Whiskey Fire

I Told You So! (Except I Was Wrong)

I know this isn't how Blog Time works, but I've been stewing for more days than I should about this New York Times piece by Rebecca Traister. Stewing while I drive, and garden, and work, because honestly, I just don't know what I think.

The empirical choice between Clinton and Obama was never as direct as those on either side made it out to be; neither was obviously more equipped or more progressive than the other. The maddening part, then and now, is that they were utterly comparable candidates. The visions — in 2008, of Obama as a progressive redeemer who would restore enlightened democracy to our land and Hillary as a crypto-Republican company man; or, in 2011, of Obama as an appeasement-happy crypto-Republican and Hillary as a leftist John Wayne who would have whipped those Congressional outlaws into shape — they were all invented. These are fictional characters shaped by the predilections, prejudices and short memories of the media and the electorate. They’re not actual politicians between whom we choose here on earth.

Traister, you might recall, writes for the Times and Salon, is the author of Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, and one of the few members of the press corps who seem unafraid of claiming the feminist mantle.

Now, our blogfriends have already weighed in here, of course:

Matt Yglesias points out that in the spring and summer of 2008, the world looked very different: "Our experience of the Obama administration has been dominated by the fallout of events that mostly happened after the election. So when people say that they thought Obama would be like this or thought he would be like that, in many ways they’re misremembering. If you’re honest with yourself, three years ago you just weren’t thinking much at all about how Obama would respond to persistent 9 percent unemployment."

Amanda notes that Hillary was a Kenyanmuslimsocialist long before it was cool: "The Republican base not only hates Clinton, but they've hated her for decades now. The paranoid base really cut their teeth constructing elaborate conspiracy theories about her. Before Obama was accused of faking his birth certificate, remember that Clinton was accused of murdering Vince Foster, a good friend of her family's. Republicans would have ambushed and stonewalled her, too. Don't forget that they impeached her husband after basically dogging him for years, looking for any tiny thread they could cling to to rationalize it." The Tea Party wouldn't be the Tea Party, of course--"the nickname and the costuming of the base uproar" would be different, as Amanda says--but it would be something just as noxious and obstructionist.

And Scott notes what many of us realized at the time: "in policy terms the 2008 Democratic primary was about almost nothing." Which was, after all, one of the most frustrating things about the 2008 primary: I was routinely called a racist corporatist centrist by people I had thought were my friends, simply because I thought Clinton was a viable candidate. Hell, in policy terms, I liked John Edwards. What the hell did I know?

And so I don't feel the need to weigh in on those points: they're well covered. But I think the fact that I was a Clinton supporter has made me generally less frustrated with Obama: since I never thought he was the Liberal Savior anyway, the fact that he has not turned out to be is just less, well, personal for me.

(I'm reminded of a review I once read on Pitchfork--back when I thought I needed to read Pitchfork to be cool--of Weezer's 2005 album Make Believe. The reviewer didn't like it, but that wasn't enough. Instead, he had to go back and smear all of the back catalog, in a comical "I break with thee!" moment of adolescent angst. A lot of Obama-hate feels like that to me.)

I've been out of political blogging a while now--partly disenchanted, partly working on a book--but I'm not such a big person that I don't remember the pain of that personality contest. At the time, I flashed a lot on the Reese Witherspoon-Matthew Broderick movie Election, and suspected that, like Tracy Flick, Hillary was being castigated for seeming to want the nomination so much. Female desire for power--like all female desire--was unseemly and kind of icky and had to be smacked down.

But I'm curious, as a feminist, how often the metaphor of Obama's strength or weakness is expressed in terms of sexual potency. The Daily Beast piece Traister cites gives several quotes, it assures us, from lots of otherwise nice little old ladies impugning Obama's manhood, particularly in comparison to Hillary.

At a luncheon in the members’ dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, a 64-year-old African-American from the Bronx was complaining about Obama’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the implacable hostility of congressional Republicans when an 80-year-old lawyer chimed in about the president’s unwillingness to stand up to his opponents. “I want to see blood on the floor,” she said grimly.

A 61-year-old white woman at the table nodded. “He never understood about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’” she said.

Looking as if she were about to cry, an 83-year-old Obama supporter shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in him,” she said. “It’s true: Hillary is tougher.”

..........

Among Clinton fans, particularly older women, the language was frequently far more caustic. “Obama has no spine and no balls,” said a 67-year-old New Yorker.

Jeez, when the grandmas have the long knives out, look out!

But of course, our go-to person for all psychosexual attacks on Democratic men does not fail us. No one does the "Democratic men are secretly women! Or pussy-whipped! Or something!" trope better than Maureen Dowd: it's the one medium she truly understands.

President Obama was on the way to Alpha when a plea came for him to be, well, more alpha.

LuAnn Lavine, a real estate agent from Geneseo, a rural town just up the road from Alpha, Ill., the last stop on the president’s Midwestern bus tour, told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny: “Everyone was so hopeful with him, but Washington grabbed him and here we are. I just want him to stay strong and don’t take the guff. We want a president who is a leader, and I want him to be a little bit stronger.”

For Dowd, Obama's weakness is clearly demonstrated by the D after his nme, and the fact that he, uh, took a vacation in August, like all Americans who can afford to. "The truth is, he doesn’t want [Congress] back in the capital any more than they want to be back. It would have screwed up his vacation and upset Michelle, who already feels trapped in the Washington bubble." Dowd doesn't quite quote Bill Murray in Ghostbusters--"It's true: this man has no dick."--but it's pretty damn close.

I wanted to end on a decisive note, but I find I don't have one. Obama is dealing with a level of obstruction I have not seen in my lifetime, and is in the position of trying to defend programs against a raft of Neitzschean, Randian ideologues who are interested in nothing but corporatist hegemony for the people who elected them, and third-world anarchy for everyone else. They do not care if they drive the whole bus over a cliff.

Obama is standing between us and them. Ineffectively, maybe, but he's there. Hillary may have played it differently, but the cliff would still be there, and they'd still be determined to drive off it. And things would be just as fucked.

(crossposted at Echidne of the Snakes)

Shoe-Throwing Crap

Cross-posted at FDL 

Tonight, from the Independent:

The Israeli embassy in central London turned into a battleground yesterday evening as police and demonstrators clashed following a pro-Palestinian rally.... In London, 13 people were taken to hospital following increasingly violent scuffles between police and protesters, and scores more were treated at the scene. The trouble began when protesters hurled shoes at the US embassy, in the spirit of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at George Bush in protest at his "war crimes".

"The spirit" of Muntadar al-Zaidi -- quite a phrase. Most of us don't get a "spirit" named for ourselves. But then, his was quite a remarkable act of protest -- probably the single most memorable act of individual symbolic protest against the American presence in Iraq. And one with a life of its own, with consequences and resonances far outstripping whatever was in al-Zaidi's mind the moment he threw the shoes: it's bound up with everything from violence in London to stupid Internet games to tongue-in-cheek protests in America to asinine wingnut faux-outrage at the impolite horror of it all.

But then, as I noted at the time, there is more to the shoe-throwing than just the act itself. I think that the way the shoe-thrower, al-Zaidi, has been treated, and the way Americans have responded to his treatment, reveals more than the act itself. Because we seem to have forgotten him, whether we liked what he did (that would be most of us) or we did not. Because while what he did surely had its comical side, to him, it was not at all a joke. And even if it were then, it is not now, because he has been in jail ever since, without being charged for anything, has probably been beaten or tortured, and seems to be facing some perfectly ridiculous charge of "insulting a foreign leader," which carries a two-year sentence.

And while his fate still seems to be a matter of concern in Iraq, in the US, and elsewhere? Not much.

But it always seemed to me that it was wrong to see the shoe-throwing as a joke, or an outrage. What it was, was a test. A test of American values. I mean, for me, my my most cherished freedom is the right to get right to get up right in one of my leader's faces and tell that sonfabitch exactly what I think of him, or her. If we are not a nation of shoe-throwers, what the hell good are we? What the hell is the point of America otherwise? But the corollary of freedom is that it is defended. And that those who exercise it ought to be protected. And al-Zaidi was, whatever else you may say of him, a free human being when he threw those shoes, even if he's not now, and we as a nation don't seem to respect that.

Last month I argued that Geroge W. Bush should publicly forgive Muntadar al-Zaidi. He hasn't, living down to all my expectations of him. But we already knew that fucker is a lousy American. But that does not mean that al-Zaidi should be so easily forgotten. We don't need to like his shoe throwing, but haven't some of us died to give him that right, according, at least, to the Official Story? What do those deaths mean, anyhow, if he's in jail for the freedoms we supposedly sent our men and women to die to give him?

Or is that a question too tasteless to ask?

Scary Monsters, Super Freaks

One "change" that I'd like to see is the end of the idea that grown, intelligent, accomplished women are, deep down, no more mature than junior high school students.

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama's presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster," is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department -- which Clinton is slated to head....

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women.

After the shrieking and hair-pulling, I expect that they will have a good cry and then bond over a pint of chocolate ice cream, after which point they will talk about boys and also perhaps nuclear non-proliferation.

In the meantime someone go give a binky to Crittenden, whose cheerleading for mass killing and ethnic cleansing makes him dislike Power, as he snivels here.

UPDATE. Jules Crittenden responds!

Hey, Whiskey Fire through-clickers, that guy old enough to be drinking that? Reading clearly isn’t his strong suit, but maybe focusing is the problem. Drunk and ignorant, not a pretty site.

Uh, nice riposte. Looks like some clever young wingnut's hepped up on goofballs.
Tell it to the free clip-art dancing leprechaun gif, lightweight.

 

A Rogue Hillary Clinton Snaps Her Tether and Kills a Presidency!

If Hillary Rodham Clinton is named Secretary of State by Barack Obama, I confidently predict that she will "go rogue," rampaging through Foggy Bottom like a savage, drunken elephant, stomping mid-level diplomats to jelly, dashing out the brains of beareaucrats with one flick of her mighty trunk. Then she will barrel furiously down the avenues of the nation's capital, mind inflamed with the feral lust to destroy, by savage instinct alone seeking the White House, where a trembling Joe Biden struggles frantically to fit a dart envenomed with powerful drugs into the barrel of a tranquilizer rifle in time. Too late! Several tons of frenzied former New York junior senator are upon him with an earth-shattering trumpet blast of fury primeval! The man from Scranton is pulverized! His entrails splatter, defiling the alabaster columns of the beloved Shrine to Democracy with crimson gore! In the Oval Office, a quivering President Obama weeps softly behind his desk as the venerable structure shudders and crumbles with the ferocious violence of her inexorable advance, her unquenchable thirst for pachydermal vengeance! Even at the last possible moment, when the enraged Clinton bursts the Oval Office door into matchsticks and bears down on him, unstoppable, elephantine, slavering, one last thought, pure and true, rings in his brain like an orison: "Well, I guess she's still more of a 'team player' than Lieberman."

Anyway I bet that's what's probably going to happen. And I mean this quite literally.

MORE. The likelihood -- even the practical inevitability -- of such scenarios coming to pass makes me wonder at the blase attitude of some progressive bloggers about this sort of personnel decision on Obama's part. Get active, people! You know what to do!

FURTHER. Meditating on what Mithras says here. Sure, it's unlikely that we're going to get prosecutions of the Bushite junta as a practical matter, though this does not necessarily mean someone is naive or foolish for calling for such prosecutions -- it's not like there is not a good case to be made for such investigations, morally and probably even legally. Put it this way; I was perfectly aware in 2002 that no matter what I thought or said or did, Bush was going to attack Iraq, and that this was a mistake. Do I regret going to marches against the war, though? No, not really. If the case is to be made, make the case. Even if it goes nowhere politically, that doesn't mean it's useless -- even politically.

Here's what I mean. If I were Obama (and who is to say I'm not?), I would be looking back at the record of the Bush years as a kind of treasure chest stuffed with "get out of jail free" cards. Look how much mileage the wingnuts still get even today out of the Clinton "scandals" -- the usually silly nature of their complaints aside, there's no question that one of the standard plays in the Bush playbook was, everytime they got in some sort of trouble, throw out some sort of cockamamie Clinton reference and boom! A Distraction!

Now, even without a formal investigation or special prosecutor, there are tons of resources for ferreting out secrets available to the executive branch, especially with a legislature of the same party, and loads of journalists thirsty of "access" and leaks. Obama is no fool, and his people are hardnosed. If they're smart, they'll be able to unveil or move along or leak a Bushite scandal maybe even once a week for eight solid years. It's not like there's any shortage of ammo lying around, you know. And when this stuff comes out -- and it is in the nature of stuff like this to come out, especially when there is so much political advantage to be gained from it -- among the people yelling about it will be those who feel vindicated by having called for it years in advance. It's not really to anyone's disadvantage or discredit that they want to exert this kind of pressure now, as it could pay off later.

So I for one think Obama is smart in not pressing this kind of investigation/reprisal stuff now. It's not the annoying "keeping the powder dry" meme; in this particular case, that actually makes sense, and I'm not really that worried that the most damaging information won't ever appear.

As for the now-infamous "one Senate Democratic aide" quote, shit, that sounds a lot like noted asshole Marshall Wittman, who frankly has less influence now than The Left, on blogs or elsewhere. Lieberman is on his way to becoming as beloved a figure as, say, Al D'Amato, so screw him anyhow.

Manifested in Psychobabble

By Molly Ivors

Well, after the tongue-bath Joe Biden gave McCain's wrinkled ass the other day, I have no qualms about saying what I think has been obvious to a lot of people: I believe it really would have been better for the party and the country if Obama had chosen Hillary Clinton for VP. Aside from thumbing your nose at 18 million voters—the vast majority of whom will vote for you anyway, but less enthusiastically—I was assured that the Biden pick was great because he had foreign policy experience and was a pit bull who would face down any and all negative campaigning. But he took the first week of Palin-mania to cuddle up to McCain. As I understand it, that's what pit bulls do to their owners, not those who pose threats to their owners. Whatever. How are all those bankruptcies going?

More dismayingly, it has freed Maureen Dowd to invent another in her line of patented Bullshit Scenarios™ between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, in an imaginary 2012 where these voracious women have dispatched the men who helped them get into office and are now head-to-head. She dubs them "the gun-toting hockey mom and the shot-swilling Warrior Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits" (the comparative number of adjectives tells you where her oatmeal-sharp wit really wants to sink its blade, of course). Dowd can't give up the idea that she and she alone recognizes the dark underside of the junior Senator from New York, and she tries hard not to reveal that, despite the fact that Palin is certifiably insane about science, a retrograde cultural throwback, proudly ignorant red meat for the christianist base, and violent and heavily armed in the bargain, she "gets" it. And for that, MoDo reluctantly admires her.

PALIN: I've got a little news flash for you, Hillary. Your night-shift, blue-collar-waitress, boilermaker routine didn't fool me. It's in your polls but it's in my D.N.A. I've actually been up at 3 a.m. — gutting moose. While you got to go to your snooty Wellesley, I had to switch colleges six times in six years. While you got to go to Yale Law, I had to enter beauty contests and turn my back to judges in a bathing suit to get scholarship money.

CLINTON: I've got a little news flash for you, Annie Oakley. Dinosaurs disappeared a lot longer than 4,000 years ago. I admit you've had a profound influence on America, and I'm not just talking about all the women wearing up-dos and rimless titanium $375 Kazuo Kawasaki designer frames. You and John are now at war with four countries — Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, even as Osama bin Laden has opened a storefront in a strip mall in Pakistan to make TV ads.

PALIN: Those wars are tasks from God.

CLINTON: You said you wanted to help women, but you've only hurt them with your silly mantra that women can have it all if they just work harder and pray harder. You put Medicare on eBay. You cut funding for special-needs children. The Dobson Supreme Court has outlawed abortion, evolution and gun control. With sex education banned, baby bumps in high schools are rampant. And the head of your Abstinence Outreach Program, Levi Johnston, has failed to force any other teenage fathers to marry their prom dates.

PALIN: Life is always welcome. Unless it's on four legs.

Maureen knows, deep in her heart, that Clinton is smarter, sharper, and more in tune with reality. But Our Mo is shallow to the core, and so the Attack of the Eye Creatures hair and the glasses (honestly, it never occurred to me to look them up) impress her. She isn't quite so far removed from reality to think that Palin has any, you know, qualifications, but her hatred of all things Clinton is so ingrained that she really can't help herself, I think. And make no mistake, that's bad for all of us.

UPDATE: Apparently, Biden's performance on Meet the Press did nothing to alter the basic thesis here.

The Big Makeover

by Molly Ivors

I've been waiting with bated breath to see what Maureen might come up with in the wake of her public smackdown and the current inexorable (but not surprising) surge toward party unity. (Many of us predicted this, you know.) MoDo's response?

Picking on older women (and you know, not too much older than you, Mo. Just sayin').

I mean, wow. Following the finest examples of crappy news coverage we've seen over the last six months (I picture J. Jonah Jameson, the cranky editor from Spiderman, screaming "Find me a racist Hillary supporter! Stat!"), MoDo takes a fine moment and focuses almost exclusively on one old lady who's having a hard time letting go.

Carmella Lewis, with her Hillary T-shirt and Hillary placard, came all the way from Denver to make sure there would be plenty of ambiguity, duality and ferocity in Unity.

Just as Hillary was testing out the unfamiliar familiarity “Barack and me” Friday and talking about “his grace and his grit,” Carmella began loudly booing and waving her sign.

“We want Hillary!” screamed the 57-year-old retired ad saleswoman and Clinton delegate.

“It’s over, lady!” yelled some Obama supporters a few yards away.

Standing between the Sharks and the Jets, David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella’s who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity. The chief Obama strategist fetched a glass of water and brought it to the woman, who was wearing five Hillary buttons.

This amenity did not stop the disunity. Carmella and her friends continued to cry, “Nobama!” “We love you, Hillary!” and “We need Hillary!” as Barack Obama sat onstage on a stool behind his former rival, his finger studiously at his lips.

Carmella was not impressed with all the kissing, laughing and whispering that Hill and Bam were diligently doing for the cameras, so that the moment could produce, as Obama press aide Robert Gibbs put it on “Larry King Live,” “a great picture.”

When it was Obama’s turn to speak, Carmella announced loudly, “I wish I had ear plugs.” Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters “can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels,” Carmella put her fingers in her ears.

As Obama tried to curry favor with Hillary, looking over at her sensible, sturdy shoes and marveling, “I still don’t know how she does it in heels,” Carmella tore up a tissue and stuffed it in her ears.

When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” she put her hands over her tissue-stuffed ears.

“Maybe she’d like what she heard if she listened,” sighed Axelrod.

When Obama talked about moving beyond “all the petty bickering,” as Hillary robo-nodded at his side and CNN’s Candy Crowley applied pre-broadcast lipstick above her, Carmella glared at people applauding.

Afterward, Carmella got her idol to autograph her sign, telling the smiling Hillary, “You’re going to be the next president.”

She told The Times that she and her friends were all voting for John McCain and that Hillary was just doing what she had to do.

“But I have a gut feeling,” she said with macabre faith, “that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.”

Now, the question here is not so much whether such people exist: of course they do. We here in the left blogosphere generally see the other side of this, as in "If she's the VP, I'm not voting!" But, you know, we recognize this for what it is: bruises that haven't quite healed yet. But they will, and anyone who supported Clinton for any reason other than her gender are going to climb on the bus eventually. Obama's striking the right notes, they're both behaving well, and it's all going to be fine by August.

But MoDo focuses on Carmella. And by focusing I mean spending far more than the requisite quote or two of column time on her. Look at how much column space she gave this person! She must have been stalking her all day. (Note to Carmella: I'd buy thicker curtains, and if an improbably taut redhead in cherry-red pumps tries to deliver flowers to you, don't open the door.) Creepy.

But then, we knew this would happen. Part of what I've been waiting for is to see what the transition to general election nastiness would look like We all understand that Maureen's Cop Daddy issues mean that she's going to do everything she can to tear down the Dems between now and the election, in order to further the chances of Senator Matlock J. Depends and his trollop of a trophy wife. But I admit, I didn't expect her to be reduced to the fringes of the crowd quite this quickly.

And now, they're "Hill and Bam" and her colleagues in the media are the "Bamary press corps," with the exception of one Fox producer who circulated tapes of the former rivals saying mean things about each other. MoDo's Hannah Montana shiv is more subtle, slyly whispering that THEY'RE BIG FAKERS AND THEY STILL HATE EACH OTHER. Umm, yeah. Maureen. Whatever. Actually, I don't give a shit what they think of each other. Are they going to fix the country? Yes? Good. Now STFU.

But like Carmella and her impossible longing for the Glory Days, Maureen finally, finally gets a chance to relive her own: by focusing on He Who Must Not Be Named, who, she says, "who is in a self-pitying meltdown about not being Elvis anymore, trying to shake down Obama for more — more apologies for perceived snubs and more help paying off the $22 million Clinton debt." Ummm, you might have missed it, Mo, but Obama did donate this week. And just as Jimmy Carter was annoyed at Clinton for dismissing his accomplishments in office, Obama should have some respect for the Clinton administration. And I think he will, eventually, but as with Carmella, it'll take some time. And Bill will, too.

But I think the whole point of today's column was to suggest a rough equivalence between Carmella and Bill Clinton, one clearly belied by the fact that he was, you know, there. But in her desperation to create bad guys, MoDo's settled on Bill, the bad guy from her Pulitzer days.

Good luck with that.

The Worst Offense Is Intelligence

by Molly Ivors

(h/t to the wonderful noblejoanie)

Things have been busy here (and will be for the foreseeable future), but in and among all the wallpapering and weeding and end-of-semester tidying, I've had some time to think. Atrios is fond of posting "What Digby Said" as a link in and of itself, and I'd do that if it wasn't his thing.  Because what she says here cuts right to the core of why, exactly, I have found this primary season so troubling.

Cable news, MSNBC particularly,  has been a major contributor to all the sturm and drang of this campaign. One of the main sources of frustration among the Obama supporters has been the notion that it's been obvious to everyone for months that the race is over, and yet Clinton refuses to quit. But that hasn't been obvious to Clinton voters (who are highly unlikely to be MSNBC viewers at this point) since she is still winning primaries. There is a disconnect with the greater public on this that the cable networks have exacerbated, much to the chagrin of the Obama voters who are anxious to call the race and get on with it and the Clinton voters who are furious at the coverage of their standard bearer and are digging their heels.

I realize that this seems ridiculous to most Obama supporters who view the press' take on this as being correct, and I don't particularly blame them. (Indeed, I'm crossing my fingers that MSNBC's positive coverage doesn't disintegrate as soon as their nemesis is gone and they are forced to choose between Barack and the manly flyboy.) But to the loathed minority of people like me, who don't particularly love or hate either primary candidate, all this still makes MSNBC as unreliable as it was in the run up to the war. As Chotiner points out, since their friendly Democratic bias seems to stem from an idiosyncratic, personal basis, they are not behaving with any more journalistic integrity than they ever were, it's just that their corruption is benefiting our side this time.

I highly recommend reading the whole Digby post and its link to the genuinely thoughtful analysis of MSNBC's coverage of the primary. Chotiner, Digby's source author, is an Obama supporter, but that doesn't mean he's comfortable with the tone of the coverage from the likes of Olbermann and Matthews. This is personal for them, very very personal, and they just hate her. Not her policies, not even her campaign (though that's been bad, for sure, but this all started long before that)--just her.

Living here in upstate New York, we see a lot of Huck Fillary sorts of things from the bumper-sticker-and-bar-sign crowd. And it strikes me as weird, because she's been an objectively good senator, domestically speaking. Aside from the war (which her haters around here generally support), she's been right on a lot of things, or at least not more wrong than anyone else. And she's brought the first jobs to come to this area in literally years. But the hatred continues.

It's been especially perturbing to see the same lines of attack coming from the right and the left. One friend even said "Gee, I wonder if she really did kill Vince Foster?" in a bizarre recursion that proves that, if you dislike someone, no attack is off limits. I see sneering at those making less than $30K a year, at those without educations, even though they're registered Dems voting in huge numbers in the primaries, because they happen to support the "wrong" candidate, for what must be the wrong reasons. I see regular abuse of women, particularly older women, from people who know better: sly comments about the "Menopause Caucus" and idle banter about "The Pantsuit Riots." And I'm not getting into the accusations of racism, which started long before there was any actual evidence to support them. But then maybe I've been to too many rock shows to hear all those imaginary dog whistles.

I'm not a person who looks to be inspired or emotionally connect with a candidate: I want administrators, not heroes, running my government. (And no, I'm not using words like "cultists," though I do think it's a little weird that some Obama supporters cannot brook even the slightest bit of critique of their guy, whether from me or Paul Krugman.) I think there are genuine reasons to view Obama with caution, not least his cultivation of religious support which I, like anyone, would like to see on the side of progressive politics, but which all too often comes with the baggage of a Donnie McClurkin. And I want universal health care. And I don't think one person should centralize all the fundraising for all the candidates on their side of the aisle through their personal campaign. It's a bad precedent, even worse than the DLC, and yet no one wants to talk about this issue except to praise the amount of money being raised.

But even sensible caution about these issues is likely to get one tarred as a vaginista, and I admit, I'm becoming quite shy about sharing my primary support with those who don't already know it, and that I'm genuinely surprised when people express a preference for Clinton out loud to me. It's become like a secret vice, discussed on an as-needed basis, but otherwise not. And when we find each other, we all sigh in relief. Finally, we can talk about issues and not personalities. I've spent a lot of time this last week with people I don't know too well, and it's been enlightening to see how many people share my view.

I began this primary season as an Edwards supporter, and for me, class is still one of the key issues in this campaign. For better or worse, the only reason HRC is still in the running is because (belatedly, perhaps calculatedly) she has seized the fallen banner of populism and is waving it for all it's worth.  The economy is in freefall, and people who used to think they made a decent living are now finding themselves shopping at Aldi's with everybody else. Populism is more important than anything, even the war, at this point. Edwards has endorsed Obama, a decision I respect but find curious, given Obama's generally more centrist domestic program, but the amount of sneering at actual, you know, poor people among Obama supporters, at least in the left blogosphere, is disturbing. I recognize the distinction between the candidate and the virulence of some supporters, but plenty of otherwise sensible people become genuinely unmoored when talking about my senator, and it saddens me.

I'll support Senator Obama when he becomes the candidate. I'll do so more enthusiastically if his VP choice indicates that he understands the frustration of my various demographics: as a working woman in my forties, a mother and wife, two generations removed from Appalachia, one from the factory, with family in a wide range of blue-collar professions. I've seen all of these demographics trashed at various points in the last six months, because we tended to vote "wrong." I guess the Starbuck's drive-through by campus and the PhD mean I have a free pass into Obama's world, when it's time for me to go there, but it would be nice to go to a place where one is respected, not disdained.

But I may never watch Keith Olbermann again.

That Would Suit You Fine, I Realize

by Molly Ivors

See, this is why I no longer listen to Keith Olbermann. And that's too bad, really. But this is fucking bullshit.

He should be ashamed of himself. And so should anyone who countenances this kind of argument, male or female.

A Contest Featuring Human Beings

by Molly Ivors

Poor Maureen. I mean, you have to feel bad for her at a certain point, because it's hard, it's hard work, to fight a war on two fronts. I mean, it's clear that, as Head Cheerleader, you have to humiliate the A/V geeks and the Mathletes and the stoners, but honestly, who has the time? It's all about focus, people. There's a lot of lunch tables in Maureen's mental cafeteria, and it just isn't possible for one widdle girl to dump them all.

Her frustration is palpable, and one of the most bizarre (and by bizarre I mean hilarious) aspects of this neverending primary season is watching her whip her brassy-dye-job ponytail from side to side, desperately trying to hone in on a victim. It's her! It's him! It's her! It's him!  AAAauuuuuggghhhh!!!! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know--HRC needs to drop out, we're spending money fighting each other when we should be fighting Grandpa Matlock J. Depends, it's time to kiss and make up, whatever. But this watching Dowd drift toward entropy is just fucking funny, people. She's losing her mind, and it shows.

In today's typically schizophrenic outing, Maureen finds herself torn between castigating the Clintons-- long and noble sport for her, and one for which she won the Pulitzer--and building the new meme--that Barack Obama is a girly boy who's afraid of food and Hillary.

So, gentle readers, is it Door Number One?

Or Door Number Two?

What to do, what to do....

So I ask you, which is more insane and offensive? Is it this...

Her message is unapologetically emasculating: If he does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?

Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival. Certainly Howard Dean will be of no use steering her to the exit. It’s like Micronesia telling Russia to denuke.

(Note that Howard Dean, like all Democratic men, is also Not A Real Man.) Or is this worse.....

He is frantic to get away from her because he can’t keep carbo-loading to relate to the common people.

In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.

But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.

“Why” he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, “can’t I just eat my waffle?”

Honestly, I do not know.

Analyzing the candidates and their issues, of course, is beyond the scope of what Maureen does. After all, she's on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, not hosting the Oscar red carpet show on E! It's not like this election matters or anything.

But I admit, somewhat mean-spiritedly, that from the geek table, watching her freak out is pretty goddamn satisfying.

Learning to Hunt

by Molly Ivors

Sorry for the long silence, folks. It was beginning to feel, at a certain point, like I was picking on the mentally disabled, or at least terminally trivial, and I had to back away. (Thers had the same response to Althouse after a while. We liberals are too nice altogether.)

But shit.

My good friend Hecate says that MoDo must be reading here, and idea I pooh-poohed as utterly foolish, but you have to wonder, since she essentially is stealing my frame of reference for today's column.

Whether or not she wins, Hillary has already given noble service as a sophisticated political tutor for Obama, providing her younger colleague with much-needed seasoning. Who else was going to toughen him up? Howard Dean? John Edwards? Dennis Kucinich?

Obama had not been hit hard until this campaign; he sailed through his Senate race. Without Hillary, he never would have learned to be a good debater. He never would have understood how to robustly answer distorted and personal attacks. He never would have been warned about how harmful an unplugged spouse can be. He never would have realized how a luminous speech can be effective damage control.

When pressed about whether he’s ready for Swift-boating, Obama has seemed a bit cavalier. But the Hillary camp will garrote him with his mistakes until he fully appreciates what garroting feels like. Ickes told a Web site Tuesday that he has been pursuing superdelegates by pressing the Rev. Wright issue.

Besides coaching Obama, Hillary is also shielding him. If she had not fibbed about the Tuzla airport landing, and then fibbed to get out of a fib, the press would have stayed focused on Wright. She has been an invaluable lightning rod.

It is objectively true, I think, that Hillary's shitty coverage makes Barack look good by comparison. I can't count the number of people who've said to me "I just can't go through that again"--a position I'm not wholly unsympathetic to. But Barack takes more than his share of shit-flinging from Maureen this morning, being called "effete," "genteelly sipping" a beer, a "starlet," "languid," and this delightfully cringe-inducing moment:

Hillary has clearly raised Obama’s consciousness about the importance of courting the ladies. Touring a manufacturing plant in Allentown, Pa., Tuesday, he was flirtatious, winking and grinning at the women working there, calling one “Sweetie,” telling another she was “beautiful,” and imitating his daughters’ dance moves by twirling around.

Later, at a Scranton town hall, he went up to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore wearing a Hillary button. “What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he charmed, before promising: “I’ll give you a kiss.”

Umm, yeah. Wow.

I guess, somehow, it's supposed to be a compliment to Hillary that MoDo calls her "scrappy," a "blue-collar Mama," and "even tougher" than Ahmedinijad, but since the default position means tarring the presumptive nominee as a pussy who can't even beat a girl, it's typical MoDo crap.

I cannot for the life of me understand why Maureen operates under the concrete assumption that strength must be met by weakness and vice-versa. I mean, I know this is her default gender position,  but you'd think the constant stream of evidence to the contrary (starting, but by no means limited to the Clintons and the Obamas) would pierce her intellectual armor eventually. But nope. Men are scared of strong women, no real woman would want a "languid" man, Q E fucking D.

She really needs to get laid.

Below : the Democratic primary season, in MoDo's world.