Richard Cohen’s sister is canceling her inauguration party because of President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to bless Mr. Obama’s taking the office of the Presidency of the United State.

According to her brother’s column in the Washington Post, what made her do this is the way in which Mr. Obama’s choice to pick this pastor for this occasion serves as a special sort of condoning of Mr. Warren’s views about gays and lesbians.

I agree with Richard Cohen, and apparently his sister, that these views should be regarded as totally unacceptable by anybody who has any sense of the importance of civil rights and indeed of human rights. I also agree with Richard Cohen’s view that as a somebody running for the office of President and who was at the time a U.S. Senator, Mr. Obama had a particular responsibility for denouncing his then-pastor’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, for giving the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan a special award during the primary season.

I find it troubling that neither Mr. Cohen nor apparently his sister have not been, as far as I can tell, overly concerned by President-Elect Obama’s equally eloquent silence and inaction regarding the sexism and misogyny directed at Senator Clinton and her supporters, particularly the sophomoric expression of these attitudes by Jon Favreau, the man writing President-elect Obama’s inaugural address. (I shudder to think what the reaction of the Cohen family would have been if Favreau had been found on YouTube horsing around calling somebody a “homo” – maybe then Richard Cohen’s sister would join us in our demand that the President-Elect fire this sophomoric bigot as his chief speech-writer. Whether a bigot is slick (Warren) or juvenile (Favreau), he is still a bigot.)

It is tempting to forget in this sort of dynamic who the real problem is. As is clear from what I have written so far, I wish Richard Cohen and his sister would be, respectively, writing about and canceling inauguration parties as much over Mr. Obama’s inaction in the face of sexism and misogyny as they are in the face of anti-Semitism and gay-bashing. And yes, I wish that Richard Cohen’s sister had paid attention to and given greater weight to the fact that she had the option to work to elect somebody who, both as a Senator and as a Presidential candidate, repeatedly marched in Pride parades and met with editors of gay newspapers across the country rather than working for somebody who would not even have his photograph taken with Gavin Newsome.

But I am not falling into the trap that lies that way. Just because people got it wrong before does not mean they cannot help matters now. People can learn. So despite the bit of complaining above, I am not going to point a finger at Richard Cohen’s sister (or, for that matter, at Katha Pollitt for decrying the misogyny involved in the Warren choice when Pollitt, like Richard Cohen’s sister, opted to support Mr. Obama for the presidency when it was already obvious that he was complacent, to say the least, about sexism and misogyny). I am just pleased that they are starting to pay attention now and apparently coming to understand better who they voted for. To quote Richard Cohen: “The real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.”

Aye, there’s the rub. During the primary season and the general election a friend of mine who spent some considerable amount of time listening to me lament the Democratic Party’s poor judgment in making then-Senator Obama their poster-child, kept saying to me that the real problem with Mr. Obama is that he is an “empty suit”.

That term seemed to me too tepid back then. But I have come to see it as the essential problem behind the problem of Mr. Obama’s inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader, and possibly any kind of leader. To be a moral leader, to stand for something means that you have to fill out your suit, your office, your position. To be an “empty suit” is to be a person who cannot draw a line in the sand, precisely because you do not have an arm and hand within that suit to use to reach out and draw that line. To be an “empty suit” is to be devoid of the weightiness that real leadership requires, including the gravitas to admit to a mistake and change one’s position (drop the bigoted minister and lose the bigoted speechwriter; say you have been wrong to dig in your heels rather than listen to the concerns of so many of the people who worked so hard to elect you). To be an “empty suit” is to be a moral vacuum.

I refused to vote for John McCain for a number of reasons but among them was the fact that while I knew he had the capacity for moral leadership, I did not care for the directions toward which his moral commitments would lead my country. I refused to vote for Barack Obama because I knew he came up empty on the capacity for moral leadership.

In some ways, moral emptiness, especially in a President, is worse than moral wrong-headedness. The morally wrong-headed leader takes a stand, e.g. George W. Bush’s legitimization of torture, and one can rally people against the stand she or he takes. The morally empty leader takes no stand. Under these circumstances, her or his silences often allow people to forget that the blank that exists in lieu of a leader is the appropriate target of criticism. After all, it seems easier to go after people who actually do take stands (Rick Warren, for example) rather than the person who silently enables wrong-headed person to gain in stature. But this is sleight of hand. The real problem is the enabler, the person who allows the sophomoric sexist to put words in his mouth, the person who lets bigoted clerics and their churches affiliate with him.

So, to Richard Cohen’s sister and to Katha Pollitt, I say welcome to my party – the one that got lost in 2008, the one that expected moral leadership of a certain kind from a Democratic president. Now that you are here, I hope you can help me figure out what we are going to do with the empty suit about to occupy the Oval Office. If that empty suit thinks he can pick up sufficient evangelical money and votes in 2012, he is not going to listen to bloggers and op-ed columnists whose votes and followers he thinks he can replace with the support of the evangelicals, regardless of the detestable content of many of their views and some of their conduct. Personally, I do not think we can give the empty suit the sort of backbone necessary to resist the lure of that support. If we cannot give this empty suit some backbone, we need, as I have written before, to start figuring out how we can have a better candidate on offer in 2012. So to the people who are canceling their celebrations, may I suggest that they use the time and effort saved to start solving that problem. We need to coalesce now around somebody who can fight for a nomination by a major Party – probably the the Party formerly recognizable as the Democratic one – who is what Obama’s supporters hoped he would be and what I fear he is not.

If you are a Jew, a woman, a gay person or a somebody who is not any of these but cares about somebody who is, and you voted for President-elect Obama in the primaries or the general election, read Katha Pollitt (article reprinted,with light annotation, below). Than ask yourself some tough questions:

• Why did you vote for then-Senator Obama?
• Has he met your expectations so far?
• Do you think he will in the future?

If you are unhappy with President-elect Obama’s conduct now, what are you doing to work toward a better alternative candidate to support in 2012? If you think you will want an alternative, you better start working on that problem now, because the soon to be incumbent is already working to make sure he is the automatic choice for the Democrats in 2012, and that he maintains the money machine he created – depending on the precedent of foregoing public funding – to ensure that he will again be the Democratic nominee.

We have had one-term presidents in this country – usually succeeded by a successful candidate from the opposing party (e.g. G.H.W. Bush followed by William Jefferson Clinton; Jimmy Carter followed by Ronald Reagan).

Now, there may be a Republican out there who you would be happy to see become president in 2012.

But if you want an alternative to a Republican follow-up to the current term of President-elect Obama; and if you are have misgivings about President-elect Obama, for whatever reason, you had better start organizing around a different option for 2012, be that person currently an Independent or currently a Democrat.

My own view is that President-elect Obama, under the banner of empty p.c. talk, has taken real steps – ranging from the retention of Jon Favreau to Warren invitation to the cabinet appointments of Bob Gates and Ray Lahod – to erode whatever vestiges of a two-party system we have had in this country.  President-elect Obama has not ever and does not now speak for liberalism; he speaks for himself. But he will enjoy a tremendous advantage in getting the 2012 Democratic Party nomination: the Democratic Party ensured that for itself by rigging his receiving it this year in Denver. That is going to discourage any Democrat from taking him on. Of course, depending on how much damage he does to himself Mr. Obama may make it easy for the Democrats to nominate somebody an alternative by deciding to step aside, as Lyndon Johnon chose to do in declining to see renomination in 1968, a move that did not work out too terribly well for liberals or conservatives as it brought us Richard Nixon, one of the most disgraced and disgraceful Presidents our country has ever had to endure.

Make the jump to read the Pollitt essay.

The issue that President-Elect Obama seems to have is one that cost him some people’s trust back in the primary season. The change many of us have been waiting for is not us. It is a change from the hypocrisy, corruption, and absurdity that have riddled the last eight years of this country’s political leadership.

If the Obama questionnaire was meant to do more than provide protection for President Obama, that is, if the questions it asked were asked in good faith, seeking full disclosure up front in the name of creating a culture of transparency and truthfulness, then Mr. Emanuel should have revealed all of his overlaps and ties to Gov. Blagojevich.

If you deal with dirty politicians, however much out of necessity, disclose your dealings; and, if need be, put them in context so as to show why you should not be seen to be cut from the same cloth.

If Mr. Emanuel only now explains himself – or rather if an explanation is supplied only on December 22, when the Obama-Biden transition team releases its “internal investigation (the one that it has already told us clears its members of any wrongdoing), that is a post-hoc effort at rationalization, which is not going to cut it with people who thought that President-elect Obama was coming to the Presidency to stop that sort of thing.

Since the inception of the office the President of the United States of America has merited a great deal of public scrutiny. No, this did not just start with Bill Clinton. In his own time, President Ulysses S. Grant’s drinking habits were subject of much speculation; whether he was or was not an alcoholic and how that affected his ability to serve his country remains a topic of historical study and debate. The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemmings came up during his first term as president. I have no view as to whether Grant’s drinking or Jefferson’s relationship with Hemmings mattered during their own eras or whether and how they should matter now. But I do have a view about Presidents who expect not to come under scrutiny. In anything like an egalitarian democracy, it is the right of citizens to question their public servants, especially those who enjoy great public power. It is their right to care about the precise relationship and connections between their President’s chief of staff and an apparently crooked Governor from the President’s home state. It is their right to care about who their President chooses to write the words he speaks; or who he chooses to bless his inauguration.

It is not only unrealistic to bleat about how unfair it is for the public to care about these things. It is to forget that the American public has always cared about these sort of things, even if at times  the press has been more selective and inconsistent with what they report on certain on Presidents and presidential candidates than others.

Certainly, part of why people care is that they care about sensationalistic matters or matters that may have nothing to with a person’s actual qualifications or ability to be a good President. But people also care because they want to decide for themselves whether what a President reads or who she or he puts into a kitchen cabinet relates to a President’s qualifications and abilities.

So, people care about how Rahm Emanuel answered question 63: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.” They care whether he had to answer the question; they care whether he discusses any of his dealings with Gov. Blagojevich. And they care not only because they voted for a change in our nation’s political culture; they care because many of them voted for the candidate they did because they took his discussions of change to mean a change from low standards when it comes to corruption or even questionable dealings. People want to trust Barack Obama. Many react badly to people who criticize his integrity or trustworthiness. But again, to expect any President to be forever unscrutinized by the public is naive. And if a a candidate makes people believe he offers more integrity and truthfulness than any of his rivals, it is naive to suppose that President will not be watched closely to see if that President lives up to the standards he himself set.

Disagreements about how to end injustice, and specific injustices, are as old as injustice itself. Whether one is considering the injustices of colonialism, racist domination, oppression of women…in each and every one of these areas, those who can agree in broad general principle have often found themselves disagreeing over specifics, including some major ones. To make common cause does not magically bring about harmony.

When Gandhi fought to escape the injustices of British rule, he was opposed by people who resisted his ideas about throwing over caste distinctions. When Mandela picked up arms to fight apartheid, many withdrew their support from his movement. When King sought to expand his conception of civil rights to include equal access to economic opportunities, former and potential allies turned against him.

None of these examples of fights for justice achieved perfect justice, no more than the Civil War achieved a perfect Union. But I do believe that the U.S. Civil War achieved a more perfect union. Likewise, I believe the India of today is a far more equitable place than the India of one hundred years ago, that the South Africa of today, like the U.S. of today, has achieved within the past fifty years enormous strides toward racial justice.

My own dream is that within my lifetime, I see the progress toward the good of justice for women that Gandhi, Mandela, and King got to see the toward the goods of justice they pursued in their lifetimes. They managed to see results in their pursuits even though each had to learn when to resist pressures from people who genuinely shared their vision and when to resist the lure of becoming subservient to those who offered only short term funding and enrichment rather than truly shared commitment.

Now, even as I write this, millions of men and women are freshly galvanized to make it a reality that all the world comes to see women’s rights as human rights, to see woman as just as much the paradigm representative of humanity as man, and therefore to see a woman’s rights as indistinguishable from any human’s rights. With all that energy comes passion and motivation. But with it comes too friction and infighting. With it too comes the willingness by some to give up the chance to speak truth to power, in order perhaps, to gain power, but nevertheless at the sacrifice of a chance to speak without fear of offending.

I believe that at the end of every day, and at the start of every morning, a person needs to be able to reflect upon herself or himself, and address these questions to herself or himself: if I am fighting for justice, am I making choices that do not compromise my integrity? What can I tolerate in allies even if I cannot join wholeheartedly in every step they take? Can I broaden my toleration without selling out my convictions?

Especially in the fight against the subjugation of women, men and women must ask themselves these questions, because one of the hardest obstacles to achieving progress toward the good of justice for women is the tendency toward infighting on the one hand and selling out on the other. Fighters for the empowerment of women tend to care about all sorts of injustice and obviously have some very basic differences, including differences in sex, race, and class. These differences can lead to fissures and cracks that can render the fight for justice for women, for justice for people, very tough going. But the common interest in justice for all must be used to resist the fissures and to repair them, when possible. What cannot be repaired is selling out. Certainly, one person’s “sell-out” may be another person’s “reasonable compromise”. Personally, I believe in the necessity to question one’s own choices in such matters very closely, because it is very tempting to see oneself as the reasonable compromiser, the unifier, the one who moves beyond “unnecessary” partisanship rather than to recognize in oneself the more natural tendency in human nature toward selling out.

For my own part, I prefer to err on the side of sticking to my convictions rather than losing them in a process of mollification and conciliation. If enough other people join me in those convictions, then they and I will not have to mollify and appease: we will ultimately have coming to us those who would now have us coming to them. We will be numerous enough and bonded together strongly enough in the fight for women’s rights – the fight for human rights – to the point where will we have the upper hand, both ethically and tactically.

For my own part, I would rather take ten million baby steps toward the good without losing my footing in conscience than take a great leap and risk losing my moral compass. I will march with as wide a cohort as I can – even when we disagree on some things – in the name of reaching my goals. But I will not join ranks with those who are able to take heady leaps that gain them a seat at the local powerbroker’s table or a grant of some of that powerbroker’s money at the price of their integrity.

If ten million or twenty million or fifty-one million people choose to baby step along with me and I with them, we will, together, make the same rate of progress as those who choose to go it more or less alone. In the fight to beat misogyny and sexism, in the fight to achieve proper representation and empowerment for women, I expect great changes. I demand great changes. I will work toward great changes. But I know the greatest shifts toward justice take years to accomplish. To stick it out, every step forward must be appreciated and celebrated (e.g. Senator Clinton’s name placed in nomination even at the admitted charade of a free and open Democratic Party convention) and every step backward must be condemned and resisted (e.g. the retention of a speechwriter for the President of the United States of America who participates in boorish, distasteful and sexist party shenanigans.) Time is on the side of those who fight for justice, so long as those who fight for justice do so with patience and tenacity, and resist the parallel temptations toward selling out or excessive infighting.

‘Don’t agonize. Organize.’
- Florynce Kennedy

Right now, many people believe that they will not see a woman elected president of this country in their lifetimes. The estimable Marie Cocco sums the situation up once again. One of my favorite blog writers, Ani, gives us her take.

One can hardly blame people for feeling this way. But, I think it is too early to conclude that we will not see a woman elected president in the next 24 years. So, if you think you have another quarter century in you, not only might you see a woman elected president, you can help make it happen. It won’t happen because it will be easy to accomplish. And it It won’t happen because of hope. It will happen because of hard work in the face of long odds.

It will happen because we challenge ourselves to make it happen’ to make it a national priority. We must recognize that electing a woman to the Presidency of the United States of America is a way of affirming the 51 per cent of the American population consisting of women, a way of affirming that Americans can understand human rights well enough to appreciate that women’s rights are human rights, a way of affirming the great American heritage in promoting the rights of all persons based on ever more inclusive ideas of who counts as a rights-bearing person.

Before you stop reading because you decide this is just going to be a bit of cockeyed optimism or mere exhortation, I will name two concrete ways Americans can challenge themselves to make a woman President within the next 25 years.

I. First, learn about The White House Project. Don’t be put off by the bit on the home page congratulating Obama-Biden. There will be some ideas and aspects of the site you will like more than others, but spend some time at The White House Project, and you will see that this group understands that to put a woman in the White House we, as a nation, are going to have to face down the pervasive misogyny and sexism rampant in the culture and never more in evidence than right now. (In May, Marie Cocco wrote about the phenomenon; now with the talk of Senator Clinton becoming Secretary of State, the public face of misogyny has surged to the forefront again.) Some great pages from the website are here (this page shows that The White House Project understands exactly what we are up against), as does this one. Want to think about leading a political life? Look here. After you investigate, sign up to participate in the group – costs nothing but keeps you involved. Then, use the group’s form to get some friends to sign up.

II. Second, set up your own support/action group, dedicated to challenging yourself and other people to put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034. I think of such a group as a “Send a Woman to the White House” [SWWH] club or partnership. It might start with you and just one other person. But as with exercise, it is easier to stay motivated toward a goal if you do so with some friends and companions. Here are some things SWWH clubs can do:

meet once a week for at least an hour; use the hour to focus on political actions you are taking or want to take; then use the next hour to see how progress is going.

create an investment fund – decide with other members what you can raise per month, and how you can raise it, and pick an organization that is dedicated to women’s rights and particularly their representation as President of the United States of America.

think of fun and social ways to educate yourself (book group on women’s history or building presidential campaigns); walk-a-thons to raise money to donate to women’s rights/interest groups.

let other people know you have set up an SWWH group – and stay in communication with other groups.

take small but direct actions: if you see misogynistic or sexist advertising, boycott the product or service and write the company in question; if your local bookstore or library does not have an extensive collection of nonfiction about women in politics or women’s history, speak to the manager and ask for a better selection; when somebody uses misogynistic or sexist language, tell him or her that you object.

invite a woman you would like to know better or whose work you would to know more about to come meet with your SWWH; she does not have to be famous and the event does not have to be fancy; it can be a coffee for three or an open house for 30.

Yesterday was the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. This sorry date did not cause me to dwell on the horror and sadness of life cut too short. Instead, it put me in mind of one of the most admirable things President Kennedy did for this country. He challenged Americans to meet a seemingly impossible challenge: they did. In 1961, President Kennedy addressed the United States Congress urging long-term and continuous funding and commitment to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. President Kennedy did not live to see that goal met in 1969, but the goal would not have been met if he had not issued the Congress and, in another famous address well worth reading and hearing, the American people to invest resources and energy in hitting the mark. So we know that we as a country can attain goals that, when first presented, seem outrageously unreachable.

We may not have a President who will challenge us to put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034, but as American citizens we can issue the challenge to ourselves and to one another. If enough of us start now, we Americans can put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034, just as 40 years ago Americans put a man on the moon.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

-John F. Kennedy, Rice University, 1963

My own ambition and commitment: to start an SWWH group and to help anybody else who would like to start one. You can reach me through Heidi Li’s Potpourri for ideas about books to read, groups that might be worth supporting, specific projects you might want to try.

In the October 17 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Lanny Davis writes that Democrats should be glad Senator Clinton stayed in the race because she made Senator Obama a better general election candidate. THIS is why Clinton supporters – most of whom were presumably Democrats – should be glad she stayed in the race?

Mr. Davis, we were glad Senator Clinton stayed in the race because we watched her win the popular vote. Many of us believe that if the Democratic Party had followed its own rules and the superdelegates and regular delegates had not been coerced by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Obama’s campaign (who Chairman Dean turned over the DNC to in June when no candidate had actually won the party’s nomination), Senator Clinton might very well have been the party’s nominee.

We were glad Senator Clinton stayed in the race because we thought she would make a superior President to either Senator Obama or any Republican, including Senator McCain. I still believe that.

If the best you can say about Senator Clinton’s campaign is that it helped Senator Obama then you really are not saying much about the millions of voters who cast their ballots for Senator Clinton, the thousands of us who donated money, time, and energy to Senator Clinton’s campaign. I assure you we did not do it so that her run for the nomination would help Senator Obama. We did it because wanted Senator Clinton to represent our party this November.

I am not sure, Mr. Davis, if you realize how insulting it is to those of us who are not “prominent” or “key” Democrats for you to define Senator Clinton’s campaign as some sort of testing ground for Senator Obama. Please give Senator Clinton some respect and some credit: presumably she stayed in the race because she wanted to win. She wanted to win. And it was perfectly ok for her to want to win, and to want to win because she thought she would make a better President than would Senator Obama.

I certainly agree with you, Mr. Davis, that “the cartoon caricature [of Senator Clinton] created over the years by extremists left and right has nothing to do with reality.” But although I have not known her personally over the years, as you make clear you have, I did not need to see Senator Clinton keep her word about campaigning for whoever became the Democratic nominee to recognize her as “principled and authentically committed to progressive issues”. I saw that when I first learned about Senator Clinton, which was before her husband ever ran for President, when I was studying the lawyers who worked to prosecute Richard Nixon’s participation in the Watergate break-in.

Finally, Mr. Davis, I must take issue with this particularly offensive passage in your commentary:

There always was a danger that certain working-class/rural voters who strongly supported Mrs. Clinton in such state primaries as Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia would not easily transfer their support to Mr. Obama. The same worry was often repeated about Democratic women who were angry or simply grieving about Mrs. Clinton not being picked as the nominee.

Mr. Davis, by definition, I do not qualify as one of the “certain working-class/rural voters” you disparage with the remark. But let me make it perfectly clear: I am not angry or “simply grieving” about “Mrs. Clinton not being picked as the nominee.” I am distressed that the Democratic Party rigged its own nomination process and PICKED a candidate rather than ELECTING one.

You began this election cycle supporting Senator Clinton, Mr. Davis. And as the tagline in the WSJ article states you are ending it as an Obama supporter. Given the patronizing and dismissive tone of the passage I quote above, I imagine you feel much more comfortable with the candidate you now back than the one you originally preferred.

Certain people have a way of saying things that shake us at the core. Even when the words do not seem harsh or offensive, the impact is shattering. What we could be experiencing is the intent behind the words. When we intend to do good, we do. When we intend to do harm, it happens. What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through. We cannot sugarcoat the feelings in our heart of hearts. The emotion is the energy that motivates. We cannot ignore what we really want to create. We should be honest and do it the way we feel it. What we owe to ourselves and everyone around is to examine the reasons of our true intent.”

Indeed, now more than ever we cannot ignore what we really want to create. The upcoming Presidential election is regarded by many people as a pivotal for our country. I agree. But I think it is pivotal less for the impact it will have on the issues that press to the forefront of our minds, partly driven there by politicians and the mainstream media: bailout bills, vice-presidential picks, whatever.

I think this election matters most because it poses a question to all Americans, but especially to Democrats, about the ways we find it acceptable to practice politics in our country.

Many of my Democratic friends acknowledge that Senator Obama's campaign relied on less-than-savory, even dishonest, measures to secure his spot as the Democratic candidate; they will admit, when asked pointedly, that they are disturbed by Senator Obama's truth squads and training camps, by his manipulation of young children when he urges their parent to have them tell their grandparents to vote for him; by his refusal to denounce sexism or take concrete measures to affirmatively demonstrate that he understands the pervasiveness of that social ill; by his tepid stands on reproductive rights and equal rights for gays and lesbians; by his commitment to tying Church and state closer together. 

But these friends excuse Senator Obama's methods by saying that he has done and is just doing what it takes to win, and after all, isn't that what Republicans have done for years?

I refer those with that point of view to the quotation above from Thurgood Marshall, an often overlooked hero not just of the civil rights movement on behalf of black Americans but a hero for all progressive Americans, because while he naturally enough, given his circumstances, began his career with great concern for black Americans, he ended it by fighting for the rights of all Americans who did not enjoy the equality of opportunity that has been the hallmark of U.S. democracy since the country's founding, and which was renewed by the programs that Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated.

Apparently, many Americans have found Senator Barack Obama's words to have a shattering impact. But what is the quality of the intent of a candidate who resorts to dishonest, manipulative, authoritarian methods to gain office?

And what is the quality of the intent of those who hurl accusations of racism against those who do not want this sort of candidate representing them as Democrats?

As the quality of Senator Obama's intent has become clearer to me over time – a will to power including the power to completely silence any diversity of expression within the Democratic Party itself – I find his words ever more grating, and certainly not inspiring.

I do not believe this country is well served by authoritarian political parties or politicians – consider for example George W. Bush and the Rovian Republican style. But Republicans do not have a monopoly on authoritarian attitudes and tactics, and neither do conservatives in general. The French Revolution – meant to end authoritarian rule in France – ended in The Terror – tyranny by mob rule.

The glory of the United States of America lies in its ability to encompass really difference and real diversity while at the same time creating an environment for equal opportunity, the protection of individual dignity, and the generation of prosperity that can be shared by all. Authoritarians try to make difference and diversity go away, first by pretending it does not exist and then silencing dissenters so it seems as if it does not exist. We cannot ignore what authoritarians really intend to create.

At the same time, we have to reflect on what we really intend. I intend my country to have at least one political party that does not cram unity down my throat, that realizes that women's rights are human rights, that will not aim to put in office candidates whose vision of the presidency is an imperial one.

The emotions that I see and feel in my heart when I examine it closely: hope that Democrats will be the ones to keep our country democratic and determination to see the Democratic Party restored to its traditional principles and methods and returned to being a democratic institution.

These emotions undergird the reasons of my true intent when I argue that the only way to fix the Democratic Party is to refuse to support its Presidential candidate this year.

I do not want my Party, the Democratic Party, to be defined by an intent to win elections by any means necessary; I want my Party to be able to win elections on the basis of truly democratic and historically Democratic intent.

……………………………………………….

From my blog, Heidi Li’s Potpourri.