An Ohio-based group of Democratic Hillary Clinton supporters say they’ll work actively against Sen. Barack Obama if he becomes the nominee, arguing that Clinton has been the subject of “intense sexism” by party leaders and the media.

I get it that former Clinton supporters are going to have a hard time supporting Obama. Staying home, sure, I understand. But, actively campaigning against him?

Why don’t Clinton supporters start a third party? The two-party system, as far as I can see, isn’t inscribed in the Constitution. So, why not? When I was at the Netroots Nation Fundraiser a couple of weeks ago, Senator Feingold spoke eloquently about how the role of activists (and we are all activists of various stripes) is to keep the candidates honest. To keep a future Obama administration honest.

527’s are one mechanism for keeping politicians honest. Yes, I understand that Obama wants to neutralize the power of 527’s. To which I will say that it’s very interesting and relevant that he wants to do that. And, I, in all due repect say to my future president: Not Gonna Happen. If I want to start (or support) a PAC that supports his candidacy I will. If I want to start (or support) a PAC that prods his campaign on the issue of energy and the environment, then I’ll do that. This hippopotamus has never been a lock-step kind of mammal.

Top-down organizing works very well for the authoritarian mindset. It doesn’t work for the Democratic Party. And, I doubt it would work for a future party founded by current Clinton supporters.

Still, I reserve a special place in hell for those who pretend to be applying analysis to one candidate or another, but in fact are just being hacky. By hacky in this case I really mean dishonest; attempting to mess with people’s minds.

To explain what I mean, I wanted to link to two posts. The first is clearly identifiable as opinion, the second appears to be analysis, but isn’t.

Eriposte: (I’m using key sentences from the post that serve to summarize the arguments)

• Sen. Clinton appears to be staying in the race because she really believes she has a much better chance of delivering the White House to Democrats in November than Sen. Obama.
• One of the fundamental values I have sought to see in Democrats is that they not quit before the votes are counted and certainly not quit because the media asks them to quit.
• As I have said before, Sen. Clinton represents the only remaining opportunity to really get universal healthcare passed in the next 4 years.

Jerome: (again, using key sentences to summarize his points)

• For all votes cast, this means that Obama leads currently by about 80,000 votes.
• There’s clearly someting happening though, in regards of support for Obama, as he failed mightily at GOTV in WV, despite outspending Clinton, and as I noted yesterday, with voting underway in OR, SUSA has it tied among those whom have voted.
• It reminds me of the ‘76 Republican nomination, when Reagan began winning nearly all of the closing states, even though Ford remained with delegate lead at the convention.

While I disagree with both Eriposte and Jerome, at least Eriposte stays well within the framework of “here’s what I think…” as opposed to “science and history tell us that…” For instance, it’s impossible to say exactly why Clinton is staying in the race, as no one can read minds. Science and history tell us that. Yes, she could believe she has a better chance of winning. She could also believe that she just really wants to be president, so there. She could believe that Obama is secretly a Scientologist. The point is, no one knows what she really believes. Indeed, no one can.

Jerome, on the other hand, tosses around what appear to be concrete facts. Like how many votes Obama currently is ahead, and how Clinton will ultimately be the popular vote winner. Unfortunately, he omits key assumptions like using 0 votes for Michigan. Or, even that the “popular vote” is not a directly measurable quantity, but requires a degree of estimation.

As I say, there’s been a high degree of hackery in the campaign. It’s the form of hackery that Jerome uses that I object most strongly to.

So, last night at Drinking Liberally we hosted author Eric Lichtblau, discussing his new book, Bush’s Law. I explained in the introduction to the discussion that I had not yet finished “Bush’s Law.” In fact, I’m still on the first chapter. “But,” I added, “the prologue is excellent, and the table of contents is one of the best ever.”

I got a laugh, which was the whole point.

Prior to the talk, Eric introduced his fellow NYT author, James Risen. I pointed out to him (James Risen) that I had his book “State of War” on my ipod, and that the audiobook was a favorite to listen to on long walks. That should tell you what degree of political geek that I am. The point is that he seemed genuinely surprised to see how immersed that this issue had become in the popular culture. How deeply felt his work was and still is.

Indeed, when I was having dinner with my mother last Sunday, I had mentioned that KCinDC and I had put together this event (along with many others, including Jane Hamsher and The Seminal crew, Josh, Jason, and Alex.) She didn’t recognize Eric’s name at first, but when I mentioned that he had written the NYT articles on warrantless wiretapping along with James Risen, her first reaction was to point out that publication had been delayed until after the 2004 election. This did not sit well with any of us.

I noticed in the discussion of the book last night that Eric Lichtblau was careful to delimit the discussion at the NYT to whether or not publication would harm national security. Of course, it did not as it was typically assumed that Al Queda knew they were being wiretapped, anyway. I just thought it interesting that the issue was framed strictly along those lines.

Big Trunk Democrat @ TalkLeft:

So let me get this straight — the first act of the self declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama will be to state that Michigan and Florida will not count? This is insane. Two key states in November will be dissed in the first act of the newly crowned Democratic nominee. At the least, Obama should wait until he has 2209 delegates counting the existing Florida and Michigan delegations.

Shystee @ CorrenteWire:

D. Aristophanes, in an extremely classy gesture, apologizes and asks:

…what do Obama and his supporters need to do today to get you into this car?

One answer is pretty simple: don’t be jerks about it. That and more progressive policy positions.

The worst possible downside to the thousands of hours we have all spent paying attention to this campaign is that democratic voters who supported the losing nominee will be so pissed off that they won’t show up to vote in November.

All it takes is a few percentage points in a few battleground states to lose this thing. Half of Americans don’t vote and a lot of them just because they’re too pissed off about something or other.

BTD is a tough cat to read. Is he blogging about this because he’s concerned about Florida and Michigan? Or does he just like the attention? The good news is that if BTD really feels disenfranchised, he can campaign for voting rights for our nation’s capital. It’s easy to forget after a bruising primary like this, but those of us that live in Our Fair City, DC, don’t get a vote in congress. That’s not just during the Democratic Party primary. That’s all the time.

Btw, where was BTD in 2004 when DC moved up it’s primary to vote for Howard Dean, and got the same treatment that Michigan and Florida did in this election? (Okay, the punishment was to make the vote “non-binding,” but if the issue is making every vote count, it’s hard to see how that differs from MI and FL in any practical way.) You can read about it here.

I have been engaged in non-internet-based activities involving other people. Upwards of 90% of which have been very positive and/or fantastic.

That said, the stupid bullshit has to stop. I really wish I had been the first to say that.

My take in a nutshell on the Democratic process is this: Hillary Clinton looked for a while like the inevitable candidate. Now, it looks like it isn’t going to happen. How her supporters deal with this is the next chapter in the saga. A suggestion if I may: patience is said to be a divine virtue. It’s not said to be a divine virtue because it comes easily to us. It’s a divine virtue because it takes some cojones. Or, if you prefer, some huevos. If you will, some huevos rancheros. Sorry, all this talk of feeding oneself on $30 ramen noodles has me pining for some solid food.

I suspect that this isn’t the first time that civilization has experienced this set of events. For the moment I’m lost on what the right historical parallel might be. I do hope it isn’t Les Miserables.

Eriposte links to a post at CorrenteWire under the title: “Why won’t that stupid bitch quit?” watch. Lambert quotes Kos here:

Clinton’s license to do harm
by kos
Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 07:21:00 AM PDT

In one of the threads last night, commenter theran made a good observation:

At some point the concept of “Republicans will do X” has turned into a license for Hillary to do all the same things. It’s bizarre, but I don’t really consider her a Dem any more.

Yup.

This, eriposte explains, is what motivated a post detailing “The Hypocrisy of Hope, Change and Unity.” In his/her words: (my emphasis)

Now, Sen. Clinton is no fairy and I do agree that she has perpetuated some Republican style talking points against Sen. Obama - something that I disagree with. However, if that is now the key criterion for inclusion in the Democratic party (according to the Crown Prince of CDS), let’s just say that Sen. Obama would have had to be expelled from the party quite a while ago. (To be clear, I believe Sen. Obama is a Democrat who requires no expulsion of any kind, but I’m pointing out what would have had to happen if we followed the illogic of the Crown Prince of CDS). All I can say is, if the Crown Prince of CDS and his like-thinking friends keep this up, Sen. Obama’s already tenuous support amongst a significant chunk of Sen. Clinton’s base (which is roughly half of the Democratic party) will start depleting even further and become problematic if Sen. Obama becomes the nominee. Their behavior is certainly not the kind that fosters any kind of hope, change or unity and it is sad that fact-free, irrational, hate-filled, blog posts - something that used to be the domain of Little Green Fascists and other lower life forms on the Right - have become part of the mainstream of Sen. Obama’s blogger base on the internets (also see Turkana’s post on this).

The tenor of this spat is a bit over-wrought. It’s difficult for me to look at this as a prelude and take this list that eriposte has put together seriously.

Now, I did look his/her list, and thought it was thin gruel. For example, what was supposed to show Obama going negative on Bill Clinton’s sex life was this letter to the editor in the Denver Post by an Obama superdelegate:

The Democratic Party chairman in Wyoming is predicting that Democratic candidates throughout the Rocky Mountain region will be damaged if his party selects Hillary Clinton for president.

“Every Democratic candidate in Wyoming will be painted with that same liberal, big-government brush. We will also be the target of the locker room jokes that rightfully belong to Bill Clinton,” John Millin wrote in a letter to The Denver Post.

“While I don’t agree with this view of Mrs. Clinton, I have to accept that this is the truth. It has become the dirty little secret in the Democratic Party,” he wrote. “Westerners have an independent, libertarian spirit and Democrats can make Republicans pay a heavy price for years of pandering to the social conservatives. None of this will happen if Hillary wins the nomination.”

This statement is well within the cultural norms of Wyoming. And not from the Obama campaign, but from somebody who plans to vote for him. So, I don’t think it’s fair to say that this is the equivalent of Hillary Clinton linking Obama to the Weather Underground during a televised debate.

• Delegates vs. Popular Vote.

  While Obama supporters continue to tout The Math, they continue to ignore the fact that Obama cannot win the nomination on pledged delegates. Once again, repeat after me: the superdelegates will decide the nomination.

  The primary system, like any contest, is a mechanism designed to measure the will of the people. The rules of the contest, some of which are contrived, must be agreed on in advance for the contest to be fair. The expected results, or The Math, as Turkana puts it (referring to a Karl Rove subterfuge when the House was hopelessly lost by the Republicans), shows that at the end of the primary process Obama will have the plurality of votes. How then, do we decide the contest if the plurality is less than a majority? Turkana argues that the popular vote should be the deciding factor:

  The pledged delegate metric is only one, and because Clinton cannot catch Obama in that metric, her entire argument rests on the possibility of her ending up with the most popular votes. That’s a reasonable argument, and one that the uncommitted superdelegates are clearly willing to listen to.

  But there was no method agreed on in advance to count popular votes. How do caucus results count? How do states count where no contest was held? How should the delegate count be weighed against any method used to estimate the popular vote?

  Let’s say for a second that there was a clear way to obtain the popular vote. Would the Clinton campaign say “Well, you’ve got us there. We really have lost this one.” Or, would they move on to some other criteria?

• Clinton’s Dirty Laundry vs. Obama’s.

  The good news for Obama, in the long campaign, is that all the bad news has now been aired. As Joan Walsh and others have pointed out, better now than in October. Rezko’s at trial, we’ve seen the Wright videos, we’ve heard the name Ayers, we’ve looked aghast at Obama’s flagless lapel.

  There is a misconception that Clinton is doing us all a service by smearing Obama. The reasoning goes that this gets it out of the way now, so that the Republicans can’t use it in the general. Clinton, on the other hand, has already been smeared by the Right for years, so there isn’t any public good served by bringing up unsavory points in her past. There isn’t even a negative context that hasn’t been explored, so the argument goes.

  Unfortunately Clinton’s supporters underestimate the degree which the right despises both her and her husband. Republicans I’ve known over the years would rather eat glass than see her elected to the presidency. As an example of relatively unexplored topics consider this from an article in The Nation by Tom Hayden:

  Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm’s partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others “tolerated communists”. Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein’s sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, A Woman in Charge.)

  All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn’t she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn’t the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn’t the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?

  You don’t think the regular suspects on the Right will read Bernstein’s book looking for dirt? The reason that these kind of smears haven’t been used by the Obama campaign is that this is precisely the kind of behavior that has turned off so many of us to politics. The Right-Wing Freak Show? Not so much.

Last night was pretty much a perfect event in so far as one needed to both observe and then discuss the Kafka-esque nature of our political discourse. Actually, it would be more fair to say that our media lies somewhere between Kafka and a John Waters movie. That scene with Tab Hunter and Divine comes to mind almost unbidden.

I knew I was going to hate myself in the morning. After all, I hate myself anyway. But the nausea I wasn’t expecting.

As Glenn Greenwald mentioned during the discussion after the debate last night John McCain polls as well, or even better, as either Obama or Clinton on the economy. McCain himself wouldn’t say he could handle the economy as well as either Clinton or Obama. How did we get so petty? How did the question about the flag pin count more than a single question about the substantial issues of our time: how do we get out of this war, how do we re-enter the world community, how do we pay for healthcare, how do we recover from the lending crisis?

Bowers:

The situation residents of Philadelphia now face is akin to Charles Gibson flushing your head in a toilet until you promise to drop everything else and debate flag pins. You might be worried about Iraq, or the housing crisis, or global warming, or even the upcoming Sixers game, but Maureen Dowd and George Stephanopolous are going to handcuff you to a metal chair in a dark room and make you watch Reverend Wright YouTube clips while listening to Beethoven’s 9th for the rest of the day.

CorrenteWire, like Elvis, has left the building:

According to Lind, Obama and his supporters are “Greater New England” types. But he thinks this is not a good thing:

“The question, then, is not why Greater New England progressives would vote for Obama. He presses all their age-old buttons: opposition to war, nonpartisan reform. The question is why anyone would assume that such a candidate would appeal to other Democratic constituencies, other than blacks (voting in this case for the favorite-son candidate).

Indeed, the Greater New England moralist culture has been rejected by practically every other substantial subculture in the United States: Irish-Americans in Northeastern cities, Appalachian white Baptists and now, evidently, Mexican-Americans. And this has always been the case.”

What Lind is describing is what we have seen in electoral politics for generations. When the Democratic party nominates a GNE liberal, we lose. We lose because they fail to connect to blue-collar, rural and small town voters. They fail to connect because they just don’t get it.

When I see idiotic statements like this, I like to learn something about the author: “Michael Lind (born in 1962) is an American journalist and historian, currently the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. Ideologically, he has gone from liberal (in his college years) to neoconservative (in graduate school and directly afterward) to radical centrist (through the early 2000s), and back to a liberal (present).”

That’s a quite a set of ideologies! At least he doesn’t have to worry about a fixed set of values weighing him down. I realize what a hobgoblin foolish consistency can be, it’s just that foolish inconsistency isn’t any better.

Here, Lind just makes up a demographic, Greater New England, demonizes it, and state that this proves that despite his lead in the popular vote and delegates, Harvard Class of ‘91 is too elitist to get elected. Meanwhile, Yale class of ‘73 is salt-of-the-earth, and that saltiness makes the working class wanna go drinking with her, except for blacks, who in Lind’s analysis don’t really count.

The only thing worse than being Michael Lind is quoting from him approvingly.

I was at the DC for Democracy meeting where it was decided who to support in the Dem primary. In that group of mixed gender, race, and state of origin, economically middle class, Obama was a clear favorite. IIRC, Edwards was the second place favorite. If you had accused the folks at that meeting of being GNE moralist elitists (I hate to dignify fictional demographics, but for the purpose of conversation and ridicule) they’d kick your ass. Or laugh you out of the room.

I don’t really understand what CorrenteWire is trying to accomplish these days. If the idea is to create a club where Hillary can be praised, and Obama (and his supporters) can have mud slung at them, I guess there’s no law against that. The idea as I understand it, however, is that democratic debate is struggle without destruction. It supposes that each participant in the process will respect the views held by the others. That’s why the Democratic Party, despite their manifold flaws are still the good guys. That’s why the Republican Party is not.

And now for the punishment: 5 shots of Crown Royal with a guy named “Dad.”