The problem isn't your candidates beliefs, folks, the problem is the beliefs of the electorate, many of whom disagree with you.  I know . . . the horror!

For eight years our democracy has been run by arrogant autocrats who believe that they are duty-bound to serve only the needs of those who voted for them while ignoring the concerns of those of us who did not.  Among all the horribles the Bush-Rovian era has produced, I consider this to be the most destructive, anti-democratic and pernicious.  It is destructive to the very fabric of our republic because it weakens the social contract that forms the core of our nation.  

Instead, I'd like to think that we believe our President should ignore no one, but instead should serve as an arbiter among us all, weighing and balancing our sometimes conflicting concerns, and make judgments that are sometimes successful because they please no one fully and leave everyone a little dissatisfied.  These are the indicators of compromise, the merit badges of consensus.

The Bush legacy will be one of bitter division, the result of Machiavellian wedge politics and criminal partisanship.

I was appalled to read that Senator Elizabeth Dole was proposing an amendment which would posthumously add Jesse Helms' name to a legislation funding AIDS research.
 
Dole seeks to add Helms name to AIDS funding bill

How utterly cynical and insensitive.  Through her website I sent the following email.

Senator Dole,

As the parent of a gay son, as a straight man who lived in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic and who watched and listened carefully to what national politicians said and did about AIDS, I am deeply offended that you would propose adding Jesse Helms' name to a bill funding AIDS research.

More after the jump . . . .

As an abolitionist in this critical moment in history, committed as I am to the cause with all the fervor my religion and moral sensibility engender, I rue ever having voted for this hypocrite from Illinois.  He has betrayed those of us who helped elect him and more importantly, betrayed the principles of our movement.  

Let it be known that I will not contribute another red cent or moment of my time to help get him re-elected.  If it results in the election of his opponent, that ineffectual military leader and martinet, George McLellan, so be it.  I see little difference between them now.  I will, instead, devote my time and energies to the more important tasks of meeting with fellow abolitionists and ensuring that we support local and state candidates who support our agenda without wavering from vital orthodoxy we must preserve.  

Why am I so incensed?  A letter President Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley was leaked to the press and in it he is quoted as saying the following . . .

I was nine years old, sitting next to my mother on the couch in our living room, watching our black and white television, as she wept.  Bobby Kennedy had been shot and she had woken me up because she knew that I'd be as devastated as she was.  My father, a meat-cutter, had left for work as usual at 5:00a.  

She probably heard it first on WBZ-AM radio out of Boston.  In those days, long before 24 hour news, there was not much TV programming before 6:00a, and we only got four stations anyway and one of them was UHF . . .

So my mom woke up her nine-year old - the youngest of five and already a political hound - and together we watched a sad bit of history and wondered how the world had gotten so uck-fupped.  We tried to make sense of why and who would feel the need to kill Bobby Kennedy, he who had seemed a ray of positivity in a dark time.  Who would want to kill someone who had stood up in a dark moment just a few months earlier and extemporaneously given eloquent voice to the collective wail of grief at the murder of Martin Luther King?

Though not unexpected, there is something fundamentally disturbing about the pushback by the Bush insiders against Scott McClellan.  The very thing this is most wrong about the behavior of this administration is expressed in its most parsimonious essence in this quote from Dan Bartlett . .

"Part of the role of being a trusted adviser is to honor that trust," said Bartlett. "It's not your place now to go out and criticize the President like this."

. . . to which the media response SHOULD be . . . Why not?

Whose trust is that staffer duty-bound to honor?  Why is it understood that a staffer who sees something amiss should keep his/her mouth shut?  Who, ultimately, does that staffer serve?  Their patron or the public?

Expectations regarding personal loyalty in the Bush White house have always been clear.

"What did he [McClellan] really believe when he was serving as press secretary?" Bartlett asked.

Foolish me . . . but could it be that he believed in say . . .honesty, integrity, the people's right to know or even the admittedly radical concept in today's cynical media environment, that loyalty to the Constitution and the American people trumps any allegiance to the president himself?

Though the tortured logic of the Clinton campaigns efforts to move the delegate-count goalposts has been laughably transparent - bordering on pathetic - it seems that football is, perhaps, the wrong sports metaphor to use.  

George Will, of all people, says it best . .

She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.

Unfortunately, baseball's rules -- pesky nuisances, rules -- say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

Now we'll leave unaddressed the question of whether the Yankees are hers or not . . . let's just chalk it up to one more politically expedient misrepresentation of the truth.  The best parts of Will's scathing deconstruction of Clinton's 'logic' is further along.

More unexpected Will humor after the jump.

This from HuffPost

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

I like what I heard this morning on NPR.  Its possible to like the candidate but hate the campaign.

Can someone explain to me how it is that we can collectively ridicule the Bush administration for sequestering themselves inside the echo chamber of their own message machine and then question the value of Obama and Clinton going on Fox News?

Is it wise to allow our animus toward the messenger to blind us so thoroughly that we forsake the possible benefit of reaching out to those (the viewers) who we may not otherwise reach?

It is counterproductive to declaim - repeatedly and shrilly - that Barack Obama's imperfections as a candidate for President of the United States are inconsequential, or the fabrications of his opponents or of the media, traditional, faux, main stream or otherwise.  
It is dismissive of the electorate who votes for Clinton in the primaries.  It is unresponsive and dangerous to imagine that voters' reluctance to fully endorse Obama is not real and heartfelt.  It needs to be addressed.

Peggy Noonan says it bluntly in the WSJ:

Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama's problem. America is Mr. Obama's problem.

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 . . .

I'd say that we bloggers are, collectively, in the vanguard of political analysis and critique.  Let's keep up the good work and continue to shape the dialogue.

I posted the following diary on 11 March, four full weeks ago.  The points I made then about Obama's superior strategic vision and organizational skills, are now being distributed as original thinking by the MSM.

ORIGINAL DIARY

Changing the Obama v Clinton meta-narrative
by RadMod [Subscribe] [Edit Diary]
Tue Mar 11, 2008 at 05:16:28 AM PDT

Who was more ready on Day One of the Primary Season?  Who had a more effective strategy for assembling enough delegates to secure the nomination?

The candidate who'd been running for 5 years or the new guy?  Who has been consistently outflanked by a tactically superior, innovative operation?  The answer is obvious, look at the delegate count.  Yet . . . . .

The rest of the original diary after the jump. . .

We need a plan of ACTION, not words.  

I do not believe that Hillary Clinton will concede before the convention.  It is not in her nature.  It would run counter to everything we know about her.  She intends to use every tactical and procedural option at her disposal to secure the nomination.  She is proving, with her actions, that she is, has always been and will continue to be a formidable opponent.  

As a liberal who welcomed the election of Bill Clinton to the Presidency, after what seemed like an eternity wandering in the electoral desert, I appreciated her and Bill's strength in standing up to the 2nd generation Atwaterites who tried to bring them down.

It is possible to simultaneously admire her single minded pursuit of her goal in the face of overwhelming odds and dislike her for the very same reason.  But that doesn't mean that I want her to be my nominee . . .

I am white, male, careening toward 50 . .. . the demographic at which, I imagine, the latest Clinton / Ferraro race-baiting strategy is targeted.  I'd like you to know, Senator Clinton, that I'm having none of it.  I'd also like you to know why.  Not that you care.

There is plenty in my life to suggest that I'd be sympathetic to the idea that a black man has gotten an unfair leg up.  Neither of my parents, the children of immigrants, went to college . . hell, my father didn't graduate from high school.  I grew up among other Italian-Americans in a town almost completely white and Catholic, surrounded by the casual racism that arises from ignorance and ethnic isolation.  I recall, as a little boy, attending mass in another town and seeing a black family in another pew.  I'd never seen a black person in church, and asked my parents, in the car on the way home, if they were Catholic.  I was five.  And I was blessed . . .

Admit it, you're a little worried.  Can he . . . will he counterpunch . . . . effectively?  Has Clinton exposed a chink that can be successfully exploited, first by her in the next six, debate free weeks and eventually by the Republicans, even if she still falls short?

Stay with me here . . .

Who was more ready on Day One of the Primary Season?  Who had a more effective strategy for assembling enough delegates to secure the nomination?

The candidate who'd been running for 5 years or the new guy?  Who has been consistently outflanked by a tactically superior, innovative operation?  The answer is obvious, look at the delegate count.  Yet . . . . . .

Take it from a NE Patriots fan, you have to play the game for 60 minutes, whether you like it or not, regardless of your previous record. If you don't, the team from NY might pull off a miracle and send you home deeply disappointed.

Blame who you will, (evil Clintonian wedge politics, neophyte Obama operatives, the MSM interest in supporting the Democratic catfight storyline etc.) but fact remains that the meta-narrative of the Democratic primary has shifted to favor Clinton.

What I hold most dear about this Republic of ours is its stability.  Like a great ship, it can be buffeted by global storms and tidal currents but for the most part it stays steadily on course.  It does not turn on a dime at every election.  It does not lurch from extreme to extreme.  The body politic will not allow it.  It lumbers on toward the horizon, making minor course corrections.

So how does this relate to gerrymandering? . . . . . .

Let us dance briefly in celebration  before beginning to dismantle and repudiate the vast Rovian mechanism of arrogant cynicism, hypocrisy and divisiveness