I really, really don’t get this “Waaaaah, the party abandoned us!!” meme that PUMA and their cohorts are bleating. So, the party “abandons” every Democrat whose chosen candidate doesn’t make the cut? Can I say they “abandoned” me because they didn’t nominate Edwards or Kucinich, both of whom I preferred to Obama? Or because I was a Dean supporter in 2004??

I glanced at the paper and saw that ”Who knows what she really thinks?” line, and thought “Really? You’re totally devoted to this candidate and you’re sure she outright lied to you on national TV?”

What a twisted and self-centered worldview.

Voters like Straughn and Blanco answer that question resoundingly.

Yes, and considering that neither of them even seem particularly impressed with the candidate they claim to support, you have to wonder where those answers come from. 

As far as I can tell, there are two options:

1.  They are Republicans or “independents” who have always tended to vote Republican, or possibly never voted before, which I guess would make the phrase “... has never voted for a Republican” technically true, and were only in favor of Clinton because they want to see a woman POTUS, any woman POTUS. 

2.  They are real Democrats who are so blinded by racism that they simply don’t know what to do at this point but pledge their support for the white guy.  These are the people I feel especially bad for, because OMG if you seriously are so racist that you can’t see anything at all to like in Barack Fricking Obama, you must drown puppies as a hobby.  Black puppies, of course.  He’s a pretty hard person not to be inspired by, or feel some sort of affinity or sympathy for, even if you think he’s only so-so on The Issues.  I didn’t really identify with John Kerry or think he would be a particularly amazing president, but I still managed not to throw my support behind Bush.

Voters like those two obviously weren’t in it for Hillary if they 1) say Hillary’s lying to them and 2) refuse to vote for the person whom Hillary recommends they vote for.

So if they weren’t in it for Hillary, and they weren’t in it for the Democratic Party, they were, and are, in it for ... um, the lack of emotional maturity required to accept the fact that the candidate you voted for lost?

That’s all I got.

Over at some of the pro-PUMA sites (TN Guerilla Women I think), they’re saying that Hillary’s kick-ass speech was code saying, “You see what you missed out on?” and that it was her signal to get her positioned for a 2012 run.

You know you are a committed wearer of tin foil headgear when you think that a political speech given to save the ass of a candidate who spent months making a fool of herself so that she might possibly have a future stab at some sort of a political career is “code” for anything.  Especially if you think it is “code” for what its universally recognized official purpose actually is, right on the face of it.  (which is for TN Guerilla Woman, not you, Lance.)

Though I have to say the number of Hillary fans who are all “2012!” today are annoying the shit out of me, because it means they think McCain is inevitable this fall.  If you do what Your Beloved Hillary asks of you and throw support behind Obama, you must also be willing to at least pretend you think he can win.  Otherwise you are a fucking chump.

I loved that quote from Hillary regarding her 25 years of experience, and how she didn’t spend all that time working for women, kids, and minorities just to see another Republican in the White House. I am a die-hard Obama supporter and it meant a lot that Hillary backed him last night. I read in Newsweek that if she didn’t, people would blame her if Obama didn’t win the presidency.

Oops. I meant 35 years of experience.

I’m a little surprised to see Democratic bloggers continuing to pick at this scab.  Maybe it’s finally time to let it heal.

Over at some of the pro-PUMA sites (TN Guerilla Women I think), they’re saying that Hillary’s kick-ass speech was code saying, “You see what you missed out on?” and that it was her signal to get her positioned for a 2012 run.

You know, it would probably be a lot easier to kill off the ridiculous meme that Clinton is some kind of ultra-scheming Lady Macbeth who would do anything to stab the Democratic Party in the back if her own most fervent supporters would stop claiming that’s what she’s like.

Clinton is a smart politician.  She knows that the best chance the Democrats have to win this fall is for them to pull together, so she’s going to do everything she can to make that happen.  It’s not her fault that some of her supporters are too stupid or too blind to do the same, because she’s said and done everything that any reasonable person can expect to try and get people to vote for Obama in November.

I like Hillary, but I’ve really come to hate her nuttier supporters who keep insisting that they’re doing what they know secretly in their hearts that Hillary really wants them to do.

The anti-Obama, pro-Hillary stuff that I keep seeing—mostly from people who are now talking about voting for McKinney and such, not and never McCain—strikes me as inexplicable.  But then a lot of stuff about this election strikes me as inexplicable.  It was less than a year ago that all the sites that I read that’re now bitterly divided one way or the other thought both Obama AND Clinton were pretty damn amazing.

Still, I don’t think the majority of the disenchantment comes from racism.  I think it comes from doubts about Obama’s experience, angry disappointment that they may never see a woman as president in their lifetime (which seems fair enough), and disappointed anger (see how I reversed that?) at Obama both because of his tendency to campaign right (especially his reaching out to certain church groups with antigay agendas, which I don’t have a cite for because my google-fu is very weak) and because his Gentlemanly Centerist thing sticks in their craw.  The last of which I can understand; as much as I am for Obama, damn, I wish he’d yell more.

I think we need to make a distinction in these discussions between leftists and Democrats who don’t want to choose Obama and Republican “PUMA” ratfuckers.  I think that’ll serve the discussion a lot better, frankly.

disappointed anger (see how I reversed that?) at Obama both because of his tendency to campaign right (especially his reaching out to certain church groups with antigay agendas, which I don’t have a cite for because my google-fu is very weak) and because his Gentlemanly Centerist thing sticks in their craw

That’s another thing that amazes me—did they sleep through all 8 years of Bill Clinton’s administration and so are under the impression that Hillary would not also veer to the right after getting the nomination?  Anyone who worries that they won’t live long enough to see a woman as president should have seen at least one or two previous elections by now.

Again, they seem to have built a Hillary up in their heads that bears very little resemblance to the actual person and politician.  How are they going to handle their disappointment when Hillary reveals that she is, in fact, a human being and a canny politician and not the purest essence of progressive thought EVAH!

Still, I don’t think the majority of the disenchantment comes from racism.  I think it comes from doubts about Obama’s experience, angry disappointment that they may never see a woman as president in their lifetime (which seems fair enough), and disappointed anger (see how I reversed that?) at Obama both because of his tendency to campaign right (especially his reaching out to certain church groups with antigay agendas, which I don’t have a cite for because my google-fu is very weak) and because his Gentlemanly Centerist thing sticks in their craw.

It strikes me as an outsider that the disappointment is not racist; it is from confusing practical politics with personal identity.  The stuff about how bad Obama is for women’s issues, or how he is anti-gay, is a post-hoc rationalisation for the simple emotional reaction to the belief that, in not choosing Clinton, the Democrats rejected *them*.

I’ve voted for women politicians for most of my voting life, and volunteered for one.  Clinton, in this context is a politician first, and a woman second.  She ran a good fight; she lost to another politician who ran a better one.

That’s the crux of it, Mnem, as far as I can tell.  Clinton’s great at making all the right progressive sounds, but—hell, the reason I went with Obama myself (apart from the jawdropping hatred Clinton inspires in the righties) was that he was juuust slightly to her left on foreign policy.

I get that they think she’s better.  (On one or two issues, I agree.)  But ultimately, she’s never been the leftist that either her more fervent supporters or the crazier Republicans… which, these days, is to say all of them… insist that she is.

As for scabs and the picking at of (maybe?), it’s hard for me to see these continued articles in the MSM as anything but fresh wounds; obviously the question of whether I’m commenting on the feedback loop or participating in it is one that’s been debated at length and will continue to be. As a blogger I don’t flatter myself that I drive stories; I do flatter myself that I am capable of watching them on occasion. The headline this post is about was at the top of technorati an hour ago; it’s gone now but I’d be a fool not to expect another in the next few days.

Hm.  I don’t know if I agree with PiatoR or not.  I tend to give people a bit more credit than that; I’m not sure people—at least, the ones I’m thinking of—are that shallow.  It is an interesting point, though.

I think it comes from doubts about Obama’s experience

I would buy this if we were talking about angry Richardson or Biden supporters.  Clinton does not have substantially more experience in political office than Obama does.

angry disappointment that they may never see a woman as president in their lifetime

How anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together could feel this way is beyond me.  In the past two days of watching the DNCC, I have said to my roommate, “OMG, [accomplished female politician N] is going to speak!  She’s going to run for president someday, just you watch,” at least 5 times.  There are more female governors, senators, and representatives now than ever before.  If I had to guess, I would say that at least in my area politicians at the local and state level have about a 30-40% chance of being female.  There are even women at high levels of government in the Republican party!  Seriously, unless you expect not to live out another decade, that is about the weakest excuse to still be bitter about Hillary. 

his tendency to campaign right (especially his reaching out to certain church groups with antigay agendas, which I don’t have a cite for because my google-fu is very weak) and because his Gentlemanly Centerist thing sticks in their craw.

Yes, because until this election, no Democrat has ever felt the need to campaign as anything but an ultra-left radical Marxist.  Seriously?  This is the Democratic party we are talking about, not the Greens.  They are going to campaign moderate, because they are at best a moderate (if not moderate-right) political party.  Anyone who isn’t aware of that is clearly not well informed enough about politics in the US to feel like they have a stake at the primary level. 

I would also mention that Clinton herself is neither significantly more liberal nor significantly more likely to lean left on the campaign trail than Obama is.  She also neither talks the talk nor walks the walk as more of a “partisan” than Obama is/does.  And a great many Obama supporters did not take kindly to her use of racism to gain the support of more conservative Democrats in the rust belt.  She has a far worse track record wrt possible support of bigotry than Obama does, by far.

It strikes me as an outsider that the disappointment is not racist; it is from confusing practical politics with personal identity.  The stuff about how bad Obama is for women’s issues, or how he is anti-gay, is a post-hoc rationalisation for the simple emotional reaction to the belief that, in not choosing Clinton, the Democrats rejected *them*.

Yup, that sounds right to me.  The basic issue is that these people identified themselves so closely with Clinton that they view Obama’s nomination as a personal rejection of them.  I do also think, though, that there’s a decent number of Republican agents provocateurs in their midst.

As much as I might argue that last point of yours, Oppo, I’m basically nodding along, at least to an extent.  I think the antigay thing is what gets under the skin of a lot of the people I’ve been talking about, and while I’m willing to give Omaba the benefit of the doubt—he *can* be a little dishwatery when it comes to gay rights, but his heart seems to be in the right place.

I have a hard time seeing where the animosity on either side is coming from.  I mean, I’ve felt it, watched it, but at a remove (being an expat).  I can’t help wondering what happened to all those people I was reading about taking polls back in December and October of last year who were all “OMG, Clinton and Obama are both running!  Isn’t that great?  How lucky for the party!”

I dunno.  I just wanted to challenge your point about racism, mostly because it doesn’t seem to be borne out by what I’ve been reading in the lefty-but-not-pro-Obama camp.  I don’t have a sophisticated argument to make, not least because it isn’t really MY argument at all.

Look, somebody has to let go first, and by insisting that it be the other party you’re not exactly doing yourself credit.  You’re not doing Obama much good, either.  I might be able to better understand the ginned-up outrage if Obama were winning this thing in a walk, but given how things are going it seems to me that it would be rather more productive to try to calm things down.  And Auguste, at this point I’m a lot less concerned about the mainstream media than I am about providing a forum for blog commenters to post deeply insulting stuff about other Democrats.

Falstaff, most of what I say doesn’t have much to do with people who consider themselves leftists and whose political leanings are more closely matched to the Green party or someone like McKinney (or Nader *shudder*) than any Democrat likely to have a chance at the nomination.  Those folks usually know the score, at least.  And most of them had in the back of their minds that they would end up going for a liberal third party candidate at least since Super Tuesday, if they really had such a problem with Obama.  Most probably had that in the back of their minds when Kucinich dropped out back in January.

I’m mainly talking about the sorts of people who are being featured in the media, people who claim to be lifelong Democrats and Hillary supporters who just can’t stomach the idea of an Obama presidency.

And again, I’ll repeat that back in ‘04 I was no fan of Kerry, didn’t see eye to eye with him politically, didn’t feel confident about his stances on LGBT and women’s rights, and personally didn’t think he would make a very good president.  I still went out and voted for him, because I couldn’t bear the idea of another 4 years of Bush.  Anyone who can’t do the same for Obama this year is either brain dead or has a latent affinity for white bedlinens and the smell of gasoline on plywood.

Look, somebody has to let go first, and by insisting that it be the other party you’re not exactly doing yourself credit.

Here’s the problem, Melinda:  the media is pushing an obviously false story, which is that there is a deep division within the Democratic Party and that the majority of Clinton voters will never vote for Obama, no way, no how.  They’ve been riding this pony for months, and it’s coloring every second of the convention coverage.  They’re spending time getting “experts” to tell us that Hillary’s body language says she doesn’t really support Obama even though she stated her support as strongly as she could in her speech.

Sitting back and letting the media push this story unchallenged seems a lot like letting the accusations of the Swiftboaters sit without challenge until it’s too late.  What’s your suggestion for countering this meme in the media while making sure that Hillary supporters who won’t vote for Obama don’t feel excluded?

Melinda, if we are to believe you are anything but a troll, please quote the part of Auguste’s post, or any comment thereof, where anyone insulted Hillary Clinton.

To clarify, Melinda, I wasn’t talking about “fresh wounds” in terms of hard feelings. I was simply extending the scab metaphor; as for “ginned up outrage”, well, again I’ll say that the idea that Clinton supporters are going to drive the result of this election is being flogged in the media. I’m outraged either by the flogging, or the potential truth of the matter. Either way, the possibility that there’s a large group of voters who are desperate to destroy the country under the flag of Hillary Clinton support should really offend everyone. I don’t think that my ignoring the story is going to change the outcome of the election for the better.

....McKinney (or Nader *shudder*)

She said the name! Oh, God, where’s the soap, where’s the soap?! My poor eyes….

We are as one mind on Kerry.  Ugh.  And as for the people being featured in the media… yeah, I’ll take that.  Frankly, the whole thing smells so strongly of Republican ratfucking that it just defies belief.

(On the other hand, you’re talking to a man who once thought Dennis Kucinich had a reasonable shot at capturing the Democratic nomination.  So you can take that or leave it as you like.)

(I have nothing to say to Melinda, who—if in earnest—clearly has her head wedged somewhere <I>most>/I> uncomfortable.)

I would like to say, the whole “PUMA” thing is completely a win-win for the Republican ratfuckers.  If we don’t address it, they create a belief among independents and weak Republican voters that Obama won’t win his own party’s vote, so they may as well vote Republican.  If we do address it, there’s some lively infighting between various wings ranging from the ultra-progressives who will go Green to the Dixiecrats who will never vote for a black man, so it gives the same impression to independents and weak Republicans that the Democrats are totally divided among themselves, so they may as well vote Republican.

Is there any turd that the Republicans can’t pick up, polish, and use for their own purposes?
/rhetorical question

You could say that, Sarah, but you have a brain. As do I.

And none of us rely on da telebision for our news. Typical MSM approach: focus on the crazies and extremists. Makes for better picture and soundbites.

I’m a little surprised to see the mainstream media and a handful of useful GOP fools continuing to pick at this scab.  Maybe it’s finally time to let it heal.

Fixed that for ya, Melinda.

You know, I was watching PBS interview Michelle Obama last night before Senator Clinton’s speech, and she said there was a vast gap between the election narrative that the pundits were projecting and the actual message that was getting through to voters.  I think she was right. 

Take a peek at the section of Clinton’s speech that starts, “I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him?”  In the video, you can hear the beginnings of immense applause that the speech actually wasn’t written to accommodate.  It sounded like, far from needing the point by point reasoning of why they should support Obama that Clinton was offering, the crowd was overjoyed at the idea of party unity.  That’s the gap, right there.

Typical MSM approach: focus on the crazies and extremists. Makes for better picture and soundbites.

Back in my activist days, I used to get worried when I saw a crew from any of the cable news outlets coming towards me or my friends, because I knew that meant they thought we were the freakiest ones there.

given how things are going it seems to me that it would be rather more productive to try to calm things down.

So we should just let this kind of MSM BS and GOP chicanery go without comment? Sorry, the point is to show, as often as it takes, what a sham this PUMA business is.

If it was just a handful of whingey idiots who don’t realise the party’s over, it wouldn’t be worthy of discussion. But the fact that they’re still being taken seriously is something that worthy of mockery, at the very least.

at this point I’m a lot less concerned about the mainstream media than I am about providing a forum for blog commenters to post deeply insulting stuff about other Democrats.

At this point, the vast majority of disappointed Hillary supporters have either, y’know, listened to her pleas for unity, or decided to sit this election out.

So the “other Democrats” you mention are truly a fringe element of fantasists and GOP patsies, who deserve the contempt you’re seeing.

Back in my activist days, I used to get worried when I saw a crew from any of the cable news outlets coming towards me or my friends, because I knew that meant they thought we were the freakiest ones there.

You were right to worry—at street protests, the cameras will always make a bee-line for the anarkiddies, the puppet guys, the whacked-out tie-die hippies, and the “Free Mumia” and Che t-shirt and Keffiyah-wearing fantasists. In my old TV newsroom, we used to call them “The Usual Suspects.”

Well, I’d like to think we weren’t quite that cookie cutter.

But yeah.  Man, those were the days…

Well, I’d like to think we weren’t quite that cookie cutter

The problem is that you were probably there to promote causes rather than yourself. One major characteristic of the “Usual Suspects” was that they were total attention whores who (even though they might deny it) loved appearing on camera as spokespeople for their “special” and often completely off-topic hobbyhorses. It became a vicious cycle where both parties met each-other halfway, and you can never go wrong with the MSM by appealing to their laziness and thirst for sensation.

The right-wing “Usual Suspects” differ in that, thanks to training at conservative “leadership seminars,” they’re far from unwitting in exploiting the laziness of MSM reporters, producers, and bookers.  Bill Donohue is a great example of this in action.

I have to admit the conservatives have kicked it up a notch with this PUMA nonsense by pushing their patsies into the MSM spotlight.

The true Hillary supporters will vote for Barack, and here’s why:

Helps Clinton the Senator- Putting McBush into the White House hamstrings Clinton and every other hard-working Democratic senator from getting anything done. Putting Obama into the White House frees Clinton up to continue her good work at a record pace.

Supreme Court Justices - If McMansions is elected, his Supreme Court appointees will set everything Clinton has worked for back decades for decades to come.

Sets up a Clinton Presidency – Clinton ran and she ran well. She learned a lot in this primary, which she can use for a presidential run in 2012. Consider Obama’s administration an assist. And they can learn a lot from each other over the next eight years.

Not Voting for Obama Hurts Clintons Future Chances of Being President – Listen up PUMA’s, if Clinton’s fingerprints or those of her supporters are on an Obama loss, you can bet there are people just as small-minded who will get the Clinton Flu come election day 2012. They will be the same people who stayed home when Kerry ran.

She learned a lot in this primary, which she can use for a presidential run in 2012.

You mean 2016, right?  Implying that she’s working towards a run in 2012 implies that Obama can’t possibly win, or that even if he does win his term will go so badly that he either won’t run for reelection or that she will be able to easily trounce him for the Democratic nomination without challenging her ability to actually beat whichever Republican runs—which I don’t think has ever happened before, or at least not in anything like recent memory.  Hillary’s next real chance at the presidency, if the Democratic party means anything to her, is in 2016.  Which would be fabulous!

I was thinking the same thing as Opo’s point 1. Women (and men) who aren’ t particularly progressive might have been drawn to Hillary,  because they really identified with her, or because they really really wanted to see a female president.  So they voted against their beliefs to get Hillary. In her absence, they just like McCain more than Obama. Or they’re put at ease by the decades of seeing McCain and Hillary in the public eye. Either way, a source of Hillary votes dried up and is not transferable.

This morning, the local NPR affiliate, WAMU, was reporting that John McCain was forming a Democrats for McCain in Virginia, headed up by a woman named Christy Swanson (I don’t know if that’s the spelling). She claims she is a lifelong democrat and a small businesswoman and McCain would better for small businesses. Listening to this, I spit my toothpaste into my mirror.

I think the Dems really really really need to play up the Republicans against McCain, you know, like Jim Leach, Chuck Hagel, etc. to counter this meme.

And PS, yes, I’m going to eventually looking into whatever this small business is Ms. Swanson owns and boycott the hell out of it if she really is a lifelong Dem.

The people propagating the meme that Hillary was forced into supporting Obama are eerily similar to anti-choice nuts who claim that they’re advocating for women.  They share the belief that women are too weak to make our own choices and are easily forced into doing things we don’t want to do, whether supporting a candidate or getting an abortion.

It’s just so bizarre.  How many other women in the public eye are as kick-ass as Hillary?  I don’t see anyone forcing her into doing anything.  The people who are propagating this seem awfully anti-feminist and anti-woman to me, and seem to have a very low opinion of the woman they claim to support.