Letters to the Editor
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Joan
I am not a creepy GOP troll, but in your case a creepy Obama supporter who questions your judgement, but have to settle with silence from your end.
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@joan
guess I still haven't qualified for consideration.
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@ Joan
I hope you will post the transcript of your Hardball appearance, because there is so much I missed when it was broadcast (due, as I said, to the conversation which was competing for my attention.) I think a transcript would refresh my memory on other points which I overlooked in my first post on the subject.
Perhaps you can tell me whether I am accurately remembering your comments on another topic: someone raised the Limbaugh Operation Chaos voters, Republicans who voted for Clinton in order to prolong the contest for the nomination. The estimate was that as few as 7 percent, or as many as 10 percent, of the votes cast in Indiana came from Republicans. Is that accurate? And the next estimate was that half or slightly more than half these votes went to Clinton? Fifty-five percent? Still accurate?
Your reply was that the Limbaugh effect was not a factor, because it contributed to both candidates more or less equally. Still accurate?
But the panel, as I recall, did not agree with your conclusion, Matthews pointing out that Obama has drawn a legitimate crossover vote from Republicans in all of the primaries, an effect Clinton has not had. I do not remember, and perhaps the transcript will show, whether anyone pointed out that Limbaugh's voters were told to vote for Clinton.
I think that did come up. My sense was that in your dismissal of the Operation Chaos effect, you didn't address the obvious, which is that Republicans voting for Obama did so on their own, while those voting did so in order to prolong the Clinton candidacy because Limbaugh has been urging them to. Limbaugh has not been telling Republicans to vote for either candidate. He has been absolutely clear and emphatic that the Chaos vote is a Clinton vote.
So the Limbaugh effect is an issue worth revisiting. Using the lowest of the estimated numbers, half of 7 percent of votes cast, or 3 1/2 percent, went to Clinton on this basis.
If true, the Clinton margin of victory, less than 2 percent of votes cast, depends on Limbaugh.
Is my memory right in thinking that you didn't think this was an issue?
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I am a day late to this post....
I took a day off yesterday because I knew the smuggness of the Obama supporters would just be toxic for my ability to think things through. I'm still thinking but I find myself unable to envision voting for Obama.I don't think I can reward the behavior of his race baiting,sexist,thuggish campaign and it's supporters nor can I be bullied by the media narrative.
The Brazile/Begala fight kind of crystalizes for me one of the strongest arguments for withholding my vote. Who was it who said, "a gaffe is when you accidentaly say what you believe"? I for one have been sick of being lectured by Brazile for quite some time and have stopped watching CNN as a result so I missed the interchange you have posted. Brazile accidently exposed what Obama and his supporters think they are doing, creating a new coalition of AA's, elites and the emerging upper middle class youth. The result of this new coalition,if it is successsful,will be a realignment that leaves out almost 50 percent of our country and their concerns and needs.We will have two parties who cater to the needs of the top 10 percent. This will only accelerate our decline into a very large banana republic.
In the long run AA's on the lower end of the economic scale will figure out that Obama has no plan to help them and no demonstratable interest in doing so. He is no far lefty as Republicans will try to paint him ,because of his opportunistic associations with them in Chicago. His economic advisers are far more right leaning(one has long been an advocate of privitizing Social Security for example),his big money supporters are from the banking and energy(nuclear, coal,gas)industries.He has already signaled to the powerful money interests in medicine that they have nothing to fear from him. His wealthy supporters may believe in progressive policies in theory but ask a few how many of their kids go to public school?
His side will try to win women back by pointing out the threat to Women's Rights that a McCain presidency might present in relation to the Supreme Court. I'm not really worried about that. By all indications Democrats are going to increase their majorities in both houses.If they allow an appointment to the court that would overturn roe vs wade then we will know for sure that the Democratic Party is lost to us and it is time to begin to build a new coalition.
Thanks Joan for being one of the very few fair and balanced.
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To Joan and Show Me
Show me (after typing this, it became clear I wasn't responding to you at all; just getting ready for my work),
I look at the political landscape as a "picture" of what I'm not willing to admit about myself. I see it as an accurate account of my unwillingness to "own up" to those aspect of myself that I'd rather see in Bush or whoever (or at least blame on him).
So while I am excited about an Obama presidency, I have no notion that he "should" or is "supposed" to be president. That is a magical type thinking that- in my opinion- expresses exactly the kind of mentally that is responsible for the intense pain and suffering we see proliferating inside and around us in our communities, the nation and the world.
I see the argument that Obama or Hillary "should" be president as silly and unsubstantiated as the argument that Nader or my daughter "should" be president.
We get so disappointed and angry at each other (friends, families, politicians, bosses, kids). We expect there to be a solution that the other guy is suppose to offer, and if he or she doesn't "get us there", we are quick to know what is wrong with him or her.
I don't disagree with you that Barack has problems or that we see his personal problems reflected in all sorts of ways. Same with Hillary and McCain. Depending on your tendencies (and massive conditionings) you will lean towards shadowizing Barack or Hillary. Hillary fans can admit she might have flaws, but in the light of their hope for what she can offer...those flaws aren't all that serious. And because they know that we would be in better hands with her, the image of Barack's flaws looms large. This is where our mental distortions take root. If I am believing that I "know" our country needs Barack, is "supposed" to be in his hands, then Hillary's flaws become symbols of so much more than her simple humanity.
If this political drama was taking place in the context of our local library system, we might take it seriously but without this religious, salvanic zeal. The zeal is the problem, not the politicians. They are just filling in a slot. And we make, hold and sustain this zealous slot; we keep a fire lit here and it blazes with our dissociated fears, blames, hates, anxieties....
I see the intensity of the division between serious Hillary and Barack supporters as a simple reflection of that division in myself that I constantly produce. And the reason this division will basically seal up soon is not due to any type of health within the democratic party; it will "heal" only because most democrats "know" that McCain is not "supposed" to be the president. We will soon begin using him to project our days away. I'm just typing out loud before work, getting myself ready to hear 6 or 7 people tell me what has "caused" their particular pains and sufferings.
I think it is fine not to vote for Barack. Yesterday I was trying to explain to a group of people who conflate my excitement for Barack with the notion that he "should" win...I was trying to explain to them why I can easily get behind somebody voting for Nader or McCain and why I think it is a sign of delusion to think that another person should be voting for somebody they are not voting for....
Anyway, it seems you wanted Hillary and had good reason to think she could help us in special ways. I know that many Barack folks expect him to be the difference. I doubt it. Big time, doubt. But that's because I see no reason to believe that any great politician will do much more than slightly slow down our collision course into catastrophe (as if we aren't already there). My hunch is that the next 20 years are probably going to stun us utterly. All of us have lived in such denial, projecting the enemy onto terrorists, corporations, liberals, Bush's, Clintons, Christians, atheists....that the true cause of our sad, tired and angry living escapes us completely. This is already reflected in any social metric we look at (violence towards women, economic disparity, incarcerations, racism, rage, increased anxiety...), but we continue to blame it on the other and each new election serves as another opportunity to measure the degree of our denial. How certain to Barack's people appear? How certain to Hillary's appear? What about Coulter’s, Limbaugh's, McCains...?
My friends often don't believe me when I voice my opinion that it must get much worse before it gets better...They see that I live happily and I'm silly and I love meeting people and helping them (I'm a therapist). They ask where my hope comes from. I don't know, but it has something to do with the fact that our solution is always right under each of our gorgeous noses; if we were only willing to sniff around a bit more.
Show me, I only wrote to you because you had the last post and you were upset about Barack winning. By the time I post this, who knows where your words will be. I just needed to write.
Joan, thanks for the update on your hardball appearances! I wouldn't get too sad about the worst representations of our species that you'll find here. This is the perfect place to project images of the "the other" and blame those. You are our screen! We each take a somewhat sick consolation from each other's projections. As long as Joan gets to be the dumb one, I'm relatively ok. I'm not calling you dumb, Joan!