I take no credit for the post I include below. The author and I belong to a listserve where we have been discussing peace and politics. Saturday, we began discussing Hillary losing the delegate race. Below is Demi's post to the group about when Hillary actually lost this. I reprint it hoping that it will recieve a wide audience, and each of you may reflect on what she says here.
Updated to make reading easier on the eyes.
zamrzla
The Clinton's are smarting - as are all the DLC Corporate Democrats - from the consequences of their own hubris in believing that they owned the future of the Democratic Party. That all ended in 2004 when Hillary Clinton took a pass on the chance to run, unopposed, as the Democratic Candidate for President. At that moment in George W. Bush's first term, we needed a champion to rally behind - and she was the obvious choice. Completely ready or not, America was ready for Hillary Clinton and we needed her to step up to the plate and provide leadership.
It certainly wasn't because I liked Rick Lazio. I was every bit as liberal in 2000 as I am today. I didn't like the idea of voting for a Republican, nor contributing at all to the neo-con movement that was approaching full steam back then.
So, why did I vote for Rick Lazio in 2000? Solely to stop Hillary in her tracks in her transparent carpetbagging chess moves toward the presidency. Unfortunately, she picked the right state to move to...one that almost certainly would vote for her...and my preventative measures failed. So here we are today. Hillary for President 2008.
As much as I have issues with Scott McClellan's delay in telling the truth about the Bush administration, there is one core concept he brings up that hits the nail right on the head for me. That is the concept of a permanent campaign...one that we can all tell today Hillary is every bit as guilty of as the Bush Administration. Hillary's permanent campaign used New York as a stepping stone...and as a result, New York (through Hillary) voted to authorize the war in Iraq because Hillary was hedging her bets for the Presidency.
I hope I don't have to tell the intellectuals and chess players on this site what's coming prior to November but I think it's absolutely obvious. We even saw the primer to it in the 2006 elections. I'm curious just how accurate my "Spidey-sense" is here.
I read something yesterday on DailyKos, my other posting spot, that left me feeling queasy. It was a warning to Bill and Hillary Clinton, saying (in the headline) "we will hold you accountable if we lose in November."
This primary has been hard-fought. I don't want to debate who was more poorly treated by the press. I don't want to argue about who played the race card, or who campaigned more negatively, or who whined more, or whose supporters are more deluded.
Unlike many, I think reasonable people can disagree.
I am a white woman in my mid-fifties. I was the first person in my family to go to college. I have been a feminist for a long time--I was involved in taking over a university administration building to get day care in the early seventies, fought for the existence of women's studies departments, the right for women to go to law school and medical school in equal numbers with men, the right for us to control our own bodies. My Ph.D. dissertation is on the subject of women's history.
I was reading Madfloridian's blog on DemocraticUnderground, and came across this story. Doing a quick search here brought up no mention of the protagonist of this nonsense, Victor Dimaio, so, not knowing exactly how to bring the subject up, I decided a diary post was in order.
What Hillary wants you and the Superdelegates to know about Barack Obama. Did Hillary have any political reason behind the her assassination comment. Of course, the comment fits in with her overall mind game strategy. Follow me, and be patient.
Since the NH primary, I’ve been mostly perplexed by the "Hillary Girls" phenomenon. There seems to be two components: "Old Guard Feminists" and the so-called low-information blue or pink collar workers, full-time homemakers and older, retired women.
The "Old Guard Feminists" are the easiest to identify as a group. However, they are the smaller subset of rabid Hillary supporters and currently sound too much like bat-shit crazy female chauvinists to hold much interest for me. Even recognizing that many of them are writing and pitching the narrative of Hillary as the feminist standard bearer and that some of their language is trickling down to those "low information voters," they aren’t driving the significant portion of the "Hillary Girls" phenomenon. They wouldn’t even know that because, like me, they approach most questions from an intellectual perspective and sometimes that doesn’t work.
The absurdity of the Clinton campaign has become so loud it's giving me a headache. Caught in what is now an inexorable countdown to her delegate-count defeat, Clinton's campaign and supporters continue to claim, as shrill as ever, that she's "leading the popular vote."
So the Clinton campaign has come out with their fund raising figures for April. The grand total: $22 million. Now, step into the way back machine for a moment, to April 23rd, the day after the Pennsylvania primary:
Hillary Clinton has scored another double-digit victory of sorts—this one related to cash flow rather than votes.
The Clinton campaign reports that is has raised $10 million in the 24 hours since winning the Pennsylvania primary.
So, almost half of their total for the month was raised in one 24 hour period? Funny, but I'm not buying it.
One week ago I watched in horror as the talking heads on TV went on and on about how important West Virginia was, what a swing state WV was going to be in November, and how great Hillary Clinton was for winning that critical state by such a large margin. I finally could not stand it any longer and I wrote THIS. Now we are a week later and once again my fucking head is about to explode. Now we have a new state to add to the most important battleground area in the nation for the fall: Kentucky. I say bullshit!
Losing sucks. We've all experienced it at various points in our lives, and as much as we all try to live up to the professed societal ideals of sportsmanship, which dictate that we should be "good losers" when the unpleasant occasion arises, we still mostly feel like hurling heavy objects around the room when we're faced with the agony of defeat -- in any competition, be it sports, politics, or beer-drinking. Sometimes we act upon these feelings, and sometimes we can successfully suppress them. But they're there.
...Friday night, and as best I can tell, no one noticed! I've watched the episode twice now, reviewed CityLightsLover's excellent-as-usual Countdown diary, and waited all weekend for someone else to post on it, and I can find no reference to what I think is a pretty phenomenal milestone. (Seriously, I've looked. So if I've just missed it, please take pity on me and let me know.)
The funny thing is, it was clear what was coming right from the start.
"BAH-NUH! BAH-nuh! Bah-NUH! Which of these 5 stories will you be talking about tomorrow?"
Maybe I was distracted by hearing a woman's voice, to which I went, "Dammit, Keith's off!" only to have that be immediately followed by the realization "Oh yay, it's Rachel!" because Rachel Maddow is awesomeness personified and totally makes me wish I was a lesbian.
We have a decision to make as a party. Are we going to worry about the people who say they will refuse to vote for Senator Obama when he is the Nominee, or are we going to move forward.
That's the very real question we are facing here. Watch this video and listen to these people and their reasons on why they would not vote for Senator Obama in the Fall.
These are supposedly 'good Democrats', most of them have Hillary buttons on and have never voted for a Republican.
On a forum with some friends, I give periodic rundowns on the state of the race to explain ... well, up until a week ago... why the media has been operating under a mass delusion that Clinton still had a reasonable chance to win.
Hit a new point today ... even with Michigan and Florida counting in full, Obama still wins the nomination by the end of the primary season.
You've got to play both videos at the same time, and then watch the top one, to get the full effect. Think of it as a 2008 version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Silent Night" with Cronkite reading the evening news in the background.
