faboo mama

I didn’t want to write this post. In fact, I’ve been avoiding posting this, but it’s gotten to be too much.

There were a lot of concerns of voter fraud in New Hampshire. After all, all the polls had Obama winning by a 2 digit margin. Lots of people were worried beforehand because New Hampshire uses Diebold voting machines and have not upgraded the security of the machines. Dennis Kucinich immediately requested a recount. Kucinich is one of the few elected officials who actually care about the integrity of our voting system. (I’m not even going to mention the frozen PayPal account/Clinton relation here.) The Clinton supporters are convinced that the Obama campaign made Kucinich ask for the recount. The recount was illuminating:

Several blogs have analyzed the votes by precinct, made available by Black Box Voting, The Boston Globe, the New Hampshire Department of State, and The Politico, and noted that Obama led Clinton in both rural and urban precincts that used hand counting, but Clinton led Obama in precincts that used machine counting. Several news sources, including Citizens for Legitimate Government, The Dallas Morning News, Malta Star, and Slashdot have covered their analyses.

In New Hampshire, The Clinton’s have pushed the lie that Sen. Obama, with his 100% rating from NARAL is anti-choice. In fact, as the Washington Post reports:

Katie Wheeler, a former state senator, said the Clinton campaign had not given her background information about Obama’s record on abortion rights when it asked her to sign the letter calling him weak on the issue, and said that, as a result, she did not understand the context of the votes that the letter was attacking him over.

“It should never have gotten to the point where anyone thought Obama was not pro-choice. I don’t think the Clinton campaign should have done that. It was divisive and unnecessary…I think it was a mistake and I’ve spoken to the national [Clinton campaign] and told them it caused problems in New Hampshire, and am hoping they won’t do it again.”

[snip]

One of the Obama supporters who signed the reconciliation e-mail, Mary Rauh, said she did so because she was very worried that the rift created by the primary could seriously harm abortion rights efforts in the state if it was left unadressed. But she said that she remained aggrieved by the Clinton attack and by the willingness of so many Democratic leaders in the state to go along with it, and worried by reports that similar e-mails attacking Obama on abortion rights have gone out in other states preparing to vote.

This is pretty important, because the Clinton’s are using this same letter in South Carolina right now. More on that later. But this letter caused problems in New Hampshire. One has to wonder if those same people who voted for the Clinton’s on Jan. 8th, would be willing to do it again on Nov. 4th.

Let’s move on to Nevada.

As I mentioned in an early post, I thought that Bill Clinton had lost his mind when he started in with the lie about the Culinary Union Workers being coerced to vote for Obama. You’d think that a former president running for a 3rd term with all those cameras around, someone would have video of it. Someone. Needless to say, the media people dutifully reported the lie, without actually, um verifying it. Maybe they still feel bad over The Clenis escapade and have decided to give Billy a pass on yet another lie.

But the stories coming out of NV on the day of the caucus were worrying. People were blogging that the the Clinton people had taken over registration and leading the caucus. There are way too many reports (yes that’s a link to DK, only because thereisnospoon didn’t put any of this on his own blog–I used this link because one, I know TINS and think he’s pretty trustworthy, and two he had more links in his diary) all of the Clinton people filling out the voter cards before people voted, telling Obama and Edwards supporters they were in the wrong room or location, or counting non-residents in their tallies.

It’s hard to believe. This is just a primary. These are supposed Democrats doing this to other Democrats Those are the same exact tactics used by the Republicans in the last 1000 election cycles. We all know that Rove thinks that Sen. Clinton is a great choice for president, the older Bush is like BFF with Bill Clinton, is there any reason to assume that Rove isn’t working with the Clinton’s on their 3rd term campaign? The Clinton Attacks Obama wiki shows that Rovean tactics are in full effect within the Clinton’s campaign.

See, the Clinton’s spent December and January trying to remind voters that Barack is a black man. They did the racist robo-calls in NV and they’re running them again in South Carolina, right now. Then they got a blogger (her name is Taylor Marsh), who must be cut from the same moth-ridden cloth as Michelle Malkin, to make unvalidated and wild allegations against Obama, actually blaming the Clinton’s racist remarks on Obama himself. Now, Sen. Clinton has spent 2 days now telling us what a great “talented young man” Sen. Obama is. xP

In South Carolina, the Clinton’s are doing the whole “oh, we just may lose again” thing. They’re calling pro-choice voters and spreading the same lies they did in New Hampshire.

******

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South Carolina is upon us. My aunt’s sister says that the Clinton people are saying everything bad about Obama short of he ate a live baby while taking a dump on someone’s grandma (Wait was that R. Kelly. You know to the Clinton’s “they all look alike”.). Bill Clinton is going crazy again, accusing everyone of being Obama plants, from people in audiences* to CNN reporters. And this guy wants a 3rd term? We done already had a crazy president, we want a sane one this time around. Preferably one who hasn’t been president twice already.

But I’m keeping my eye on South Carolina. I’m so used to blogging or sending emails reminding people to be on the lookout for GOP election shenanigans. I never in a million years, thought I’d have to tell people to watch out for the Clinton’s. After all, it seems they inherited Rove’s playbook.

*I wonder if the “young man” was a black and that was why Clinton accused him of being a plant.

This morning, I checked into BooMan Tribune and found a diary by Real History Lisa, that was a bit disturbing:

In a nutshell, Democrats are suing to stop - get this - Democrats, from voting!!

Yes, it really is that crazy.

The Nevada caucus rules have been in place for nearly a year. Several “at large” precincts had been set up in Casinos so workers could easily get to a caucus to vote.

The whole point of this setup was to allow people who otherwise couldn’t participate that day a real option to have their vote counted.

But when Clinton’s camp lost the much coveted union endorsement from the Culinary Worker’s unionto Obama, people with connections to the Clinton campaign filed suit to stop the casino caucuses, which are sure to be filled with Culinary Workers.

Huh? That’s can’t be right. That doesn’t make sense. I believe the numbers are something like 40% of the Culinary Workers Union are Latino. Clinton has been trying to woo the Latino vote. Surely, something like this is being misunderstood or something…Right? So, I do a little googling.

Nutshell: The State party decided to put nine polling places inside casinos on the Strip. This will allow voters who have to work on Saturday to vote at their workplace. This was decided last May. Two days after Sen. Obama got the CWUs endorsement, a suit was filed by the teacher’s union. The teacher’s union whose leadership are Clinton supporters. They decided that allowing polling places inside casinos disenfranchises janitors who open schools on Saturdays.

Yeah, I’m scratching my head too. From the Las Vegas Sun:

The complaint, with the state teachers union and some party activists as plaintiffs, came as Obama accepted the endorsement of the Culinary Union. The timing seemed designed to cloud the good buzz from his campaign, which could only help Sen. Hillary Clinton’s efforts in the state.

The lawsuit claims that those voting in at-large precincts being held on the Strip would have too much weight compared with those voting at their polling places, violating the equal protection law of the U.S. Constitution. It also claims the at-large precincts violate state statute in the way they were drawn.

State Democratic Party officials disputed the lawsuit’s contentions.

“This has been a fully transparent process,” party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer said. “These rules have been approved by the Democratic National Committee and the campaigns have been fully informed throughout this process, which started in May.”

I’m assuming that these people were completely behind Kucinich’s suit to be allowed to participate in the recent debates hosted by NBC.

Bill Clinton is rambling on about votes in the casinos counting 5 times more than other votes:

The plaintiffs argue that the sites allocate a disproportionately high number of delegates to one group of voters. More than 700 out of roughly 10,000 delegates to Nevada’s presidential nominating convention could be selected at the casino caucuses.

Workers at most casinos on the Strip are organized by the powerful Culinary Workers Union, which has endorsed Senator Clinton’s rival for the nomination, Senator Obama of Illinois.

And Bill Clinton said:

“Do you really believe that all the Democrats understood that they had agreed to give everybody who voted in a casino a vote worth five times as much as people who voted in their own precinct? Did you know that?” Mr. Clinton said in a testy exchange with a television reporter, Mark Matthews of KGO. “What happened is nobody understood what had happened. … Now, everybody’s saying, ‘Oh they don’t want us to vote.’ What they really tried to do was to set up a deal where their votes counted five times, maybe even more.”

I don’t know Bill…your explanations of late have sucked and this one sucks even more. How is that no one recognized this until after the Culinary Workers Union gives an endorsement?

From The Nation, we get a dose of reality:

Rob Richie, Executive Director of FairVote, agreed that the timing and impact of the lawsuit are problematic. He told me, “The time to discuss the fairness of caucus sites is long past – you simply don’t want to reduce the number of places to vote or do a last-minute change if you want people to participate. Caucus turnout already promises to be distressingly low for representative outcomes.”

and…

D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of Culinary Local 226, also felt that the Democratic Party should speak out strongly to defend the caucus sites. As he said to the New York Times, “I never thought we’d have people in the Democratic Party try to disenfranchise women, people of color and large numbers of working people in this state. I am sure every single elected official in Nevada will renounce it, and so will the Clinton campaign.”

But no such luck.

Asked about the lawsuit on Meet The Press Clinton said, “The courts and the state party will have to work it out.”

You’ll be sure to note that as much as the Clinton campaign tries to distance itself from this lawsuit, Bill Clinton’s words pretty much match the language of the lawsuit. Word for word. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has an article which gives a bit more detail:

[NSEA President Lynn]Warne said she didn’t even know about the at-large caucus sites until last week. But new court filings submitted Wednesday by attorneys for the Democratic Party of Nevada allege that other plaintiffs in the lawsuit not only knew about the at-large sites, but supported them.

In an affidavit, Travis Brock, executive director of the Nevada State Democratic Party, said minutes of a March 31, 2007 meeting of the State Central Committee show that plaintiffs John Birkland, Vicky Birkland, John Cahill and Dwayne Chesnut voted in favor of the draft delegate selection rules.

In the comment sections of most of the above sites, people are pointing out that the same plaintiffs approved the caucus rules as late as 11/3/2007.

And the NSEAs stance that this whole thing disenfranchises their janitors also doesn’t carry weight, as the caucus rules state that a person can participate in a caucus as long as they’ll be 18 by Nov. 4, 2008:

Who Can Participate?

All participants must be Democrats registered to vote in the precinct. A list of registered Democrats will be available at the caucuses. If you are not on the list and are not registered to vote, you will be able to register as a Democrat at the caucus.

• Seventeen-year-olds, who will be 18 by the general election on November 4, 2008, will be allowed to fully participate. They will be required to fill out a voter registration card and register as a Democrat if they have not done so already.

• Participants may register to vote at the caucus. Republicans, nonpartisans and others can change registration to become a Democrat that day.

To make matters a little more clear, this is a caucus, not a primary. For Clinton and the lawsuit to claim, “one man, one vote” is to muddy the waters of what a caucus is. From the Nevada State Democratic Party’s website:

Caucus systems are not set up to be a one person one vote system. Rather, they are designed to allocate delegates to only those candidates with a threshold of support that is based on the number of people participating in a caucus. Meeting the minimum level of support is called “viability” and whether or not a candidate has enough support determines whether they meet the “threshold” to continue.

That means that the janitors the NSEA is oh-so-worried about can actually attend the caucus at the school if they’re already registered Democrats or would like to register as a Democrat for the day. In other words, they don’t have a basis for their suit and the NSEA is proving themselves to be WATB.

UPDATE: A judge has dismissed the lawsuit. From AP:

LAS VEGAS - Democrats with ties to Hillary Rodham Clinton failed in court Thursday to prevent casino workers from caucusing at special precincts in Nevada.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan was presumed to be a boost for Clinton rival Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday because he has been endorsed by the union representing many of the shift workers who will be able to use the precincts on the Las Vegas strip.

“State Democrats have a First Amendment right to association, to assemble and to set their own rules,” Mahan said.

[snip]

He said it is “up to the national party and the state party to promulgate these rules and enforce them.”

The Democratic National Committee ratified the state party’s rules in August

So there you have it. I’m sure there’ll be an appeal.

Well, no need to worry about the coded racist signals, the Clinton campaign has been sending. According to susanhu (a Clinton supporter), who posted this diary at MyDD, assures everyone that…it’s actually Obama’s fault. Actually, I think it’s important for the title to be posted as it should give you a clue as to how these so-called liberals think:

Yep, that’s what the bit…she wrote.

Let’s move on to the gossipy, shrill and breathless intro:

Obama’s campaign is orchestrating the trumped-up racism brouhaha (see the Obama campaign memo that Taylor Marsh acquired).

Obama wants to guilt-trip every black voter into voting for him. He needs black voters in South Carolina, a state he desperately needs to win to stay viable after his New Hampshire loss. (Pundits say if Obama loses South Carolina, he’s finished. So far, he’s behind Clinton in the polls.) That’s what is behind Michael Eric Dyson flapping his gums on every talk show and that Obama campaign memo that gives Obama-ites talking points to promote this fabricated issue.

Yep, this would be the same MyDD where the front page post Obama’s Dog Whistle Politics was found. susanhu, posted this screed also on No Quarter, the blog of former CIA analyst, Clinton supporter and robust Obama-basher, Larry Johnson.

That’s what is behind Michael Eric Dyson flapping his gums…

Nah, let’s save susanhu’s unveiled racism for another day.

Did you click the link for the memo? It takes you to Taylor Marsh’s website. Now, I’m sorry, but all my years in the blogosphere has given me an even bigger dose of skepticism than I already had. The “memo” Marsh posts is allegedly from the Obama campaign’s secretary. There’s no proof there, except her name is at the bottom. But even if the memo is from the press secretary so the fuck what? What do they have? A memo to the press pointing out Clinton’s racist remarks.

AND?

It’s a fucking campaign. Campaigns highlight the words of their opponents. Or is Obama not allowed to do that because he’s black?

It’s funny to me the same people who wanted DINO Jim Webb in the Senate, who were pulling out hair and wetting their fucking pants because of George Allen’s macaca moment are now completely accepting of racism. Allen’s explanation for using that term had less holes than Marsh’s and susanhu’s post combined.

But you know what? When you scroll down to comments both at Marsh’s site and at MyDD, you can actually hear the sigh of relief from The White People.

Oh and those of us who have witnessed the racism from the Clinton camp? According to susanhu, who knows black people, she gives us bullshit lines and some of them fully wrapped in racism:

(For a while, it seemed that Obama would avoid Al Sharpton-esque B.S., but the New Hampshire results shook him badly. His deflation was written all over his face and in his body language. It’s a sad mark of decline to see such a smart, highly educated man resort to such tactics. Further, it harms the fight against real racism.)

See, in the white, liberal blogosphere, real racism, is when Republicans do it. Other than that, those people hide behind their so-called “progressiveness”, rampant ignorance, and almost contagious stupidity of, “Whaaa? I had no idea that calling you ‘nigger’ would offend you.”

Now, I read the beginning of it, thinking, “Well, I lost the bet.” See, me and some other bloggers had a bet that a diary like this would be posted some time this weekend. It was obvious that the Clinton campaign was going to do it soon if you checked the comment sections of news and media sites. And throughout the blogosphere, you read the same thing from Clinton supporters. Yes, we knew that the Clinton campaign would dispatch a few people to write something to make all the words coming from the Clinton campaign look like it’s Obama’s fault. So it’s even more hysterical when susanhu writes an incredibly factless and racist intro to her diary, then all of a sudden gives us this quotes and facts. The same quotes and facts that have been floated throughout the comment sections and blogs. LOL…I can so totally work in the Clinton campaign now.

Taylor Marsh writes one of the most delusional lines I’ve ever read:

Using the race card against Hillary Clinton is laughable.

If Clinton’s campaign uses racist code words and gets called on it, that’s “using the race card”? How? Or is it laughable because there are some white people out there who actually think that Clintons “helped black people” despite the fact that that isn’t true? Or maybe because she’s a white Democrat and as some white Democrats like to lie to themselves, “they don’t have a racist bone in their bodies”?

But you know what, none of that matters. The liberal blogosphere is absolutely relieved to see that it is Obama’s fault.

Everyone who’s pointed out these dog whistles of the Clinton campaign are imagining things. And, susanhu also says that everyone who’s noticed the dog whistles are just Obama surrogates. Apparently in susanhu’s world, black people can’t think for themselves, and so we’re actually being directed by the Obama campaign. And if anyone knows black people, it’s susanhu, Clinton surrogate.

I think it’s safe to say that I’ll not be voting for Clinton at all. If she gets the nomination, I’ll just leave that bubble unfilled when it comes time to vote. The racist stuff coming out of her campaign is just too much and I’m not going to put up with it.

In the words of that Clinton adviser: “If you have a social need, you’re with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you’re young and you have no social needs, then he’s cool.” (The Guardian)

Yep.

What that translates to is:

Obama supporters are rich, white kids. Everyone else will vote for Mama Clinton because only she knows what’s best for you.

That’s what it says. Naturally, places like Wonkette make light of this comment. As an aside, one of the best comments there is from The Happy Hookah:

That was fucked up. Even Michelle Obama just went from Jackie O to Jackie Oh-No-They-Di-int.

Yep.

But white bloggers are probably going to discount this, like they have so many of the other examples. Over at Politico, Ben Smith gives us an article about the “racial tensions” in this campaign.

“A cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements,” said Obama spokeswoman Candice Tolliver, who said that Clinton would have to decide whether she owed anyone an apology.

“There’s a groundswell of reaction to these comments — and not just these latest comments but really a pattern, or a series of comments that we’ve heard for several months,” she said. “Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this really an isolated situation or is there something bigger behind all of this?”

Greg Sargent in his post at TPM (a decidely pro-Clinton blog now), quoting the same part, acts the innocent:

What is this “pattern,” this “something bigger,” that the Obama spokesperson is suggesting might be lurking behind the Clinton comments? Anyone know what this is a reference to?

Because you know, it’s all in our heads. What snark did Wonkette say? Oh yeah…

RACIST RACIST CALL THE RACIST POLICE, CLINTON EATS BLACK SKULLS.

I’ve gotten a buttload of emails on stuff happening at DailyKos. I actually clicked on a few links and saw that the same people denying that HarveyMilk’s diary was racist are denying that any of these Clinton “gaffes” are racists too. Naturally, to most of the people at DailyKos who supported HarveyMilk’s racist diary, black people are just being too sensitive. Let me tell ya, if I didn’t leave back in October, I sure as shit would be packing my bags right now.

Like I said over at Jack and Jill Politics in response to Sen. Clinton’s lie that Sen. Obama was a part time Senator in IL:

Clinton is out-Rove-ing Rove. That’s gotta say something.

In a different post, I mentioned that the only thing left for these people is to bring out the old “He’s a credit to his race”. I gave it until next week, but the way these things keep rolling out of the Clinton campaign, I wouldn’t be surprise to see it by the time I go to bed tonight.

UPDATE: Please consider reading this excellent piece: Dear Gloria Steinem: Ain’t I a woman, too? from blogger whattamisaid.

*****

Indulge me a bit in posting on “old news”, but there’s a discusion going on in the blogosphere about the Senator, with the basis in feminism. On BooMan Tribune, Arthur Gilroy has decided that women, particularly left-leaning, blogging women, hate Clinton because:

They resented her success. They resented the template ITSELF. To some degree, the fact that this woman had become a truly DOMINANT woman…not just independent,. but dominant over the lives of many, many men as well as children and women pressed buttons in both of their heads that had been implanted in their early “I ENJOY being a girl!!!”, “Play with those damned dolls or ELSE” youth.

You have to read the entire post to fully appreciate that women, according to Gilroy, can not make a decision regarding Clinton because we’re preconditioned.

Hijole!

Over at BlogHer, there’s been a very robust discussion on the Senator. Morra Aarons submitted the entry Why Thirtysomething Women need Hillary Clinton, and Why She Needs Us. She exhorts us to vote for Clinton for president, because “it’s time”. Ironically, the same arguement Gilroy used for why lefty, blogging females hate Clinton, Aarons uses as to why women should vote for Clinton:

I think many young women are coming around to Hillary because despite our hesitancy to re-join the Feminist Majority, we know it’s time. Oddly enough, I think it took a reminder from the godmother of feminism, Gloria Steinem, to wake us up. As (male) uber-blogger Markos put it: “You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable?”

It’s time. Older women have understood that and overwhelmingly support Clinton, but younger women have been slower to support Hillary. I think, though, we are realizing that perhaps having a woman in the White House will let us breathe a little easier at work.

These posts, in and of themeselves would be interesting enough if I was white. But I’m not. I’m black and there is a high level of disinterest of how racism AND sexism can effect a woman’s outlook among white females. Especially of white females of certain economic classes and educational levels.

Gloria Steinem, the so-called Godmother of Feminism, wrote a piece for the NYT titled, Women are Never Frontrunners. Somehow, this title was chosen, despite the fact that Sen. Clinton has been the frontrunner since she announced her campaign. Indeed, the media declared her the frontrunner before she announced her campaign. Steinem’s article does what most white feminist do, dismiss race. After all, black men were given the right to vote before women were. She neglects the Jim Crow south. She doesn’t mention the inherent privilege that Hillary Rodham Clinton grew up with.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

Yes, we should remember that, but Steinem spends the rest of the article, carefully not remembering that. At Jack and Jill Politics, dnA gives us a post titled Access to Power with the conclusion:

Women like Steinem are quick to invoke “the sisterhood” as a reason to vote for Hillary Clinton, but black women see few of the same benefits that white women do; yet they’re still expected to feel (and act on) gender solidarity with people who essentially ignore the issues facing them. Unless it involves some high profile figure like Imus.

Indeed, that is exactly what Aarons did in her BlogHer post. I responded to the BlogHer post (my post is most definitely longer):

Gloria Steinem’s NYT article was clearly directed to young, white females. Of privilege. She lives in a headspace that I could never occupy, would never want to occupy. Her arguments were specious at best and all I took away from the article was that her oppression was greater than my oppression. (I’m sorry…I should stop here and mention that I read the article yesterday and got pissed. As the day wore on, I was downright livid at Steinem’s presumptions, assumptions and petty pitifulness.)

Over at TalkLeft there was a post Steinem’s article. One person noted that Steinem seem to declare that racism is dead. I posted:

But Steinem is so incredibly wrong on this front. White women are more often “given” much more leeway, advantages and opportunities than any minority regardless of gender and if anyone should know that she should. For someone like Steinem to actually say that is laughable and insulting. Look at feminism, as a movement. Did Steinem ever have to face police dogs, fire hoses and be scared of lynching to get equal rights for women?

Didn’t think so.

Other than that, the subject wasn’t broached, yet ageism became the focus. On liberal blogs, in general, the subject is very rarely touched. And pointed comments like mine are usually ignored.

rikyrah’s response at BlogHer gives you a little political perspective on how white women have more access than blacks in general.

There are, what, 9 White Female Governors?

1 Black male Governor.

NEVER a Black Female Governor.

There are what, 15 White Female Senators.

1 Black Male Senator.

Only 1 Black Female Senator.

Who are the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action?

Sure in hell isn’t Black folk..

Oh yeah, WHITE WOMEN.

Black women are only ‘Sisters’ when it’s convenient. If not, our concerns are not addressed, like in that Steinem piece. Black women were INVISIBLE in that piece. She completely and deliberately ignores White Privilege - how convenient for her.

I usually like to keep my isms separated as, the liberal blogosphere has a horrible habit of ignoring one argument to bring up another to make a point. In this case, it’s a little difficult, as the Clinton campaign has been quite active in the racism front. Does she get a pass on this because she’s a woman? Because she’s white. Judging from the media coverage and unreaction in the liberal blogosphere, it seems the answer is ‘yes’ to both. Female bloggers who are dismissing the sexism regarding Clinton’s choking up moment, are extremely quiet on the campaign’s race-baiting statements.

That’s not to say that I would expect them to speak up. After all, someone like Jane Hamsher, who would be a Clinton contemporary, now has a very strong reputation as a racist in the black and Latino blogosphere. Her site seems to largely condone racism and since I’ve been oh-so-lucky as to meet some of the guest bloggers there, I’m going to say that this is something that is entrenched. I’m certainly not going to disabuse anyone of the notion that FDL is a blog with racist bloggers, when my experiences with face to face meetings reaffirms that.

While female bloggers recently gave us entries on Feminism, all of them took Steinem’s lead with dismissing or ignoring racism. We’ve gotten rallying cries, as women, to back up Clinton, because she is female. These are the same women who tell me that black people who vote for Obama because he’s black are short-sighted. I fail to see why that’s not quite a double-standard. However in the comment sections of media sites, to blogs, to random discussions, these double-standards are enforced to the point of becoming conventional wisdom.

I think it’s important for people to understand that many black people don’t put the Clinton’s a pedestal as the media and the Clinton’s will have you believe. As I wrote on BlohHer:

But let’s take that experience at face value and ignore the fact that she’s basically asking us to elect her to a 3rd term…When someone like Clinton wants something from me, my first (selfish) question is, “What have you done for me lately?” With Clinton (Bill or Hillary), it’s “What have you done for me period?” Because every core supporter they could have had (Blacks and Gays specifically), they threw under the bus long ago to strengthen their insider ties. At least Bill could make you feel good while he screwed you over. His mantra was always, “Later…your time will come later.” Well, it’s “later” and Sen. Clinton has most certainly picked up that refrain. What exactly are we waiting for? More backroom deals? More compromises that still leave many Americans with unequal rights?

With the race-baiting tactics from her campaign this past month, are black women supposed to ignore that and history and still back Clinton because she’s a woman?

Let’s keep in mind that Clinton is not the first woman to run for president and that Obama is not the first black person to run president. Indeed, in 1972 Shirley Chisolm was the first black woman from a major party to ran for president. In 2004, Carol Moseley Braun another black woman ran for president.

Would Steinem still back Clinton if Clinton was a black woman? Did Steinem back Moseley Braun’s candidacy for president as she did her run for Senate?

Would the white women of New Hampshire have rallied behind Clinton if she was black?

Would female bloggers even be discussing Feminism if Clinton wasn’t white?

For my part, just poking around these internets, I’m going to say the answers to all of my questions is ‘no’.

Now the White People know!

HAHAHAHAHA

I was just over at MyDD and there’s a post there called Obama’s Dog Whistle Politics. The main point of the post is that Jesse Jackson Jr. said this:

(transcript from TPM)
We saw something very clever in the last week of this campaign coming out of Iowa, going into New Hampshire, we saw a sensitivity factor. Something that Mrs. Clinton has not been able to do with voters that she tried in New Hampshire.

Not in response to voters — not in response to Katrina, not in response to other issues that have devastated the American people, the war in Iraq, we saw tears in response to her appearance. So her appearance brought her to tears, but not hurricane Katrina.

Yeah. He said it.

And if you are a Black person in this country hooked on politics and know other black people hooked on politics, the same thing was said days ago. IOW, Jackson didn’t say anything new, he just said it to White People.

Dammit. ;P

This started as a post on MyDD, but I said screw it…I’ll put it on my own blog:

Moments after the media plastered her choking up on TV, I heard it from my aunt who used the same exact line, except there were more curse words and The Clenis involved. I was on the phone with family and friends for about an hour after the story posted talking about this. All these people pissed at Clinton for choking up about her fucking hair, when there are loads of other things to get worked up over.

No, it wasn’t lost on anyone and Jackson Jr. just said what people have been saying for the past few days. I got emails asking if I was going to broach the subject on my (largely unread) blog. I said that I wasn’t even going to touch it and those other bloggers didn’t either. Let people figure it out for themselves. After all, if I can get 7 phone calls and 12 IMs moments after the story broke, all saying the same thing, the clearly broader America could get it on their own. If they cared to think for themselves, that is.

On a much broader issue, there is a race dynamic in this campaign that The White People have really had to deal with before. So, this 2nd guessing on blogs and in the media is really amusing to me. I love the verbal contortions and “accidental” slips of the tongue of entrenched racism. Not necessarily talking about any one here (MyDD that is), but to see white bloggers in the liberal blogosphere pretend to worry about race all of a sudden, when they’ve either accepted racism from fellow posters or posted something racist themselves is somewhat amusing to me.

IMO, no matter what Jackson Jr. said, it would be called a “dog whistle” by someone in the blogosphere simply because he is a Black man defending another a Black man. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see people (especially in the liberal blogosphere) hollering for Obama to distance himself from the remarks for various reasons I’m going to be too nice to mention.

So everyone have a field day with Jackson remarks. The Clinton campaign will call foul. Stupid and pointless drama will unfold in the liberal blogosphere (as usual) and the not-so-closeted racists will come out and say things that will be defended (as usual).

Meanwhile, us black folk can keep on keepin’ on and move on to other things. Like the stuff that matters.

Like Sha Na Na.

Whatever happened to the 90s throwbacks? Remember Iowa, where Villiaraigosa, Clark and Albright were upon stage with her? Last night they packed everyone who looked younger than the Senator’s daughter right behind her and up front. The crowd shots looked a big weird with just old people, but whatever…for the tight shots, they got what they needed; rows of young, white faces waving American flags.

******

I take exception of the media narrative that Clinton’s campaign handlers have let her go “off-script”. From the last week in Iowa, to voting yesterday, that had been the plan. The media told us the plan. The campaign told us the plan. They told us that you’ll see a softer Clinton, a more accessible Clinton. It was true. They changed her clothes, and let her talk to the media. But don’t insult me and tell me all of this is off-script. Please note, that Clinton read–practically line for line–every word of that (dull) speech. Or I could have a different meaning of “off-script”. Let’s put it this way…just pulling from my 20 years of political junkiehood, I could have given that speech in my sleep. That means there is no doubt that Clinton could have pulled it off. She can be personable and engaging and that is speech she should have given last night.

******

Please, please, please keep Bill away from the campaign. It seems when he goes out by himself, he can talk about Sen. Clinton pretty well. When she’s around, he seems to get mad she’s getting the attention. I’m also really sick of the constant lies he keeps telling. He’s making himself, as a former president, look really stupid.

Besides, most people don’t think of this campaign as Sen. Clinton’s campaign. They see it as The Clinton’s campaign. That’s not good…I sometimes find myself typing “The Clinton’s” instead of “Sen. Clinton” and realized it was the campaign’s fault for compromising itself with forcing Bill on us.

******

Most importantly. For my sanity and peace of mind, as I’ve said before, I really hope this New Hampshire win means the Clinton’s will stop with the negative campaigning. I think that if they had been doing this all along that it would be one thing, but all that negativity in 5 days…with most of it being complete lies or old news…it was embarrassing.

Here is Sen. Clinton’s victory speech in New Hampshire.

Here is Sen. McCain’s victory speech in New Hampshire.

I don’t have a synopsis of either speech as they were both very, very dull speeches. I went to go smoke during McCain’s speech and I killed ants during Clinton’s speech.

******

I will have to say the media narratives on both wins are quite dishonest. Going into New Hampshire, both Senators were expected to win the state. That’s what the media was telling us on Friday.

AP is calling it for her, just like I did almost 2 hours ago.

Welcome aboard boys!
From the Concord Monitor:

	Clinton , Hillary	Dem	72,227	39%
	Obama , Barack	Dem	66,010	36%

I’m watching the returns and am happy that Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews have managed not to make their trademarked stupid comments regarding Clinton.

I am not happy that Chris Matthews seems to be acting like that guy at the party who’s had a bit too much to drink and decides to barge into everyone’s conversations with a story with no point.

******

Still pretty bummed at the votes for Edwards. I know way too many people who live in New Hampshire who are Edwards supporters and to hear them talk, voting for Edwards was a no-brainer among their contacts. Come to think of it, everyone I know in New Hampshire save two people are Edward supporters, so this is kind of strange.

******

You know, I went to both YearlyKos conventions and Markos spoke at both of them. While the speeches were okay, it was his speaking style that put me off. It’s so vastly different from his conversation style that it was hard to reconcile the two. Still, this past August, I kept thinking, “Gosh, he when he gives speeches, it reminds me of someone and not someone I like.” I actually left the room during his speech because the delivery was bugging me. I asked around and some people agreed that he sounded like someone and couldn’t put their finger on it. But tonight, I realized who it was. Senator John McCain. During his concession speech, I got on IM with 7 people who I had asked and told them to listen to McCain give his victory speech. They completely agreed with me.

I told my husband all of this…he thinks I should drop politics as a hobby for awhile.

******

Mike Huckabee and McCain both gave pretty good speeches. Mitt Romney’s speech was atrociously insulting. I couldn’t get over the fact that really, really looked like ’70s era sportscaster with that mic in his hand and my husband kept groaning, “Is this assclown for real? This speech is so cheesy!” I’d have to agree…I told him that I’m sure that if we looked at the speech, each line was lifted from some movie like Fame or Rudy or Babe. It was that bad.

******

The Clinton vs. Obama saga continues…it was Clinton up by 3% then down to 2% and right up to 3%. It’s a nailbiter, though I’m sticking with my call for a Clinton win, if anything just to say I scooped CNN. LOL!

All the media outlets are saying the race is too close to call.

I’m calling it for Clinton. She won New Hampshire!

Come on…even though the numbers are nowhere close to what exit data says they should be (Obama 39%, Clinton 30%), she’s up by 6 pts. Come on!

Clinton has won New Hampshire!

Go on a media blackout…At least until returns start coming in. I’m hopping around the intertubes and all I see is drama. Clinton going nuts here, another Clinton babbling mindlessly there. Speculation about if the Clinton campaign is going to start an anti-Obama 527 group. Speculation if old friends will join the campaign. Speculation of if Sen. Clinton is going to avoid NV.

Just stop it. We know there’s infighting within the campaign and there’s no doubt that factions are leaking stuff probably to harm a different faction. Still, it’s wearing me out and there are still more states that Clinton can probably win.

I don’t know how you give a speech that’s supposed to promote a candidate, but turn it into a diatribe about media coverage and your campaign manager, but Bill Clinton allegedly did it. Naturally, I don’t know the context, as CNN managed not to talk about who he was addressing or where he was. But Clinton touched on media unfairness (towards him), Mark Penn’s hurt feelings and dirty campaign tricks from the Obama camp (mostly again about Bill Clinton). I’m sure there was other stuff said that CNN left out. After all, no matter how long Bill Clinton speaks, I’m positive it wasn’t all about him.

He did make one clear point, that everyone should be aware of:

“And you took that speech you’re now running on off your Web site in 2004. And there’s no difference in your voting record and Hillary’s ever since.”

What everyone Obama supporters who slam Clinton and Clinton supporters who slam Obama, needs to know is that their votes in the Senate are the same. Neither of them have taken strong leadership roles in the Senate (they’re both junior Senators) and they vote the same way even abstaining from the same votes. On paper, they’re practically the same, except for Sen. Obama does in fact seem to have more experience.

And if I hear one more Hillary supporter pointing to the fact that Michelle Obama sat on the board of a Wal-Mart supplier, I’m going to scream. Sen. Clinton herself sat on the board of Wal-Mart and they manage to overlook that fact.

Political Radar (an ABC News blog) is reporting that old Democrat throwback, James Carville, is not joining the Clinton campaign.

There was talk today that perhaps the Clintons would turn to old friends like James Carville and Paul Begala for help.

However Carville told ABC News from Houston by telephone that he hasn’t been tapped.

“I am not joining the campaign,” Carville said, “I have had no discussions with them about that.”

What we’re not told is that even while Carville is on-air, supposedly as an objective pundit, he has written letters of support for Clinton, donated money to her campaign and is already an advisor to the campaign.

I visited Jack and Jill Politics where I found a post titled, Hillary: You Negroes Better Thank The White Man For Your Rights. It links to a post at Politico where we find this quote:

Hillary was asked about Obama’s rejoinder that there’s something vaguely un-American about dismissing hopes as false, and that it doesn’t jibe with the careers of figures like like John F. Kennedy and King.

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done.”

(video is here and the question starts around 4:10)

/:-|

I thought the quote was way over the top so I had to watch the video and it’s there. In all it’s shame and glory, it’s there. At Jack and Jill Politics, dnA writes:

Johnson didn’t change America. Johnson reacted to the changes in America. For that he deserves some credit, but never mistake the man in the suit for the soldiers on the street. The difference is obvious: Johnson isn’t the one whose life was ended by a sniper’s bullet.

This is the kind of revisionist history I expect from the most extreme white supremacist kooks.

I’m inclined to agree. I don’t know exactly what Clinton’s purpose was for such a statement, but the only way to look at it is that she’s framing herself as Johnson. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but at the expense of Dr. King? A couple of weeks before Martin Luther King Day? Sen. Clinton just told us that, “Hey, it’s great that Dr. King ‘Had a Dream’, but Johnson enacted the legislation.” Which is true, because last I checked Dr. King wasn’t an elected official. Still, it’s not like Johnson was working in a vacuum either.

The commenters at Politico are stunned, to put it mildly:

Clinton downplaying King ought to go over well. Who is running that campaign?

Posted By: Dead Horse | January 07, 2008 at 03:54 PM

Well, this one will backfire. In other words, black folks sure can talk nice and pretty about the future, but it’s us white folks, the grown up realists, who need to be in the halls of government to bring those “dreams” to fruition. Witch.

Posted By: Kelley | January 07, 2008 at 03:56 PM

When she started on the talk vs. action theme at the debate, I thought it was a loser. At this point, there is an odor of desperation about her and Bill. But dissing MLK two weeks before MLK day and right before the South Carolina primary seems almost suicidal.

Posted By: former Clinton supporter | January 07, 2008 at 04:06 PM

Is she running for the DEMOCRATIC nomination for president, or the 13th congressional district of Texas? This is mind-boggling. At what point do we simply start feeling sorry for Hillary. I saw it written somewhere on this site earlier that this has become almost a Shakespearean tragedy. I’ve never been a hillary fan, but i thought she was alright and would have probably supported her nomination. But now I’m almost feeling pity for her. Until recently, I wanted her candidacy to be over for ME, but now it’s as if I want it to be over for HER.

Posted By: NYC4Obama | January 07, 2008 at 04:17 PM

I don’t have a damn thing to add, but I’m not in complete agreement with the last line of NYC4Obama’s post:

Until recently, I wanted her candidacy to be over for ME, but now it’s as if I want it to be over for HER.

UPDATE: Since no one is really going to watch the video, I decided to transcribe her entire quote, because what Politico gives us is only part of it. I got halfway done before I learned that Josh Marshall at TPM did it for me:

“I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.”

Doesn’t really change much, but there are several commenters on forums, blogs and message boards who are using the lack of a full quote as an excuse to not address was she said. I’ve watched that entire interview 3 times now. The more and more I look at it, rewinding bits here and there, the more I think this comment was meant exactly as she said it. I can excuse it by saying that she’s tired or that she was reaching into her bag of Political Buzzwords and made a mistake.

I find the people who say it’s unclear that she’s referring to Obama a bit disingenious. After all, the reporter just quoted her some of Obama’s speech and asked if she’d like to respond. There’s no coyness here. She knew exactly what and who she was referring to.

The past few days, Sen. Clinton’s attacks against Sen. Obama and Sen. Edwards have left me a bit unsettled and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. This morning, I woke up realizing that the problem is that she’s now running against Gov. Clinton.

When Bill Clinton threw his hat into the ring, he had a strong message of hope and change in Washington. While his record in Arkansas didn’t quite show he had it in him, he held fast. He was a great orator and made people feel the warm fuzzies inside. His campaign was mocked in the media and by Republicans for it’s message of hope. The immediate and ongoing attacks from the GOP side have proven that Clinton in ‘92 was a threat to the status quo.

And now, 15 years later, we’re being told by a different Clinton that a message of hope and change is mere “prose”, that now records are important. She gives her marriage to the President as an example of her experience in government. And to make it even more surreal, that same Bill Clinton is using the same lines. It’s almost as if he’s forgotten his own campaign speeches running up to the ‘92 election.

I don’t think that people are willing to believe that after 15 years in Washington, Sen. Clinton can be an agent for change. Last year, Rupert Murdoch hosted a fundraiser for Clinton’s campaign. Get that? The man who owns a media corporation that has spent the last 15 years running down the Clinton’s hosted a fundraiser for her. Yet, one of her talking points in her campaign speeches is that only she “can handle the Republicans”. Well, the way you handle your friends is vastly different than how you handle your enemies. It’s just unclear under what category the Republicans now fall.

UPDATE: Seeing as how I knew I couldn’t be the only one to have this thought, I did a little Googling. This is what I found:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Bill Clinton says Sen. Barack Obama is a highly ambitious, political prodigy who is asking voters to “roll the dice” and elect him president.

He should know — that’s a fair description of Clinton when he sought the presidency in 1992.

The fact that the former president is stealing a page from the same Republican playbook used against him 15 years ago underscores the threat Obama poses to the candidacy of Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

It also illustrates Clinton’s penchant for rewriting history.

For the past year, I’ve noticed that the media and the political class have been a little frightened of this election. It started last year with the complete shunning of Edwards and his message of populism. The media has continued to shun Edwards. Note, that he came in second in Iowa. Instead of more media interest in him, we were treated to loads of articles about the 3rd place winner.

Now, if you read my blog you’ll notice that I do the same. For me, it’s because I’m disgusted with the Clinton campaign and I don’t necessarily trust Edwards. Yet, I have not given money to any campaign, nor do I have friends deep insides these campaigns. Okay, that’s not necessarily true, but my friends are not influencing me as we don’t ever talk about their campaigns and they never blog or email on politics while working campaigns.

With the Beltway circuit things are a little different. Listen to the TV hosts on these shows. They’re not journalist by any stretch of the imagination, they’re opinionmakers. They let slip that they hang out socially with the people they pretend to cover. When a Senator goes on a show and casually mentions a party both attended hosted by another media outlet, you can see how things can devolve into the circle jerk realm.

While they spent most of last year telling us that Clinton was inevitable, they were also the first in line to chew on the carcass of her 3rd place finish. In one state. Instead of spending most of last year focusing on if Sen. Obama is “black enough” or if “America is ready for a Black president”, they could have been telling us more about Edwards, Dodd, Biden or Kucinich. While Mike Huckabee was trying to run a campaign, these people shunned him to focus on the larger (to them) question of “will Fred Thompson run?”. Get that? Over the summer of 2007, there was more press on a person not running for president than there was on 5 of his fellow Republicans.

In any election cycle, before any votes are cast, these opinionmakers could just say any old thing on any show and they were confident that the sheeple, the American public was eating it up and digesting it. They are clearly stuck in an old model of doing business, of handling business. 10 years ago, this could have worked. For the most part, we did not have access to what was really happening on the other side of the country. We had to settle for what they wanted us to see on TV. We saw the impact of technology on the 2006 mid-term elections. With a cellphone that has a camera and internet access anyone can scoop any media outlet. You get information unfiltered. Photos get posted that aren’t approved by a campaign. The photos are also posted usually with the proper context, something our newsotainment shows rarely do. A pundit that will use a candidates words out of context to fit their predetermined frame, can be called on it moments after the sentence is uttered.

To a certain extent, these newsotainment outlets sort of get that the times have changed. They all have blogs where comments are heavily moderated. A disjointed, racist comment with poor grammar or spelling and no truths will be posted immediately, while (from my experience these last few years) posts that simply call the poster out on his or her sloppy reporting are delayed or never posted. But they very rarely engage their readers. Their service to us is to post something that may or may not be completely true with whatever bias of the day is and let the readers hash it out. They don’t seem to be ready for readers that are informed. Readers that are informed beyond what that specific media outlet has told us what they wanted us to know. Note the drama surrounding Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell. First she got embroiled in the Woodward/Plame fiasco, then she went on to repeat the lie that Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats (this led to WaPoOnline shutting down its blog) and because of informed readers calling her on both situations, she decided that despite being an ombudsman, that she was just not going to reply to “critics” any more. All of this is interesting because after the Woodward mess, Howell said:

“I am getting a lot of reaction and, from readers, it is all bad,” Howell told E&P today, referring to the fallout from Woodward’s disclosure that he spoke to a confidential White House source about Plame in 2003. “We are being barraged with calls. They think it was wrong for him not to tell his editors and wrong for the Post not to tell readers.” The ombudsman also pointed out that the e-mails “are all very different. I have not seen [an organized] campaign.”
(emphasis mine)

To someone like Howell, the idea that many readers can create their own emails is unthinkable. She really does believe that there was an organized campaign. Liberals are a lot of things, but ‘organized’ doesn’t even rank. Considering how many people were following the Plame story despite the fact that the major news outlets were either ignoring it, or barely covering it, yes something like what happened with Woodward would be noticed.
I say all of this because Things are Getting Serious.

As the Iowa caucuses neared, we got even less coverage of Edwards. The media-determined 2nd and 3rd tier candidates were practically ignored. By cramming religion down out throat Huckabee got noticed by the media, but his message, which is eerily similar to Edwards’ hasn’t really been reported by the media. Many of us vote based on the goals or pledges of the candidate. If we are not told those goals by the media, the only place we can turn to is the candidate’s website. That’s not going to be an unbiased search. One can always turn to Google, but then you’ll run into several factless sites or even worse, that endless ring of sites who only reference each other hoping that you take it at face value rather than click the link. Yes, there are times when it seems like the MSM is willfully not covering a story. For this election cycle, that uncovered story is populism.

Kucinich and Gravel, both based their platforms on it, but the media has decided that those two are not viable candidates. Edwards has been running for president for almost 4 years now on populism, but the media has decided that how much he pays for a haircut is way more important that what is happening beneath that haircut. Mike Huckabee has a very strong message based on populism, but the media decided it was easier to dismiss him because he’s a preacher. Because of this wall, one begins to wonder just what are they afraid of.

I had noted this shunning at the beginning of the summer, but didn’t give it much thought. For whatever reason, I still have this super tiny optimistic side that message will overcome frivolity. But what happens when what seemed like happenstance (after all Britney Spears actions are definitely more important than choosing a president), becomes a trend, which becomes tradition or conventional wisdom?

Iowa showed us that The People speak. They spoke loudly for hope and caring for your fellow man. After years of having both parties and the media tell us that there is never enough money for health care, education, or any other societal good, The People decided that they were willing to go with the candidate that offered it anyway. The caucus goers in Iowa turned out in record numbers to vote for something the media didn’t tell them about. The caucus goers in Iowa voted for their best interests, not the interests of the Beltway insiders. The caucus goers in Iowa voted against the establishment.

As we’ve seen these past 3 days, things have gotten a bit ugly because of that. All of a sudden, the media who told us that Obama was all flash decided to look at his record and learned that, wait a second, he isn’t all flash. They looked at Edwards record in the Senate, found that Edwards refuted quite a few of his votes then, but has worked these past 4 years to undo the damage he was a part of. They looked at Huckabee and found that even despite a few scandals there are people who still like him.

What they decided to tell us instead was how Barack Obama changed his mind on things. The nerve! John Edwards made money being a lawyer. Yawn, you did that in 2003. And Mike Huckabee is pulling in homeschoolers. They vote?!?!

Since Huckabee started gaining in the polls, the media did some research. Apparently they didn’t like the message because all we’ve gotten from our newsotainment centers are hit pieces on Obama, Edwards and Huckabee. I don’t mind the media dissecting Huckabee’s very Christian Christmas ad. I do mind that they spent a week on it and still no one really mentioned his campaign goals.

With John Edwards, most articles or reports wind up being about his wife, the son he lost or how much money he made as a lawyer. Considering that most people who run for president are lawyers, it makes no sense that Edwards is being picked on. That is, until you realize that by running on a populist platform Edwards is bucking that system that made him money. By turning his back on that class, he’s basically turning his back on all the Beltway insiders. They know that they are not strong enough to do that. So they feel the need to bring him down.

Since Iowa, the hit pieces on both Edwards and Huckabee have gained momentum. The articles I’ve read on CNN, MSNBC or ABC News are almost giddy in Huckabee’s 3rd place setting in New Hampshire. And while their showings in Iowa have made the media do some reporting, what little there is always address the populism of both candidates derisively. All of this made me laugh at the thought of the DC populace sitting there thinking that this was to be a coronation of their fellow friends, Clinton and Romney, instead they got their Yankee butts kicked by two Southerners and a black man.

I knew they were scared when both Clinton’s and Romney’s campaigns co-opted “change” and Clinton decided that the youth vote was important. The they both arrived in New Hampshire the next morning, Sen. Clinton immediately deriding Iowa and her voters, Bill Clinton almost disgusted not only at the number of voters who braved the cold, but also the number of young voters. Meanwhile, Gov. Romney tried to laugh it off as if a 2nd place finish was his ultimate goal all along.

Naturally money and power will try to protect money and power. I believe the Wall Street Journal and Fox News have even started boring their die hard fans with their daily Huckabee hit pieces. So since Iowa, it’s been up to the op-ed pages to do more of these. All of this culminated in an article by George Will that should have been titled I’ve Been Crapping My Pants Since Thursday, he called it The Problem with Populism. (Thanks to BooMan for pointing me to this, as I try to avoid Will at all costs.) The article is a two-fer. A hit job on both Huckabee and Edwards. It’s bad enough I linked to this one, but just to give you a taste of how threatened the Beltway feels I’ll give Will’s overdramatic and poorly written prose:

He[Mike Huckabee] and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.

Well indeed. Exactly who are these two to care about people who make less money than them? How dare they remind people that they were both born of working class people? If the middle class really wanted to make money they should have just gone to Ivy League schools, met the right people and gotten jobs at The Washington Post, MSNBC or on the Hill.

Naturally, because this is Will, there is some serious fudging or misunderstanding of numbers and then he hits us with:

According to Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today — “I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally.” Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: “In my family, ’summer’ was never a verb.” Nixon, who maundered about his parents’ privations and wife’s cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?

You know, reading that I’m positive that Will glimpsed briefly at the people of New Orleans swamped by Hurricane Katrina and sniffed, “Well, why didn’t they just go to their winter homes up north?” Even today, he’d look at the unrestored Gulf coast and pretend it has nothing to do with reality since it doesn’t affect him. In this paragraph, Will let it be known that the only people who should be allowed to be president are “the right kind” of people. Clinton and Romney type of people.

Will doesn’t write for us. For you and me. He writes for the Connecticut homeowners who work in DC and summer in the Hamptons. They read this and nod their heads in complete understanding agreeing how politics just isn’t what it used to be now that people have gotten involved. Think I’m lying?

In today’s Washington Post, there was an article title Obama’s Rise Dismays Clinton Supporters. That title is so boring that I almost didn’t read it. I clicked anway. What I learned is that Clinton, isn’t drawing the crowds and her supporters in New Hampshire are very upset by that. Then the article turns to how people who couldn’t afford Boston have practically flooded parts of New Hampshire. Those people, those middle class people are Obama supporters.

Ted and April Weismann are part of New Hampshire’s demographic shift. They moved to Brookline in 1999 from the Boston area partly for more affordable real estate, and they have seen many other young families follow them. They say that they, like many of their peers, are supporting Obama.

Well, that was certainly subtle. But then the article gets longer and at the end get a clearer picture:

Yet there is palpable disbelief among top Clinton supporters here that she should be facing a tight finish in a state that was once seen as Clinton turf, and against a candidate with as thin a Washington r¿sum¿ as Obama’s.

[snip]

Mary Louise Hancock, the 87-year-old grande dame of the state’s Democrats, said she “resented” that independent voters were poised to influence the outcome of the Democratic primary, saying it turned the vote into a “personal-liking affair” dominated by “students and the trendies.”

Oh.

My.

So I ask…what do they have to fear?

Okay, this is freaky considering what 17 of us were talking about via IM last night. When we heard Clinton’s snippy ‘reality’ line, we brought up all the stuff that America did just because there was hope for change. It was like Obama was on the chat with us:

“You know, I’ve been teased, even derided lately, for talking hope. Last night in the debate, one of my opponents said that you know, ‘You need to stop offering the American (sic) false hopes about what can get done. You need a reality check.’ You remember that?” Obama asked the crowd.

He poked fun at the claim, contextuaizing it in the light of Amwerican history which he said had relied on hope to get through some of his greatest challenges.

“Now think, think about that as a concept. Think about that — not not — ‘imagine that we’re going to the moon and we’ll figure out a way to do it. Understand we can’t do that. We can’t rebuild Japan and Germany after we defeated them in war — that would make no sense. Why would we do that?” he asked the crowd.

Taking a swipe using gender, Obama said, ” Imagine the gall to believe that women have the right to vote. They’ve never had the right to vote before.”

And more: “Imagine a country that was no longer half slave, half free. How can that be? How can you offer people false hopes?’ We don’t need leaders who are telling us what we cannot do. We need a president who can tell us what we can do! What we accomplish! Where we can take this country!”

Sweet.

Hijole! Justhow many people does the Clinton campaign have working the web? Moments after the debate ended last night, posts on media outlets from pro-Clinton supporters looked like so much spam. They all said the same misleading and selective thing on Obama’s record (Edwards’ record too) and since the formatting was also the same in like 90% of the posts, it’s safe to assume these were talking points. I haven’t checked my campaign email account yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see these talking points in there. They’re already up on Clinton’s website, with the same formatting. Hell, most of the people posting it, actually are linking to Clinton’s website, so there’s no hiding there.

On Political Ticker there is a post regarding last night’s debates. I posted a comment an hour after it was posted and it never showed up. This morning I logged on to see two other comments posted 4 hours after mine, but mine is still “awaiting moderation”.

The post is about Clinton’s large oppo research dump in last night’s debates. The performance that was laughable at best.
1. Clinton didn’t say anything that wasn’t alredy common knowledged
2. Clinton portrayed Obama’s votes as dishonest, but didn’t mention that she voted the same exact way.
3. She managed not to mention that some of those votes were guranteed because of backroom deals by Harry Reid.

Naturally, CNN didn’t report any of this either. That would mean doing research and why should they bother when they just want to tell us what we saw on TV?

My comment then:

Wonder why that comment is still “awaiting moderation”?

UPDATE (12:10pm): About an hour after I posted this, someone from CNN Political Ticket checked this post. And my comment is still “awaiting moderation”.

UPDATE (5:11pm): Well, after approving 98 comments that were posted both before and after mine, my comment above has been posted.