Balloon Juice and Oliver Willis enjoyed this nasty bit of sexism - Hillary Clinton: Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Of The Democratic Party.

Is there any self awareness left in the blogs? Or do these folks really want to alienate every Clinton supporter in the country?

P.S. The blogger who wrote that post's ironic slogan? "Don't be a d*ck!" Try it some time dude.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Comments closed.

I have long admired WaPo columnist Eugene Robinson but I found his last column offensive and wrongheaded. Like many, Robinson is taking to accusing anyone who recognizes the problem as arguing that white working class voters will not vote for African American candidates. That is a nasty smear from Robinson intended to shut down the discussion. Shame on Eugene Robinson for doing that. Robinson wrote:

Lower-income white Democrats may well defect to John McCain in the fall if Obama is the nominee, Clinton is arguing . . . Let's examine th[i]s premise[]. These are white Democrats we're talking about, voters who generally share the party's philosophy. So why would these Democrats refuse to vote for a nominee running on Democratic principles against a self-described conservative Republican? The answer, which Clinton implies but doesn't quite come out and say, is that Obama is black -- and that white people who are not wealthy are irredeemably racist

(Emphasis supplied.) That is simply false. Consider the argument Bill Clinton made against his opponents in 1992. Or that John Edwards made against his opponents in 2004. They argued they could captured white working class voters and their opponents could not. Under Robinson's construct, it is out of bounds to make the same argument against Obama because he is African American. That is wrong. More. . .

I support this idea:

On Tuesday a bunch of Hillaryites launched "Voteboth.com" to push the idea of a "Dream Ticket" of both Clinton and Obama … again. "We figure why have a nominee who has won 51.1 percent of the vote when you can have a ticket of both of them who have won 100 percent of the Democratic vote?" Voteboth.com spokesman Sam Arora said.

Until recently, Arora was Clinton's press spokesman, but now he's okay with Obama in the No. 1 spot."If Sen. Obama becomes the nominee we're going to make the case that hope and experience can co-exist and make the ticket much stronger," Arora said. Pundits say that a "Dream Ticket" could deal with one problem – the possibility that Hillary supporters could vote for Republican John McCain come November.

Here is the VoteBoth web site. As is often the case, I am speaking for me only.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but there will be an election in November. To read some blogs, you would think that Barack Obama's almost certain victory over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination means Obama advances straight to the White House. In case they did not know, it does not work that way.

One blogger says that it is silly to discuss Obama's failure to connect with white working class voters because:

Demographic and socio-economic differences between the two states,* plus the effects of Clinton’s ugly “kitchen sink” campaign, are not considered. [*For example, 31.7 percent of Virginians have college degrees, while 23.4 percent of North Carolinians have college degrees. Obama tends to do better among college-educated voters.]

I am curious if the blogger expects those voters without college degrees to suddenly get them by November and thus solve Obama's problem here. But I especially wonder if the blogger expects that Republicans will not campaign against Barack Obama. Or if they do, whether their campaign will be so much nicer than the Clinton campaign.

The reality based community? Not so much. Not anymore.

Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice by Ethan Brown

Sunday, May 19, I'll be hosting the Firedoglake Book Salon where author Ethan Brown will be discussing his new book. (5:00 PM ET)

Pick up a copy or order one from Amazon at the link above, and come join us.

My view: Snitch (cooperators') testimony is purchased testimony and inherently unreliable. It is testimony the Government purchases with promises of leniency, and freedom is a commodity far more precious than money. The incentive to lie is enormous and the practice has made our criminal justice system morally bankrupt.

About the book [More...]

Law Professor and blogger Ann Althouse and I have another Bloggingheads TV diavlog on Tuesday's primaries. The topics (you can click on any one or watch it all, but warning, it's 54 minutes total):

• Did the mayor of Gary, IN try to sabotage Hillary’s victory? (08:34)
• Jeralyn makes the case for Clinton to stay in (09:39)
• Ann fears Obama is too liberal, Jeralyn that he’s not liberal enough (05:59)
• Will voters think Obama is angry because he’s black? (08:35)
• What’s the real difference between Obama and Hillary? (04:46)
• Looking ahead to a McCain Supreme Court (05:19)

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Update: Here's Donna's comment right before the fracas:

BRAZILE: Well, Lou, I have worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, and I respect Paul. But, Paul, you're looking at the old coalition. A new Democratic coalition is younger. It is more urban, as well as suburban, and we don't have to just rely on white blue-collar voters and Hispanics. We need to look at the Democratic Party, expand the party, expand the base and not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

***

Here's the transcript of the big blowout tonight between Donna Brazile and Paul Begala, with Campbell Brown confronting Brazile about her Obama bias. (received by e-mail from CNN:)

It begins with comments by Alex Castellano, a Republican member of the panel.

More...

The New York Times reports on Hillary Clinton's transformation into America's working class hero.

Here's Green Day:

As I wrote here the last time I picked this song for late night (with the John Lennon version), we've only got one working class hero in this race. [more...]

Somerby reminds us today of Richard Cohen's classic example of double standards:

[RICHARD] COHEN (2/5/08): [. . . [I]n 2005, [Clinton] co-sponsored a bill that would make flag-burning illegal. . . . I was not alone in suggesting that on the flag issue, Clinton was readying herself for a presidential race and trying to blunt her image as a harridan of the political left.

. . . Look, I know what Obama was doing when he refused to confront his minister about the latter's embrace of Louis Farrakhan. . . . He will not get my Profiles in Courage award for this, but the rest of his record overwhelms this one chintzy act. Not so with Clinton. In the first place, you don't get to pander with the First Amendment. It is just too important, too central, not merely an amendment but a commandment: Thou Shalt Not Abridge Speech.

In his column the next week, the following correction:

COHEN (2/12/08): My Feb. 5 column was critical of Hillary Clinton for supporting a bill to make flag burning illegal. I have since learned from a reader that Barack Obama also supported that bill.

Heh. That is a classic.

Spoiler alert: Stop here if you don't want to know what's on Hillary's top ten list of things she loves about America that will air on the David Letterman show tonight.

If you want to know some of them, keep reading below the fold:

I was never good at math, but it seems Ezra Klein is worse. Ezra gets it completely wrong on the popular vote:

[Clinton]'s far behind in the popular vote. If you add Florida, where neither campaigned, she's still 300,000 votes behind. If you cheat and add Michigan, where Obama wasn't on the ballot, and you give him the "uncommitted" voters (as some Clintonites have suggested), she's still 188,000 votes behind. If you do all of that, and then Clinton wins every remaining contest by 10 points, according to Rick Hertzberg's calculations, she'll still be 160,000 votes behind.

(Emphasis supplied.) So Ezra's "math" says that if Clinton wins the last 10 contests by 10 points she only makes up 28,000 votes? Say what? But it gets worse.

Chris Bowers says "the Medium is the Movement:"

Is there a progressive movement? . . . If the Obama campaign can change the principles of the movement so quickly, perhaps there isn't a movement at all. . . . [T]he rise of the Creative Class doesn't really work, even most members of the Creative Class tend to be progressive. This leaves us with the lower cost of information, and resulting explosion in cultural production, brought on by the Internet. Perhaps the de-centralization of mass media consumption, the public sphere interaction, and cultural production brought on by the Internet is the progressive movement. It is the clearest example of how daily life has changed in a progressive way over the last decade. The medium is the movement.

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