(Pointless rant button on)
Sorry to serious up again here at SNLC (but when does CCCM ever do otherwise?), but it is right before Super Tuesday, when MO and a bunch of other states will be holding primaries, caucuses, whatever. If I get up early enough (and self is so not a morning person), I'll be in line to vote. Of course, the loser aspect of this is:
(a) This is in this particular DK series, where only a select few will read it.
(b) It will get almost no recs and thus disappear quickly from the diary roll.
(c) No one really cares what this writer thinks (how's that for low self-esteem? True sign of a loser, natch).
(d) The purer-than-thou Jacobins will not take the message, such as it is, to heart (especially one side, understandable though that is).
In addition, it's essentially an updated variation of an SNLC from last year. Anyway.....
It barely needs repeating that many have cringed at the DK pie-wars between the hard-line Jacobins for Obama and for HRC. For both camps, and the rest of you who are sane, a cold splash of reality from Michael Tomasky prior to all this from this NYRB piece, where he responded to reader e-mails on an earlier article on Al Gore's The Assault on Reason (how appropriate that title is now!) on how destructive pie-fights like these are, a prescient quote from before things got really ugly. He also paints the big picture that too many people on our side are forgetting, but which the other side can be aware of all too well (bold mine):
Question: "Given that a 2008 Democratic presidential victory will require that the Republican base stays home, I'm surprised by your characterization of the Democratic nomination as largely a race between the country's most disliked woman and a black man whose name rhymes with the world's most wanted terrorist. Their respective nominations would be the political equivalent of poking the Republican base in the eye with a stick. Exactly which of the red states that Kerry lost in 2004 do you see either Clinton or Obama winning in 2008?"
Tomasky: "Well, this is a difficult matter, certainly. Whenever I hear Democrats getting overconfident about taking the White House in 2008, I remind them of what you've just said. Their visages tend to grow more somber.
If you didn't see this NYT article from Columbia, TN, one Buford Moss has a further reality check outside-the-bubble quote for what the Obama camp will have to fight, per Tomasky's comment above:
'"Anyone but Obama-Osama," [Moss] said, chuckling at a designation that met with mirthful approval at the table.'
Dropping back to the earlier article, Tomasky commented then:
".....a Republican campaign against a woman (especially that woman) or a black man could be far worse than rough. There's no question that conservatives will turn out in droves to stop Clinton, and possibly Obama. And then there's the more nuanced question of white males who aren't movement conservatives, and who might have female or African-American bosses. They may be willing to vote for a woman or a black man for senator or governor but they may also, on some psychological level, be reluctant to vote for a woman or a black man for president. This is the category that worries me.
Through this week, my own preference had been for John Edwards, mainly for policy reasons (wow, what a loser CCCM is, choosing on that basis). I happened to be at Edwards' speech 2 Saturdays ago, early in the morning before he jetted to Atlanta, the latter very nicely diaried here. (I didn't diary the local jaunt; only one diary per Kossack per day. But guess what: the only DK coverage of Edwards in Missouri was this one, and it didn't focus on MO exclusively. But self hugely digresses.) The crowd was good and the hall was full, and JRE gave a good speech. He seemed to channel Howard Dean at several points, giving the classic Dean-ism of "I want my country back!" and among the good lines, one to the effect of:
"Wouldn't it be great to be patriotic about something other than war?"
Yet some friends I met at the rally and I were in agreement about Edwards' chances of getting nominated, i.e. none, which came to pass this past Wednesday. One must keep in mind an old political maxim:
"Never confuse wishes with facts."
Thus, up to this week, my first choice in the MO primary would have been Edwards. Obama was my 2nd choice, HRC 3rd. In principle, the primary is where one can be "pure". However, at least to self's thinking, in the general election, pragmatism and the greatest good of the greatest number rules.
Those who think that any of the Republican candidates beats any of the Democratic candidates have learned nothing from the experience of the spin liars and the Naderites in 2000, who said that there was no difference between Al Gore & Dumbya and managed to persuade sufficient voters of that lie that it led to the mess we have now. (And to think that Nader is contemplating running again? Just what we need: him around to f--k things up big time, again.)
Plus, if people really want Senator "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran" to appoint two Supreme Court Justices (Stevens will be gone for sure next term, if not before, and quite possibly Ginsburg, from the little I've heard about health issues with her) and thus run our country further into the ground, then you are the losers, not me, for once. In the "Who'd you rather have a beer with?" test, based solely on public perceptions right now, McCain would smoke HRC, hands down. Plus, as Jonathan Freedland points out in this pro-Obama op-ed for The Guardian:
"....if McCain does indeed wrap things up next week, the rightwing critique becomes a positive asset. It also leaves the Democrats in an uncomfortable position, especially if February 5 delivers no such clear verdict. First, the Republicans will have a head start in closing ranks and marshalling resources, while Clinton and Obama will still be taking lumps out of each other. Second, McCain can get on with the business of making a national case for himself as president, while Clinton and Obama will still be obliged to tailor their message for a Democratic-only electorate. That will give McCain a chance to define himself before his eventual opponent can do it for him."
So in the primary, based on the reality of this past week, "strategery" dictates that I vote for my second choice now. It is not a very "moral" or "noble" basis for decision-making, to be sure. But we are supposed to be the "reality-based community", right? The reality of the actual, 3-D world sometimes, more than sometimes, trumps the idealized vision in one's head.
And more for the purity police out there: the sad truth is that politics in the real world is not merely about purity in policy or anything else. Politics, in any realm, be it government, business, or even your kids' Little League teams, involves many people, not all with precisely identical agendas, who all think in ever so slightly different ways. They all do not perfectly mesh 100% with each other. Thus we have to accommodate each other to varying degrees. And that means (shudder) compromise, in one form or another, in ways trivial and not-so-trivial. It may not be, and often isn't, what we want in life, but we all do it to varying degrees, as much as people might want to admit it. If the Jacobins out there want to cut off your noses to spite your faces, and give the country 4 more years of Repug mis-rule in the name of "purity", for that transient moment on Election Day, and thus cause us all to suffer, don't blame the realists among us if/when that comes to pass.
Plus, leave it to The Guardian, in this case Paul Harris (is The Guardian a great newspaper or what?), to give things perspective:
"Yet [Bill Clinton] is also dividing the Democratic party and has helped plunge the race into a bitter feud, tinged with the poison of race-baiting politics. Some fear the prospect of an all-out political civil war in a party that many had assumed was ripe to take power after the demise of the Bush White House. Instead the Democrats could fall prey to an old disease of bloody infighting, tearing strips off each other and ignoring the real enemy."
A car mechanic quoted in Harris' story sums it up beautifully:
".....if we don't stop fighting soon then this is going to be very bad for the party."
However, after Thursday night, maybe, just maybe, certain Dems in the various camps are getting a clue that tearing each other apart is not a good way to win POTUS elections. Given the inveterate propensity of Dems to form circular firing squads and forget who is the real opponent we'll be up against come November, I wonder how long it'll last.
Is CCCM a loser for being so worried and such a pessimist? Of course he is (he did say he was a loser, didn't he?). But have a look at what's happened to Daily Kos of late with the pie-fights, and give me a reason not to be. Freeland closes his case for Obama as follows (emphasis mine):
'The Democrats took a first step in the direction of resolution yesterday, as John Edwards closed out what had been a brave campaign: how exhilarating it was to hear a mainstream centre-left candidate use the phrase "extraordinary economic inequality" in his stump speech. It would be good if Obama and Clinton were to adopt more of that message as they compete for Edwards's voters. What would be even better is if Democrats were to show some of the sense exhibited by their Republican counterparts, and choose a candidate who appeals beyond the party and can win over the unconverted.'"
So what will happen come November? I know for whom I'll vote for POTUS: the Democratic candidate. What sayest thou?
(Pointless rant button off)
OK, it's Saturday night, I'm off to where I usually go on the weekend, unlike many people who will be here this evening. You know the loser story of the week ritual; have at it....