speech. You know it. When you guys look back at the end of this week and you start to tear apart the speeches and you will, you know that was a presidential speech.

She did everything for Obama that she was supposed to do. Now it's time for him to step up and do what he's supposed to do.

MALVEAUX: Will you vote for her when you cast your votes later in the week?

PRICE-MILLS: I was selected to come here as a delegate for Clinton. I will vote for Clinton.

You ask me about my personal vote in November? Obama has two months. I won't vote for McCain. But he has to get me there and I haven't connected with him. Experience speaks to me. I ask everybody all the time, I said, would you take us to heal us? Would you take somebody straight out of Harvard, even if they had the education, and put them as a CEO in the company?

MALVEAUX: Tell me the kind of connection you felt with Hillary Clinton.

PRICE-MILLS: I see in Hillary, I saw in Hillary what my potential future could be. I saw more than just dreams. I saw things that could be reality.

In her eyes and in her words, I could envision the reality of knowing that we can actually have green jobs instead of talks. That we could have the image that we once have of a United States that was respected and that went out and did the jobs that we're supposed to do on the global level. I saw the country that we strived to be and wanted to be and she could have made it happen.

MALVEAUX: Will you cast that vote for him in November? Will you cast your vote for Barack Obama in November or will you vote for McCain or not vote at all?

PRICE-MILLS: I will not vote for McCain. I will not vote for McCain. But for the first time since I was 18, and that's been a long time, I may be faced with something I don't want to have to deal with.

I've never not voted. I am one of the strongest Democrats I know. I call up all my family and say, Carl, you need to get out the house, I don't care how much rain is pouring down. I don't what's going on in your schedule, you need to vote.

For the first time I'm faced with not being a person who calls them and says go vote. They may have to call me and tell me and remind me of how hard and how long we strived to get to the right to vote, the right to be here.

Experience counts. I don't care what anybody told you. And his resume is just --

Anne Price-Mills never filled in the blank about Obama's résumé but I can guess. It's lacking.

Obama isn't the best choice for the Democratic presidential nominee at this time in history. Hillary is.

With the highest respect for Hillary's call for unity, I must be true to myself. I own my vote and it must be earned. I will not reward a party that has betrayed Clinton Democrats, turned a blind eye to sexism, and allowed a rookie U.S. senator with a thin résumé to usurp the party because of why? Money?! Sexism? Clinton-hatred? The party has disgracefully lost its way especially in taking action on women's rights.

I have previously written:

I can't speak for others but my opposition is:

• about protesting a party that's sexist, corrupt, and out of touch
  

• about throwing out party leadership by abstaining from their Anointed One
  

• about a nomination process that used undemocratic means, i.e., caucuses, that made the Democratic party's name a joke

• about the injustice of punishing MI and FL but giving NH, IA, and SC waivers when those states also violated the Rulz
  

• about the dismissal of women and the working class by claiming we have no other political option other than voting Democratic
  

• about the DNC rigging the nomination to wrangle their cash cow

• about nominating the least qualified candidate of the field

• about Obama's complicity in a dirty-tricks campaign of false racial smears, sexism, and okey doke politics

• about manipulating the press propaganda machine to favor The One

• about embracing homophobes and playing the LGBT community for suckers

• about voting for "the lesser of two evils" that insidiously enables evil, hypocrisy, and complacency

• about rejecting the extortion of my vote through intimidation and fear-mongering
  

• about protesting the abandonment of constitutional principles for political capital.
  

I'm probably forgetting other important motives, but in short, I am fed up and revolting against corruption, sexism, exploitation of racial tensions, homophobia, and the plutocracy of both parties.

I hold Howard Dean, the biased anti-Clinton DNC, and the barking mad Obama wingnuts responsible for discrediting the Democratic party that's supposed to represent liberal principles and to stand up for democratic policies.

The party should count its lucky stars that I plan to vote for down-ticket Democrats. But...

No way, no how, no Obama.

Hillary Clinton is simply the best

After a long, long absence, I was compelled to comment having been motivated by the absolutely phenomenal speech Hillary Clinton delivered a few hours ago.

Now that is how a president leads and how a real Democrat behaves.

I will continue to fight to reform the party of The One, an un-democratic party I no longer recognize, and a so-called liberal blogosphere that has transformed into a frat boy club that spread right-wing Clinton-hating memes like a vicious virus.

This early morning, I take solace in Harriett Tubman's words as quoted by Hillary:

If you hear the dogs, keep going.

If you see the torches in the woods, keep going.

If they're shouting after you, keep going.

Don't ever stop. Keep going.

If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.

POSTSCRIPT: The national media continue to eviscerate their credibility. Did they ever have any?

Apologies due to Hillary plus

Via Taylor Marsh, at U.S. News & World Report, Bonnie Erbe wrote that Hillary and her supporters deserve an apology from Obama, the DNC, and party leaders for their sexism.

The Democratic National Committee either doesn't get it or refuses to admit it. Nothing short of a lengthy, detailed mea culpa by the DNC and by Obama himself, directed to Clinton supporters for the sexist name-calling and personal, nasty characterizations Clinton was alone forced to endure, will do. Even that may not persuade these voters to consider supporting the party this fall. The DNC, Democratic Party leaders in Congress, and Obama should have been at her side, calling her treatment by the media (and even by some Obama supporters) unacceptable.

According to most polls, something in the range of 20 to 25 percent of her 18 million supporters say they'll vote for Senator McCain in November. That's 4.5 million votes—too many to take for granted. Yet taking them for granted is just what the party and Obama are doing. When CNN's Candy Crowley asked Obama how he would appeal to disaffected Clinton voters, he missed the mark entirely, giving a standard set of policy proposals.

I appeared on one of the cable news networks over the weekend, paired with a political reporter from a major newspaper. We were asked whether her supporters would kiss and make up with the Obama camp and end up throwing their support to the Illinois senator in the general election. He said, dismissively, "yes." I responded that with all due respect I thought he was quite wrong. But his laissez-faire attitude typifies that of the bulk of the MSM, the Democratic Party, and the Obama campaign.

M'yeah. The "highest, hardest glass ceiling" appears to have constructed a brick wall in front of it. Just try talking to it.

Meanwhile, Sapphocrat reported on how the denizens of DU expect Hillary Clinton to “self-immolate on the steps of the Capitol.”

With anti-Hillary attitudes still in force, pardon-moi if I don't participate in the June 21 Unity Day. It's a joke, n'est-ce pas?

My answer: PUMA!

A campaign legacy of shame

I've been busy offline and finally caught up with a backlog of reading. The following piqued my interest.

Criticism of the deeply-entrenched sexism in America came from across the pond in Andrew Stephen's article, Hating Hillary, for the British New Statesman (via Judith Warner). Stephens opened with a candid assessment, one that I have pondered from a historical vantage. His essay of May 22 offers more to explore than the grafs I'm excerpting (with emphasis):

History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins. The chief victim has been Senator Hillary Clinton, but the ramifications could be hugely harmful for America and the world.

I am no particular fan of Clinton. Nor, I think, would friends and colleagues accuse me of being racist. But it is quite inconceivable that any leading male presidential candidate would be treated with such hatred and scorn as Clinton has been...

...I will come to the reasons why I fear such unabashed misogyny in the US media could lead, ironically, to dreadful racial unrest. "All men are created equal," Thomas Jefferson famously proclaimed in 1776. That equality, though, was not extended to women, who did not even get the vote until 1920, two years after (some) British women. The US still has less gender equality in politics than Britain, too. Just 16 of America's 100 US senators are women and the ratio in the House (71 out of 435) is much the same. It is nonetheless pointless to argue whether sexism or racism is the greater evil: America has a peculiarly wicked record of racist subjugation, which has resulted in its racism being driven deep underground. It festers there, ready to explode again in some unpredictable way.

To compensate meantime, I suspect, sexism has been allowed to take its place as a form of discrimination that is now openly acceptable. "How do we beat the bitch?" a woman asked Senator John McCain, this year's Republican presidential nominee, at a Republican rally last November. To his shame, McCain did not rebuke the questioner but joined in the laughter. Had his supporter asked "How do we beat the nigger?" and McCain reacted in the same way, however, his presidential hopes would deservedly have gone up in smoke. "Iron my shirt," is considered amusing heckling of Clinton. "Shine my shoes," rightly, would be hideously unacceptable if yelled at Obama.

Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, American men like to delude themselves that they are the most macho in the world. It is simply unthinkable, therefore, for most of them to face the prospect of having a woman as their leader.

I argued the last point in 2006 (Sophia aka Wisdom men take no offense as this is not directed at you):

What all the Hillary bashing boils down to is patriarchal resentment of powerful women. Primate brains just can't handle the presence of a modern woman treading upon the same sacred ground upon which the founding fathers once stood. The ingrained pattern to objectify the master's previously-held chattel manages to frog-leap DNA memory strands generation after generation despite women's liberation in the 20th century.

The exhibition of primate brain vs. modern woman closed with chest-thumping, triumphal grunts from the press corps and its allies in the 'sphere. Stephens:

The massed ranks of male pundits gleefully pronounced that Clinton had lost the battle with Obama immediately after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, despite past precedents that strong second-place candidates (like Ronald Reagan in his first, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 1976; like Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown) continue their campaigns until the end of the primary season and, in most cases, all the way to the party convention.

None of these male candidates had a premature political obituary written in the way that Hillary Clinton's has been, or was subjected to such righteous outrage over refusing to quiesce and withdraw obediently from what, in this case, has always been a knife-edge race. Nor was any of them anything like as close to his rivals as Clinton now is to Obama.

The media, of course, are just reflecting America's would-be macho culture. I cannot think of any television network or major newspaper that is not guilty of blatant sexism - the British media, naturally, reflexively follow their American counterparts - but probably the worst offender is the NBC/MSNBC network, which has what one prominent Clinton activist describes as "its nightly horror shows". Tim Russert, the network's chief political sage, was dancing on Clinton's political grave before the votes in North Carolina and Indiana had even been fully counted - let alone those of the six contests to come, the undeclared super-delegates, or the disputed states of Florida and Michigan. . .The unashamed sexism of this giant network alone is stupendous...

...But never before have the US media taken it upon themselves to proclaim the victor before the primary contests [were] over or the choice of all the super-delegates [were] known, and the result was that the media's tidal wave of sexism became self-fulfilling: Americans like to back winners, and polls immediately showed dramatic surges of support for Obama.

The press corps persists in their stubborn, indignant denial of their sexist, misogynistic treatment of Hillary Clinton and women in general. See the WMC video for irrefutable evidence of the media's "sins." If media have been projecting American machismo attitudes toward women to which the Obamasphere marched in lockstep, then we have a lot of work to add more than 18 million cracks "to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling."

Stephens quoted studies of the bias against females in which "women are seen as ambitious and capable, or likeable - but rarely both."

Gender stereotypes trump race stereotypes in every social science test," says Alice Eagley, a psychology professor at Northwestern University. A distinguished academic undertaking a major study of coverage of the 2008 election, Professor Marion Just of Wellesley College - one of the "seven sisters" colleges founded because women were barred from the Ivy Leagues and which, coincidentally, Hillary Clinton herself attended - tells me that what is most striking to her is that the most repeated description of Senator Clinton is "cool and calculating".

This, she says, would never be said of a male candidate - because any politician making a serious bid for the White House has, by definition, to be cool and calculating.

Just as Stephens withheld no punches in identifying rampant sexism, he didn't hesitate to clarify the political instigator who introduced sexism and the race card:

Obama himself prepared the ground by making the first gratuitous personal attack of the campaign during the televised Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate in South Carolina on 21 January, although virtually every follower of the media coverage now assumes that it was Clinton who started the negative attacks. Following routine political sniping from her about supposedly admiring comments Obama had made about Ronald Reagan, Obama suddenly turned on Clinton and stared intimidatingly at her. "While I was working in the streets," he scolded her, ". . . you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart." Then, cleverly linking her inextricably in the public consciousness with her husband, he added: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

One of his female staff then distributed a confidential memo [contained in this post] to carefully selected journalists which alleged that a vaguely clumsy comment Hillary Clinton had made about Martin Luther King ("Dr King's dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964") and a reference her husband had made in passing to Nelson Mandela ("I've been blessed in my life to know some of the greatest figures of the last hundred years . . . but if I had to pick one person whom I know would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions . . . I would pick Hillary") were deliberate racial taunts.

Another female staffer, Candice Tolliver - whose job it is to promote Obama to African Americans - then weighed in publicly, claiming that "a cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements" and saying: "Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?" That was game, set and match: the Clintons were racists, an impression sealed when Bill Clinton later compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 (even though Jackson himself, an Obama supporter, subsequently declared Clinton's remarks to be entirely inoffensive).

African-American congresswomen Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) as Clinton supporters both disputed Tolliver's spin as did Obama supporter Jesse Jackson:

"I don't read anything negative into Clinton's observation," Mr. Jackson said in a phone conversation late Sunday night from India...

...In his conversation with Mr. Obama on Saturday, Mr. Jackson said, "He told me what Bill had said. And I said to Barack, as a tactical matter, resist any temptation to come down to that level. There may be temptations, especially when the media keeps saying 'Barack is black,' and they never said 'Dukakis is white' or 'Hillary is white,'' he said, referring to Michael Dukakis, who won the Democratic nomination in 1988.

But, Mr. Jackson said, "Bill has done so much for race relations and inclusion, I would tend not to read a negative scenario into his comments." He said his chief concern was that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton not "bloody themselves" so much that they can't unite against the Republicans in November.

So much for Jackson's counsel. Obama--replying to ABC News This Week George Stephanopoulos' question about Bill's comment--spurred the anti-Clinton momentum ever so subtly by stating, "I think people want change. I think they want to get beyond some of the racial politics that has been so dominant in the past." He didn't address directly Jesse Jackson's assessment, leaving unanswered the inference that Bill Clinton had utilized the decades-old tactic of racial politics. "Well, you know, I think that that's his frame of reference was the Jesse Jackson races. That's when, you know, he was active and involved and watching what was going to take place in South Carolina. I think that a lot of South Carolinians looked at it through a different lens," he said.

The candidate true to a promise of change and unity would have countered that, with all due respect to Jackson's presidential runs, he, unlike Jesse, had won Iowa, a watershed moment, and that he, like Jesse, didn't perceive malicious intention behind Bill Clinton's remarks. That would have been the high road, proof that his unity slogan isn't mere hype. But he left the question dangling, open to doubt, fostering mistrust of the Clinton campaign when he summed up, "No, I don't think they were trying to demonize me, but I do think that there is a certain brand of politics that we've become accustomed to, and that the Republican Party had perfected and was often directed against the Clintons, but that all of us had become complicit in, where we basically think anything is fair game." [transcript here]. This from a candidate who played good guy on camera and on stage while his staff circulated memos of the Clinton campaign's alleged "deliberate racial taunts" and later hawked Rupert Murdoch's trashy tabloid, the NYPost, with its article and Olbermann's diatribe imbuing Hillary's RFK assassination remark with diabolical meaning. Obama demonstrated "anything is fair game."

Unreliable witnesses in the press corps and the Obamasphere whipped themselves into a frenzy to label the Clintons as racists, a blatant lie, and "no more real than Al Gore’s claim that he invented the Internet." They unleashed a barrage of false accusations against Hillary Clinton, her hemming and hawing about whether Obama was a Muslim to exacerbate resentment toward her, conjuring a Nixonian specter of "Clinton Dirty Tricks."

Stephens described the resulting fallout of a dirty trick smearing Hillary and a sexist ploy joining the Mrs. to her Mr. in the "amorphous creature called 'the Clintons', an aphorism that stands for amorality and sleaze." When I spy a reference to the Clintons, I earmark the writer, blogger, or speaker as potentially one who might as comfortably misname the Democrat Party, a political epithet. Shame on fauxgressives who carried water for the Republican talking point bureau against the Clintons by imitating Andrew Sullivan's dubious Clinton shtick.

Those of us who weren't willingly deluded and/or avid readers of The Daily Howler knew who sent the dogs out of which Stephens surmised were Obama-Axelrod objectives:

The pincer movement, in fact, could have come straight from a textbook on how to wreck a woman's presidential election campaign: smear her whole persona first, and then link her with her angry, red-faced husband. The public Obama, characteristically, pronounced himself "unhappy" with the vilification carried out so methodically by his staff, but it worked like magic: Hillary Clinton's approval ratings among African Americans plummeted from above 80 per cent to barely 7 per cent in a matter of days, and have hovered there since.

I suspect that, as a result, she will never be able entirely to shake off the "racist" tag. "African-American super-delegates [who were supporting Clinton were] being targeted, harassed and threatened," says one of them, Representative Emanuel Cleaver. "This is the politics of the 1950s." Obama and Axelrod have achieved their objectives: to belittle Hillary Clinton and to manoeuvre the ever-pliant media into depicting every political criticism she makes against Obama as racist in intent.

Have I mentioned that I consider Obama's campaign the most underhanded, lowdown political operation on the Democratic side that I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing? Yup. He is a Democratic presidential nominee? Wow! Why isn't the party ashamed of itself for blessing this conniving, macho-pandering, two-faced, sexist, calloused, race-baiting, snake-oil selling politician? I would add other adjectives but I'm attempting to keep it clean. And millions have fallen for Obama's manipulative BS. Well, I guess it was the Democrats' turn to swoon for their faux version of "a uniter, not a divider."

I wonder how much time will pass before the SCLB realizes its error. Did I just make a funny? They will compulsively preoccupy themselves with attacking John McCain and then defending Barack against the evil Republicans and the noise machine and they will proceed ignoring their failure to document the atrocities. Kevin Drum responded to my Hillary's unreliable witnesses post in comments for criticizing bloggers like him who jumped on the right-wing Drudge bandwagon to "wrongly [finger] the Clinton camp for the photo of Obama in a turban and Somali garb." To my thinking, Drum's excuses didn't absolve his "lapse in judgment." He should have known better from the start. Matt Drudge! GIGO.

I highly doubt the Blog Boyz will admit their mistake of backing the wrong candidate if Obama loses or when his presidency reveals that he's mostly an orator of spiel, not an executive. Stephens:

The danger is that, in their headlong rush to stop the first major female candidate (aka "Hildebeast" and "Hitlery") from becoming president, the punditocracy may have landed the Democrats with perhaps the least qualified presidential nominee ever. But that creeping realisation has probably come too late, and many of the Democratic super-delegates now fear there would be widespread outrage and increased racial tension if they thwart the first biracial presidential hopeful in US history.

But will Obama live up to the hype? That, I fear, may not happen: he is a deeply flawed candidate. Rampant sexism may have triumphed only to make way for racism to rear its gruesome head in America yet again. By election day on 4 November, I suspect, the US media and their would-be-macho commentators may have a lot of soul-searching to do.

I'm not as hopeful as Stephens about media's "soul-searching" examination. They savaged Bill and Hillary in the 1990s only to return unrepentantly to lambaste the Clinton's campaign by using misogyny, sexism, and the faux race card as political weapons.

I have the same sinking feeling in my gut as I did in the spring of 2000. Bad times ahead whether McCain or Obama wins in November, a tragedy of the missed opportunity of President Hillary Clinton lost by a campaign legacy of shameful sexism and race-baiting.


CREDITS: Time and New York Post covers from Mark Pasetsky's Cover Awards, The New Republic cover from Voices in their heads, and Chris Matthews Hardball graphic from The aria of Tweety.

You're our hero, Hill!

Photo by Barbara Kinney

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Excerpted from Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

Hillary, RFK, malignant absurdity

Via VastLeft, two commentaries on Hillary and her RFK assassination in June remark. First, the cogent, rational Avedon (with emphasis in bold):

I really look forward to the day when I don't get up in the morning and find my formerly favorite blogs littered with so many stupid posts attempting to twist statements by Hillary Clinton into Proof of Evil. When the Republicans say stupid things about Obama, everyone is perfectly capable of seeing through it and tearing it apart - in fact, y'all do it so well that I have little to add. Why can't we do that for Hillary? And why is it that when I try to do that, I get attacked as a "Hillary supporter", even though I've made it clear that I can't choose between her and Obama? What's wrong with you people? Do the Republicans spend half their time trying to destroy the reputation of the Reagans, or Gingrich, or any of their standard-bearers? Do you think they would spend five seconds doing this kind of self-immolation? Pull yourselves together - you're just joining in with a favorite Republican sport, and you are not helping clinch the nomination for Obama. The corporate media is always going to attack the Clintons, and they don't actually need your help. [And, for the record, HRC was talking about nominating races that ended in June, as she clearly emphasizes that word in the clip. And she picked the two June races that were most memorable for her. Now, if you can't figure out why the '68 and '92 races were particularly memorable for Hillary Clinton, you should consider the possibility that your prejudices are clouding your judgment.]

Duh! How biased, stupid, and/or ignorant of history can people get? Here's how: the MSNBC clown act from Rachel Maddow when the conversation turned to Clinton as Obama's veep.

MADDOW: I think that it makes you think that it would be very awkward for a vice president to be on a ticket—for a vice presidential candidate to be on a presidential candidate‘s ticket after she‘s made repeated references to his potential death. Yes, that would be weird.

But the other—but I think it‘s important also that you raised this prospect that she‘s talked about other assassinations in modern American history during this campaign.

GREGORY: Right.

MADDOW: I think for the superdelegates, I think John Harwood‘s point is well taken, which is that this shows a lack of discipline at best here. This shows—this is a gaffe and a big mistake from a remarkably disciplined candidate.

And if this was a mistake, it‘s a big an uncharacteristic mistake. If it wasn't a mistake, it‘s disgusting.

Project much, Rachel? Maddow video and transcript link at Corrente.

POSTSCRIPT: The Obama campaign stirred up the press corps by circulating lowlife Olbermann's wacky doodle commentary about Hillary's RFK assassination reference. Hey, it's a new kind of politics! When Obama plays lowdown, dirty tricks--and why would he if he's truly the inevitable nominee?--the words, change, hope, and unity, appear inside the O'Kool-Aid sippy cup.

Lawsuit filed to seat Florida delegation

Via Jerome Armstrong, the Miami Herald reported:

Florida's history of discrimination against African Americans should force the national Democratic Party to count all of the state's delegates at its national convention, a federal lawsuit filed Thursday claims.

The suit, filed by state Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller and two other Democrats, claims that the federal Voting Rights Act prohibits the national party from stripping the state of its convention delegates.

The Civil Rights-era law requires the U.S. Justice Department to approve any significant voting change in Florida to make sure it doesn't disenfranchise minority voters. Geller argues that includes the Democratic National Committee's demand that Florida switch ''from a state-run primary to party-run caucus system'' to avoid losing its delegates.

''The purpose of this lawsuit is not to support one candidate over another; it's to enforce one of the most basic tenets of our democracy: Count the votes as they were cast,'' Geller said in announcing the lawsuit.

Geller, a Cooper City lawyer, said the Democratic National Committee has repeatedly argued that the reason it is punishing Florida is because it held its primary before the February date authorized by the party and then refused to conduct a post-primary caucus to designate delegates.

Geller argues that a caucus would have replaced the vote of 1.75 million Floridians with an event that was expected to capture only about 100,000 voters at 120 polling sites, thereby disenfranchising thousands of Florida Democrats, including those serving in U.S. military based outside Florida.

See how caucuses disenfranchise voters? Florida provides a significant example, another reason why I give more weight to Clinton's primary victories. Will the Democratic party learn this lesson and change over to closed primaries? One can hope.

Geller is an uncommitted superdelegate. The other two Democratic plaintiffs are also delegates, one for Clinton and the other for Obama.

The lawsuit also says that by penalizing Florida, the DNC is violating the constitutional protection on equal application of the law and a federal law that requires parties to write their own rules and then follow them. The lawsuit argues that DNC rules require it to conduct an investigation into questions involving state action, such as the premature primary date, but the DNC failed to conduct any investigation.

The lawsuit comes as the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is scheduled to meet in Washington May 31 to hash out how to settle the delegate dispute involving both Florida and Michigan.

Geller, and two other plaintiffs, sent a six-page letter to the DNC accusing them of failing to understand the legal and practical problems of stripping the state of their delegates and demanding they restore the delegates to the convention.

Geller believes the strongest argument Florida Democrats have in the legal challenge is how it relates to Section Five of the Voting Rights Act. The 1965 act was designed to protect blacks, primarily in southern states, from discrimination by banning literacy tests, poll taxes and unfair redistricting that had denied them access to the voting booths.

Seems the ball is no longer in Howard Dean's court (pun intended) if the May 31 DNC meeting fails to decide to seat the Florida delegation. How can the Democratic party live up to its name by violating the Voting Rights Act? Did I just hear Donna Brazile's head explode?

Earlier today, BTD at TalkLeft quoted Obama on Florida's delegates:

...Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday that "a very reasonable solution" would be to count Florida's disputed primary votes and cut the state's delegation to the convention in half.

Betcha Florida voters would disagree with Obama's "very reasonable solution" and we will soon discover the outcome from the May 31 DNC meeting. Something tells me the committee will rule against Obama's thievery suggestion. Just guessing.

POSTSCRIPT: This lawsuit on behalf of the Florida delegation wasn't the first.

UPDATE: Edited to reflect that the other two Democratic plaintiffs are not superdelegates. Barbara Effman (for Clinton) and Percy Johnson (for Obama) are pledged delegates.

Hillary's huge win in Kentucky

The news orgs have already called the Kentucky primary for Hillary Clinton. I heard Wolf Blitzer of CNN predict the margin may be as large as 30 points.

With 51% of the precincts reporting, Hillary is ahead 22 points:


I'll update as the numbers roll in.

UPDATE 8:11 PM: Clinton is now up 32 points with 60% of precincts reporting:


Hillary is about to give her victory speech in Louisville, KY. Woo hoo! The crowd chants, "Hillary! Hillary!"

Here's a rough transcript:

"If we only had a president ready, willing, and able to lead..." [Yes we will! chants]...

She said she didn't stay in the race to "prove her toughness" but because of a "determination"... "by never giving up and never giving in... I'm going on now to campaign in Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico and keep standing up for the voters of Florida and Michigan.... they deserve to have their votes counted... and that's why I'm going to keep making that case for the nominee whoever she may be... [Crowd roars.]

"Kentucky has a knack for picking presidents... two terms to a president named Clinton... and it's often been said as Kentucky goes, so goes the nation... who's ready to lead our party at the top of the ticket... who is ready to defeat Sen. McCain in the swing states... who is ready on day one? ...Me.

"I'm thinking of all the women... to break the hardest glass ceiling in the land...

"We will unite our country... and thank you.. and God bless America!"

A CNN commenter remarked about a KY sign: "Kentucky says hold your horses."

8:41 PM: With 88% of the precincts reporting, Hillary thumps Obama in KY by 35 points.


8:58 PM: Hillary mentioned that Kentucky has "a knack for picking presidents." In general elections, the bluegrass state is 10 for 10:


Below are the lackluster KY primary numbers for John McCain:


A panel from the CNN exit poll in KY:

How to read exit polls

9:46 PM: Data from KY exit polls indicate that Obama doesn't appeal to Hillary voters.

Two-thirds of Clinton's supporters there said they would vote Republican or not vote at all rather than for Obama, according to the polls.

Forty-one percent of Clinton supporters said they'd cast their vote for John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and 23 percent said they would not vote at all.

Just 33 percent said they would back Obama in the general election, according to the polls.

Those numbers are even worse for Obama than in West Virginia one week ago, where 36 percent of Clinton voters said they would back him in the fall.

10:32 PM: With 100% of KY's precincts reporting:


Now the map. Of the two counties that Obama won in KY, he got 51% to Clinton's 46% in Fayette, and 53% to Hillary's 44% in Jefferson.

Consolation prize: at least he won two counties compared to a big fat goose egg in West Virginia last Tuesday.



SOURCES: Screen grabs of KY primary numbers and map from CNN.

Obama the divider

BTD of TalkLeft identifies an AP story, which reveals a political mistake of the Obama camp. The AP story states:

Barack Obama will reach a significant milestone Tuesday as he marches toward the Democratic nomination for president — a majority of pledged delegates at stake in all the primaries and caucuses.

A majority, eh? Is that something to celebrate since:

The Obama campaign will ignore Florida and Michigan. . . There simply is no getting around that. and for what? To declare victory on May 20 as opposed to June 3? This is simply stupid. The Associate Press of course is on Obama's side on this, but actually harms him.

The AP reporting mentions that Hillary Clinton is still fighting to get the MI and FL delegation seated, which "would increase the number needed to clinch the nomination," an endeavor that Obama has opposed. Why does Obama hate MI and FL?

When Obama takes the stage of his Spielfest in Iowa, he's dissing half of the Democratic coalition and 17 million Hillary voters. He's tossing off MI and FL. And he's pulling a political stunt that indicates his immaturity and inexperience, that broadcasts his arrogance. What a stupidly divisive move. His Spielfest decision demonstrates he's incapable of uniting a coalition behind him to win the WH.

To drive Obama the divider point further, egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Women posted an ABC News story that...

...highlights a few of the misogynistic blows directed at Hillary Rodham Clinton. . . including one from Tennessee's own Congressman Steve Cohen. Cynthia Ruccia, founder of the group, Clinton Supporters Count Too warns that if Obama is the nominee, the group will campaign against him.

The women's group will boycott the election and abandon the Democratic Party too. [Emphasis added.]

Egalia also cites an ABC News-Washington Post poll in which "nearly 25 percent of Hillary's supporters say an Obama nomination will cause them to abandon the Democratic Party by voting for McCain."

Thus, a perfectly spot-on, one-line summary from egalia tells the story:

But, of course, the Democratic Party abandoned women first.

She also provides a cache of linked sources that range from piffle to protest. An example of piffle via Howard Kurtz, The Sisters are Steamed:

Numerous women -- journalists themselves and those interviewed by journalists -- believe the former first lady has gotten a raw deal, especially from the media. [Emphasis added.]

Under what rock has Kurtz lived to miss how the media has been sexist and misogynistic? At the same time with his subtle choice of verb, he dismisses the reports of female journalists. Just scan the criticism of Kurtz by Bob Somerby to realize Howie has been a protector of media misdeeds and is a completely unreliable witness.

Go visit egalia to watch the ABC News video, "Clinton supporters count too."

The revolution is just getting started.

See
That no matter what you have done
I am still here.
And it has made me dangerous, and wise.
And brother,
You cannot whore, perfume, and suppress
me anymore.
I have my own business in this skin
And on this planet.
--Gail Murray, 1970

Kentucky hearts Hillary

Photo by Barbara Kinney

Hillary remains poised to win the Kentucky primary tomorrow. During a campaign stop in Loretta, KY, Amanda Keith, wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed, "Step aside gentlemen, it's time for a woman to take over," explained why she supports Hillary:

"She's the one that can get us out of this mess," Keith said ahead of Clinton's campaign stop at Maker's Mark distillery that drew hundreds of supporters.

Keith, who had to drop out of college because it became too expensive, said Clinton's plan to help people pay for higher education won her support. "I've got tuition bills I can't pay, and I don't know what I'm going to do about my kids," said Keith...

Keith's reasons were echoed by another Kentucky voter.

"She's showed she cares about this state," said Angela Markum, who drove an hour from Louisville to attend the event. "I don't see Obama here. I don't see him anywhere."

Real Clear Politics shows that Hillary could win KY by as much as 30 points.

Stumping in the bluegrass state, Hillary conveyed the ultimate argument:

"I am hoping that Kentucky will send a big message to the Democratic Party and to the country," Clinton said as the crowd cheered, "that we know what kind of president we need and we know who will defeat John McCain in the fall."

We need Hillary Clinton.

Obama promised a new kind of politics and he has orchestrated one of the most divisive campaigns I've had the misfortune to witness in my lifetime. He has lost key swing states and will lose Hillary voters, whom he bragged he could get to vote for him. But he has alienated too many for him to win the general election in November. As Anglachel so poignantly articulated, The Electoral Map Trumps the Party Math.

Hillary--not Obama--can defeat McCain.

Hillary--not Obama--can win the presidency.

Hillary--not Obama--performs better in the all-important Electoral College map.

Hillary has the experience America needs to lead us into more prosperous times, protect our national security, and improve foreign affairs.

Only one Democratic nominee can win in November.

Her name is Hillary Clinton.

More votes in Democratic Primary history

Via HillBuzz, ABC News tallied up the popular vote total:

Clinton: 16,691,283
Obama: 16,647,926

Result: Clinton leads by 43,357 votes. She has now earned more votes than anyone in Democratic Primary history.

The total includes MI and FL according to The Fact Hub.

Reports from West Virginia

Hillary Clinton at a rally in Charleston, WV

Chicago Tribune (with emphasis added in bold throughout):

The front-running Obama made quick work of the state, flying in for a speech in Charleston before departing for Kentucky, which votes on May 20. And in those remarks he readily conceded what most expect: that Clinton will handily beat him Tuesday in the state's Democratic presidential primary....

...Meanwhile, Clinton moved eastward across the state, making an afternoon stop in the economically ravaged coal town of Logan. There, in a packed high school gymnasium, she seemingly pulled at the threads of all of her campaign themes to date, telling the crowd that she would fix the troubled economy, sever America's dependence on foreign oil and be a strong commander-in-chief.

Robby Shell, a resident of Logan, said his state would punish Obama for campaigning so little here. A Clinton blow-out, he said, "will send a message that working people, blue-collar people trust Hillary Clinton. They don't know Obama."

Boston Globe:

Clinton has tried to cast today's primary as one of the few remaining chances for party leaders to recognize that she would be a stronger nominee against McCain. "I keep telling people, no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia," she said at a morning stop yesterday at a Charleston biscuit shop.

"West Virginia used to be a leading Democratic indicator, but the last few years we've gone more Republican," said Susman, a consultant who is not supporting a candidate. "People in West Virginia like their guns, like their religion, love their country - and they like the Clintons. They relate to Bill, they relate to Hillary."

Reuters:

Clinton, a New York senator who has vowed to keep fighting despite her dwindling prospects and a mounting campaign debt, spent the day in West Virginia on Monday and showed no sign she was ready to step aside so Obama could focus on a November match-up with Republican John McCain.

"West Virginia is a real indicator of which way the political winds are going to go," she said at a rally in Logan, West Virginia. Clinton said her wins in crucial big states like Ohio and Pennsylvania made her a better choice against McCain.

"I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe that I could be the best president for West Virginia and America, and that I was the stronger candidate to take on John McCain in the fall," she said....

...Despite calls from some Democratic officials for Clinton to quit, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found nearly two-thirds of national Democrats say there is no rush for Clinton to get out of the race.

Even 42 percent of Obama's supporters said Clinton should remain to the end of voting on June 3, rejecting the idea that a prolonged race would hurt the party....

Why do the media hate democracy? Why do they ignore a majority of Democrats? Why do they downplay West Virginia in the race for the WH? Let's review via The Reclusive Leftist:

• In 1988, Jesse Jackson took his hopeless campaign against winner Michael Dukakis all the way to the convention, often to great media praise.

• In 1980, Ted Kennedy carried his run against Jimmy Carter all the way to the convention, even though it was clear he had been routed.

• In 1976, Ronald Reagan contested the “inevitability” of Gerald Ford all the way to the convention. Few, then or since, have ever thought to criticize Reagan’s failure to step aside and let Ford assume the mantle.

• Also in 1976, three candidates — Mo Udall, Jerry Brown, and Frank Church — ran against Jimmy Carter all the way through the final primaries, even though Carter seemed more than likely to be the eventual nominee.

• Even in 1960, Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson fought the “certain” nomination of John F. Kennedy all the way to the convention floor.

In fact, until this year, it’s been an axiom of American politics that candidates are allowed to pursue their runs until they decide to drop out...

...Clearly the rules are different for penis-less lady candidates:

Yet in one of the tightest races in modern history — before the opponent has come close to clearly clinching the nomination, before a number of voters have been given the chance to have their voices heard, and when Clinton still has a chance, albeit a slim one, to win the prize, she is continually vilified for failing to see the light and bow out. What gives? ...

...…Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history. That’s being driven by Clinton fatigue, but it’s also being driven by a concerted campaign that examines every action the Clintons take and somehow finds the basest, most self-serving motivation for its existence. Thus, in this case, when Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she’s constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party. Is there a fair amount of sexism in the way she’s being asked to get out of the way so a man can have the job? You be the judge. [Emphasis added.]

No, there’s not a fair amount of sexism. There’s a huge amount of sexism, both conscious and unconscious. All this talk of Clinton fatigue is bullshit — in 2004 the party was wishing they could re-nominate Big Dog after his speech at the convention. What’s going on now is that lay-deez aren’t supposed to reach for power, and those who do are evil unnatural witches who consort with demons, eat babies, and fuck ponies for fun.

Can anybody name me a single über-powerful woman in the entire history of Western civilization who hasn’t been vilified as a freak of nature?

The sexist press corps have attempted to destroy Hillary's reputation for years. But West Virginia will send a clear signal to the media today: go to hell.

And they will send a message to Obama: we don't want you as our nominee.

Superdelegates can change their minds before casting their votes in August and Hillary Clinton has every right to take the fight all the way to the convention floor. She can win the general election in November and sweep in more Democrats on her coattails. Obama can't.

In South Dakota, whose primary will transpire on June 3, 41 former state legislators and constitutional officers have endorsed Hillary Clinton.

More importantly, swing state Democrats declared that Hillary is best for the top of the ticket:

The decision about who to support to be our Party’s nominee is not one that any of us should take lightly. We haven’t. But, after giving this important decision a great deal of thought, we are convinced that Hillary Clinton has the vision, skills and commitment to make the changes our country needs. As Democrats who have run and won in competitive Congressional districts and battleground states, we believe that Hillary is best positioned to successfully lead the Democratic ticket in districts and states like ours around the country.

As you know, Hillary has racked up victories in bellwether states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and now Indiana that are absolutely vital to winning the White House and maintaining our Congressional majority in the fall. Hillary has won the big battleground states by connecting with voters whose support we must have to win the general election. Her victories in Pennsylvania and Indiana were all the more impressive after being outspent by as much as two or three to one.

Pennsylvania was not just a victory for Hillary Clinton. It was also a wake- up call for superdelegates, forcing us to ask ourselves two essential questions: 1) Which candidate can carry the magic 270 electoral votes to win in the fall? 2) Which candidate is most likely to help our fellow Democrats in down-ballot races? We believe the answer to both of these questions is Hillary Clinton.

On the first question, Hillary has shown she can win the all-important battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida even while being outspent. This speaks to her ability to connect with voters we must deliver in the fall, including blue collar Democrats who can sway this election as they have in the past.

On the second question, Hillary has won rural and suburban districts which we as Democrats must carry to maintain our edge in Congress. Of the fifteen districts rated “toss up” by the Cook Political Report, Hillary has now won ten. Of the 20 districts we picked up in 2006 that had gone for President Bush just two years before, Hillary has now won 16. She is strong in the places we must win to hold and expand our majority.

Turning attention to today's primary, if Obama is allegedly as inspiring as JFK, why can't he win WV as JFK did?

It's as if today WV voters will deliver a famous snub to Obama, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Get your game face on for Hillary

Hillary is still in this race despite the 24/7 media spiel anointing Obama the winner and the chortling over the perceived fait accompli in the Obamasphere. So get your game face on and let's roll.

In cramming a lot into one post, I've abbreviated some of the cites so click the links to understand the whole picture.

Who has our worthless media establishment cut out of the political discourse?

Older voters. For Obama, it's teh suck:

The Clinton campaign consistently includes Hillary Clinton’s appeal to seniors when it discusses why she is the better choice to face off against John McCain – but the media seldom mentions older voters, choosing instead to concentrate on Clinton’s appeal to “white working class” voters to hype the race angle in the campaign.

The Obama campaign’s use of talking points involving “new voters” and a “new coalition” is sending a message to older voters – that “old” is worth a lot less to them than “new”, that young voters are more important than older voters, and that the “new coalition” means that the concerns of the “old coalition” members are no longer critical to the Party.

And all this is going on when the Republican Party will have a 71 year old as its nominee.

Paul Lukasiak provides in-depth analysis, numbers, charts, a whole megillah.

Who joined Republicans against progressive Democrats to undermine the middle class by voting for legislation with the Orwellian name, Class Action Fairness Act?

You know who:

In 2005, Barack Obama voted for CAFA, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005. Who voted against it? Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, Pat Leahy, Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer and other progressive Democrats. Even Harry Reid. Who voted with Obama? Republicans, from Trent Lott to Lindsay Graham to Jeff Sessions and Democrats Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein (big surprise.)

Jeralyn of TalkLeft discusses why it was a very bad bill and commenter andrys adds more flesh to some of *cough* Barry's benefactors:

Obama gives Hope to corporations - Truthdig, Apr 28, 2008

Barack Obama Inc.: The birth of a Washington machine - (Harpers, Oct 26, 2006 issue)

Obama Campaign press release - response to Harper's article - Oct. 23, 2006

A Bit More on Barack - Harper's added detail for Obama campaign - Oct. 26, 2006. This includes Obama's explanation that We can do better than burdening businesses with cases of class-action abuse.

All his talk about not knuckling under to special interests is talk. M'yeah. Smell the hypocrisy. Here's a whiff of Barry's stealthy lobbyist network from The Hill.

Polls from West Virginia and Kentucky indicate an upcoming Hillary landslide.

Do you wonder why the media have gone ga-ga for Obama as if he's got the nomination? C'mon. The media are corporate subsidiaries comprised of influence peddlers dedicated to the plutocracy. Via tngen at Corrente:

There’s a good reason for the recent Obamabot psyops, pundit declarations, general wailing and at times cajoling Clinton supporters have been subjected to since her recent Indiana victory was spun into a loss: Clinton still has a very good chance of securing the nomination.

What’s more, the next few days are absolutely critical for her and her supporters. The end is only here if we allow the latest round to depress morale and turnout for the upcoming WV and KY primaries.

Jay Cost at RCP lays out why Clinton’s down but not out. First some numbers and demographics:

Two things are holding me back: West Virginia and Kentucky.

—SNIP—

However, it is possible that she could counter Tuesday’s blowout with two big blowouts of her own in the next two weeks. This could undo most of the damage done by her big loss in North Carolina, and put her back on track....

...What happens to “It’s Over” if Clinton pulls a 40-point victory in West Virginia on Tuesday, then follows it up a week later with a 30-point victory in Kentucky? If these states turn out in the same margins that states since March 4th have averaged, that would imply a net of about 290,000 votes for Clinton. That puts her within striking distance of a reasonable popular vote victory. “Over” will be over as we turn our attention to Puerto Rico.

Lambert weighed in:

I keep thinking that, if they really had it in the bag, they wouldn’t be screaming so loud that they’ve got it in the bag — and then attributing Hillary’s persistence to, er, psychological factors (“You know how women are…”)... Eh? ...I mean, why doesn’t Obama just release the 50 SDs he’s got in the bag and have done with it?

NOTE And I love that “elite opinion” has congealed around Obama triumphalism. This is the Village [aka media pundit class]. They’re always wrong about everything.

To quote a Daily Howler bromide I'll repeat often in the next few days: "You really can’t run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps." Big media is out of touch, disconnected in their ivory towers. They want to pitch information, not listen to info consumers. You think we have a free press in America with the public's best interest at heart? Don't make me open a can of bwahahahahaha.

What's happening to the Democratic Party? And are the Blog Boyz still members of the reality-based community?

Super-smart Anglachel analyzes the "mass psychosis that has overtaken half of [our] party" and the "dissolution of what should have been a solidly unified party." She delves into the break-up, the differences between Obama's and Hillary's approach, and a "revolution" of Barry's new "saints" demanding old sinners--Hillary supporters--to simply give up and bow to The One.

What I see rising from the other side is clearly of two kinds. Half of Obama's support is simply racial identity voting. The other half is from the faction of the party that is significantly insulated from the stark world of need and want. There is a love of the other-worldly where the beauty of the idea and the ideal matters more than the base. The political "base" is seen as base - low, uncouth, adulterated, impure, unworthy. They are not among the saved and the saints. I honestly cannot remember a previous time when so many people in the party were reviled for doing nothing except vote for a conventional candidate....

...Cultural liberals really do tend to think that people who fit the profile of Clinton voters don't have deeply held principles and are not capable of forming complex opinions of the world, little more than dupes of puppet masters like Karl Rove. They act from false consciousness, not from the rich inner life that the properly educated and worldly claim as their own. The dedication and commitment of Clinton voters is denied because those hicks can't really believe anything, and thus the saints need not take into consideration the desires of the fallen as real, let alone legitimate.

Are Clinton voters to STFU and sit down until our ballots are required at the sacrificial altar of The One? Ha! Think again. Anglachel cites Obama supporter Chris Bowers to prove her point. He wrote:

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

The New Democratic coalition is kicking the working class (and whole lot of other folks who aren't Bubbas) to the curb.

Note the Bowers echo in the words of the DNC's Donna Brazile here and whoa! A hostile response from her here. (Thank you, Joseph!)

After reading Bowers's crazy talk, I wish someone would spike the Blog Boyz Kool-Aid with lithium. Maybe their manic phase would subside and snap the boyz back to reality. Grandiosity and hubris has run amok. McCain and the GOP will make lemonade out of a chunk of Hillary supporters pegged as lemons cast aside as old.

I'm fighting for Hillary because she's fighting for us all. Let's do it.

Saying no to Obama and sexism

Brilliance from the Reclusive Leftist: "Why I will not vote for Obama even if he’s the nominee — and why you shouldn’t either"

Far too much good stuff to do justice with a snippet here and there so go read the entire essay.

Clipped some grafs to drive the point of how damaging sexism has been and is; the complicity of so-called "hope-change-unity, yes, we can" supporters who enable, deny, and refuse for whatever reason to speak out against it, or worse, utilize misogynistic speech degrading Hillary and women in general.

The Obamabots are under the delusion that if Obama wins the nomination (which he hasn’t yet, by the way), all of us in the Hillary camp will forget about the misogyny and come over to their side. Make nice for the sake of party unity. Forgive all the abuse.

Nope.

Several of us have tried over the past couple of months to explain why that won’t happen, but the Obamabots don’t seem to understand. And I know why: it’s because they don’t take sexism seriously. When women say we will not reward misogyny, we’re laughed off. The Obamabots just tell more jokes and hurl more insults and write more crass articles about how the little lay-dees have their little pan-tees in a twist.

They understand how vile racism is--and it is disgustingly immoral--but they're clueless about how despicable sexism is. Now pretend the roles are reversed. Sexism is vehemently denounced, which favors the female presidential candidate, but racial innuendoes and discrimination used to smear her African-American opponent gets a pass:

...Obama, not Hillary, is the punching bag of the media — a media that is blatantly and unapologetically racist. And I do mean blatant. Jokes every night on the cable news shows about Obama’s hair and his fondness for fried chicken. Pundits laughing about what a problem uppity Negroes are.

Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture. 501c groups invoke the most grotesque racist slurs with their advertising; T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport.

Online, Hillary’s supporters constantly refer to Obama and his supporters as n—–s and c— -s and all the other epithets I refuse to type out. Blogger Boyz blog about those stupid lazy Negroes who are still wallowing in memories of the Civil Rights era, too dumb to get with the program and vote for Hillary.

And the lies: Obama is constantly lied about, belittled, demeaned. His record is distorted, his character impugned. Every day the pundits and the Blogger Boyz urge him to drop out of the race, to remember his place, to give up his seat to the white woman. All in the interest of “party unity.”

And nary a word of reproach from Hillary herself. No denunciation at all of the relentless racism. In fact, she actually cracks a few racist remarks herself, albeit subtle ones. She jokes and nods with the media about “letting” Obama run as long as he wants to. And when she makes speeches about American values, she talks a lot about women’s rights but never mentions civil rights. She’s strikingly silent on the subject. Even when she delivers a major address on the importance of rooting out bigotry, she neglects to mention racism at all.

Fast forward to:

If you’re an adult American with even half a lick of sense, you know damn well that there is no way black folks would stand for that crap. There is no way any self-respecting African-Americans in this day and age would take that from the Democrats. It’s inconceivable that anybody would expect them to.

Because dig it: if the Democrats carried on like that, they wouldn’t be any better than the Republicans. And they sure as hell wouldn’t deserve the African-American vote.

Why should it be any different with women?

If Barack Obama and his supporters become the new Democratic party, then the Democratic party will no longer be the party of women’s rights. There will still be women in the party, naturally, but basic respect for women as citizens will be a dead letter. It will be the party of John Roberts and anti-choicers and the most virulent outbreak of public misogyny I’ve ever seen. All the sexism of this campaign will be rewarded instead of repudiated.

And that Democratic party will not deserve my vote.

Primary split

On last night's primary results, Riverdaughter speaks for me:

The votes were close in IN and not so close in NC. But we all know why this is. Indiana was an open primary. We don’t yet know how many crossover votes there were to make havoc. Plus, Obama *should* have had a major geographical advantage and Chicago media market spillover. It *should* have been a blow out for him in Indiana as well. It doesn’t look like his urban-youth-DINK-Republican crossover vote was enough though. Most of those Republican votes will not be staying with us for the general, of course. He won urban areas where African-American votes are highest. He did the same in NC where he won the middle of the state where 2/3 of the population lives. And 35% of the state is African-American.

I think what we’re seeing here is a real racial divide. It was engineered, deliberately, by Obama’s campaign in order to separate African Americans from the Clintons. It has worked spectacularly well. Obama consistently wins urban and southern AA voters, by lopsided margins. It didn’t have to be this way. There was no reason for the African-American community to spurn Clinton. But in this America, in 2008, color is everything. It seems like the civil rights movement of the 60’s was just a dream. As long as you are the right color, you’re golden. Color masks a multitude of deficiencies- experience, knowledge base, earned coalitions, even interest. Obama has not reached out to the working class, to women, to the elderly, the loyal base of the Democratic party. But he has managed to exacerbate the fault line in the party when it comes to race. There’s no doubt about that now.

Winning NC does not make me like him more nor do I have an elevated desire to vote for him. Let me dispel the notion that he and his supporters have about me voting for him in the fall: unless Florida and Michigan are seated and have an impact on the nomination, I will not consider the nomination legitimate. That doesn’t mean I’ll vote for John McCain. It just means that I don’t know what I’ll do when I stand in front of that button. And don’t hang this on Hillary. If it comes to that, I’m sure she would do her best to GOTV. It has nothing to do with her. It has to do with how deeply offended I am by how Obama has split my party on racial lines and pitted race against their regular party members, as if there was a real split there to begin with. As if I were the enemy....

Reminiscent of Obama's stereotypically wrong and bitter arrogance, Donna Brazile, divider extraordinaire, said on CNN last night:

BRAZILE: Well, Lou, I have worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, and I respect Paul.... But, Paul, you're looking at the old coalition. A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don't have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics. We need to look at the Democratic Party, expand the party, expand the base and not throw out the baby with the bathwater. [Emphasis added.]

Here's a hint: to unify the party, don't insult the "old coalition" that's halfway out the door should the superdelegates choose Obama.

POSTSCRIPT: See also Lambert's NC/IN primary wrap-up and hat tip to TalkLeft's Brazile vs. Begala on CNN: Brazile's Blowout. Maps from CNN.

Monday catch-up, Tuesday predictions

Since I've been somewhat unplugged for the past few days, checked in with various sources for a little catch-up. As we head toward Tuesday's primaries...

SurveyUSA tracking poll in Indiana:

24 hours untill [sic] votes are counted in the Indiana Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton defeats Barack Obama in the symbolically important popular vote, and possibly by enough to pick up more than a trivial number of net Convention delegates, according to SurveyUSA’s final pre-primary tracking poll conducted for WCPO-TV Cincinnati and WHAS-TV Louisville. In 4 tracking polls over the past 5 weeks, Clinton has never polled lower than 52%, Obama has never polled higher than 43%. At the wire, they finish: Clinton 54%, Obama 42%.

SUSA's tracking poll for North Carolina:

On the eve of the North Carolina Democratic Primary, with 25% of votes already cast, Barack Obama has no breathing room in his hope to defeat Hillary Clinton in popular votes, according to SurveyUSA’s 8th and final tracking poll, conducted exclusively for WTVD-TV, the ABC-owned TV station in Raleigh. On the final day of the fiercely fought campaign, it’s Obama 50%, Clinton 45%. There is no foreseeable outcome in North Carolina, regardless of which candidate wins the popular vote, where one candidate collects significantly more Convention delegates than the other. Therefore, the exact final vote totals have much more symbolic importance than real importance.

VastLeft's list laid out an excellent Clinton vs. Obama summary of why Hillary over Barry... point by point.

Jerome Armstrong put up two ads: one "closer" from Clinton and one from Obama, "probably his most negative ad to date." Jeralyn at TalkLeft offered a transcript on the Obama ad. Irony alert! Mr. New Kind of Politics uses a negative attack ad to accuse, "And what does Hillary Clinton offer us? More of the same old negative politics."

Clinton and Obama talked with local gay media in North Carolina and Indiana. The Obama interview was his first with local gay press. What took him so long? QNotes, which covers both NC and SC, posted the Clinton interview here, Obama interview here. In Indiana, the LGBT magazine, Reality, "along with bloomingOUT, The Bloomington Beacon, The Letter, Indiana Equality and The Word," asked questions of the candidates and published their responses here. (Via)

Riverdaughter coined the new term--“Mitchellism”--and defined it as: "The tendency of the media to see American politics through its own eyes and to over value its impact on the voting public."

This tendency has been noted before by other bloggers who have referred to the Washington DC press corps and pundits as The Villagers, that self-selected authority of knowledge of what the voters will or will not tolerate. High-Brodersim is another variation and is the belief that the root of the problem in American politics is too much partisanship and if the Democrats would just sell out all of their beliefs and try to meet Republicans half way, there wouldn’t be any more fights and there would be unity and much rejoicing and we could all buy the world a Coke. Barack Obama is a disciple of High Broderism.

Funny un-ha-ha how the Obamasphere hasn't noticed the similarities between "post-partisan" rhetoric and High Broderism.

Riverdaughter went on to say, "But I have noticed a curious thing happening this primary season. I don’t think the voters trust the media much these days." I agree. Here's why: from a big picture perspective, an annual report on The State of News Media 2007 stated, "The press is no longer gatekeeper over what the public knows." In its "Public Attitudes" section, the report reiterated:

...the public’s confidence in 2006 according to some indices continued to slip.

And perceptions of bias, and the partisan divide of media, appear to be on the rise.

All that comes, of course, against a background of more than 20 years of growing skepticism about journalists, their companies and the news media as an institution. As we have noted in other reports,since the early 1980s, the public has come to view the news media as less professional, less accurate, less caring, less moral and more inclined to cover up rather than correct mistakes.

I suspect the disconnect between the public, which includes voters, and the media has widened this year.

Sometimes Bob Somerby's candor tickles me when he analyzes media bias:

COHEN (2/12/08): My Feb. 5 column was critical of Hillary Clinton for supporting a bill to make flag burning illegal. I have since learned from a reader that Barack Obama also supported that bill.

That’s right, dumb-ass! Clinton supported the flag-burning bill. And Obama supported it too!

But then, more than half the senate’s Democrats supported that bill, in June 2006. It was brought to the floor by Dick Durbin, Obama’s biggest senate supporter. Everyone understands the politics of these bills–everyone but [Richard] Cohen and [Gail] Collins, that is. Because they’re two of the world’s biggest androids, they keep singing the same tired songs.

Shhhhh! Don't tell the Hillary-haters at the Orange Sippy Cup™ who criticize Clinton over the flag-burning amendment. Their CDS-suffering heads might explode with reality.

Speaking of a lost grasp on reality, a Cannonfire update on the robocall controversy involving Women's Voices, Women's Votes demonstrates that "another Obamabot attempt to do the GOP's work" is still ticking as if it's "never been discussed before!"

Yesterday at the Left Coaster, eRiposte debunked the hoopla over the gas tax holiday:

Aside from the usual jokers rending their garments over it, I don't find the gas tax holiday back-and-forth to be particularly earth-shaking. I already linked to two Paul Krugman posts that touched on the gas tax issue in previous posts; one of Krugman's posts was a specific critique of Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain's different proposals and another was an op-ed where he again mentions the gas tax issue in a broader context. I agree with Krugman's view that Sen. Clinton's proposal is "pointless not evil".

All politicians pander and I've never said Sen. Clinton is above pandering. That said, her proposal has been misrepresented or distorted by the Obama campaign (see here and here) and by some in the media (see here). Sen. Obama's own history of pandering and his repeated voting in favor of a gas tax holiday in 2000 (when gas prices were much lower) make his current pronouncements on this matter, um, amusing....

My new friend Declarations of Pride posted a rallying cry: On Tuesday, the game will change!

On Tuesday, Hillary will vastly pad her lead in the popular vote. On Tuesday voters will show momentum for Hillary by way of votes of confidence for her that were once not thought to swing her way. Voters will change the game on Tuesday because the luster of inspiration isn't enough to make change happen. The voters will change the game on Tuesday because the Senator from Illinois is becoming less consistent. The voters will change the direction of the wave of democracy on Tuesday because electability is more important that hope alone. Hope can only be fulfilled if the hopeful win. Otherwise that hope was just a dream, and it appears that democratic voters are waking from the Obama dream as it turns to a nightmare where McCain could be President.

Voters are changing the game. Voters are continuing the shift in opinion. Whereas Barack was once seen as the only option, buyers remorse has set in, and the voters are changing the game to who they see as the GE winner: Hillary! Hillary has demonstrated over and over again a winning strategy that includes more than hope for change, but details, plans and understanding of how to make change happen. The voters are changing the game because they know that hope of change alone isn't enough. For change you have to have a plan. For change you have to have an understanding of the problem. For change you need stamina, charisma, and the will to fight on in the face of your enemies. Otherwise, your only hope is to return to sleep and dream of a reality that never had a chance.

Couldn't have said it better!

CREDITS: Cropped photo originally shot by Barbara Kinney.