Dear Hillary: Please don’t ask me to support Barky because I won’t. Ever.
By medusa on June 24, 2008 at 7:25 PM in ABC News, Current Affairs, DNC, Elitism, Gender Bias, General Election, Hillary Clinton, Media Bias, Misogyny, Obama Attack Ads, Obama's Thugs, Race Card, Sexism, White Working Class
It’s all over the press that beginning Friday, Hillary Clinton will be fundraising with the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama. For many of us, I’d say at least a few million, this is a nauseating thought. While we respect Hillary for her loyalty, we will not be joining her efforts. In fact, for me at least, Hillary’s choice to support Obama reminds me of the battered wife returning home to her batterer. Often, these women have no choice. And I think in a way that’s true for Hillary. She’s a Democrat before all else and I’m sure there are other complicated factors. But in a Salon article entitled: Why Clinton Supporters Will Come Back to the Fold, Walter Shapiro argues that I’ll change my mind. His piece carries the subtitle:
Don’t worry about those angry Hillary supporters who say they’ll vote for McCain or stay home in November. History proves they’ll vote for Obama.
The article shows a photo of a Hillary’s supporter, a woman of course, crying and being comforted by another. But this melodramatic display of emotion, Shapiro suggests, is just bluffing. First, to continue the theme of a domestic spat, he compares us to nagging parents. Perhaps because that insult is too banal, he then compares us to George Bush:
As an empty threat, it ranks right up there with “Eat your spinach now or your mother and I won’t pay for college” or even George W. Bush’s taunting promise to get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive.” During the post-primary news lull, ardent Hillary Clinton supporters have managed to linger in the spotlight with their over-hyped warnings that they intend to sit on their hands or even bolt to John McCain if they are not wooed and won over by Barack Obama.
Yes, the sexism is there: we’re waiting to be wooed. And of course Clinton supporters are holding out because some people, women specifically, are fanning the flames of “feminist grievances. ” Here Shapiro perpetuates the Obama campaign’s sexist stereotyping of Hillary’s supporters by focusing on women, when in fact there are many men actively protesting Obama’s stolen nomination. But when the “Barack-and-Hillary show” goes on air, and the pundits wonder:
Was the joint appearance enough to win over the hardcore Hillary holdouts? The answer is an obvious “yes”…
Shapiro makes the same mistake as others outside the circle of Just Say No Deal PUMAs. He thinks that during the primary there was no “overriding issue…absolutely no ideological reason — beyond ruffled feelings” to keep Clinton supporters from voting for Obama. In fact, he says that the polling done today will not stand up in November:
For example, an ABC News/Washington Post Poll last week found that 24 percent of the Democrats who backed Clinton prefer McCain over Obama. But these numbers will certainly decline as base Democrats gravitate to their party’s nominee with increasing enthusiasm.
Citing studies that indicate that voters come back to the party even though their favorite candidate lost the nomination,” Shapiro seems to think that we will be convinced that Obama WON the nomination. We know that he did not win. This is no longer about Hillary, this is about the corruption of the Democratic leaders. Shapiro joins the ranks of Dean, Pelosi, Brazile, and the Obama-loving media who think we are simple-minded vacuous creatures who will ultimately follow them like sheep to the slaughter. He says:
A common theory is that disgruntled voters, troubled by the direction of their party, end up staying home in November. But with a record-smashing 36 million Democrats voting in the presidential primaries, this is not shaping up as a political year in which anyone will neglect to vote because, say, Whole Foods was having a sale on organic olive oil that day.
Again resorting to sexist stereotyping, Shapiro suggests that “the hardcore Hillary-types” will vote for Obama instead of shopping for olive oil. The media, and the Obama campaign, which of course includes the DNC, since they are now one and the same, are expecting us to develop collective amnesia.
We are going to forget all about Barky stealing the nomination, and insulting Hillary and her supporters. We’re going to forget the farce of the primary, that the decision to put Barky in place came before the first caucus cheating ever happened. We’re going to get over the misogyny and the sexism and the accusations of racism, and the elitism. We’re going to forget that many of us have received death threats from Barky’s insane followers, that our families have been threatened, and that we blog in full knowledge that we could be outed and viciously attacked at any time. We’re going to get over the fact that Barack Obama is an inexperienced, unqualified, two-faced, and a potentially dangerous politician with roots deep within the corrupt Chicago Machine.
Shapiro is certain that we’ll come around, though, even if we don’t know it yet. Well, maybe not those bitter, gun-toting, religious nuts–the blue-collar Dems, but those us who are “errant voters,” we will. In an analogy that is surely a Freudian slip, Shapiro claims that we will be guided by the lights of a roadside hotel, where cheap tricks are scored and whores are on the make, that is, the hijacked Democratic Party:
Party unity is never total — and there certainly are blue-collar Democrats who opted for Clinton in the primaries because she was a placeholder for their qualms about Obama. But for over-the-hill-with Hillary voters, passionate about the notion of a woman president or beguiled by all things Clinton, there will be no dramatic renunciation scene in their political future. Virtually all of them will be voting for Obama, whether they know it now or not. For a political party is a bit like Motel Six, where there is always a light on to guide errant voters home in the dark.
Talk about being in the dark….
by Ronald Scott
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