Thank you for that excellent post. I'll sign off on your good note. You are 100% right and 0% wrong, this is all childish vanity and bruised ego-coddling and it gets us nowhere as a party and a country.

Bottom line: Don't feed the PUMAs.

(BTW I remember you from back on TT a few years ago! I respected your passion for Gore then and now. I feel that Obama is a continuation of many of the progressive ideas that Gore has come out with in the past 8+ years (as well as Howard Dean's, to some extent). If not Gore, then I'm very happy with Obama. I just wish he'd stump more for him! Oh well, hopefully after Labor Day once we get out of silly season / summer doldrums and into the real campaign.)

The title of my above post should read: "Who says the Clintons are not trying to unify the party."

No apostrophe is necessary.

... In fact, apostrophe is necessary. I must address you, dear Smith, you whose baneful effect is exceeded only by your baleful affect.

You are a useless anti-intellectual loser and a waste of oxygen - in other words, the perfect Green. I wish you and Cynthia every happiness.

- HPhiB

AKA Smith: "Right. It was the so-called "accidentally" released "lower-staff" memo that was the real dog-whistle."

Wow, look at you desperately clutching on to the ONE AND ONLY THING YOU'VE GOT and trying to make it into so much more than it is. There is no evidence that the memo was anything other than what it was reported to be, a screw-up by a regional staff member in a response to a specific query. It was poorly written, full of claims that weren't valid, and showed no sign of being produced by Axelrod's slick PR machine. It was also minimally distributed.

Your attempt to make hay out of this is sort of like if I were to keep harping on and on about the Clinton staff members who forwarded Obama/Muslim conspiracy emails. That stuff is also well documented, but you don't see Obama people holding on to it for dear life like you are here.

AKA Smith: "That was Axelrod's best Astroturf moment. All they wanted was deniability."

There is no evidence of this, you're just spouting your worst-case-scenario, conspiracy-minded opinion.

AKA Smith: "Huffington ran the memo. Huffington was so in the tank for Obama, so anti-Hillary."

If Huffington were so in the tank for Obama, why did she run the memo, which made Obama's campaign look bad? Of course, Politico also ran the memo. Other news outlets "ran the memo." They were smart enough to realize it really was a small-time thing and not worth turning into something that it was not. Unlike yourself.

AKA Smith: "But the memo was a damned road map. It showed Obama supporters exactly how to attack the opposition. Brilliant move really."

Did you read the memo? It was stupid and contained no new information that anybody couldn't have read in the news. It wasn't a road-map, it was just a list, and it wasn't distributed to "Obama supporters," it was written in response to a query from a local journalist.

AKA Smith: "Ever read about Axelrod's other business? Axelrod is an Astroturfing genuis."

Axelrod runs a PR firm. Just like Hillary Clinton's adviser Mark Penn did. I defy you to explain how Axelrod was any more nefarious or sinister or whatever than Penn was. Or to give an example of something Axelrod did that was actually unfair/unethical etc.

AKA Smith: "No one on the Obama campaign needed to explicitly call Bill and Hillary Clinton racists. The netroots and the pundits did it for them."

Blah, blah, blah. People also called Obama a sexist, making a big deal out of some dumb thing he said when his cell phone vibrated, or whatever else they could latch onto. They also tried to invalidate all of Obama's support, and they tried to paint whites who were pro-Obama as people who had fallen prey to "liberal white guilt." Nobody who ever supported Obama ever said "I vote for him because I have white guilt." That is always an accusation from the opposition. It's the modern-day equivalent of "nigger lover," and just as mean-spirited and pathetic.

AKA Smith: "I could look up posts right here at Salon of people calling the Clintons racists."

I could look up posts calling Obama sexist...

AKA Smith: "There are even posts claiming that Hillary wishes Obama dead."

There were a variety of responses to Hillary Clinton's bizarre and ill-considered assassination comments, and that was the extreme side of it. But the majority of people simply thought she had put the "ass" into "assassination comments."

AKA Smith: "Some of these people have "disappeared"..."

Why the quotes around "disappeared"? Were they kidnapped by Pinochet?

AKA Smith: "...but others are now saying so very coyly: "But of course Bill Clinton isn't a racist ... but ..." -- some of the same people who flat called him one."

Which people are those? And what was it that was coy? You're just making stuff up here, as you often do. You're not a very honest or credible person. You just say things based on whatever emotions suit you at the moment, the veracity of your statements be damned. It's ugly.

AKA Smith: "The Clintons are more forgiving than I am."

Forgiving of.....what again? Winning? I believe you -- I mean, I believe that you probably do hold a grudge against anybody who is victorious over you in an even competition. I believe that about your ego.

AKA Smith: "For all those assholes who called me a racist in argument here at Salon, I have two words for you: Cynthia McKinney."

Like you never called anybody a sexist without cause. You were one of the worst and most heedless offenders. Now you're playing victim. Hilarious. And ugly. (You ain't got no alibi, your soul is ugly.)

The racist crap I referred to? The Memo of course. Just because it leaked and just because Axelrod said Obama said that they weren't going to run the campaign that way, doesn't mean that they weren't running the campaign that way.

It was deliberately "leaked."

Axelrod is quite clever. He simply hid the evidence of "racist crap" in plain sight and then pretended its existence was nonsense generated by lower lever staffers.

Stroke of genius really. One loooooog, loud dog-whistle. It worked.

Do any of you know what astroturfing means and how it works?