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And now I have to kill myself
So it turns out I accidentally insulted Mightygodking. Wonderful. I wish something less depressing just happened, like I just choked a kitten to death with a baby duckling. Or perhaps accidentally ran over Barack Obama with my car. That'd probably suck less.
Leading the conservative movement since 1944
The right-wing magazine Human Events wants to offer you "all the ammunition you need to end Obama's White House dreams once and for all."
Stay classy, guys.
TalkLeft needs to smell the coffee
Look, I realize that Armando and Jeralyn are completely in the tank for Hillary Clinton and the juvenile antics of their thread moderation is a pretty good indicator that even suggesting they'll accept what I'm about to say is laughable, but every single one of their doomsday "if we don't seat Florida and Michigan the party's gon' SPLODE!" posts is based on the scenario that the nomination isn't settled before the convention. And the way that doesn't happen is, of course, what the aforementioned Hillary backers are refusing to acknowledge.
If (and with, at the moment, a statistical liklihood of about 70%, when) Clinton loses the race to Obama, she then gets to release her delegates from first-ballot obligation. This is what pretty much every losing candidate, for both parties, has done in modern times in order to present the public image of unanimous support for the winning nominee. When that happens, Obama, who will control the rules committee, will naturally seat all of Florida and Michigan's delegates, who will then likewise vote for Obama.
The argument here is that Florida and Michigan's votes in some way "don't count" this way. Well, yeah, they won't. Or rather, they won't count for Hillary. Because, you see, she lost. Howard Dean won Vermont in 2004. He lost the nomination race to Kerry. He released his delegates. They voted for Kerry at the convention. See how this works?
Everything- everything- said about how Florida and Michigan need to be "represented" at the convention is based on the premise that they need to be represented at the convention in a contested primary to vote on the floor for Clinton. That's the addendum that Hillary supporters aren't saying, and it's based on a plan to carry the entire nomination process to Denver and then fight to make the nominee the candidate who, barring a miracle at this point, will have won less states, will have won less delegates, and will have lost the popular vote in the primaries.
That is what "maintaining the democratic process" means for the Hillary supporters pushing to seat Florida and Michigan's delegates. That is what "letting the will of Florida voters" means. It means not accepting that Hillary Clinton's lost the race, and it means four months of this instead of attacking John McCain. Hooray for democracy, or something.
And now she is screwed
To paraphrase The West Wing: for future reference, tonight was when Hillary Clinton officially lost.
You have to understand the overall context with this: this isn't just a prominent campaign staffer, which would be bad enough. Geraldine Ferraro, a notch in American history as the first female candidate on a major party's presidential ticket, has just accused the Obama campaign of being racist against her because she's white- a statement in which being merely declared "monstrously stupid" would be dodging a bullet.
The Clinton campaign- not exactly pristine as it is with eyebrow-raising statements from surrogates via-a-vis race- now must choose between either tolerating a series of statements from Ferraro that most people will declare horrendous, and a large constituency see as blatantly racist, or publicly condemning and dismissing from involvement in the campaign arguably one of the most significant and landmark female figures in the history of modern American politics. And either way, Hillary's screwed.
There is a depressing irony in the idea that the chance of the first female president was destroyed tonight by the actions of the woman who was almost the first female vice-president, but it's looking very apparent that's going to be the case.
Sinbad responds
I honestly didn't expect more to come from all this, but it's kind of hilarious and I'm glad to see Sinbad is, well, you know... still alive. That said, it's kind of annoying that I called attention to this 48 hours before everyone else on the internet and yet the thing that got me all the traffic this week was the post where I said "fuck" a lot.
Wow, whatta concept
Geraldine Ferraro: Obama is lucky to be black.
Okay then.
Update: Adding in: as a straight, middle-class white male, I realize and accept that in the context of the demographic lottery that is America, I'm pretty lucky. It's going to be a very hard subject to address, especially since the media is dominated by people who, well, "speak for me" (see previous description) but this is an example of why, contrary to other suggestions, the longer this primary goes, the worse it's going to get.
The reality is that there's a huge demographic of Angry White Men - you know, the stupid, bitter people who think that everyone who is successful despite not being white and male has someone succeeded "unfairly" - and the idea that both campaigns aren't going to lean toward that demographic for some important votes is very naive. They're not going to be direct, which is why incite-by-proxy attacks like Ferraro's are going to be noticed more and more frequently. And please, Obama people, don't get all excited about this because I promise you you're going to get in the same kind of trouble until this nomination is decided.
In shorter terms, get set for a six week "outrage-off" where both campaigns take turns being outraged at each other, subtly suggesting to all the Angry White Men that Obama's only awesome because he's black and Hillary's only awesome because she's a woman, as well as the more blatant inverses that people attacking Hillary are sexist and people attacking Obama are racist.
And then, of course, the white guy wins the election in a landslide. Isn't triangulation teh awesomez?
Jesus Christ.
Eliot, you are a fucking idiot. You stupid, stupid, fucking stupid, shitheaded, stupid, stupid, stupid, fucking stupid, fucking idiot. Fucking shit-for-brains goddamn stupid asshole. You fucking stupid, stupid, stupid twat. You fucking moron.
Is there a chance we could sit down for a moment and have a brief chat about how fucking stupid you are? Because I'm not sure you've really grasped how fucking stupid you are. You, sir, are really fucking stupid.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ, are you stupid. Are you really that stupid? Oh my holy titfucking Jesus, you are actually that goddamn stupid. You absolute dick. You complete and total stupid bastard. I mean, good god. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. You are so fucking stupid.
Listen to me. No, look at- I said fucking look at me. Look. At. Me. You. Stupid. Cocknugget. What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you are? I just- fuck you, stop looking at me. Goddamn it. You fucking idiot. Holy shit, you are stupid. You are so fucking stupid. You stupid asshole.
Fuck you.
"Sinbad 2008"
Look, I think Hillary Clinton's qualified to be president. And I understand she wants to do whatever she can to win the election. What I don't understand is how in God's name she thinks she's going to win an election against John McCain on foreign policy and national security. And as people are starting to notice, she's claiming foreign policy credentials that are, quite simply, laughable. Neither Clinton nor McCain have a lot of active overseas diplomatic experience, but let's just check for a moment: "spent five years in a P.O.W. camp" versus "pretended to bring peace to Northern Ireland."
We're totally screwed, aren't we?