He and his wife, and everyone they surround themselves with, have an irrational hatred of all things Clinton, including the "politics of the past," where Bill and Hill had to court the votes of "racist bitter low-information hillbillies" to win the White House.

This irrational hatred, I believe, is what has caused the former Republican Obama bloggers to embrace Obama with such fervor and passion. You see, they were Republicans when Bill was President, and I don't think they ever got over their insitutional revulsion for the man and woman that won twice despite their best efforts.

Today I heard Obama bloviating about how wonderful HRC was. Just words. No way is he going to change himself to be more like Bill. For Obama, that would truly be becoming the thing you hate. In a weird way, I think it would be against his "principles."

Nevermind that Bill had over 60% approval when he left office, something NO other president can claim. But somehow he's become something to be ashamed of.

What is wrong with these people?  They even throw our last good President under the bus for good measure.

And it's not something Bill Clinton did in 1992, when he was about Obama's age.  He was the darling of seniors, and spoke out aggressively on their issues.

Nothing at all ever needs to be said more about Marshall.

All the other things talked about here are important, but if one is interested in winning in November, before one can even address Obama's weakness with certain demographics, one needs to address, OBAMA NEEDS TO ADDRESS, people like Marshall.

And kick them to the curb.

Simple as that.

First step on the road to Unity.

But what is wonderful is that there is another generation coming who think Josh is hopelessly old fashioned and another one after that who will think the same about the previous generation ....

Demonization of Bill and Hillary Clinton seems to be an addiction of some in the so-called "progressive blogosphere."  It's wrong, but I expect it to continue even after the nomination.  A few may even see Clinton as a bigger enemy than McCain, which is absurd, but I think for them it is not about politics or issues.  It's something else entirely.  

I chose Obama about a week before Edwards endorsed him.  I respect Hillary and Bill Clinton and see little difference between the two on the issues.  

I also agree with what Edwards said about Senator Clinton:

"She is a woman who, in my judgment, is made of steel, and she's a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done."

Admittedly I am angr over Saturday. But that anger goes to the Clinton campaign's actions then also.

Here are my concerns, BTD: The Obama supporters appear to me to want to dismantle the new-deal foundation of the party. I am attributing this to the followers, not the candidate.

Women, blue-collar voters, low-income earners, AAs and other ethnicities are all part of the grand coalition.

I think there's an attempt to reprudiate not only Bill Clinton, but the makeup of the party itself. Obama talks about unity, and about the party, but then his underlings repudiate Clinton supporters and Clinton arguments.

Policy-wise, there is little difference, but Bill Clinton sold his policies to the public in understandable terms.

Rather than ramble on, I must ask... does Obama actually LIKE 'the people?' Or does he think his policies are best for the people, and those that dont support him or his policies 'just don't get it.'

Geez, still too wordy.

Is Obama the person his supporters say, or is he like his supporters?

I am a 62 years old women who spent 25 successful years in adverting in NYC and then went to law school and practiced immigration law for 8 years before "retiring" so I have time to enjoy the world around me...I swim 4 miles a week, walk and bike 5 days a week and have never felt better...never.

My mind is sharper, more thoughtful and, if I might say so myself, smarter than any time in my life.

So kick Bill to the curb and I'll be right there, too.

Obama's problems are his ego (he obviously thinks there's nothing that needs to be changed) and cultural. There's really nothing that can be done about these things. There's not a VP candidate alive that will solve his problems.

Obama can lose via any one of a variety of ways, but McCain can't win.

I don't even know what that means.  But I think the import of the statement is Obama controls the election.

Bitter yes?  Clinging to religion or guns? No.

perhaps they're right. maybe all us old fogies, who vote religiously every election, will be washed away by the tidal wave of new voters in the 18-25 year-old range, that have registered during the primary season. perhaps.

possibly (should sen. obama be the dem. nominee), he'll be swept to the white house by that force of nature he's unleashed known as the "youth vote". possibly.

more likely, as with every election held since 18 year-olds got the franchise, they'll show up in pitifully small numbers, barely registering a bump on the richter scale.

It's one thing to run against someone's policies and plans, but it's another thing altogether to do to the Clintons what the Obama campaign has done.  And that is not going to heal, it is not going to just magically go away, people are not just going to understand.

I have to say that if Obama is the nominee, he is going to have a very hard time getting past the visual of looking down his nose at John McCain - I know he won't be able to help it because he is taller, but the images, combined with his attitude, are going to really hurt.

There is no sense of limits, no empathy for others, not even a sense of when they are acting counterproductively or destroying the path to their own goals.  

Just winning isn't enough, no, they have to utterly destroy all in their path.

They claim to have won the contest; they've already planned their victory celebrations; yet they are still earnestly trying to destroy Bill Clinton's legacy.  Mindboggling.

Parasites.

This post reminds me of something that I've been thinking about during this political drama. The contempt for the previous generation shown by the young Obama supporters is interesting to me because I see the same thing all the time in academia. Young scientists (especially grad students) are often arrogant and constantly dissing older scientists' ideas and pointing out their mistakes. They are too immature to recognize that they stand on the shoulders of those who came before. Many times I've had to gently suggest that a grad student not write that tempting paper trashing an older scientist for their mistakes lest their hubris come back to haunt them. Everyone makes mistakes and most of them also make contributions. I mean Darwin made a lot of mistakes because he didn't know about plate tectonics and Mendelian genetics but that doesn't mean we throw out his contributions to evolutionary biology.

I'm only 40, but I have a different perspective - I see a great chain of those who came before with all their mistakes but all their positive contributions too, and we can learn from all of it, including the mistakes.

The same thing holds in politics or any other field. The youf are often filled with hubris and disdain for those who came before (until they get a little older and the same mistakes are made towards them). Bill Clinton made some mistakes and, yes, he's part of an older generation that calls it a movie - shocking! But Josh and the rest could learn a lot from him if they weren't so contemptuous and immature. It is always tempting to trash your elders instead of learning something.

BTD, they hate the Clintons.  They hate us for not kissing their candidates ring.  And. I. Never. Will.  And, to honest, they are so blinded by their certainty that it's scary.  Maybe I'm wrong and this haughty, Harvard educted (which is great btw, but a lot of people go to Harvard and don't become elitist, although I'm sure that it helps-:)) who hangs out with a bunch of 60's radicals (again, no bother for me, I probably would have been one myself if I wasn't born so late) and has such an aura of arrogance is going to beat a man that spent five years in a tiger cage getting the crap kicked out of him on a daily basis, but I'll believe it when I see it.  

Okay, THAT was a run-on sentence, eh?  LOL

BTW, I will never vote for McCain or Nader, you don't have to vote for president, you can leave it blank.  I'm in WA state, which will probably go Obama but it will be close.  The Regressives are gunning for our Governor hard, but of course you probably know that, so turnout is key.  They Regressives will be energized, while maybe we won't be.  Gregoire and Cantwell are getting my vote, but not Obama.  But I'll gleefully be here with you bashing the crap out of McCain, and I'll just shut up about Obama and hope we only lose by a little.  I'm sorry, a vote for him is to reward a dirty, vile campaign run by his associates, if not himself.  No deal.  But I will beat on McCain like a kettle drum.  :)

I don't know what this "new and improved" Democratic party stands for, but it clearly stands against the working class. I'm one of those old dinosauric New Deal Dems, so I'm without a party now.

And another they're accomplishing with this foolishness (and is IS foolishness because that 2006 Midterm election depended on turning out the working class vote, and the world hasn't changed drastically in the past two years) is that they are making it easier and easier for those of who've been alienate to NOT vote for Obama in November.

"The way this campaign has been run is the way we need to be forever," Obama said. "Don't trust bloggers or someone else's opinion, because people lie."

An exerpt:
"GWEN IFILL: Now, Karen, how much of this is emotion? And how much will practicality rule of the day?

KAREN TUMULTY: Well, you know, it's not unusual for supporters at the end of a long and bruising primary -- and, as Adam says, this has been longer and more bruising than most -- to feel this way.

And you hear a lot of pundits, even party leaders, pointing to polls that suggest that a third or more of Hillary Clinton supporters will say that, in November, they will not vote for Barack Obama.

But if you look back at history, if you look back at the polling that was done, say, of people who voted for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party in 1976, or people who voted, you know, in 1984 for Gary Hart, you often find these kinds of percentages, somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent, saying, "I am not going to support that other person.""

Read that again, the stupid just burns and burns and burns like a million suns. "But if you look back at history" Karen my cognitively dissonant friend you would notice that every single example you gave, that nominee LOST IN NOVEMBER! Why didn't you just throw in Carter/Kennedy in 1980 while you were at it?

(1) Unity and post-partisanship - building bridges across old divides, healing wounds in order to get things done.  A "new" coalition.

(2) Change - being a clean broom through Washington. Out with the old, in with the new.  The old politics has failed us, etc.

These two messages are in fundamental tension.  You cannot say, on the one hand, that you want to bring everyone together, and then say, on the other, that certain people and groups are part of the problem, and not the solution.  If you say the latter, you are setting yourself up for a confrontation with those groups.  A change candidate has to say "there are people who we need to get rid of to make politics work again, because they have failed us."  A post-partisan candidate has to say, "There is nobody who I do not respect, or who I will not work with to implement the people's business."

You can't get away with both.  At times, Obama's change message has been so extreme and divisive that it's no wonder his supporters now ridicule people  - e.g. seniors, people who don't use the internet regularly, etc. - who are not part of the exciting new coalition.  Obama's core message has often been that anyone with more experience of national politics than him (and let's face it, that's 99% of Washington) is part of the problem, not the solution (witness, for example, his views on what counts as appropriate foreign policy experience).  That will upset supporters of those politicians - notably, Clinton supporters.  In fact, one of the weirdest phenomena of this primary battle is the number of Dems on the Hill and elsewhere that have been happy to say, in effect "Yeah, he's right, we're all fuddy-duddies.  Give us hell, Obama!".  Instead of, presumably, "Look, I was fighting for issues like a woman's right to choose and healthcare when you were still writing essays at kindergarten about how you want to be president some day.  So give us some respect."

Of course, the New Democratic Party ISN'T liberal, and is one of small tent, very, very, small -- and apparently not very techy at all in Josh's case, if he doesn't get that the term 'movie' is also accurate.

And the reason the Obama Movement doesn't want that, again, is that control of the party machinery is more important to them than winning the election.

Paranoid fantasy:

No doubt part of the "shock therapy" to come will be a government of national unity, which greatly devalues the office of the Presidency...

That's a measure of the contempt that Barack Obama has for the Democratic Party, and for voters who supported Hillary Clinton. That is why Harold Ickes nailed it when he said it was not a good step toward "unity" for November.

Those 4 delegates....Obama's shocking act of brazen scorn tips the balance for me. I cannot vote for anyone who has such contempt for Michigan voters, or for Sen. Clinton. Whether or not Clinton works to support the party for November, I know that I will not do so. I will vote for John McCain--my own "middle finger" flipping act of contempt for Barack Obama.

On the first point, I'll begin with a caveat: I like Bill, a lot.  I think he was a great president. I would love to have the Clintons participate in a large way in the party going forward, they have tremendous strengths.

Having said that, I think what's happening, in part, from Obama supporters is a reaction to some of the attack dog statements Bill has made over the course of this primary.  I know you will vehemently deny that any of these statements were of an attack dog nature, but if you can shed the partisan spectacles for a moment, you will recognize that, yes, indeed he made a few rather inflammatory remarks.  And yes, so did many Obama surrogates, but Bill Clinton has a unique and amplified podium from which to speak.

Just yesterday (or Sunday?), Bill was lamenting that his days of campaigning are now finished.  The insuation, to me, is that he will not be campaigning for the Dem candidate this fall.  So, if one removes the partisan lens, perhaps you may see that some Obama supporters are feeling mutually rejected by the Clintons and their supporters (come on now, you can't argue with that point).

On the second point, that Obama is disdainful and condescending, well.. you're certainly allowed to hold that opinion, but i think crowds of 20-75,000 belie the biased nature of that point.  

I don't think he's saying that connecting with people in unimportant, I think he's saying that Obama can connect with people in this day and age while Clinton is trying to do it in the same way he was doing it in the 90s and that way just doesn't work any more.

He has had a bad case of foot in mouth disease during this campaign.  

Sidenote:
As for Gore, the media trashed him 24/7 and Kerry made a horrid attempt to fight back the swiftboaters.

At the same time, Hillary is in the same place that Gore was in eight years ago.  Only this time, she leads her GOP opponent unlike Gore who trailed badly until the convention.

The Republicans have nominated a candidate who is hated by a significant portion of their base,

What johnny-come-latelys and neophyte change agents seem to forget is that bringing along that which worked before, that which was truly good and foundational, is not antithetical to their epiphany currently driving them forward. (which may have some merit) A respectful understanding of what came before is essential to moving forward in a just, economical, and efficient manner.

Pres. Clinton provided sound footing and effective leadership. Personal indiscretions are personal failures that intruded but did not devour a productive economy. He secured greater successes for low income constituencies. How can his successes be ignored. He still marshals on for the most needy around the world. He is a substantive American statesman who has a global heart of gold.

The float of Clinton supporters like Wes Clark  suggests to others that we should do the same but to me, they are former supporters looking for new opportunities. Clark introduction of Sebellius as the next VP is telling. Identity substitutions will attempt to persuade the offended and substantive moral fiber is nothing compared to perception in Obama's world. I can't stand turncoats to substance. I want a leader to run this nation with substantive knowledge and the tenacity  to stand up for their beliefs. Voting present does not reflect a substantive stand. Questions of actual alliance to cause should not have to be clarified. Compromise is one thing. Capitulation is another.