I came to the Democratic Party because of its commitment to working Americans, civil rights, and an activist government. But I also believe in the value of work, capitalism, and a strong military. I have always distrusted the far-Left and its focus on identity politics and anti-Americanism. I believe the United States is a force for good and I believe in the prudent use of our military power.

Read the rest ->

I see the Obama campaign as a resurgence of McGovern liberalism, albeit better packaged and mixed with a good dose of Chicago-style corruption. In a brilliant speech, Lynette Long summed up exactly how I feel about Obama:

Obama is a brand just like any other brand. Obama the Brand has a logo, a tag line, and a song. But Obama the man is not the same as Obama the Brand. Obama the Brand talks about new style politics, while Obama the man used Chicago style politics in every election. Obama the brand is for women’s rights while Obama the man pays the women in his office 77 cents on the dollar compared to men … Obama the Brand is a post-racial candidate while Obama the man plays the race card at every turn, listens for 20 years to the racial teachings of Rev.. Wright, and makes contributions exclusively to Trinity United Church of Christ, the NAACP and Care Africa. Obama the man and Obama the brand are not one in the same.

I find it unacceptable that Obama and his supporters have used sexism and race-baiting as a political tactic. I believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama to be president, and the sexism against her (and Hillary Clinton) has been one of our worst moments as a Party, comparable to Southern Democrats voting against Civil Rights in the 1960s.

I will be voting for McCain because I trust him not to divide Americans along lines of race and sex for his own electoral gain. I will be voting for McCain to send a message to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid that a rigged nominating process is not acceptable in the Democratic Party. I will be voting for McCain because Obama is not qualified to be president.

But this movement has a twist: Obama lacks legitimacy. The continuation of this rift is not about Hillary “losing.” Clintonistas, like myself, know that losing elections and having your heart broken is the inevitable risk of politics. Anglachel writes:

With John Edwards in the news these days, I have been reflecting on the theme of “Two Americas” and have applied a twist that more accurately reflects the two Americas within the Democratic Party – those whose bigotry and biases are excused because they are of the right class and those whose flaws are inexcusable, even when the flaws do not exist.

This “class” split in the Democratic Party is much more than an economic split. As Anglachel suggests, it is evidence of a values divide. These values are not the black-and-white split of abortion. Instead, this divide is a matter of emphasis. Obama talks about access to health care, but he doesn’t offer a universal plan. Obama criticized Hillary for her Iraq War vote, but he wasn’t in the senate to vote. Obama lectures Americans to learn Spanish–an irony not missed by many– a language he doesn’t speak.

But the differences of emphasis were not themselves the deal-breaker. The deal-breaker, I believe, was about Obama’s tactics in the campaign and the Democratic Party’s complete bias and vote-rigging for their chosen candidate. Donna Brazile’s embarrassing performance at the RBC was so transparent in its bias that she became the most visible Obama shill massaging rules for her candidate, all the while lecturing us on rules. Do they really think we’re that stupid?

Clintonistas, and now PUMAs, are revolted by four major issues. This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but includes the followings:

(1) The Democratic Nomination was Stolen

garyinchapelhill writes about Obama’s lack of legitimacy resulting from a stolen nomination:

Obama’s decision to return full voting status to delegates from Michigan and Florida does not make up for the fact that the RBC stole delegates from the uncommitted voters, as well as all write in votes, AND 4 of Hillary’s delegates. Until that travesty is corrected the votes of those delegates can not be considered legitimate.

And Marc Rubin of The Denver Group considers Obama’s current flip flop on Florida and Michigan as a ploy to entice disgusted Democrats into the fold:

Florida and Michigan were one of the earliest examples of how dishonest, two faced underhanded and fraudulent Obama can be, when he claimed in speeches that he stood for “voices being heard” and “every vote must count”, and then clamped his hand over the mouths of almost 3 million voters in Florida and Michigan because he didn’t like what those voices were saying, which was a loud “go home”. And in all likelihood are still saying “go home and will continue to say it. Clinton beat him by landslide numbers in both states and this little act of political self preservation isn’t going to fool anyone. Anyone, even an Obama supporter can see it’s nothing more than another cynical political ploy to try and win back voters who were disgusted with him a long time ago because he needs them now.

(2) Obama Race-Baited the Clintons

Obama’s race speech was compared to Lincoln by his sycophants in the media. It was closer to Nixon’s infamous “Checkers” speech, a disingenuous, hateful piece of sophistry created to dove-tail with white liberal guilt. The conflation of Jeremiah Wright’s homicidal racism with Geraldine Ferraro’s simple observation was only the most glaring evidence of Obama’s tactics. Anglachel points out that Obama’s demonizing of low income whites was a basic political calculation:

working class voters are not the socio-economic slice of the “white” vote that votes Republican. They are the least likely portion of white voters to do so, which is part of what made the constant slamming of this group so infuriating during the primaries. This was the slice of the white demographic most likely to vote for Hillary, and that was the reason they were being singled out for shaming and insults.

And Alegre puts her finger on why PUMAs find Obama unacceptable:

I think I can speak for millions of Hillary’s 18 millions supporters when I say that Camp Obama stepped over a serious line when they tarred the Clintons as racists in the lead-up to the SC primary (and since). Those attacks were simply unforgivable and may be a big reason (among many!) why many of us won’t get on that unity pony of Howie’s.

(3) Obama Attacked Hillary from the Right

Attacking Hillary from the Right was not by itself a deal-breaker. But the fact that Obama went after Hillary on health care — after everything she had fought for in the 1990s — was a disgraceful appropriation of Right Wing tactics and talking points. As SusanUnPC writes:

The sad reality, of course, is that Obama has no fealty to commitments over issues. Issues are merely fodder to be used to grab what he seeks above all else: Victory…Now, every politician has to be focused on winning. But most politicians have some issues about which they genuinely care and are knowledgeable about. Obama doesn’t seem to hold any issues dear.

(4) The Democratic Party Rejects Racism, Embraces Sexism

Democratic Party leaders and Obama supporters stayed silent while egregious misogyny was leveled against Mrs. Clinton. As feminist blogger Violet Socks said to me, the silence from our “brothers” on the Left regarding this sexism has been one of the most disappointing political events in the annals of progressivism. So we must have an accounting, and a defeat. There are worse things than losing elections, and I believe we have just witnessed them during the primaries. Obama’s use of sexist stereotypes against Hillary gave cultural permission for the venom against Hillary. It was outside the realm of acceptable behavior for a Democratic politician, and must be vehemently rejected. Voting for Obama is condoning tactics which are anathema to why we are Democrats in the first place.

Lynette Long writes:

I am not Lolita. I will not crawl back into bed with a party that raped me. I will not stay in an abusive relationship because I have nowhere else to go. I will not be placated by a pat on the head or a worthless trinket. I will not spend the rest of my life waiting for tomorrow or listening to people tell me that today is better than yesterday.

Defeat is Good

Just as Barry Goldwater’s defeat by Johnson in 1964 was considered the end of the conservative movement, Obama’s victory is seen by the neo-liberals as a rejection of third-way progressivism. However, the PUMA movement is not an end but a beginning. It’s not the continuation of Bill Clinton’s moderate policies, but a movement of dedicated progressives who embraced Mrs. Clinton’s far more bold agenda, an agenda more analogues to FDR than Bill Clinton, and one which is much more progressive than Obama’s. Our nascent movement parallels the rise of the conservative movement:

All the pundits saw the size of Goldwater’s defeat. Almost none grasped the implications of the fact that the Goldwater campaign had twice as many volunteers as Johnson’s — or that while 66,000 people donated to the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns of 1960, over a million gave to Barry Goldwater in 1964. Among other things [it is an] account of how a rebellious and at first marginal political faction moved toward power reminds us of the dynamic character of politics and the dangers of static analysis

I am a Democrat because I believe in universal health care, because I despise racism, race-baiting, and sexism, and because I believe in the democratic process. On all these counts, our Party has failed us. We must rid our Party of race-baiting, sexism, and vote stealing, and return our Party to its glorious heritage of patriotism, equal opportunity, and care for the most vulnerable.

Thanks to Medusa for her help with this essay.

Tonight I have the honor of interviewing Bob Shrum. His book, No Excuses, is just out in paperback and it’s candy for the political junkie. If you love politics, you’ll love this book. I’ll be asking him about his political war stories. I also want to get his thoughts on this recent primary campaign and the concerns expressed by Hillary’s supporters. We’ll take some calls. I hope you’ll tune in to hear this very special guest. The show begins at 9 p.m. EST.

There have been many discussions of the astounding similarities between McGovern and Obama as fringe candidates who offended the senses of the majority of America, who by and large are not as loud as The Fringe — but who instead tend to register their disdain at the polls.

While channeling George McGovern, we would certainly hope that Obama is a bit more careful than George was in his selection of Vice Presidential partners, given the problem with Mr. Eagleton and his undisclosed foray into the world of Electro-Shock therapy.

I do suppose that given recently uncovered Countrywide loan events, this would as a minimum rule out the loyal Senator Dodd, although there doesn’t appear to be a mental history. Just a history of pocketing about $80,000 in interest savings, while registering appropriate outrage on-cue and as he asked suffering American taxpayers to bail out the same subprime lender who gave him his “VIP” deal.

As I think about it, there are several other similarities between the McGovern campaign and the Obama Campaign besides ill-behaved and rude, threatening followers. Music seems to play a big role in the Obama campaign. More correctly, Rap has a big role, as so many of us do not regard Rap as music. Many of us are not even sure what to call it. We do know that its the medium to refer to when you want to learn as many ways as possible to kill people and beat the crap out of women. However, Obama worshippers find Rap to be appropriate to their candidate. The rest of us do too.

We have seen plenty of Youtubers use Rap to worship Obama in faux-song, and even the classless, crude and crass Obama himself has paid homage to one famed rapper on video, while giving Hillary Clinton the finger and brushing Whatever from his shoulders.

However, the use of music was also an integral part of the McGovern campaign, with one exception: George McGovern had far too much class and was far too much of an actual adult to do what Obama did on camera. Still, while today we have the Yes We Can song, created just for Obama, The Man Himself, in 1972 there was The McGovern Song, also written just for McGovern, The Man Himself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate the lyrics, but for $50 you can get your own copy of the The McGovern Song in it’s own special sleeve here. So we see yet another similarity between the two campaigns.

While bad behavior, incessant chanting and rallies, and music are definitely similarities between the two campaigns, I never realized exactly how much Obama has channeled the doomed McGovern campaign, till I was reminded of George McGovern’s campaign logo.Here is the now famous, and hopefully soon to be infamous, Barack Obama “sun” logo (pre-”Presidential Seal”, of course)

Now let’s have a look at George McGovern’s “sun” logo:

Amazing, isn’t it? Or is Eerie a more appropriate word?

Barack Obama: May you channel George McGovern all the way to November 4.

Today I know “how” people voted for Richard Nixon in a historic landslide. Nobody really thought he was so great. The problem was they refused to vote for McGovern.

Really, as I look back in retrospect, George McGovern was a gentleman. Next to Barack Obama he was brilliant and honest. He had the experience and the service to his country to add to his resume. He actually had a real resume. His resume made Barack Obama look like a Playground Director. And he was a pleasant enough guy as well. He didn’t offend women at all either.

George’s problem wasn’t George. His problem was his followers. We were angsty. We wanted “change”. We wanted somebody who inspired us. What kid doesn’t? George was it for us. Pass the bong!

George was also rather academic. That meant smart! They called him an “egghead”. That was the equivalent word at the time for “elitist” and “snob”. George didn’t relate much to “regular folks”. He was….well….at a higher level. We young people understood what that meant. Our parents did too. They just didn’t attach the same meaning to it. Sound familiar?

George was beloved by all the kids.

He was beloved by all the college professors, especially the professors who taught Socialism and Communism.

The hippies loved George. He was like one of them only older.

George knew all the cool mannerisms and buzz words. And he knew our music. He turned us on.

The old SDS people loved George.

The anti-war people loved George.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn for sure loved George!

The American Communist Party loved George.

The American Socialist party loved George.

George was the quintessential fringe candidate.

I remember discussing how cool and Far Out George was and how odious Dick was with my parents and they gave me that “Are you crazy??!” look. I didn’t get it. McGovern was going to pull our troops out and end that stupid war. My parents wanted that war to end as much as anybody. We had relatives and friends who died there for Chrissakes. McGovern was anti-war. Nixon was not. Nixon was nothing more than the establishment. The same old boring crap! Yet my parents were going to vote for Nixon! What the hell was that all about?

What had happened to my parents? I thought they were smarter than that! Was it like some pod thing? As my generation went, I had parents I could talk to. I mean, they were pretty cool. They kept me under check and acted like real parents, but other than that annoying problem, it wasn’t as if I had to hide things from them. Except the bong of course. The truth is, these were not completely Uncool or dumb parents. Yet, here they were planning on voting for Nixon! I could see they didn’t like Nixon, so why the hell were they going to vote for him??!!!

I’m telling you, I was just so freaked over my parents’ opinion of George McGovern that I seriously thought I should leave home while I still knew everything. I mean it was clear to me that these people who spawned me had morphed into completely stupid excuses for adults. Same with my grandparents. They were all voting for Nixon. My grandfather, the card-carrying Carpenter’s Union guy! They were losing it! How could Democrats abandon their party when they had the best damned candidate ever???At this point, I was so angry at my parents that I barely tolerated allowing them to feed me, heat the house, pay the mortgage, take me on cool vacations and buy me lots of stuff.

I didn’t “get it” then, but I get it today.

The fact of the matter is, George McGovern’s followers offended and terrorized the American Electorate more than the war did!

George McGovern received 38% of the votes that year, a huge bashing. Today we would call it “Handing your ass to you on a plate“. And there we were, stuck with Dick Nixon again.

What was it about George’s followers that made Americans trip over themselves to go to the polls and vote against him? How did adult America perceive them?:

They were mean. They were nasty. They never shaved. They burned flags and bras and shit. They rioted over simply everything. They had rock concerts that destroyed entire cities. They demonstrated and held up traffic. They were all dependent on their parents and had a lot of free time to be pushy and arrogant. They were often on TV doing something that reviled the rest of America. They took drugs. They had sex all the time. There were socialists and communists and radicals of dubious intent hanging around with or worshipping George. Some of them did dangerous things like blow up buildings and crap. Now who could I possibly be referring to?

The amazing thing is, they didn’t even have the internet in those days, where McGovern followers could terrorize, insult and thwart Nixon supporters. Technology was scant by comparison to today, yet McGovern’s followers were very well “known” to the electorate. Of course, in those days, reporters actually reported the news instead of creating it. There were no Keith Olbermanns or Chris Matthews-type people stirring the pot and working diligently to make things come out the way they wanted them to be. There were no nasty bitter old men like Jack Cafferty to sneer and snort and peddle his own opinions as if they were fact. News wasn’t blocked out because it didn’t “suit” the political ideology of the networks. If it happened, it was reported, even if the reporter didn’t like it. And boy-oh-boy, did those noisy rallies of screaming angsty kids put people off.

So, in 1972, people sat around their TVs and watched the bad behavior of McGovern’s followers. They chanted for George. They hooted. They yelled. They rallied in huge crowds. They chanted some more. Everybody around him looked about 12 years old to most of America. Some of them showed up at the Democratic Convention as Delegates, displacing elected officials that Americans knew and loved. 19 year-olds were making history, so they thought. Some of them hadn’t even grown beards yet in the eyes of their ATMs known as “parents”. They wouldn’t even take out the garbage and here they were as Delegates at a convention, trying to tell everybody who should be president.

Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and their Declaration of A State of War were well established household Nightmare names by that time, and the words used to describe them weren’t pretty. Their most recent Pentagon bombing was fresh in everyone’s mind. America had watched their crap on TV over and over again, and most parents silently thanked God they didn’t produce sociopaths like those two. To America, these were two insane maniacs blowing up the country and Declaring War on simply everybody.

In 1972, People also still remembered 1968 and the violence associated with that year. That was the year Richard Nixon won his first term thanks to the behavior of Young Democrats and the infamous unruly convention. Two great men were assassinated that year, and the result was yet more violence. It was not a pretty time and voters weren’t going to give these fringe crackpots anymore shots at crashing and burning down America and promoting socialism. It was as simple as that. When I think of Recreate 68, I think, Thank You! You are helping to defeat today’s George McGovern, Barack Obama. Please keep doing what you are doing!

The electorate chose Nixon because they felt America was safer with smarmy Him in charge. If nothing else, he would reign in the angsty young I-Know-Everything “new voter registrants,” also known as “dependents” — and hopefully keep them from destroying the entire country’s infrastructure. And there were a lot of new young voter registrants in 1972. This was the first year 18-20 year-olds were allowed to vote, so the number was massive. Remember, these were the Baby Boomers — The largest block of young voters in the history of America. This voting block was far larger than the youth voting block of today. Yet……..George McGovern got 38% of the vote that year.

Nobody helped George McGovern lose that ’72 election more than his young followers did. They were a Gift to Richard Nixon.

Today, those Baby Boomers are still a huge voting block. Except now they are grown up and they know shit from shinola.

I rest my case.

Dorothea LANGE, “Migrant Mother,” 1936

A friend paraphrases a famous story to illustrate why she may vote Republican for the first time in 40 years: in the late 1960s, when the feminist movement was still thought of as a novelty, a boorish male reporter asked the heterosexual Gloria Steinem if she was a lesbian. Steinem responded, “I am if you’re the alternative.”

There is a growing consensus at No Quarter and elsewhere that Obama’s tactics have made him an unacceptable alternative to Hillary, and many of us will be voting for McCain, writing in Hillary, or staying home.

As Hillary continues to increase her popular vote lead and absolutely crush Obama in critical states, many are looking at a potential Obama nomination as a coup d’état similar to Florida in 2000, facilitated by the neo-liberal-Dean wing of the Party, African American power brokers, and the Clinton-hating media. Regarding Florida and Michigan, Anglachel writes:

Lack of legitimacy means relying on force to win. If you have to bully people to make them be quiet, you have lost legitimacy. If you have to remove votes from the contest in order to win, you have lost legitimacy. The objection Hillary supporters have to “teh Rulz” to exclude Michigan and Florida is how nakedly they are used to force the numbers themselves into submission.

A commentator agrees with Anglachel and points out that:

The FL/MI debacle not only robbed Clinton of delegates, but it robbed her of momentum that would have affected later contests. It robbed her of frontrunner status. In fact, with those 2 states and Super Tuesday, she probably would have been close to winning.

An Obama nomination — after the selective but intentional disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida, the relentless race-baiting by Obama and his surrogates, and the venom from his supporters — is repugnant to many of us who, to use Arthur Schlesinger’s phrase, are unrepentant and unreconstructed liberals and New Dealers.

What we are witnessing is nothing short of the breakup of the historic Democratic coalition. Chris Bowers, Obama supporter and writer at Open Left, dreams of a cultural change in an Obama Democratic Party which is almost a parody of the brie and Chardonnay stereotype:

There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades.

Further illustrating their break with traditional liberalism, Markos Moulitsas has declared himself a libertarian Democrat, in other words: a politically correct Republican. These neo-liberals are really proposing a Party run by those who have little need for government and instead focus on identity politics, environmentalism, post-partisan government, and the rejection of American exceptionalism. The neo-liberals demonize the traditional Democratic base of poor white voters precisely because these voters rely on government and expect their leadership to fight partisan battles on their behalf. They are also deeply patriotic and weary of the moral relativism put forward by the likes of Jeremiah Wright.

Because of Obama’s anemic performances in West Virginia and Kentucky, the campaign and its supporters imagine a new Party. Sean Wilentz writes

the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of “change” – nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.

It remains to be seen whether the breakup of the Democratic Party more resembles (A) the McGovern disaster of 1972 and 20 years in the wilderness, or (B) a dismantling of the current coalition more akin to the Republicans replacing the Whigs in 1856.

In whatever form our Party takes, the perpetrators of this breakup are the Obama campaign and the neo-liberals. It’s their demonization of low-income white Americans which is largely the cause of our coalition’s breakup. Wilentz continues:

Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party’s inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom “progressive” pundits and bloggers disdain variously as “Nascar man,” “uneducated,” “low information” whites, “rubes, fools, and hate-mongers” who live in the nation’s “shitholes.”

Hillary’s ability to keep this race so close, with virtually no African American support, shows Obama’s incredible weakness as a candidate. This is not because of race, as the neo-liberal race-baiters would have you believe, but because Obama does not articulate an economic message which appeals to low-income whites. According to Wilentz:

Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters – and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama’s campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker — and that Clinton’s positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama’s campaign.

The class warfare now raging in the Democratic Party, while both sides ostensibly are on the Left, is actually the classic struggle between the proletariat workers (blue-collar whites and Latinos) and the petite bourgeoisie (neo-liberals). African Americans have mostly gone to Obama because of the historic nature of his candidacy; many, however, were pushed to Obama by the race-baiting wedge utilized by Obama and the neo-liberals, a tactic identical in form and result as that used by Lee Atwater and other Republican operatives. Obama’s hostility towards the white working class, as seen with his bitter-gate remarks, is the exact framework from which many of the neo-liberals view this struggle:

Obama’s dismissal of white working people represents a sea-change in the Democrats’ basic identity as the workingman’s party – one that has been coming since the late 1960s, when large portions of the Left began regarding white workers as hopeless and hateful reactionaries.

Arthur Schlesinger, eminent historian and New Frontiersman, foresaw the dangers of identity politics as a substitute for progressive policy. He believed in an activist government which should be used “to improve opportunities and to enlarge freedoms for ordinary people.” The Obama campaign’s desire to win the nomination, regardless of its illegitimacy, and their hostility towards poor white Americans is a movement which is tearing the Democratic Party apart. Many of us believe that the best way to fight for working Americans — regardless of color — is to make sure this movement is defeated.

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is steering the candidate’s wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups, calling into question what had been expected to be the groups’ central role in this year’s Democratic offensive against Senator John McCain.

Obama’s national finance chairwoman, Chicago hotel mogul Penny Pritzker, told supporters at a national finance committee meeting in Indianapolis May 2, and in other conversations, not to give money to the groups, people familiar with her comments said.
“From the beginning of this race Obama has told supporters that if they want to help his effort, they should do so through his campaign,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, who confirmed that Pritzker has told donors not to give to the groups. “And he means exactly what he says.”

Many of these progressive groups were established to counter movement conservatives’ dominate infrastructure. In 1971, in a reaction against the New Left, Lewis F. Powell drafted a memo for business groups and the Nixon administration on building a conservative infrastruture to counter what he saw as an anti-capitalist, anti-freedom movement of the New Left. This plan was followed and we have had a third of a century of conservative governance, interrupted by 4 years of Carter and 8 years of Clinton.

Similarly, after what many progressives saw as an attempted coup d’état by movement conservatives against President Clinton, the left began building its own infrastructure to counter the Rush Limbaugh/American Spectator magazine/Newt Gingrich assault on our first progressive president in a generation. MoveOn.org was born as a muscular defensive of Clinton in a era where the left consisted of stale periodically like The Nation and Mother Jones.

Now Obama is seeking to use the fragile progressive infrastructure for his own electoral gain:

But in recent days, major donors have begun to conclude that Obama is serious in trying to cut off funds to the outside groups.

“It’s given donors pause,” said one prominent Democratic donor of Pritzker’s words.

Obama’s remarkably swift and complete consolidation of Democratic Party power. It’s an unprecedented seizure of control that has built him, over the course of a year, the most powerful field organization and the largest financial network in American politics, leaving many existing structures – traditional party organizations in many states, the Clintons’ long-nurtured national network – in the dust.

Outside groups, of course, can alter the electoral landscape. Just ask Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, both victims of brutal attack ads run by groups more affiliated with movement conservatives than with the campaigns themselves.

But some liberal activists argue that Obama is making a big mistake by consolidating all the power and money into his campaign:

But Democrats who support the work of the media 527s say Obama’s making a mistake. Progressive Media USA has aired anti-McCain television ads and developed a website intended to be a hub for negative information about McCain.

As I wrote previously, the Republicans and their conservative shock troops have prepared their plan to dismantle Obama, assuming he becomes the nominee. Obama may be disarming himself in his attempt to deny Hillary the nomination, and consequently we can look forward to Obama joining the pantheon of defeated Democrats: McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore [updated], and Kerry.

I was reading an article this morning about how one of Obama’s advisors had to resign because of his connections to Hamas. Pretty serious stuff, wouldn’t you think? I mean, considering his other Middle Eastern affiliations of dubious intent and criminal status, you would think that an Obama supporter would at least be somewhat alarmed. Nope. Here was an Obama supporter’s comment:

All I have to say is keep crying like broads on a rag. You all lost face it…Cowards…..

Posted by: The Oracle in MD May 10, 2008 10:24 AM

This is just one of scores of messages I have read and captured from Obama pigs–with links captured for posterity, deleted or not. I do hope that young women who swoon for this man at least understand that self-respect demands respect from others. I shall be using these comments well throughout the election season.

On behalf of millions of Clinton supporters who have made it very clear that we will vote for a cockroach before we vote for Barack Obama, I would like you pieces of Obama crap to know that you can kiss our asses. We will collectively do everything in our power to see to it that you and that mysogynist, bigoted, race-baiting pig you worship, the fraud who has already set gender and racial relations back thirty years, goes down in flames in a big way. And there are millions of us. Millions. The kind of millions that brought his type down before from the voting booth.

Our goal is to make Barack Obama lose by an even bigger margin than George McGovern, and he got 38% thanks to his ill-behaved savage followers. And you guys are worse! And George was actually a gentleman with some brains, unlike Barky Obama. He didn’t even do the rap on camera and give people the finger. His nutcase followers didn’t even have the internet where they could make comments about slitting Hillary Clinton’s throat and tossing her into a river like you guys do at my.barackobama. But, there is one huge simlilarity. Like his crackpot followers, you folks are the reason that the Democratic Party has only elected only two Presidents in thirty years. And only one of them served two terms. Guess why? Because he was a moderate instead of a crackpot Marxist hanging off some radical cliff.

So who are all these people who will bring Barack Obama and you down?

They are The Women who fought for rights and recognize sexism and misogyny when they see it; women who will fight you with every fiber of their beings.

They are the Italians who would like you to know that their Garlic Noses are going to shove it up your asses in November.

They are the gays and lesbians who understand why Barry Obama refused to have his photo taken with San Francisco’s Mayor. The people who remember that a blank white page occurred in a magazine in the area that was supposed to contain Obama’s interview.

They are the Irish who watched that raving, crazed maniacal America-despising, white-hating “reverend” insult them on national television.

They are the Catholics who love Hillary Clinton and have a huge allergy to people who go to churches with preachers who act like whackjobs.

They are the Latinos who have received the same kind of unfair treatment from African Americans that African Americans have long resented themselves.

They are in Michigan. They are in Florida. No sense of hiding it. They know.

They are the Seniors, who are old enough and wise enough to recognize an empty suit peddling bullcrap when they see it.

They are the “Hicks” with guns and blue collar and service workers in those badly needed Swing States.They provide your smug arrogant asses with silly things like food, products and services you would be screaming about if they weren’t there. Now, Barry might pick himself a Vice Presidential candidate from one of these states, God knows he has plenty of swing states to choose from where he needs help badly. As a matter of fact, he needs to pick about four VPs to run with him. I’m sure if it can be done, they will allow Barry special dispensation to do it, right?

They are all the marvelous feminist men, the real progressives among you imposters, who are horrified at your behavior toward women.

They are the elderly and disabled who couldn’t caucus. They are the working people, including nurses and police officers and firefighters on shift who couldn’t caucus and tell you what they really think–because they were too busy keeping your arrogant asses safe.

They are the Baby Boomers who aren’t still on the bong, who recognize exactly what Recreate68 means. They won’t let you force us back to that vile time. They remember Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn too. Get it?

They are the Jews who recently had to hear Hamas say on the Day of Mourning for those killed in the Holocaust –that the Holoucaust was created by Jews to get rid of their own weak people. That was right after they had to hear Hamas endorse Barack Obama with a wink-wink.

And most of all, they are people who recognize ability, experience and knowledge as easily as they recognize an empty-suited media creation with a resume the size of a postage stamp, who is handing out Needful Things ala Leland Gaunt.

That’s who they are folks. Good luck with that.

So kindly don’t bother trying the Nicey-Nicey. We are not your wives you can beat the crap out of and later come back and get back together with. You are so vile you give yourselves away by the third comment, so really it’s a waste of time. You don’t even know you are offensive because it’s in your DNA or something. So really, there’s no sense of stressing yourselves trying to hide your disdain for us. It’s not necessary. We hate you even more than you hate us and all of you only serve to solidify our resolve. And when Barry Obama goes down in November, kindly remember why. Or don’t remember why. Nobody cares.

Flavia, here’s your head on a plate. Study. Learn.

One thing I do think Flavia is accidentally right about. McGovern is very significant. But not for the reason she thinks. Of course, how would she know that considering she probably doesn’t know squat about McGovern. McGovern sees himself in Barack Obama and wants to try to at least minimize the November slaughter.

The former president tells Jay Leno Wednesday night that the two states’ delegations should not be seated at August’s convention because they “disqualified themselves.”

“It would be a catastrophe for the party.” (Via Mark Halperin’s blog)

So here’s the new logo for the Democratic party convention, via New Hampster:

And HERE’S a t-shirt for these LOSERS:

BUY YOUR T-shirts here at New Hampster’s ZAZZLE page.

But after the Obama campaign’s “go-for-broke” Pennsylvania strategy, after their avalanche of negative ads, negative mailers and negative attacks against Sen. Clinton, after their record-breaking spending in the state, a fundamental question must be asked: Why shouldn’t Sen. Obama win?

Good question. Obama can’t win because he’s not a candidate of substance; he’s a candidate of style, and “bitter” blue-collar Dems have enormous economic anxiety, they want a candidate who will address their concerns, and they want a winner.

“Hope” is too vague a promise. In addition to Pennsylvania, there’s another canary in the coal mine.

Superdelegates, listen up: The canary that dropped dead is Obama in Massachusetts: in current match-ups, Obama and McCain are tied there. The Boston Herald’s Michael Graham writes about Obama’s weakness in the Bay State:

[John] Adams noted during the Boston Massacre trial that “Facts are stubborn things.” And it appears that, for the moment, the facts have caught up with Obama here in Massachusetts.

How else to explain the amazing, astounding and unthinkable results of the latest SurveyUSA presidential poll: Republican John McCain is tied with Barack Obama in the Bay State.

The last Republican to win Massachusetts? Ronald Reagan. The last Republican before that? Dwight Eisenhower. Even George McGovern managed to carry Massachusetts in 1972, the one Democratic holdout in Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide.

Let these facts sink in for a moment. At this date, Obama is tied with McCain in one of the most reliable Democratic states in the country. We’re not talking about swing states here, places like Ohio and Pennsylvania where Obama is under-performing. That’s a whole different concern. We’re talking about a state as blue as the water off Nantucket in August. Now close your eyes and imagine the Republican Convention: grainy black-and-white film of McCain The War Hero, the maverick, the smiling friend of Hispanics. Then GOP operatives roll another video: it’s Obama the liberal, the friend of a terrorist, the elitist in San Fransisco with his chardonnay-drinking friends talking about those poor, bitter white folks who love their guns and God too much to vote for a black man named Barack, and then the garish voice of Rev. Wright screaming “No, no, no, God Damn America!”

Graham continues:

Replace “McGovern” with “MoveOn.org” and you’ve seized the essence of the Obama candidacy. He’s the most liberal U.S. senator, advocating tax increases on the “wealthy” and enjoying the support of Gov. Deval Patrick, Sen. Ted Kennedy, The Boston Globe-Democrat and every 9/11 conspiracy kook in the People’s Republic of Cambridge. He’s got all the players in Massachusetts behind him except the ones who actually vote.

And this is the key line:

While Hillary Clinton soundly beats McCain in Massachusetts in the new SurveyUSA poll, 56 percent to 41 percent, the Obama/McCain number is 48 percent to 46percent, well within the margin of error.

Graham believes the reason for Obama’s weakness is Democrats’ desire to win, “What they want is victory – at virtually any cost.” He suggests that Bay Staters see Obama as too weak to take on McCain. There is some truth to this notion, but when you consider that Obama lost to Hillary in Massachusetts even while he had the entire liberal establishment behind him, it must be something else. What’s happening in Massachusetts is what we’re seeing in Pennsylvania: Obama doesn’t connect with blue-collar voters. It’s not his race or Harvard pedigree; the election of Governor Patrick dispels that idea. It’s the fact that Obama mocks the concerns of working people and his policy proposals are milquetoast next to Hillary’s, particularly in regards to the concerns of blue-collar workers.

Obama talks about “change,” but real voters in the real world want health care and jobs. Obama’s mushy rhetoric reminds many Democrats of the Compassionate Conservative George W. Bush in 2000. Harry Truman once said, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.” It’s no wonder then that 32% of Hillary supporters in PA would vote for The War Hero if Obama gets the nomination. Superdelegates, it’s 3 a.m. and your phone is ringing. It’s Massachusetts: the canary is dead.

I found a recent interview with George McGovern, the man who went down in history as one of the biggest Presidential election losers in history. George, you see, was loved, revered, worshipped by every child in America. He was like a Rock Star! Sound familiar?

Everyone who turned 18 that year couldn’t wait to vote for this man who was so progressive (for the time), they would have attached a bungie cord to him today just to make sure he didn’t fall off the left cliff. They worked their hearts out for George, yes they did! It was their source of entertainment for nearly a whole year! I was a little puppy at the time, and I simply was in LOVE with George. My parents on the other hand weren’t so impressed with the rallies and the behaviors of busloads of rowdy kids. Now does it sound familiar?

There was one little problem with this though. The mainstream, as in the majority of Democrats, disagreed with him and their young dependents. These were people like, you know, people who worked for a living, paid taxes, and boring stuff like that. So in practice, McGovern was the man who was ultimately the inspiration for Super Delegates. I’m sure you can now see where this is going.

So now it is time for everyone to understand the true purpose of Super Delegates. Mostly their job is to avoid another George McGovern train wreck. Does this at least sound familiar now? Just asking.

The idea here was to make sure that, as a minimum, people who are barely housebroken and who are rather …um…scant on life experience (not to mention scant in the taxpaying department) and judgment/wisdom didn’t pick any more presidential candidates all by their little selves – at least not until their beards grew in completely and they had reached their adult height. The idea here was that it’s kind of nice really to allow people who know something besides which rappers are the coolest to help pick the most powerful person in the world.

The party leaders realized after McGovern that young people are very prone to razzle dazzle and idealism. Substance seems to escape them if the rock concert is a good one, like, you know? I mean, without a little wisdom in the mix, we could have a real inept dork or a Pied Piper con artist as a candidate, you know what I mean?

Now does this sound familiar?

How about this quote from an Obama fan to help you along:

“There’s just this amazing excitement that’s here,” she said. “When he was talking about hope, it actually almost made me cry. Like it really made sense, like, for the first, like, whoa … how important a time this is for us. It was really exciting.”

–20 year old at an Obama Religious Experience Rally.

Like Whoa….

Now you know why Super Delegates exist. Too bad they are all afraid of getting beaten up if they do their jobs.

Anyways, here’s a link to an interview with our main Presidential election loser of all time. selected zealously by our adoring American youth: George McGovern. I should go easier on him though. He was a lovable progressive curr, I’ll give him that. He was an all-right guy, just a little over the edge of the mainstream is all. His followers, though, were Like Whoa.

The kids adored George McGovern. His 18 year old delegates were hooting and hollering all over the convention floor, let me tell you. And George was Our- Man-Dammit-And-Don’t-You-Mess-With- Us! If they had the technology then you might have seen George’s face on this sacrilegious poster. Like Whoa.

Unfortunately, enough Democrats didn’t subscribe to Like Whoa enough to vote for George. Richard Nixon (sputter!) kicked George McGovern’s butt onto the next continent because, even next to Dick, he was out of touch with the mainstream. They felt his anti-war platform was too “radical” in the way it was handled. It scared them more than the war did. George deserves love just for that race though. Who among us could feel good about ourselves after losing to Richard Nixon? God, how awful. It must have been kind of like the thought of losing to John McCain. Like Whoa!

Here are some highlights from the interview that might ring a bit of a bell today:

GEORGE McGOVERN: No, the superdelegates were not part of the McGovern reforms, but they were a concession some years later to the party regulars who thought that certain people should automatically be delegates. If you were the governor of a state, if you were a United States senator, if you were the state chairperson, you should automatically be a delegate, up to a percentage of one-fourth of the total number of delegates. There always had to be three-fourths of the delegates going to the national convention who were elected according to our reform rules, but we made that one concession.

I think one of the things that produced it—we discovered in ’72, for example, that a nineteen-year-old McGovern young woman defeated Tip O’Neill in his home district of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Well, Tip O’Neill should have been at the Democratic National Convention. Averell Harriman, running in New York, was defeated by another young person, a McGovern delegate.

So next time you hear Barack Obama or one of his swooning fans tell you that Super Delegates must go with the “popular vote” or the “delegates,” or whatever he is ahead with that suits him at the moment, please remind him that he is full of crap. Their job is to do their job. Overall I would say that, in this case, their job is to avoid Barack McGovern from being the next embarrassment for the Democratic Party on Election Day.

Originally posted at Hyper Educated Uppity Woman