Obama to Bill Clinton: You've got the Unity Pony. Give it to me.

If you think of yourself as a Clinton Cultist, then I said I despise you. If you think of yourself as an Obama Cultist, then I despise you.

I respect and admire SUPPORTERS of good progressive candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. but pols are pols and they do what they do. If you think your candidate walks on water, then you are a cultist and I despise you. Yes Jeralyn, I despise such cultists.

But let me make this simple for everyone, I will write about the election elsewhere if folks do not like the way I express myself. I have not changed one bit.

All of you complaining today had not a peep of concern when I condemned Obama cultists. IF you want a cheerleader, then do not read me. do not comment to me. Ignore me.

Jeralyn, delete this comment as you like. I am beyond caring now.

I feel it now.

There is something distasteful, disappointing, and potentially counter-productive and possibly regressive about the notion of Hillary Clinton as VP. I know purity and politics are a bad combination, and the Obama/Clinton unity ticket at a first blush would seem the logical way to unite democrats (IF Obama is the nominee) for the only thing that is important - beating mccain, but the idea of HRC - the woman - settling for the 2nd fiddle spot, when she has clearly demonstrated she is ready for the top spot and perhaps is more electable than Obama, may actually set women's equality back rather than advancing it (there, I said, I refuse to personally own it, don't blame me). HRC as VP could end up reinforcing the societal sexism and misogyny that her campaign has so glaringly exposed by ultimately conveying a woman in the chauvinist's role as 2nd fiddle message rather than the ground-breaking woman as serious POTUS candidate or first woman as VP message (what message will resonate is the rub).

At some point it would be nice if a woman could break through the glass ceiling of expectations and preconceptions in a very public blatant symbolic way. And there would be no better way of doing that than a woman as POTUS.

In the beginning I thought HRC was not the woman for that important accomplishment. I find her policies often self-emasculated to her dedication to playing the insiders game - she may be a true believer, but doesn't seem willing to take a firm stand on her beliefs, and too often picks triangulation. But her tenacity, skill, sanity, and humanity through the campaign against unreasonable odds and irrational misogynistic vitriol - including from many self-described faux progressives and the arrogant/obnoxious kreative klass has been very impressive. It almost seems a waste of her accomplishments to settle for VP. - END OF NOTION. (That said, I think HRC should and will accept the VP slot from Obama if its offered in something other than a poison-pill fashion.)

I probably won't watch it, just as I won't watch Recount. I remember all of the events way too personally and with way too much anger and resentment to have them re-enacted.

This quote:

They despise the Clintons so much, they seem willing to risk the Presidency to destroy them. I find this attitude simply irresponsible. Just as I despise those Clinton supporters who say they won't vote for Obama, I equally despise those Obama supporters who would rather destroy the Clintons than win the Presidency.

While BTD is free to despise whomever he wishes it should be clear by now that 2008 has been turned into a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.

It's the fate of the party, what it will be that has become a central issue.

If the Obama wing prevails, the party could little resemble the party of Roosevelt, Truman and Johnson.  The fate of the nation really hangs in the balance because a Democratic Party stripped of its bread and butter element leaves a large swath of people unrepresented.  Unrepresented in real terms by either party.  The nation may well be left with only a choice (in economic terms) between right and farther right. I suppose it could be called the Mexicanization of US politics.

The Obama Democratic Party as it's taking shape reminds me all too much of the 19th century Whig Party.  The Whigs were arrogant, elitist losers. If the the bread and butter branch is shunned, the Democratic Party could well become a minority party for years to come.

So despise away all you want BTD, some of us are deeply disturbed by what we're seeing.  Disturbed enough to make a heart wrenching decision.

Regular   407.9
Premium   411.9
Supreme   LOL.9

Then...came across a marvelous poem in the May 19 issue by Bob Hicok.  It is called

                  A Primer

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan.  The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergaretn to Mother.  I lived in Michigan
forty-three years.  The state bird
is a chained factory gate.  The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam.  You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat.  I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed.  The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound if we were Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended.  February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us.  "What did we do?"
is the state motto.  There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives.  When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

Obama was supposed to win, but he was too nice.

Clinton and McCain were big meanies who fought dirty.

It will be just another pity party for the losers, omitting every inconvenient fact (like every underhanded attack by the Obama campaign, including accusing Clinton of racism and suggesting that McCain's military service makes him unfit for office, and every time Obama has flip-flopped or fired an adviser, or when Obama can't remember the name of the city he's in, or when he mades sexist remarks, etc.).

Gore lost in 2000.  Only a full statewide recount would have allowed him to win--and he rejected that option, because he wasn't principled enough.  He wanted to cherry pick Dem-heavy counties and only recount those.

Gore didn't want to recount the inconvenient counties or count the military ballots.  Obama doesn't want to count Michigan and Florida (both of which he expected to lose all along anyway).

I think his words were intemperate and counterproductive, especially from one ostensibly promoting unity.

BTD: "Just as I despise those Clinton supporters who say they won't vote for Obama, I equally despise those Obama supporters who would rather destroy the Clintons than win the Presidency."

I am reposting below because I think it tracks the feelings of numerous others. In addition, I think I may have inadvertently posted after the thread closed.  I think the issue needs to air out or it will fester.  If you choose to take out my earlier post, please give me a chance to repost the rest.

Thank you for your consideration.

My post:"to think you have the right to despise me.

I believe you have said you are 45 years old.

I have been a good and faithful Democrat, election after election, for just about as long as you have been on this planet.

The only way I believe I could possibly vote for Obama, as I have said, is if it became crystal clear that McCain would make preemptive war against another nation.

You think this was not an excruciating decision.
The problem for me is that I see this as a moral imperative and no one, including you, has the right to judge me or my reasons for reaching that decision.

Questioning my judgment or moral justification is somewhat akin to saying that the reason I voted for Clinton is because I am a racist.  I will proudly write in Hillary Clinton and vote for every Democrat down ballot, if she should not get the nomination.

I share the support for Big Tent Democrat.

I don't write as emotionally as he does, and I try to avoid words like "despise." This site tries hard to steer clear of insults.

That said, his reference was to a small group on both sides. The complaints about him were unfair.

Big Tent Democrat is a huge part of TalkLeft and his contributions are very much appreciated.

We will both support the eventual Democratic nominee. I am still hoping it will be Hillary, and unless  she withdraws, I will be writing in support of her candidacy.

Commenters who want to vote for someone else are free to express their opinion, so long as they abide by the comment rules of no personal insults or attacks, name-calling or race-baiting. That applies to comments about the candidates as well as BTD, me, TL and other commenters.

It seems to be two sets of people you call cultists. People who go more than one round with you on why they believe Obama is not the inevitable nominee. Or people who tell you that even if he is the eventual nominee they will have nothing to do with supporting this nomination in the fall.

I suspect you mean the latter.

Well, here's the problem with your argument. Cultists adhere to someone or something with blind belief. That's not what occurring here. Instead:

1. We are telling you that the DNC and Obama campaign have gone too far in destroying the underlying Party. (That's something you have warned would occur --- i.e. that we would feel this way.)

2. You throw salt on our wounds by telling us that  Hillary can take a nominal position as VP. But you never explain how or why this would actually change the destructive things occurring within the party (voter disenfranchisement, race baiting, and virulent sexism).

3. You lose your temper and claim that we hate you  and or/are crazy cultists (all of which shuts off discussion).

4. Yes, things sucked over at KOS when you left. You were certainly a better person than him or most of his front pagers. But this Jeralyn's site and only she can toss people off of it. [Yes, I understand that she might just do that after this post.]

5. But just as you cannot shut discussions you don't like having. (Don't elevate banning people with silencing them. That's only a temporary solution unless you OWN the site or wear the judge's robes.)

LET us go then, you and I,   
When the evening is spread out against the sky   
Like a patient etherised upon a table;   
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,   
The muttering retreats           
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels   
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:   
Streets that follow like a tedious argument   
Of insidious intent   
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...           
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"   
Let us go and make our visit.   

In the room the women come and go   
Talking of Michelangelo.......