Friday evening I came home from a short trip to find that my house had to have an emergency AC repair. I've chatted with one of the several brothers who own the HVAC company before. The first brother I met a few years ago was a typical southwestern Virginia good old boy with a big NASCAR sticker collection on his metal clipboard and a side business/hobby of restoring classic VW Bugs and other cars. A family owned and well-established business, they are probably the largest in our rural region at the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, AKA Appalachia.

Last night I met another one of the brothers. I've been here for quite a while, visit daily, and comment occasionally but this is my first diary - I just have to share this experience with everyone.

Well, I promised myself that my first diary would not be about Hillary Clinton, but after last night I can't help myself.  So here goes....

I'll never forget the moment in (I think it was Cleveland) one of the debates when Tim Russert asked Senator Obama about the unsolicited endorsement he received from Farrakhan.  Obama replied that he did not seek the endorsement and had denounced Farrakhan.  Clinton piped in that it was not enough to "denounce" the endorsement, he had to "reject" it as she did when she received support from a bigoted group during her senate campaign.  She was attempting to present herself as the moral figure with the stronger convictions and I found it ridiculous.

But once again, Hillary Clinton is off message and it's time for her to do a little denouncing and rejecting of her own.

Following Hillary Clinton’s lopsided victories in West Virginia and Kentucky, media outlets predictably interpreted these results as some indication of Barack Obama’s so-called problems with white, working-class Americans.  It simply does not ring true.  To make matters worse, Hillary Clinton also bought into that distorted analysis.  Pollsters and political analysts, slicing and dicing exit polls according to demographic criteria, have a tendency to arrive at some fairly contrived results, and adds insult to injury by extrapolating those results over a much more heterogeneous population that that original sampled.  This is the very nature of the fallacy.

Hillary Clinton won Kentucky (which is 91% white) and West Virginia (95% white), predominantly white states. She proudly boasts that she is the electable one because she can carry the white hard-working, lower educated demographic. She just had to play the "redneck" card.

   Much has been made ad naseum in the MSM the past eight days about Obama's "problems" with working class whites. Hillary launched this narrative the day after her win in Indiana (my state) and the MSM took this narrative and Obama's narrative as the presumtive nominee to the airwaves because a "horse race" sells and at the end of the day ratings matter. A week later Obama loses WV 40 points with the potential of another week of the media salivating over Obama's problem with white people. However if greater scrutiny is applied to the actual demographics beyond race and income, one realizes two larger issues are the determining outcome. Those two factors are the urban/rural split and generational divides. Now, race and income can intersect those two groups, but they are not the determining factor. Please allow me to make my case.

Tonight Senator Hillary Clinton went for the pathos moment with the story of a little boy from West Virginia, or was it Kentucky, who sold his bike and his toys to raise money for Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign.  Maybe he's a real kid.  Maybe his parents can afford to buy him new toys, or this was just his yard sale.  Maybe he figures his Mom will love him if he gives up everything for Hillary Clinton.  Wonder how much he gave, in sacrifice of a child's pleasure in a bike and activities. Dalton may walk on water, or he may be a child who is overly invested in his adult's adult concerns and passions. A touching story . . . maybe.

Or, maybe its another story, that initially sounds endearing and cute, until you consider that Senator Clinton has no fair chance of winning the nomination.  

It is time that feminists who have supported Clinton for the right reasons step up to the plate and criticize her for unacceptable remarks and practices. The women’s movement has been deeply divided over the Clinton candidacy. Yet what started out as a legitimate disagreement about the merits of the candidates and their agendas has turned into a test of one’s feminist credentials. But the test is perverse. It is not a test of feminist principles and values. It has become a test of loyalty to Clinton, in spite of the fact that she is undermining basic feminist values.

Hillary Clinton, in her cynical, increasingly desperate attempt to steal the Democratic nomination from Barack Obama, claims her strength with "White, working class voters" makes her eminently more electable, and better able to defeat John McCain than Obama.  In fact, this very demographic is why she loses to McCain.  Add the alienation of Obama supporters if Hillary hijacks the convention, and you're looking at a defeat to match Dukakis in '88.

The logic is simple:

As diaried in several excellent entries earlier (for example here and here), Hillary Clinton in a USA Today interview said that "hard-working Americans, white Americans" are a part of her base and that "whites in both states (Indiana and North Carolina) who had not completed college were supporting me." Later in the interview Clinton asserts:

"These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."

"Prejudice: a (1): preconceived judgment or opinion (2): an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge b: an instance of such judgment or opinion c: an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics" (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary)

I think Hillary just slipped and said something honest in the USA interview about "her" white voters.   What very few people are talking about honestly (except for Bill and Hillary in their (undoubtedly white) superdelegate conversations) is that there are certain areas of this country, more than others, and certain demographics in this country, more than others, where discrimination/prejudice is alive and well.  

It is now completely clear that Hillary is intent on knee-capping Obama. She has been asking the supers to wait while she supposedly 'shows' them she is 'more electable'. That is a fraud.

It seems Hillary Clinton's new path to the nomination has been forged. Based on her and her strategist's statements over the last day or two, this path rests on one bold claim: Obama can't win white voters and is therefore unelectable.

Here's what their path to the nomination looks like:

After finishing up my morning cuppa java, and reading diaries here, I headed over to some other sites to try to find something to read to get away from my primary day jitters.

I found this excellent diary on TPM, Hillary Clinton Has a Palmore v. Sidoti Problem, and Now We Do Too, which focuses on the case of a child being removed from the home of an inter-racial couple.  
Coincidentally, this diary comes at a time when we mourn the death of Mildred Loving. Mildred Loving, Who Fought Ban on Mixed Marriage, Dies at 68

Ok, I've HAD IT.  Today marks day 5 of my daily endorsement series on dailykos.  For those of you who missed me , I can tell you that I'm sick and tired of sitting idle while the newest concern-troll-of-the-day, masquerading as an AP writer, finds his political commentary conveniently published on the front page of Yahoo News--the same regurgitated story about Obama and his supposed struggle to win over white voters.  I don't know about you but I don't like it when someone puts words in my mouth or votes in my ballot box.  I guess I could say nothing about these daily attacks and refuse to check my Yahoo email account from now until 2009 but I need to vent today and tomorrow and the next day too.

As a white dude with white skin, white parents, grandparents who were white when they were alive and probably still white in the afterlife and white European ancestors, I hereby endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America even if I only count for .0001% of a pledged delegate.

Ok, I've HAD IT.  Today marks day 4 of my daily endorsement series on dailykos.  For those of you who missed me , I can tell you that I'm sick and tired of sitting idle while the newest concern-troll-of-the-day, masquerading as an AP writer, finds his political commentary conveniently published on the front page of Yahoo News--the same regurgitated story about Obama and his supposed struggle to win over white voters.  I don't know about you but I don't like it when someone puts words in my mouth or votes in my ballot box.  I guess I could say nothing about these daily attacks and refuse to check my Yahoo email account from now until 2009 but I need to vent today and tomorrow and the next day too.

As a white dude with white skin, white parents, grandparents who were white when they were alive and probably still white in the afterlife and white European ancestors, I hereby endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America even if I only count for .0001% of a pledged delegate.

Ok, I've HAD IT.  Today marks day 3 of my daily endorsement series on dailykos.  For those of you who missed me , I can tell you that I'm sick and tired of sitting idle while the newest concern-troll-of-the-day, masquerading as an AP writer, finds his political commentary conveniently published on the front page of Yahoo News--the same regurgitated story about Obama and his supposed struggle to win over white voters.  I don't know about you but I don't like it when someone puts words in my mouth or votes in my ballot box.  I guess I could say nothing about these daily attacks and refuse to check my Yahoo email account from now until 2009 but I need to vent today and tomorrow and the next day too.

As a white dude with white skin, white parents, grandparents who were white when they were alive and probably still white in the afterlife and white European ancestors, I hereby endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America even if I only count for .0001% of a pledged delegate.

Ok, I've HAD IT.  Today marks day 2 of my daily endorsement series on dailykos.  For those of you who missed me yesterday, I can tell you that I'm sick and tired of sitting idle while the newest concern-troll-of-the-day, masquerading as an AP writer, finds his political commentary conveniently published on the front page of Yahoo News--the same regurgitated story about Obama and his supposed struggle to win over white voters.  I don't know about you but I don't like it when someone puts words in my mouth or votes in my ballot box.  I guess I could say nothing about these daily attacks and refuse to check my Yahoo email account from now until 2009 but I need to vent today and tomorrow and the next day too.

As a white dude with white skin, white parents, grandparents who were white when they were alive and probably still white in the afterlife and white European ancestors, I hereby endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America even if I only count for .0001% of a pledged delegate.

Ok, I've HAD IT.  I'm starting a new daily series here on dailykos because I'm sick and tired of sitting idle while the newest concern-troll-of-the-day, masquerading as an AP writer, finds his political commentary conveniently published on the front page of Yahoo News--the same regurgitated story about Obama and his supposed struggle to win over white voters.  I don't know about you but I don't like it when someone puts words in my mouth or votes in my ballot box.  I guess I could say nothing about these daily attacks and refuse to check my Yahoo email account from now until 2009 but I need to vent today and tomorrow and the next day too.

As a white dude with white skin, white parents, grandparents who were white when they were alive and probably still white in the afterlife and white European ancestors, I hereby endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America even if I only count for .0001% of a pledged delegate.