photos by durrati
Last week I learned that my United States Senator Claire McCaskill (not Roy Blunt - someone else can have his ass) was to roll into my hometown of Springfield, heart of the deep red 7th District of Missouri, on my birthday, July 3. Now, in this Panglossian world I am a big fan of Claire because she is a Democrat and in the Senate from Missouri - consternatin' the freakin' hell out of the slimy teabagging Missouri GOP merely by being a Democrat and a Senator from Missouri - voting yea on things that no self respecting neanderthal male Missouri Republican (apologies to Jack Danforth) would ever vote yea on like the President's Stimulus Plan, the Lily Ledbetter Act, The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, The Heath-care Bill, the demise of DADT etc. etc. and so forth and so on, and much as this synergy delights and amuses me, and as much as I understand that some of the more stalwart defenders of the leftier faith object to her making the votes and taking the very stances necessary to hold the office she exercises to our mutual benefit (seeing as how she kicked Jim Talent's ass out of HST's seat by a coupla thosand votes and Talent would vote for exactly a big f'ing doughnut hole's worth of the above mentioned worthies)... I regretfully just say f you idiots very much.
So please walk your tired asses over to another thread.
But I wanted to hear what Claire had to say to her critics here, so I went to see her.
More 'yond yon ochreous Octopetala below.
Reaching HQ in the mid-day heat I am greeted with this signage....
which - despite the cool reflections - was a bit wrong as ClaireCruise 1...
had yet to arrive.
A nice crowd gathered despite the heat...
...and though loyal Dems one and all, we might note they are not exactly a throng of "up against the wall" rabid leftists.
Waiting for Claire to arrive I caught up with an old comrade from the '08 campaign who, when she learned I was to post pics of the event, preferred I use this one of her from the good old days...
Soon tho, Claire arrived, looking svelte from her recent weight loss...
I had chosen a good spot and was able to get a couple of good shots of the Senator...
....pumping up the crowd...
...and...
greeting constituents.
As noted in rturner229's diary from yesterday, in Springfield as in Joplin, Claire stressed that her three priorities if she won re-election were:
(1) Opposing the privatization of Medicare
(2) Opposing the privatization of Social Security
(3) Opposing the re-privatization of Students loans.
Also as she had done the day before she referred to her opponents running for the teaba Republican nomination in a humorous way as “My three opponents, three of a kind, but one and the same!”
I prefer (with apologies to Swift) to refer to them differently:
Strange all this Difference should be
'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee...
(and Tweedle-dumber if you include
Michell Bachman's choice Sarah Steelman)....er...
...hee-hee)
Claire likes her retail politicin'. By waiting patiently for the crowd to thin , I was able to approach the Senator directly, and, waiting my turn...
..ask her the question I came to pose.
Informing her that I was going to post to dkos I queried:
"You have been attacked from the left at various sites on the net for not being Democrat enough, Claire. How would you respond?"
A look of hurt and concern wrinkled her eyes as she said...
"I think you should tell them to come to Missouri and see what we have to deal with...and ask them if it more important to remain pure or keep the Senate."
I thanked her and wished her, most sincerely, good luck.
In this year, of all years, I agree that we must do all we can to retain the Senate, and I will do all I can to help to re-elect Senator McCaskill, as I would Tester, or Landrieu or Blanche Lincoln if she had not already been sacrificed on the altar of purity and blind obedience to ideology.
Missouri has never produced a Bob LaFollette, a Ted Kennedy, a Russ Feingold, or Bernie Sanders...this is true.
Missouri Democratic Senators are cut from a different cloth and do not break easily to the bit.
Thomas Hart Benton hated the Bank of America(sic), Eastern moneyed interests, and championed The Homestead Act. But he also owned slaves and once shot the founder of the modern Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson.
Harry Truman was a fiscal conservative who integrated the armed forces and fought for the unions, but also created the CIA and immolated a couple hundred thousand Japanese to show Stalin we were serious.
Tom Eagleton was a darling of the left, essential to the Clean Air and Water Acts, sponsored bills that ended the bombing of Cambodia and the Vietnam War, but also teamed up with Orrin Hatch to produce the Hatch-Eagleton Amendment...which stated "A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution". And Bob Novak swears Eagleton gave him the "Amnesty, abortion, and acid" line the right used to bludgeon McGovern in '72.
And one of my favorites, Stu Symington, while one of the principal architects of the Cold War, and refused at one time to speak to integrated audiences, early on opposed the Vietnam war and loved to torment Tailgunner Joe...
So this ain't yet the best of all possible worlds yet...Liz Warren is not the Senior Senator from Missouri...Claire McCaskill is. Yet Claire is one of a handful in the Senate that can save us from a god-damned teabagger tinged dystopia and I will work my heart out to re-elect her and prevent that.
Didn't think this would get so many views...now I must be off to work and so won't be here to defend myself against this "hippy punching" nonsense...to those who propagate such BS I just gotta ask
Is that a real poncho or a Sears poncho?
Late.