blogging

There seems to be a lot of victim mind out there in the blogosphere these days directed at Barack Obama. For example, Reclusive Leftist's post, "Fuck off, Obama":

Actually, what women everywhere now know is that this country still isn’t ready for a woman President. That if a woman runs for President, she doesn’t stand a fucking chance. No matter how brilliant and capable she is, no matter how many people vote for her, the media will crucify her and some shady half-ass snake oil MAN will be handed the nomination instead.

Fuck off, Obama. Just fuck off.

Soviet-style one-candidate election results have now become a rallying cry for a perception of injustice that their candidate did not win. And if she did not win, well, then, it must be because she's a woman, right?

Echidne asks:

Are feminists really divided so clearly along the lines she describes: age, race and class? Are the waves of feminism really so different in their understanding of what constitutes feminism?

I want to leave this post full of questions for you to think about. But I'm already feverishly thinking about some of these issues in terms of my own feminist definitions, about horizontal and vertical equity, about the onion layers of feminism and about which layers we want to work on, about how someone who wasn't part of any of the waves in person might see them and so on. I think we need to go deeper in the onion, to strip off the layers one by one, not to discard them, but to investigate each of them on our way to the core. That probably doesn't make any sense right now, but I think that the way I write about feminism is more in the world of concepts and theories and less in the world of how they ultimately crop up and interact with other phenomena. Is that bad or good or indifferent? Or even true?

Then there's the whole problem of the class "women" being part of so many other classes, defined by race, income, class, religion, ethnicity, so many ties of solidarity of shared experience, of shared oppressions in some cases, too. How does that all play out in defining feminism?

Is it really the case that the nation cannot accept the idea of a woman president? Or is the unthinkable, unacceptable fact is that we as a nation are ready to elect a woman, but Hillary isn't the one, not now?

Some see it as a tragedy that Hillary Clinton did not win the nomination. But I see the real tragedy that so many women (and some men) are stepping into victim mind and seeing a women president as an impossibility. And I do not feel that this is at all the case.

Let's remember that, when she announced, Hillary Clinton was regarded as the front-runner. She had the name recognition. She had the campaign infrastructure. She had the establishment ties with the DLC. She was generally respected in Washington.

But let's not forget that Hillary Clinton was also problematic from the get-go. She had a ton of Clinton baggage. She had the war vote. She had her image problems, leading to a lot of questions of just who she is. She had a disastrous campaign that ignored caucuses and did not imagine having to go on past Super Tuesday. She had her big-money lobbyist ties, and a general lack of grassroots support financially, compared with Barack Obama. And she had Bill popping up, mouthing off, reminding everybody that when you buy Hillary, you get Bill, too.

And her falling into the racist realpolitik analysis on tape and on camera didn't help. It added a real ugliness to her persistent attacks on Barack Obama.

This was during a campaign when Obama couldn't get his message out, thanks to mainstream media obsession with Reverend Wright, flag pins, stealing phrases from his own campaign adviser, and on and on. Clinton was getting plenty of coverage of her own attacks on Obama, while he was buried in a media agenda of trivialities and distractions. Did one reporter ask Clinton why she wasn't wearing a flag pin? (Or McCain for that matter?)

No, it seems Obama has been the whipping boy in the campaign coverage.

What's the narrative we have this week? Rachel S. writes on Alas, a Blog:

One thing that struck me about Clinton and Obama is that I didn’t notice either one of them make note of the historic significance of having the first black nominee for President on a major party ticket. In contrast, both of them noted the groundbreaking campaign by Hillary Clinton, arguing that she was blazing a path for women, but I didn’t hear the same for Obama. Isn’t that an interesting distinction between racial politics and gender politics? The colorblind ideology silences almost any public discussion of racism by black candidates, who are vying for white votes. In contrast, we don’t have as much silence on the gender front (from the candidates). That has been a fairly consistent pattern in this Presidential election over the past few months.

Let's look at Barack Obama then. John on Liberal Rapture writes:

The problem is Obama. Clinton supporters came to her initially because of her experience. We liked her. We did not - in large part - become fervently committed to her until the media and Obama's campaign began to trash her. Obamites, quit pretending this trashing did not happen. It did. Anyone who spent 32 seconds on Kos-co or watching MSNBC knows you were ugly and relentless in your vilification. Stop lying about it. It is insulting. Our passion for Hillary arose out of her response to this hatchet job. She went from being the best person for the job - to the fierce leader of a huge part of the Democratic Party.

Policy is not the issue. Cue: Obamites going nuts. "How can you say this??? Supreme Court etc etc" This is an ironic response to say the least. You guys have not voted, rallied, and donated to Obama based on policy - ever.

Oh really? Talk about the strawman/straw-woman! What about the major policy difference between Clinton and Obama: the war on Iraq? I'd say there's a very large contingent of voters who would not vote for Clinton because of her vote authorizing the war, and her failure to really own up to it. (Sorry, but just saying "I've taken responsibility for my vote" doesn't cut it.)

Almost to a person the commitment to Obama has been put in terms of personality.

Personality counts, though, doesn't it? We elect a person, not a platform. This isn't parliament. You can't just dismiss personality when it comes to leadership -- true leadership.

Putting what we know about his past aside for a moment - why don't you appeal to Clinton voters based on what you find so suitable in this man? I am not kidding. I am filling in a gap I see in the play for Clinton voters. Honestly - in over a year I have yet to hear WHY HIM?

Why him?

• Because one of the most broken things in DC is the fact that lobbyists are not only dominating the Congressional agenda, they are actually writing the bills, and Obama is running against that idea, while Clinton embraces it.
• Because Clinton is part of the DLC, which has been a huge sell-out to lobbyists.
• Because Obama's voting record is progressive.
• Because Obama paints a vision of the future, while Clinton was running on the past, on her resume.
• Because Obama is a very smart guy who doesn't insult our intelligence when discussing the issues.
• Because I can sense Obama's authenticity, while every time I've seen Clinton over the past 8 years, I've been left wondering who she is, what she really believes.
• Because of the Iraq War, his opposition of it.
• Because I'm seeing a lot of Republicans fascinated and interested in Obama.
• Because Obama speaks centrist but votes progressive.
• Because Obama's financial support comes from 1.5 million individual donations from ordinary people, not from a few thousand elites and lobbyists.
• Because he worked his way up from humble beginnings.
• Because of his background as a community leader.

Them's just a few off the top of my head. But I wonder if the real question here is whether an older generation of people, who tend to have, let's face it, more hang-ups about race than younger Americans, are willing to vote for a black man.

Here's a strange notion from Megan McArdle:

Fundamentally, what the netroots want is a Fighting Progressive. They want an unabashed liberal who will go toe to toe with the Republicans and punch them in the nose.

But what they have is a choice between a Fighting Pragmatist (Hillary Clinton) and a Kumbaya Progressive (Barack Obama).

That's not quite right, is it?

What we have is more like an abrasive politico willing and eager to parrot activist views (Hillary Clinton) and someone more interested in achieving true progressive reform than scoring rhetorical points (Barack Obama).

Megan, it's how you define "Fighting", really.

No, the it's not unanimous. There are a lot of angry people out there who just want to hear the angry rhetoric, damn the torpedoes. But let's face it, the matter is pretty much settled. Count the states, count the votes, count the delegates, count the money, count the number of donors, Obama is the leader. Obama is the candidate.

And anything that ends up changing that fact, at this late date (and yes, it is late for this particular election season), will be perceived as the stealing of the Presidency.

Do we need that again?

A Kosnik called Alegre has loudly discontinued his participation on DailyKos:

Sadly, the majority of the administrators have allowed this hostile environment to develop in our online community for anyone who isn’t planted firmly in the Obama camp. They’ve routinely ignored personal attacks and allowed disruptive, spam-like posts to go unchecked whenever anyone expresses support for Hillary or challenges something their candidate has said or done....

...As a result, our community has become little more than an echo chamber with an attitude that harkens back to the early days of Dubbya’s administration - yer either with us or yer a’gin us, heh! The attackers and disrupters are no better than Chris Matthews with their sexism, hate, lies, and obsession with bashing - all - things - Hillary....

...[I]s that the kind of behavior that Obama would be proud of? Do the venomous attacks and lies about fellow Democrats represent him and all he stands for in an accurate and fair manner? Does this spiteful and vindictive behavior reunite our party? Would outing this working mother represent hope? Would it bring about change? Would Obama encourage that sort of anger, bullying, intimidation and hate from his followers toward another Democrat and her supporters? Do those followers of his help his cause at the end of the day?

I can't say I'm surprised. For me, I decided to stop enduring the abuse from "allies" when the pie fight happened.

Sometimes the partisan blinders end up being blindfolds.

Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft gets it all backwards:

Obama's Unity Schtick is precisely what the DLC and Joe Lieberman have been preaching for decades and that the progressive blogs were supposed to be fighting AGAINST.

Not.

Barack Obama is a progressive who pitches his rhetoric in rational, moderate, common sense tones to appeal to centrists and independents and even disaffected Republicans, drawing them to his point of view.

This is just the opposite of Joe Lieberman, who has been voting with the right on important issues (and let's start with the war on Iraq and go from there), while pitching his rhetoric against the left.

Equating the two seems to be simply -- as Barack himself might put it -- intellectually lazy.

You know the election primaries are close when Kos starts his strident howls:

Psst, Barack, slamming John Kerry and Al Gore is what Republicans do. Not Democrats.

Making an argument for his electability, Obama said, "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats -- we've done that in 2004, 2000," according to a person at the event (rush transcript).

Funny, that. Last time I checked, Gore won his election. And really, is Obama going to argue now that the nation was divide because of the Democrats' fault? Is that the latest right-wing talking point he wants to peddle?

Huh? Is either Gore or Kerry running now? Why shouldn't he distinguish himself from losing party bids of yore? What next? Don't speak ill of Andrew Johnson or Grover Cleveland?

The fact is that the Al Gore of 2000 was pretty pathetic. Remember, this was the pre-"Inconvenient" Al Gore. This was the Al Gore whose campaign had demonstrated public angst over whether he should wear blue jeans or Dockers. This was the Al Gore who didn't seem to know who he was. It was his election to lose, and it was close enough to lose, one way or another. Any decisive win wouldn't have let the Supreme Court's meddling happen.

And serious, John Kerry? There are many reasons why John Kerry did not win the election. One....

I think that maybe the one sounding like a Republican is Kos with his nervous nellie cries. He cites Edwards flack Joe Trippi as an authority on the subject.

Joe Trippi, a senior strategist for John Edwards, blasted Barack Obama's field program in Iowa on New Year's Eve, bluntly rebutting the Obama Campaign's attempt to promote its large crowds as a sign of momentum in the homestretch. "If the crowd numbers are that huge, and ours are this small, and they're going to kick our ass then there's no reason to explain it. Just show up and kick our ass. It's better if you don't say anything about it," said Trippi, who has overseen caucus campaigns for Howard Dean and Walter Mondale. "Anytime anybody starts throwing those kinds of things around, it's because they're in deep shit," he told The Nation.

Kos then does the two-sides-of-the-mouth thing:

Obama's recent embrace of right-wing talking points and wholesale embracing of Broderite "Unite 08" talking points suggests that he's giving up on Iowa and playing to the independent vote in New Hampshire. He has to stay close in Iowa to remain viable in New Hampshire, but I'm not sure why else he would decide to shit on Democrats at such a rapid clip these past few days.

Yeah, Democrats. Don't "shit on Democrats." Got it? Unless they're actually running, that is. Yep.