... Obama should be crushing JM, but I'm afraid that the lack of an enthusiastic and unified Democratic crowd behind BO, half of whom respond with anger and delight at his obstacles and missteps, is a large part of the problem.

Everyone knows exactly what Obama could do to unify the party. He doesn't want to do it. Oh well. His choice.

However, he will have no one to blame but himself if he doesn't unify the party. That's what being the one left standing means. It's all on his shoulders. He is responsible for the result of his own decisions, whether they improve his chances or defeat him.

Bill Clinton has said absolutely nothing to blame Obama himself for the racist smear. In fact, he endorsed him. He is speaking at the convention on Obama's behalf. Hillary Clinton has wholeheartedly endorsed Obama. She is campaigning for him. What more can either of them do? They are doing what he has asked of them. If he doesn't want to ask more of Hillary Clinton, that's his choice.

However, he may suffer very real consequences for not asking more of her. His choice.

That crap about the Clinton legacy that the press keep going on about is so much noise. Bill Clinton's legacy is his presidency -- all the good and bad about it. Hillary Clinton has shown that she is an exceptional vote getter. I think she will do fine continuing in the Senate or maybe running again in 2012. If she does, that racist crap won't work anymore should Obama choose to compete again.

You can only cry wolf so many times.

Yes, of course his supporters labeling the Clinton's racists helped him early on. It was not about his black voters. It was about white racial guilt. He needed to rally white liberals. It didn't become a disadvantage to him until he had to compete in those states which were much less liberal.

It won't work against John McCain. It won't work when employed to do anything but rally his base at liberal blogs.

Yes it hurts him now with General Election voters. Now he wants to be post racial.

I think a review of the early primary calendar may be instructive here.

January 3 -- Obama wins the Iowa caucuses, Hillary comes in third. Clinton's obituaury is begun to be sketched out.

January 8 -- Hillary wins New Hampshire. Uh-oh, maybe she's not dead after all.

January 15 -- Hillary wins the Michigan primary, from which Obama has cynically removed his name.

January 19 Hillary wins the popular vote in Nevada, where the Obama campaign had expected to win.

Now the Obama campaign is genuinely worried, with Hillary projected to win big in Florida in ten days. They HAVE to win South Carolina, and according to some sources they make a conscious decision to play the race card against the Clintons before the January 26 primary there, releasing the infamous "lower staff" memo. This was days before Bill Clinton's "Jesse Jackson" remark.

It was Obama who injected race into the campaign, and he did it for cynical reasons.

I am a "self styled PUMA". My unwillingness to "rally around the

presumptive Dem nominee" is because I do not trust Obama

and have never bought into his schtick.

I do NOT think HRC was robbed: she didn't organize for the

caucuses, pure and simple. My beef is with the MSM's disgusting

fawning over Obama, the downright nastiness of his followers,

his own attitude of "I am The One", and the whole cult thing he's

got going. Oh, and the FISA vote and all the other switcheroos.

I love the Party Unity My Ass slogan. I feel the same way about

Obama as I did about Bush: anything that fucks with him is

all to the good.

You can call me bitter, hag, crone, whatever. I no longer care.

I vote and my vote counts, same as yours.

And Joan Walsh calling PUMAS "post menopausal freaks" : CHEAP

SHOT JOAN

i don't think things are going to heal in the way suggested. And I'm not even sure the diagnosis is correct. I know that McCain believes 4 dollars make a buck. That worries me a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNbyGD6XPWE

I also have no clue how we might ever know that Obama won the primary mainly because a majority of his voters thought of the Clintons as racist. It seems, to me, like the kind of thing that exactly can not ever be agreed upon by historians or reasonable observers. At this point, I don't see any evidence that points to a significant percentage of Obama's votes coming from a massive conviction that Clinton was racist. That said, I also have no doubt that millions and millions of democrats hated Clinton and Obama.

Trying to heal from this primary by getting the awful players to come clean is a bit like trying to heal from your relationship with that asshole by getting him to admit all the things he did wrong. The healing will come from the fact that we are less and less distracted by those awful influences.

And we can't blame them for the distraction in my opinion. No matter how many powerful Clinton supporters tried to focus our attention on Obama in one-sidedly negative ways, they can't be held responsible if we fell for it. And no matter how many powerful cultural figures said that the Clintons are massive racists, come on. If you started to believe that the Clintons secretly believe in white superiority or even tacitly support such thoughts, it isn't due to the power players. Most of us know that Obama and Clinton are full of flaws. And most of us know they are kind of smart and have some basic good intentions and a few really positive abilities. There is no way, in my opinion, that this primary will ever be healed.

But I don't think it is necessary. I guess what I find as necessary (if we are to avoid what's coming down the pipe socially) is a massive reorientation of our attention. This change will be demonstrated in many ways, one of which will be that the movers and shakers spend much less time even listening to talk about who makes eye contact, who comes across as stiff and who was married to who. We will know there is hope when the average person gets bored more quickly when somebody tries to convice them that the way Obama shakes hands is meaningful or when the average person starts daydreaming when somebody gets really worried about admiration from abroad. I think we are heading in that direction. kind of. It will be a good sign when a real genuine asshole is recognized as such and yet still given the nomination because she just makes consistently good decisions and seems to able to help take a few good steps forward.

and let me be clear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNbyGD6XPWE

It isn't McCain's gaffe about three dollars being in a buck that makes this video enjoyable to me. It is how the song rightly points out that McCain is basically recommending that we deflate our tires and trying to embarrass Obama for the point he made about fuel efficiency. I also just like the beat.