Sunday, July 27, 2008

Get Over This!: Another Obama ‘Journalist’ Doesn’t Get It

Original Link: http://donedems.com/2008/07/13/get-over-this-another-obama-journalist-doesnt-get-it/

In an article linked to Real Clear Politics under the title “Dems face defeat if Clintonites don’t get over it,” Michael Kinsey at Time proves he doesn’t, nor does he want to get it. He begins with an incongruous comparison to the current predicament within the Republican Party:

Consider the Republican Party. Many Republicans dislike John McCain with a passion that has lasted for years. Asked to explain, they refer to the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform law (which they thought, incorrectly as it turns out, would bite Republicans more than Democrats), or his opposition (since rescinded) to the Bush tax cuts, or what they regard as his tiresome and preening routine as a maverick. They resent his mutual love affair with the press (which he jokingly refers to as “my base”). They remember a lot of foolish talk a while back about how McCain might switch parties and become a Democrat. And yet almost all of these McCain haters will vote for him in November.

Now consider the Democratic Party. The one-on-one rivalry between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lasted only about three months from beginning to end. Their policy disagreements are negligible. For many Clinton supporters, the chance to elect an African-American President represents the culmination of a cause they have been fighting for all their lives. Yet almost half of Clinton supporters tell pollsters that they will not vote for Obama. And Clinton’s big-money backers are deflecting money and energy away from their party’s presumptive nominee.

Kinsey expresses exasperation at the amount of PUMA voters, but fails to offer any legitimate reasons to vote for Senator Obama. Perhaps the difference between Hillary and Obama was “negligible,” during the primary, before Obama became the champion of faith-based initiatives, channeled Thomas and Scalia on Choice, and ripped up the Constitution. But today it seems he and McCain have more in common than he and Hillary (experience is not one of the similarities, just in case anyone was wondering).

With that out of the way, Kinsey’s only reasoning for Hillary’s supporters voting for Obama is because he is black. Even Senator Obama should be angered by this line of reasoning. Not only is this insulting, but it reveals the lack of legitimate reasons offered to support Obama. Further, Kinsey’s assumption that electing a multi-ethnic individual as president is the “culmination” of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for equality is laughable, offensive, demeaning, and utterly inaccurate.

But that isn’t the worst of it.

Kinsey, in the mold of many Obama supporters in his campaign and in the media, chooses to condescend instead of comprehend Clinton Democrats and even Senator Obama’s newly disaffected supporters:

What is their problem? News reports suggest that disgruntled Clinton supporters are angry about alleged sexism in the coverage of her campaign, while other Democrats are upset at Obama’s recent moves toward the center. The second complaint is childish. Securing your base and then moving to the center is the fundamental move of politics, like the basic steps of the fox-trot. And Obama is hardly responsible for Clinton’s press coverage. But there is no easy way these folks can vent their anger at Chris Matthews. So they are taking their revenge on people without health care, women who need abortions, and others who they (if they supported Hillary) must think will be harmed by a Republican victory in the fall. That’ll show ‘em.

First, we need to make room under the bus for Obama’s “childish” supporters who consider themselves passionate progressives and are realizing they’ve been sold a bill of goods and can no longer trust the word of their candidate. How dare they demand that when their candidate makes promises and pledges that he follows through?!?!

Second, Kinsey is clearly unaware of the continuing sexist (”periodically, when she’s feeling down,” “the claws come out,” “if you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House”) rhetoric coming from the Obama campaign. Third, Kinsey didn’t get the memo that Obama doesn’t support universal health care (which is understandable considering Obama insists on calling his non-universal plan, universal) nor has he been following the new campaign developments indicating Obama has some agreements with Thomas and Scalia concerning abortion.

Nevertheless, Kinsey then takes the time to explain that Republicans are beginning to rally around McCain even though he “isn’t their type,” and attempts to diagnose and remedy what he believes to be the problem with Democrats:

Democrats aren’t like that. It’s not that they’re too nice or too principled, or too unwilling to be ruthless. The hatred of George W. Bush on the left–and the eagerness to see him gone–is at this point as extreme as anything the right has to offer. (I know this because I share it.) The desire to win for winning’s sake is pretty deep, too.



But true, professional unscrupulousness–the kind of do-anything-to-win pragmatism that Democrats envy in Republicans–requires more than just working yourself up into a lather of dislike. Sometimes, in fact, it requires the opposite: putting aside your dislike, your disappointments, your anger, your feelings of betrayal. In the case of Hillary Clinton’s erstwhile supporters, all of these feelings seem overwrought to me. But there is no point in arguing about this, or at least not now. Now is the time to just get over it.

Ha! He thinks our dislike (distrust is more like it), disappointment (in our Party and its disregard for Democracy), anger (over the injustice of caucuses, the RBC meeting, etc) and our feelings of betrayal (that the Democratic(?) Party would allow sexism and misogyny to go unabated and unacknowledged) are overwrought?!? Not only does he have it completely wrong, he doesn’t even want to gain an understanding (when it could cost the Precious the election) and thinks we should just shut up and get in line, or as he put it, in equally offensive terms, “just get over it.”

You know something is wrong when those who support the candidate who claimed to be “new politics” and unwilling to “say anything to get elected” (a moniker he consistently and inaccurately leveled against Hillary) are arguing that we need to acquire the “professional unscrupulousness” and “do-anything-to-win” (even steal elections) attitude we so loathed in Republicans.

Sorry, Kinsey, but it is not noble, nor desirable to vote for someone you don’t agree with and have serious qualms with just to win an election that ultimately won’t benefit you or represent what you believe because the candidate your Party “leaders” have selected has switched positions so often he can’t afford to do anything in office without angering and alienating at least half of those who took him at his word (whichever position they heard) and voted for him.

No, Kinsey, we won’t be getting over it: get over that!
Posted in Barack Obama, Democrats, Election 2008, John McCain, PUMA, Politics, Republicans Tags: Barack Obama, conservatives, democrat, get over it, hillary clinton, hillary supporters, John McCain, Just Say No Deal, michael kinsey, no unity, progressives, PUMA, Republican, unity

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