June 21, 2008

From the Mail Bag

Re “Dear Obama Supporters: We told you so.,” Blue Linchpin writes:

Please don’t generalize with Obama supporters.

I thought I made it clear that I was speaking to the Obamaniacs — the Obama supporters who have made the last year of my life as a Democrat a living hell.

A lot of us never had any hatred towards Hilary, and are pretty insulted that Hilary supporters hate us for no good reason.

Now, who’s generalizing?

First, you have to remember I’m not a Hillary supporter — merely a Hillary voter by default. At the risk of putting myself to sleep by repeating it for the umpteenth time: I am a Kucinich woman. Clinton and Obama were my last two choices.

Second, not all Hillary supporters “hate” all Obama supporters — but those who hate many Obama supporters have lots of very good reasons. Honestly, don’t tell me you haven’t seen the name-calling, the threats, the F.U.’s… all in an attempt to silence criticism of Obama?

If you have a problem with someone individual, insult them, not the group they belong to. Get it?

If I were to name every last member of Obamanation I “have a problem” with — well, the task would be akin to typing out the contents of the Manhattan phone book.

Go back over some of the hate mail I’ve received. Go find me on Democratic Underground, before I gave up the futile effort of trying to talk sense to the brainwashed. Anyone who called me a racist, who told me my civil rights were a non-issue (which goes all the way back to 2002, pre-Obama), who accused me of being a Republican troll, etc., etc. — that’s who I’ve got a problem with.

(And, no, I don’t buy the line, “It’s only a message board.” I know there are real people behind those “anonymous” usernames. In fact, I had a long, wonderful history with a good many of those very real people before they were put on a drip feed of Obamania.)

Now, I definitely disagree on Obama with this, and on other important things. But the sad fact of the matter is the alternatives were worse.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! The only alternative — and the right one — was for Obama to stand tall, against his own party. Isn’t that what he’s supposed to be all about, doing the right thing, as opposed to the politically-expedient (and cowardly) thing?

Yet all he’s done is live down to my extremely low expectations of him. Don’t make me read off the long, long laundry list of his endless sell-outs — although one I haven’t mentioned much is NAFTA; that’s another prime example of Obama selling out on progressive Democratic values (and typical of the way he operates).

In any case, I truly believe he was not forced into a corner on FISA. Re-read Unqualified Offerings‘ take; UO’s “sneaking suspicion” is my “sneaking suspicion,” too:

I have a sneaking suspicion that, as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, Obama could have kept the bill from getting even this far with a quiet word or two. Nothing stopped him from dragging Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid into the same corner where he buttonholed Joe Lieberman. If the House and Senate leadership really did sneak the bill past him last week, which I’m not inclined to believe, still nothing stopped him from shutting them down this week. Except if he either doesn’t consider it important enough to be worth his time and credibility, or if he’s just as happy that the measure might pass.

The man is the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, and he has a lot of political capital to spend — less today than yesterday, of course, but Obama could have circumvented this disaster… unless, of course, “Obama Kinda Likes the FISA Bill (But He Won’t Come Out and Say It).” Which, I believe, he does.

I like Hilary, but she felt it necessary when she was First Lady to end her campaign for universal healthcare thanks to being bribed by the healthcare industry. So I don’t feel I could trust her to work for the wellbeing of the poor if she was bribed again.

Who mentioned Hillary (or healthcare, for that matter)? Hillary has nothing to do with this. This was Obama’s decision and Obama’s decision alone, and no amount of speculation about what Hillary might or might not have done has any bearing on that.

Did you read the post where I mentioned Godwin’s Law? You’ve got to get out of the “Hillary would have been worse” mindset (the Siamese twin of “Hillary did it too!”/”Hillary did it first!”) and focus on Obama now. The Hillary blame game is moribund, defunct, pointless, futile.

The primaries are over. Obama is the nominee now.

McCain? I won’t even get started on that sick bastard.

Neither will I. Nor did I.

So complain all you like, got any better ideas?

As a matter of fact, I do — but none of them will work now that Obama has been crammed down our throats (mine and yours). But since you asked, I’ll tell you how we, together, could have avoided this whole nightmare — although I expect you won’t like the answer:

Public campaign financing.

Take the big money out of politics, and you’ve eliminated the legalized corruption of politics. Leave campaign financing in the hands of private donors, and you end up with truly excellent candidates like Dennis Kucinich, and truly decent candidates like John Edwards, dropping out. That’s the reason Edwards dropped out before Super Tuesday (the day he, and not Clinton, would have gotten my vote): He was outspent. His campaign was starved to death.

Private campaign financing makes for the most un-level playing field possible. That we ended up with the two candidates with the deepest pockets should come as no surprise.

So that’s my answer: Strike at the root, before you find yourself strangled into immobilization by an out-of-control weed. (In Obama’s case, we’re being chocked to death by kudzu.)

But that’s all moot now. The problem can’t be fixed. I’m tempted to fill an entire paragraph with old sayings about putting the toothpaste back in the tube and shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped, because that’s what it comes down to: It’s too late to fix it now. Obama is the nominee, and he shouldn’t have been.

That’s why I ended my post as I did: I don’t have any solution to this travesty. The problem could have been avoided if the Obama believers had just listened to us doubters, and taken our concerns as seriously as we did (and do).

And yes, I will keep complaining all I like. I’m hella angry with Obamaniacs (the ones who spit out “racist!” like an endless loop at every criticism of Obama, no matter how valid), and even angrier at those who refuse to admit their complicity in forcing an unvetted DINO on us.

I feel exactly the way I did in 2000: I was in the minority then — the minority of Americans who saw right through George W. Bush’s snow job — and now I’m in a minority within a minority: those of us who never bought Obama’s snake oil in the first place.

My only consolation — and it is a very small consolation indeed — is that at least I wasn’t responsible for this mess. I tried to stop this, in the only way I knew how, and so did 18 million other voters, and scores of clear-headed bloggers. Nobody listened, and so here we are.

You bet I’m angry. And I expect I’m going to be raging against the machine until the day I die.

It’s just a damned shame that the party I once believed in with all my heart and soul is the machine.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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