Or have any of you PUMA-ites ever read any of his stuff?

Oh, I forgot: Many if not most of you are McCain operatives and only pretending to be Democrats, so of course you wouldn't know about the books and articles Conason has written over the years defending the Clintons.

Then again, maybe you do -- which is why, instead of listening to him, you try to attack and destroy him rather than suffer the horrible, terrible insult of hearing the truth.

What's even more pathetic than watching ignorant McCain trolls do sockpuppet IDs and swarming Salon's letters section to attack the guy who probably did the most of any human living to keep Hillary's hubby from being removed from office?

Watching them hold a national convention:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/15/31818/6878/241/568256

By being allowed to speak at, and to demonstrate his Christian faith to, a White-Approved Exurban Megachurch congregation (oh, and did I mention that it caters to WHITE people?), Obama destroys the Republican-spread "he's a Muslim Terraist!" crapola once and for all.

This wasn't about trying to convert the hardcore evangelicals; it was about blowing up myths being used to weaken his support among average Americans.

It was all the people who are falling prey to the GOP's crypto-racist substitution of "Muslim" for "ni--er".

By going to the exurban megachurch of Saddleback -- which unlike his old church is White-Approved and White-Sanctified -- and showing his Christian faith, even if it's not of the same flavor as Warren's (McCain's sure isn't), he drives a big fat stake in the heart of the Republican-fueled "he's a Muslim terraist!" garbage being strewn about.

The true hardcore racists won't be swayed, but the millions of fencesitters who don't let racism dictate their every more might be.

That's why they're so industriously pushing the "Obama is a Muslim" lie.

It's also why Obama went to the very white, very exurban megachurch of Rick Warren's: To demonstrate his Christian credentials in a White-Sanctified forum. It's not the folks in the Saddleback pews he was seeking to convert; it's the far greater number of folks exposed to the Muslim smear.

Jeannequixote speaks the truth:

As a lifelong Dem and progressive I spent the best part of the 90's having to apologize at all times for Bill and Hillary Clinton and hearing disparaging remarks about Jimmy Carter and glowing ones, ad nauseum ,about Reagan and Gingrich.

The events of the last 8 years have so angered me, beginning with the Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq, that I am becoming politically active, which was never a consideration before.

Am taking off for a family reunion on Saturday in rural South Georgia, sporting my Obama sticker, and am actually a little bit anxious about how some of those conservative and farming relatives are going to react. They will, but may be too polite to confront me. See, that is something else we have lost, the ability to have a political conversation when we disagree with one another. I will be perceived as the total outsider. Republicans in these parts simply cannot comprehend why anyone, certainly not one brought up around agriculture and who worked in a financial services firm, could be a Democrat. The shift is all the more amazing when I recollect that most were Democrats through the 60's at least. I blame it on all those private schools too many of them attended. And, we are not talking about elite private schools. We are talking about mostly religious ones created on the heel of busing and forced integration. Oh, how our past continues to haunt us.

The shift, of course, happened because of "The Southern Strategy": The Republican Party's deliberate abandonment and downright repudiation of their beginnings as an abolitionist, anti-slavery party, in order to take advantage of the massive ill will 1950s and 1960s white Southerners felt against Democrats for taking up the cause of civil rights and human rights.

The Southern Strategy works to this very day, though its Republican practitioners have to be a bit more subtle. For instance, they use the term "Muslim" as a code word for "ni--er", which is why they love pushing the bogus "Obama's a Muslim terrorist" lie -- and why Obama's reaffirmation and demonstration of his Christian faith at Saddleback helped blow big fat holes in this lie.

As Jeanne mentions, the religious authorities in the South -- many of whom have gone national with their megachurches in order to push their brand of theology as America's de facto state religion -- back this institutional racism, not least by running private schools where white children need never see a black face. Their alignment with the Republican Party means that Corporate America will, via Big Media, promote them and whitewash their ickier aspects.

This is why Schaller is right, and no amount of "I've encountered worse racism in NYC than anywhere in the South" anecdotes will change that.

That's the sad thing, Tangerine: The utter rejection of social programs that help everyone, black and white, precisely because they help everyone.

As Schaller pointed out, FDR was only able to get the South to accept the New Deal -- and that only grudgingly -- when it was made clear that the New Deal wouldn't upset the white-run power structure in the former Confederacy states. Once Democratic pols like Hubert Humphrey and LBJ started pushing for civil rights after FDR's death, the Southern pols (like Strom Thurmond, the first to break off and join the GOP) started getting restive.