R.E.S.P.E.C.T. – Why Obama Can’t Give It and Why He Will Lose
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on August 8, 2008 at 9:06 PM in Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, CNN, Current Affairs, DNC, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Nomination, Hillary Clinton
At the Rules and ByLaws Mugging, uh, Meeting on May31st, Howard Dean, in a truly disgraceful effort to appease Hillary’s angry supporters finally acknowledged that there might have been a bit of sexism in the campaign. But, of course, he didn’t know about it because “he doesn’t watch cable TV.” Weeks after the contest was forcibly ended, some media types dipped a toe in the waters of sexism and copped to about 5% of the brutal treatment Hillary received.
Two months after Obama has claimed the nomination, far from abating, the clamor for Hillary to be nominated has gotten louder. PUMA has grown, for obvious reasons. One big problem: R.E.S.P.E.C.T. We can’t seem to get any. Never mind sastisfaction. We ain’t getting’ any of that either.
From Rosemary Regello’s excellent piece in the City Edition:
Try telling a disgruntled Clinton activist it’s futile to wage a campaign without a candidate, and she’ll ask you if it’s easier to let a knucklehead run the country…
[T]he New York senator is bound by her blackmail agreement with the Democratic National Committee to stump for her rival, a candidate who many of her supporters regard as corrupt and inexperienced…
Why did she give up? By June 3rd, the day of the last primaries, neither candidate had earned enough pledged delegates to claim the mantle of presumptive nominee. Moreover, when you consider the Democratic National Committee’s Alice in Wonderland approach to allocating delegates, you don’t find a nominating process at all, but rather grounds for a criminal conspiracy. Thousands of complaints filed after of a dozen red-state caucuses, ranging from voter intimidation to outright ballot stuffing, suggest that some of those contests were deliberately rigged to give Obama two-to-one margins of victory. Yet even without an investigation, a sixth-grade civics student already knows that plenty of mischief has gone on here. Whatever the official explanation as to why Obama “won” the election, it can never pass the straight-face test. Beginning last March, Clinton was hounded by the party establishment and its collaborators in the American media until she quit the race. That’s not an election. That’s a coup.
One might go so far as to suggest that all those high-ranking party officials involved should be charged with treason. For the first time in American history, the Democrats are about to crown a nominee who’s not only unfit to serve, but whose ties to foreign bad boys like Aiham Alsammarae, Nadhmi Auchi and Antoin Rezko make him a candidate for the no-fly list, not the presidency.
There’s also the matter of those superdelegates. This elite cast of elected leaders and party officials can’t vote until the convention, yet the DNC went ahead and declared Obama the winner based on their input. Even on the official website democrats.org, the Chosen One was being heralded as “the Democratic nominee” within hours of the last contest. In criminal justice parlance, this is what’s called perpetrating a fraud.
I couldn’t have said it better. Adding insult to grievous injury, the misogynist, partriarchal ‘what does she want’ attitude from the Boyz in the press has not abated either:
The nonsense most folks are fed in the mainstream media is enough to make steam come out of anybody’s ears. A case in point, Kenneth Walsh files this story: Despite Obama’s Efforts, Clinton Supporters Won’t Fade Away with U.S. News. Even the title is insulting. Fade Away? 18,000,000 people voted for Hillary, more than any primary candidate in history. Fade away? To where? Wait, don’t answer that. As for ‘Obama’s efforts’ — he has not reached out in any way. Remember when he told Rep. Diane Watson of the Congressional Black Caucus that Hillary’s supporters need to ‘get over it’?
[Clinton supporters] argue that she hasn’t been given the respect she deserves even though Obama has apparently agreed to give her a coveted primetime speaking slot August 26 and he has been quite conciliatory.
Wait! Stop the presses! That charlatan has AGREED to give her a COVETED prime time speaking spot! He deigns to be conciliatory? They are still treating Hillary like the scullery maid.
Obama and his surrogates impugned her character, misrepresented her policies and her record and got away with it daily in the media. Bill Clinton was called racist, they implied she was race baiting and let her supporters be called racists and now Obama is being conciliatory? Who wrote this story? Dick Cheney?
She is getting a COVETED PRIMETIME SPEAKING SPOT – WOW. Obama you are so GENEROUS! But wait! That’s not all…
On Sunday, he endorsed the seating of the full delegations from Florida and Michigan, which had violated party rules by holding their primaries too early. Party leaders had penalized them, but Obama is now asking that the penalties be lifted. Clinton won both contests, although neither she nor Obama campaigned actively in the two states.
NOW he is going to be generous enough to seat all the delegates. Isn’t that nice of him? Once they are seated the race would amount to a tie. I think they would be all of 59 pledged delegates apart. But he is going to be really generous and allow that Clinton woman to speak!!! It speaks!! Wow.
I’ll try to contain my glee at all the respect he has shown to her and her supporters. Hillary won almost every large state, all the battleground states, has the popular vote and the electoral map in her pocket. Never mind that she is actually a real leader and not a media creation. But he’s being really generous…
The media has to perpetuate this line of reasoning, otherwise they must admit complicity in selling this phony bills of goods to the public, forever losing what little credibility they have left. They, and the DNC, are still hoping the public won’t wake up and notice the fraud that Ms. Regello discusses and that many of us are still reeling from.
Here’s another quote from the article:
For their part, some Obama backers consider the hard-line Hillary supporters to be sore losers. “What usually happens is, if you lose, you go silent for a while,” says an Obama strategist. “But Hillary’s supporters haven’t gone silent. They’re still out there in the news.”
“They went negative on us (in the primaries),” he adds. “But we didn’t fight fire with fire. It could’ve been scorched earth, but that’s not where our guy is.”
Sore losers? WE went negative? Help me out here, ladies and gents. Do I even need to dignify that one with a response? That’s not where their guy is? No. Rather Obama reminds me of Bush. A snake oil salesman wrapped up in a good marketing package.
And this is the pièce de resistance:
Now, the Obama team’s patience is being tested again, Obama advisers say. One particular problem is Bill Clinton’s apparent reluctance to campaign publicly for Obama. The former president’s role at the convention remains unclear.
Gosh. That darned President Clinton is testing Obama’s patience! That darned really successful two-term President who presided over eight years of peace and prosperity in this country. Darn him!!! He’s really testing Obama’s patience. Join the club. The clueless candidate, lost at sea without his teleprompter, has been testing my patience for months.
But, according to CNN, all is not lost because…
…[F]ormer President Bill Clinton will have a speaking role at the Democratic Convention…
The sources say he will speak Wednesday night, the night of the vice presidential nominee’s speech. Barack Obama will officially become the presidential nominee the next night.
Candy Crowley also reports Obama and Bill Clinton spoke today.
…
Obama said Thursday that the controversy over whether the New York senator’s delegates would be able to vote for her at the Democratic convention was a media creation.“There hasn’t been controversy other than what you guys are projecting right now,” he told reporters. Obama described conversations between the two campaigns over convention planning as “seamless.” “It has not been a problem,” he said.
Seamless, eh? I think not, baby puppy.
Asked later in the day whether he would be content if Clinton’s name were placed into nomination at the convention, Obama responded “I didn’t say that. I said they are working it out, guys.”
Oh. So I guess Obama is not so conciliatory after all.
If Obama really had respect for Hillary or Bill Clinton and was generous enough to put the interests of someone else besides himself first – you know, like the American people, he would show the respect to her and to her voters and ask for her name to be put into nomination. He would want the stronger candidate to drive us to victory – whoever that may be – and let the chips fall where they may. He would want everyone to be heard, knowing, as Hillary herself has stated, we would have a better chance then to be united as a party and win in November.
However, Senator Obama’s nature is to ride a wave of arrogance in order to cover up his fear, so true unity at the Convention, true respect for Hillary and her platform obviously will not happen. Not of Obama’s own volition, anyway. This does feel very much like a coup in the Party. If Obama, and indeed the elites at the DNC, were not running scared ever since the Texas and Ohio primaries, we would not be seeing this debacle now.
The very thing that keeps the Obama campaign insistent on continuing this pattern of exclusion and disrespect is the very thing that will destroy the Democratic Party. We are supposed to be the guys who count every vote. We are supposed to champion fair reflection. The more they refuse to acknowledge his “luck” in have the DNC riding shotgun for him at every turn, the more we dig in our heels, the greater our rage at this injustice.
Frankly this man is singularly unqualified and I don’t think I can support him under any circumstances. But a man who truly loved the idea of “America returning to its best traditions” might put his ego aside for just a moment and be courageous enough to truly let the delegates have a fair vote at the Convention. In answer to the question Ms. Reggello posed earlier, I think Hillary stepped aside because she put the Democratic agenda first.
It is ironic that Senator Obama’s personal flaws prevent him from doing the one thing in August that might give him even an outside chance in November.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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