Once we officially have a nominee, and that nominee will be Senator Barack Obama (only the delusional at this point can dispute that), most of us will unify around our nominee. But I will tell you one thing I will not be doing:
Begging the holdouts.
I will not be begging them to join us so that we can fight and beat John McCain. I will be polite, I will be welcoming, and I will be more than happy to have Clinton's supporters join their fellow Democrats and liberals and progressives in a common cause.
But I will not be begging or pleading, and I will tell you why.
Both camps are angry at each other. Obama's supporters are angry for just reasons, for we feel Hillary Clinton has embraced all that is wrong with our politics, from using wedge issues, to race baiting, to religious McCarthyism, to subtle innuendo concerning confusion over Obama's faith, to her campaign's utter contempt for Howard Dean and the 50 State Strategy, and to so other many illegitimate Republican-Rovian style attacks employed in Hillary's damn-it-all-to-hell strategy of winning the nomination against all hope, logic, reason and reality. And we are angry at her supporters for performing twists of logic and morality in order to defend the use of such tactics, and because they themselves have resorted to using right wing talking points against Obama.
And while some Obama supporters have used right wing talking points against Hillary, and have called her despicable names in the heat of the moment, those minority of Obama supporters engaging in such tactics are a deviation from the majority of his support, and from the tenor and direction of the Obama campaign itself. The same cannot be said for the Clinton campaign or her supporters.
No, what the Clinton supporters are mad about is the supposed unfairness to Hillary in that she will not be ordained as our nominee. They perceive sexism as the cause of her demise, and they are angry about it. I have had more than one Hillary supporter say to me that our country is so sexist that they are willing to let a black man be the nominee just to prevent a woman from winning it. The irony of that sentiment is that it reveals racism on the part of those Hillary supporters to even think in those terms.
Hillary supporters are not angry at unfair campaign tactics or attacks employed by Obama, because quite simply, there are none that rise to the level of disgust employed by Clinton. Rather, they are angry that Hillary is being denied the nomination. For they think they know better than all these ignorant and naive Obama supporters (and yet they cry that Obama is an elitist), and who is this young upstart Obama to think that he can challenge Hillary anyway. They think it is not his turn.
In short, Hillary's supporters have no right to be angry, but they are. Now, I understand anger and disappointment at the fact that a candidate you like and believe in is losing, and in fact will lose the nomination. We have all been there at some point in our lives. We were all angry and disappointed at John Kerry and Al Gore's losses. So we can all understand that kind of anger. But the anger of Hillary's supporters rises above that, and it matches a self righteous indignation that justifies any and all methods to prevent the loss.
And that is why I say they have no right to be angry. Hillary Clinton, and her supporters, have much to apologize for. And really, no apology will be necessary if we all come together in common purpose to elect Barack Obama as our President this summer and fall. But if Clinton's supporters lash out, as they have been doing so far, in unjustified anger, and if they resort to threats concerning not voting for Obama or voting for John McCain, well, then, rather than pleading with them to change their mind, all I will have to say to them is that they know what they can do with themselves.
For it takes some nerve to be a Democrat or a liberal, and to support and defend a losing candidate who abandons her and our principles and employs the Rove playbook when there is no chance that she can win, and then demand concessions and acts of contriteness on the part of the victors.
We Obama supporters will be welcoming, but we will not stoop to begging.
Or at least, I will not.