Jimmy, I love that Bill Richardson is fighting back. I love that someone has the vertebral fortitude to tell you that you have become a caricature of yourself, that while once you fought for principle, now you have become the enforcer of some kind of code of personal loyalty rather than our collective self interest.
What is the greater good here Jimmy? Do you really believe it is acceptable to destroy your fellow democrat in a desperate attempt to nominate your patron? How can you allow yourself to so quickly abandon your sense of what is RIGHT in pursuit of what is EXPEDIENT?
Say it ain't so . . .
Oh I am sure you are convinced that Clinton is the superior candidate, but what does that mean from a man who is capable of forming his most intimate relationship with someone who is committed to undoing everything have ostensibly been fighting for all your professional life. This isn't like a Yankee fan marrying a Red Sox fan. This is about people dying while others engorge themselves at the trough of a privatized war. This is about defunding the public school system. This is about an executive branch run amok, convinced it is unaccountable to either the other branches of government or the body politic. Is it all just a game of short term tactical advantage Jimmy? Is it all just a parlor game?
Don't call me naive Jimmy, I know how the game is played and have admired your skill in playing it. I love it when my folks (and you've been one) don't take shit from anybody. I love it when hypocrites are hoisted on their own petard. You are quick and agile and ruthless and I love that you and I have been on the same side. But now I'm disappointed, deeply, profoundly disappointed in you. You've morphed from a progressive Lee Atwater (which we sorely needed after getting our asses kicked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue for so long) to some kind of venom-spewing, scorched-earth Hunter Thompson-like attack dog, blind to anything but personal loyalty, political debt and payback.
It's not too late though. You may have already spent your thirty pieces of silver on something shiny for your wife, but it's OK. Redemption is possible even for someone who has strayed so far from the path. Remember my friend, it ain't about the person, it's about the principles. It's about standing for something different. We're liberals, progressives, whatever . . . because we believe that raising each other up is how best to raise ourselves up. We believe a commonwealth is more desirable than a fiefdom.
It's not Obama's fault that your girl surrounded herself with a bunch of overconfident a-holes collectively incapable of understanding that the rules of the game were changing. You all thumbed your nose and ridiculed the 50-state strategy and all those who believed in building a broader coalition than the one your boy rode to a plurality in 1992 (thank god for Perot huh!). And then you all were surprised that Super Tuesday was a shitstorm of failure? Sheesh . . . .
Come on back Jimmy! I can tell your heart's not in it . . . that you now you fucked up . . . that you really want to do the right thing. We are forgiving bunch. We need you. Come on home.