Moving on…

I’m assuming that Obama is the Democratic nominee for President of the United State – thank the goddess and gods and whatever principalities and powers that be – so let’s start snarking all over McCain, shall we?

Has anyone actually heard him speaking about Iraq? This man wants to be President? I’m not sure what reality distortion field he’s living in but he’s at least as confused as the writers of LOST. He thinks he can run by rubberstamping the policies that got us there in the first place? I actually thought that he would have something to contribute to this campaign, but so far he’s proved it’s more of the same. (By the way, at least the McCain campaign has moved on. Are they directing attacks at HRC?)

It seems to me that the first thing that we need to do is admit we made a colossal mistake. This admission is only partisan to the extent that it acknowledges the mistake is the fault of those in power, which, I think we can agree, is first and foremost, the Republicans; secondly, the Democrats who authorized it (*clearing my throat* you know who that is) and the OLD MEDIA who rolled over and played dead. (Oh, and the people who voted for Bush the second time, don’t think I’m forgetting you!) Rub my belly, give me a story and I don’t care how true it is. And Colin Powell, I’m looking at you. I hope you have the balls to ameliorate what you did, at least a little bit, in the privacy of the ballot box.

You want to change things? Don’t let the assholes change the subject, which has been Obama’s tack since forever:

• The Page – by Mark Halperin – TIME

  tags: obama, mccain, election

  • Q: Senator Obama, are you surprised at how hard Senator McCain has come after to you?  And are you surprised by his tone this early on in the election?

    BO: Of course not.  He’s adopted George Bush’s policies, and he’s going to adopt George Bush’s tactics.  I don’t know why anybody would be surprised by it.

I admit. I’m not exactly surprised but I am disappointed. It could have been a contest between two clear-headed adults differing over tactics. What we’re hearing now is that it will either be a victory of the young and the fed-up – and the young-at-heart – over the status quo. Or it won’t.

America, you have your choices. Start your engines.

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Why some gay men still support HRC despite her having thrown us under the bus

One of Sullivan’s readers explains:

• The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

  • They watch Sex in the City and the Golden Girls and see their struggles reflected in that of women. I empathize with women, but I never identify my situation with a woman’s and these gays see Hillary’s struggle as their own. They ignore my points about Don’t ask Don’t Tell, DOMA, and how Hillary Clinton can barely bring herself to use the word “gay” in public. None of it has any effect. She’s a diva. She’s drama. She’s Regina in Mean Girls and Barack is Lindsey Lohan and some gay men will always follow the Queen Bee.

Plus, both Madonna and Babs have endorsed HRC, and recently Ricky fuckin’ Martin! What’s a poor, helpless queen to do but follow along blindly?

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“We cannot forgive you this!”

Typical over-the-top Olberman, but nonetheless a powerful and convincing argument.

As Sullivan pointed out yesterday, she could have made her point about candidates winning the nomination late in the process without mentioning Bobby Kennedy. She could have pointed out that Kerry didn’t win until late in the process. Simply mentioning Kennedy at all would probably have been a bad idea but using the word assassination? There’s simply no rhetorical justification for it. It’s shockingly Freudian and bizarre.

I think the pressure of the campaign, the realization that’s she’s lost, and the affront that realization is to her overweening sense of entitlement and inevitability, well, I think it’s not only broken her spirit, I think it’s also shattered her mind.

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Why HRC Lost

Note to the whiners among HRC’s supporters: She’s losing and will lose because she ran a lousy campaign, but more importantly, because Obama ran a better one. Among all the talk about his supposed reliance on the soaring, substance-less rhetoric, it’s ignored that he simply out-organized everyone else. And oh yeah, his campaign isn’t $31 20 million in debt, either. You love her so much, show her the money!

So it wasn’t misogyny. It’s hard work paying off. Get over it. (There are plenty of reasons to hate Hillary without resorting to sexism.) Allison Benedikt blogs against the pricks below:

• My Lady Parts Do Not Ache for Hillary Clinton

  tags: hillaryclinton, feminism, election, obama

  • Here’s the thing: There is plenty of sexism—more than enough, thank you very much—in this country. Which is why it’s so sad to see Hillary’s supporters (and lately even her female detractors, and way too many column inches) elevate her to some kind of goddess warrior, symbolizing the decades-long fight for gender equality, absorbing the entirety of history’s catcall in one massive blow, and then standing tall again because that’s what women do. Powerful stuff, except that she’s a lying, race-baiting insult to our collective intelligence.

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HRC go-go boys vs Obamamaniacs

Thoughts and invective induced by:

Obama Talks All Things LGBT with The Advocate  | Election 2008 | Advocate.com

Sullivan’s quoted a different passage from the Advocate’s interview with Barack Obama, but what I find the most encouraging, and a confirmation of what I see as his core strengths, is that he is unable to treat anyone except as an adult. No pandering.

In reply to a question that suggested he was asking queers to “wait their turn” for full marriage rights, Obama said this:

So I strongly respect the right of same-sex couples to insist that even if we got complete equality in benefits, it still wouldn’t be equal because there’s a stigma associated with not having the same word, marriage, assigned to it. I understand that, but my perspective is also shaped by the broader political and historical context in which I’m operating. And I’ve said this before — I’m the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born. That doesn’t mean that had I been an adviser to Dr. King back then, I would have told him to lead with repealing an anti-miscegenation law, because it just might not have been the best strategy in terms of moving broader equality forward. That’s a decision that the LGBT community has to make. That’s not a decision for me to make.

In other words, be leaders. If you think you can change, not only the minds of the millions who don’t agree with you at the moment, but also influence my own thinking, then go for it. I’m listening if you have a strategy for moving forward on this.

His response to the inevitable McClurkin question also requires maturity to accept:

The flip side of it is, [if you’re segmenting your base into neat categories and constituency groups and you never try to bring them together and you just speak to them individually] you never create the opportunity for people to have a conversation and to lift some of these issues up and to talk about them and to struggle with them and our campaign is built around the idea that we should all be talking. And that creates some discomfort because people discover, gosh, within the Democratic Party or within Barack Obama’s campaign or within whatever sets of constituencies there are going to be some different points of view that might even be offensive to some folks.

Imagine. Working and talking with people who might disagree with you. A core Obama value but not a universal one.

Which brings me to HRC, an expert at segmenting constituencies.

I’ve been trying to understand how and why so many queers who should know better have hitched their wagon to the Clintons again, after having been betrayed repeatedly in the past. After examining the recent Philadelphia Gay News brouhaha, I’ve concluded that there are people for whom pandering is a comfort and a promise: I will never ask more from you than your vote, and I will never give to you any more than my term in office. I will hire the occcasional lesbian so that you will feel included, with your place at the table, your careers as professional lobbyists assured, but as far as changing the lives of ordinary queers, that’s several steps too far. Bill went so far as to make this point when he was taken to task recently by a high school student over just these issues. Bill replied in a huff, but look at all the queers we hired!

So you’ve got the big Human Rights Campaign Fund fundraisers with the gay & les high-rollers and they get a couple of private hours of feeling the glamour and the illusory access to power. (A commenter over on Sullivan’s blog called these guys the “HRC go-go boys.” Which I’d said that.)And then it’s over and nothing changes. But it cost so much money, surely something got done. Surely they realize our value now?

No, that’s not leadership and it’s not grassroots. Take a look at the Human Rights Campaign Fund’s record: One victory, and only in the House. A big one and they deserve credit for it but come on. How many years?

As it ever was, the choice is between moving forward or the same old divided-electorate, bow-down-before-the-diva politics. Our to make.

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Thinking about using the c-word again…

HRC:

You’re not going to wave a magic wand and all the special interests will go away.

No, certainly not. In your case, that would require a D&C.

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The End of Billary?

Dave Winer sees it in the release of HRC’s tax returns. Sorry, but this really doesn’t seem like big news to me, or telling us anything we didn’t already know. Namely, that the Clintons are big-money insiders, like most politicians. Obama’s not poor, but missing is the odor of sleaze or cynicism, which is why the status quo on both sides of the aisle hate him so much, and ridicule his optimism. They have a lot more to lose than he does.

A commenter makes this point and that’s why I’m blogging about this post. He sees hope in the emerging leadership of the African-American and Latino communities, and from what he calls the “post-left ecotopian enclaves.”

Here’s his concluding thought:

Anyway, I hope this is the end of Billary. I’ve waited a generation for the political machine that created the Clintons to die, hopefully this is the beginning of their end.

But read the whole thing.

Why this is the end for the Clintons (Scripting News)

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Dramatic footage: HRC wasn’t lying!

See also: The War Journals of Hillary Clinton, Vol 1

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I have a crush on Obama Girl

Yikes! Two women mentioned in one day on the blog. Am I switching sides? No.

It’s just, like Dave Winer, I can’t stop watching Obama Girl. She’s awful cute.

In her newest video, she, uh, unloads on HRC. Her arm around Hil, she says, “Can’t you see it’s hopeless?” And: “I know deep down, you’re an Obama girl.” HIlarious.

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Maybe she saw it in a movie?

Hillary caught in the act of trying to manufacture her foreign policy experience:

And this asshole calls Obama a liar, for what I can’t quite tell from her post, which if nothing else is an exercise in bad faith and even worse logic. Pretty rich coming from a Reverend. I’m not quite snarky enough to put that last word in quotes.

Hey, I believe Sinbad.

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