I can't even begin to calculate how many hours and dollars I've invested in this site since 2002.

I'm personally trying to segue into a more detached, observational mode of this election now that I dislike both major candidates, and have resolved to participate only to the degree that I feel comfortable.  Politics is still fun (and important) to watch and discuss, even when it doesn't go your way.  I just ask not to be bullied into parroting some Democrat company line, where reality is secondary to narrative.  I'm not ready or willing to go there.  And I thank you for making this a place where I don't have to.

Let me be clear, I didn't really get angry during the campaign--I got disgusted.  But now,  when i idiotically click a frank rich column I get really really mad.  I get mad, not because of the misogyny but because of the dishonesty inherent in his columns.  The misogynists destroyed something that is essential for democracy:  informed discourse.  They did it throughout the primary by focus on hillary and now they're focusing on women in general.

"Angry women <3 mccain"  Gah.  why did i click that stupid link.  I'm so f'n mad after reading part of it...i stopped at "hysterical."  Probably the only time i wanted to comment on an editorial with %^&# &*$.  First it was "just not that woman"  now it's "maybe women are rational if they don't vote for mccain, cause clearly the only reason not to support obama is bitterness"

However, I have an important quibble. The "democrats" didn't give him the election. Rather certain elements within the DNC and other leadership structures gave it to him. That's a distinction with a real difference.

I suspect that you know from your own work within the criminal justice the ineffectiveness of cosmetic fixes imposed from above. Just create three strikes and the bad guys will disappear -- as opposed to doing the hard work of fixing our educational and economic systems. Impose harsher penalties for drug use to prevent addiction- as opposed to investing in programs to provide necessary treatment.

Much like those "cosmetic fixes" to the criminal justice system- combined with economic inequalities - have helped rip communities of all colors apart, so this "primary" has severely damaged the Democratic Party.

I respect that you folks want to hold things together in order to elect a democratic president. However, the problem is not going away. Nor do I believe you will be very happy with the outcome even if you are successful.

What I'm not having a hard time with is the way you run this website.  When every liberal blog was climbing blindly on the Obama bandwagon you provided an oasis of reasoned discourse.  That you can now support him does not take away from that.

In many ways I'm glad to see TalkLeft returning to its roots.  There's a crying need for study and dialog on how we deal with crime.  While other sites are consumed yet by politics, this one gives its readers something meatier and, I daresay, even more important than who said what about whom.

Thanks for not chasing people like me away.  I'll try to be mindful of your guidelines in posting.  

Everyone votes for different reasons.  The Democratic candidate has never received 100% of the Democratic vote, nor has the Republican (of Republican votes).  The election is a process that is organized vertically -- votes flow from many unassociated people up to a candidate.  We should not make the mistake of thinking that all Obama supporters are organized horizontally, and that they need to convince Clinton supporters to join them.  I understand how annoying that must seem -- I wouldn't do that to anyone at a party, so why on the Internet?

Why would he? He hasn't yet, and he is not by any measure assured of a win in November.  If he won't reach out now, when he needs the people who are not just Clinton supporters, but who support a Democratic party that does not act as this one has for much of this year, what possible incentive does he have after he has our votes?

If it were just Obama, what you've said might come to pass.  Maybe I'd be willing to wait him out and get the party back.  But it was not.  The was a full-court press by a significant part of the Party leadership to change the party itself.  Look how long it took the remaking of the Republican party start to unravel.  And it's still stuck.

I don't see any signs that supporting this party will cause it to give me or others with similar views any credit.  All I've heard here, on most other blogs, and in the MSM is that no one needs worry about my vote, because I'll come back, people like me always do.  And usually, not always, with scorn.  Howard Dean only even acknowledges sexism in the media (only) because of the volume of switched party affiliations and angry emails and returned solicitation envelopes.  Again, how would that change if I support the party?

Regarding the Obama of it all...I am a member of a long-time political list that grew out of the horrors of the 2000 election. It's had its ups and downs but this primary has pretty much destroyed it - what was once a very active group is down to a few messages/jokes and arguments.

One of the members posted something about the misogyny of the campaign. Another member, an Obama supporter, responded by saying that she was taking Senator Clinton's advice and "moving on," and that we would never agree on why things turned out the way they did, which I took to mean that she didn't think the misogyny was a big issue (she also disagreed with my characterization of Keith Olbermann, which shall we say, was harsh).

I said that it's easy for winners to "move on." But if the grievances of the losing side aren't acknowledged and addressed, a lot of people won't move on, and under those circumstances, unity is just another empty slogan.

That's why I'm still on the fence about what I will do in the fall (though it won't involved voting for McCain - I'll either vote for Obama or not vote for President at all and vote down-ticket). I think BTD has stated this - it is up to the winners to create unity, and they can only do that by genuinely reaching out, listening, acknowledging and giving us some of the things we want.

When the Obama campaign seems more interested in outreach to right-wing evangelicals than to elements of the base of his own party, what am I supposed to think? That I'm just "low-hanging fruit," that I'll go along?

"They'll come back. They always do."

This is the thing. I want to vote for Obama because I don't want to see another Republican in the White House. But how can I vote for Obama, when voting for him basically says that I've accepted a candidate and a party that doesn't value me or my vote?

Criticism:  Trusting Bush is a bad idea.

Hate:  Hillary Clinton is a warmonger.

This is an object lesson.

The Democratic Party is now controlled, owned and operated by people who think Hillary Clinton is a warmonger.

When I have good reason to think otherwise then I will re-consider supporting that party.

It's nice that we can discuss all this.

The comforting thing is this, that by quirk of fate, or by the intellect of common people, everyone I know agrees with me on this issue.

I hope those of you who supported Hillary will take her at her word and transfer your support to Barack Obama.

this assumes (wrongly, i believe) that all democrats are interchangeable. clearly that's not the case, or why bother having primaries to begin with? it would be easier (and certainly cheaper) to just take the name of every registered democrat, put their names in a hat and draw one.

sen. clinton, to her credit, is being the "good soldier", and i understand that. i don't agree, but i understand.

you assert as well that sen. obama has won the nomination. i thought that wasn't official until the convention, since the superdelegates are free to change their minds up until they actually cast their ballot there? am i wrong on this?

it appears that congress will become close to a super majority democratic body, come nov. 4th. that being the case, i'm inclined to believe a pres. mccain would actually be less dangerous than a pres. obama; a strongly majority dem congress would be more likely to act as a break on a pres. mccain, than they would a pres. obama.

as you yourself have noted, it isn't at all clear what sen. obama actually stands for, since it changes from day to day. at least with mccain, we know what we'll get up front.

yes, sen. obama appears to have won the nomination, by working the system set in place by the DNC, among other, more distasteful means. he's also managed, in the process, to display his glaring GE weaknessness, alienating huge swaths of the very people he'll need then.

i started out liking him, but believing his candidacy was several years premature. i now dislike him, and feel he'll both lose in nov., and never be seen or heard from again.

I will also never EVER forgive the Democratic National Committee and those politicians who turned their backs on the Clintons, who worked so hard to keep the Democratic Party viable when the Republicans bulldozed their way into the Congress and the White House.  The vilification of William Jefferson Clinton was the last straw for me.

I will never say a bad word about Obama, but neither a kind either.  His recent actions- moving the DNC to Chicago, especially, proved to me that Rev. Wright is correct:

Barack Obama is nothing more than a politician who will pander to anyone to get power and use anyone to help promote his arrogance.  

Any and all of our concerns can and will be ignored because they will have proven that no matter how much we disagree with their agenda, we will fall in line and give them our votes anyway. Our votes are our only power and if give them away to people who insult us now they will only continue to ignore and insult us after they win.

Many Clinton supporters have grave reservations about Obama's plans once in power, but Obama supporters refuse to acknowledge that sincere, thoughtful people may have a different point of view that may have merit.

Your outrage because because some of these loyal Democrats, like Jeralyn, can only voice lukewarm support for the nominee ONE WEEK after the suspension of Hillary's campaign is petty and, to put it mildly, counterproductive.

Jeralyn's saying that TalkLeft isn't going to be a Kool-aid stand, not for Obama, not for Clinton, certainly not for McCain. Reasoned disagreement, questions, doubts can be expressed here--just not character assassinations and groundless negative assertions. Having a snit because gray is allowed and there's no bright, colorful Kool-Aid served here doesn't do much to further one's cause: it only alienates people even more.

I'm not a loyal Democrat--not anymore. I'm an Independent now, thanks to Obama and his supporters in the DNC and elsewhere, but I'll vote for Obama--unless I become convinced that he would be so inept that even a good council of advisers couldn't help. But I must say that the utter intolerance of any criticism of Obama is disturbing.

I really like this blog because it does not glorify Obama - the facts are presented about him and this is a source I can trust.

Right now I am going to sit back and listen and then make my decision. I love Hillary but I am not going to vote for him just because she is telling me to or because he is a Democrat.

You appear to be saying that the way to reduce the strength of the GOP memes within the Dem. Party is to elect the gang that used the GOP memes to get the nomination and is busy purging the party of its strongest non-GOP faction.

I don't get the logic in that.

It seems to me, to the contrary, that the only hope of reclaiming the Dem. Party and getting it back to something closer to what it ought to be is if the current party approach and leadership goes down to crashing defeat in November.

My dilemma, and that of many, many others, is whether a McCain presidency, for four years or eight, is likely to be worse for the country in the long run than having the Dem. Party continue solidly in the hands of what I'm increasingly seeing as an authoritarian gang of Republican Lites.  My dilemma is that if Obama wins this November, we will not see a real Dem. Party again in my lifetime.

I don't know what I'm going to do about that yet and I will have to sit back and wait to see how things develop before deciding how I'm going to vote.  I my not make up my mind, for once in my entire life, until I go into the voting booth in November.

And even though I began as an Obama supporter, I can't support him at this time, thanks to the acrimony of the campaign.

And equally important, one reason I bailed on dKos and on Obama is I could no longer see any difference between the Dem supporters and freepers. And I knew good and well I'd engaged in freeper-like behavior, and I was extremely self-conscious and guilt-ridden about that because I really, really don't like freepers.

I would never vote for McCain - never voted for a Repub in my life and don't plan to start now. But I don't want to become or participate in the Dem version of freeperism.

And I am extremely insulted and disturbed by what I've seen happen in this campaign, but I do not want it to govern my life or my behavior except insofar as I remove myself from its immediate proximity and refuse association with it.

Now, I will never vote for McBush, but I am not too sure if I can make myself vote for Obama.  Now in Nov. I will be voting for , Ms Brown but I still have not seen anything from Obama (other than he is the Democratic  candidate) that assures me he is the better candidate, so I may just leave the presidential part blank.

There is no difference in the 2000 stolen election than the 2008 MI/FL primary.

Obama's backers were at least named:

Bob Wexler, the chair of Obama's Florida campaign

MI House Dems: supported Obama
Coleman Young II, Bert Johnson, and Aldo Vagnozzi

great love of Obama from Hillary supporters.  But if you cannot even accept that he won, that he earned the nomination, the healing process  cannot even begin.

1. he hasn't won, the convention isn't until august.

2. he hasn't earned anything yet.

3. the wounds the obama campaign intentionally inflicted aren't going to heal, ever. he will be hoist on his own petard, come the GE, should the SD's completely lose whatever measure of sanity they possess, and give him the official nomination in aug.

All blogs have to decide which side they're on now.

I firmly believe that.  If one does believe that how the Clinton legacy was treated during the primary is not OK, I just don't see how you can move on.  It crossed the line.  Obama's pastor crossed the line.  Smearing the Clintons as racist crossed the line.  

I just don't see it.  Again.  I just don't see it.

And that's really the question to the bloggers here who run this site.

One of the common refrains is "Pols are pols".  It's an excuse I think.  A lame excuse.  In the end, it's a way of saying "whatever the Obama campaign did, it's OK because they only did it in an effort to win a primary.   In the end, pols are pols, that's what they do."  

I have a fundamental disagreement with that perspective.

The question is, does someone who has a fundamental disagreement with that perspective, should that person be participating at talkleft?

You see.  The problem is, if you have a different perspective, then one must draw conclusions about what the Obama campaign, Obama himself, and the Obama movement truly does believe about the Clintons.  One must conclude that Obama himself really does think the Clintons are lying horrible people who must be purged from the party.

Those are the conclusions that I have drawn.

An ongoing effort is still underway to purge the Clintons from the party, and on that issue, there are sides one must take.

Will talkleft avoid this choice?

When you look at the text proper of what BTD says, the answer appears to be "Purging the party of the Clintons is a mistake" but that is constantly submerged by reading between the lines.  We must support the movement that seeks to purge the Clintons from the party because Obama is now the nominee.

That's what the Obama supporters are looking for here.

The dreamed of a war for the soul.  The wet dream of power.  Consultant power.  

I spoke out against that repeatedly.  I said that was a mistake.  Because once you decide there's a war, everyone must take sides.  No one can be switzerland now.

Everyone must take sides.

I think the Obama movement is a despicable thing.

I never hated Obama.  I defended Obama repeatedly in the past.  I defended Obama to the very people who he now embraces.   It is only because he has embraced the hateful people who dream about wars for souls that I must now be hateful towards him.

Everyone must choose now.

ClubObama and the NuDems -- the allegedly millions of voters allegedly here that render the "wrong" ones obsolute -- should stand or fall on their own merits for a change.

I won't allow one thin dime of my own or one scintilla of my support to prop them up any longer.

The further diminishment of the SCOTUS, the weakening of checks and balances, the continuing opacity of government, the disappearance of an active liberal presence within the Dems will be 100% the fault of Obama and his inside group of flatterers and toadies.

The most expensive landslide loss in history won't be one scintilla the fault of Clinton supporters and other groups impeded from participating and who "failed" to give proxy to political hyenas who wanted too much power too soon.

This, too, will be entirely the fault of Obama's prematurely triumphal political machine and its Boss-style vision of operation with self-important embarrassments like Rahm Emanuel and Donna Brazile riding the prow and scorching faithful allies and hard earned past accomplishments to pander to known right wing political enemies.

As I've said many times here, and particularly during examples of it in action, Jeralyn and BTD are stellar Dems. Were they representative of the party even in small measure, it would be easier to put aside my disgust with what my lying eyes saw during the primaries and the disaster in the future.

Jeralyn and BTD shouldn't have to babysit commentary, but I disagree even more that Clinton supporters should have to be subjected to the threats, patronizing, and ridiculous psycho-caca that TeamObama has been turfing in order to get us in line and turn over our support without making trouble.

Speaking only as one of millions earmarked for this continuing rotten treatment, which has been more subtle in the past in exploiting my willness to give them the benefit of the doubt, I won't accept the future role either of convenient scapegoat and handy straw (wo)man for the party's continuing pathetic failure to do its job.

My future activism regarding Obama and his kingmakers will be to ensure that the buck stops there and that they bear the full responsibility of their record, words and actions.

I will wholeheartedly support Sen Clinton in whatever future she decides for herself, whether in '08 or '12, and I know it will be another historical milestone -- perhaps less shamefully hobbled by her alleged allies and more fully appreciated this time.

 I don't know if I am a long time Obama supporter (late January?) but my Democratic and, even more importantly, liberal support stretches back years.  I welcome criticism of Senator Obama from the left.

I reject the notion that Obama "trashed" the Clintons. He did not trash them. Prior to the Philly debate in 2007 he made two specific critiques, which I think were accurate.

1. Hillary was attempting to excuse the decision to authorise the war, a decision numerous Democrats(including myself) decided was a telling and pivotal moment in which the opportunists in the Democratic Party were sorted from the principled Democrats. Call it a purity test, but I continue to see it as a character test, and by voting as she did Hillary failed that test. John Kerry failed that test. We lost in 2004 because Kerry never demonstrated clear principles and I wasn't about to vote to let that happen again.

2. The second critique was that Clinton kept on hedging her positions, flip-flopping on nuclear options in Iran and Pakistan, maintaining a public and a private position on social security, refusing to lay out a clear timetable on Iraq. Was Obama too quick to turn these minor issues into character issues? Perhaps. These were not blatant deceptions in retrospect(that came later for Clinton).

How did this start? It started shortly after Hillary said "this is when the fun starts" in the aftermath of the 2007 Philly debate. In the immediate days after she said that, three of her Iowa staffers were caught forwarding "Obama is a Muslim" e-mails. The Clinton campaign sent out a press release that juxtaposed a picture of Obama with a picture of Karl Rove. Then Bill Shaheen speculated about whether the Republicans would ask if Obama was a drug dealer. Bob Kerrey repeatedly stated that Obama had "muslim roots" and that he went to a madrassa. Andrew Young remarked that "Bill Clinton is blacker than Obama ever will be."

Are these wholly unrelated events? Perhaps. Speaking for myself and many other Obama supporters, we were starting to see a pattern in which Obama was being baited into making a public issue of his own race. And since the campaign was in Iowa, nobody was sure how durable his support was among white people.

After Obama won Iowa, this covert baiting seemed to become more explicit. When Hillary talked about Martin Luther King and Johnson and the Civil Rights Act and said, "It took a president to get it done," the problem with the statement wasn't it's factuality. THIS IS A KEY MISUNDERSTANDING AND REVISION OF HISTORY. Hillary wasn't insulting Martin Luther King in this statement, but rather she was insulting Obama by way of analogy. This was offensive because it came within the context of anonymous Clinton backers telling the Guardian that Obama was just "your hip black friend" and Bill Clinton comparing him to a television personality and a plumber, implicitly discounting Obama's twenty years of public service. Comparing Obama to MLK was a way of saying he wasn't a man with a decade of elected experience and another as a law scholar and community organizer, but rather THE UNCREDENTIALED LEADER OF A RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT(this was also in the context of news articles comparing Obama's supporters to cult members).

Through all this, Obama did not explicitly say that he felt the Clintons were campaigning against him in a race-based way. A campaign co-chair in South Carolina prepared a memo listing some of the events I just detailed, but Obama rejected the notion that Clinton was running a race-baiting campaign. Obama continued to reject that suggestion through Bob Johnson's comments, Bill Clinton's comments about Jesse Jackson.

In fact, the ONLY time that Obama or his campaign has explicitly said a comment made by a Clinton campaign member was offensive and demanded an apology was when Geraldine Ferraro decided to go on her "Obama Is The Affirmative Action Candidate" Press Tour. He has never said that they made racist comments in any other circumstance and if you want to try to prove otherwise, go ahead.

Look as much as Dean, Brazile, etc. have disrespected the Clintons, the whole Obama wing of the party is still closer to the Clintons and their supporters than the Republicans. The Republicans were the original seed of hatred and contempt, and it has just infected the Dem party.