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if there’s one thing that might have made a clinton supporter out of me, it would’ve been this:

[Obama] ended up voting for what he called “an improved but imperfect bill” after backing a failed attempt earlier in the day to strip the immunity provision from the bill through an amendment… Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, who had battled Mr. Obama for the nomination, voted against the [FISA] bill.

of course, had she won the nomination, i’m guessing hillary too might have felt differently about FISA — especially knowing she’d be next in line to take those fancy new executive powers out for a spin. still, at least she’s able to mimic the basic postures of leadership, which is more than i can say today for the other guy. “improved but imperfect”?? way to set the bar higher, mister reform candidate.

obama won’t take the oath of office for another six months — it is way too early for buyer’s remorse to be setting in.

The finally-over primary season has made one thing crystal clear: pretty much everybody who doesn’t consider him/herself a feminist (and many people that do) has no idea what feminism is.  This has manifested on both sides of the Clinton/Obama divide, and continues to show up in the media pretty much daily.

 To many Obama supporters I’ve encountered, “feminism” is a way of behaving based on dualistic and oppositional thinking (men and women are at WAR!!!) and hypersensitivity to the possibility of slights.  The label “feminist” has often been tossed out as an insult against overzealous Clinton supporters, which is unsettling.  To a certain extent, this is the fault of incomplete gender awareness among said Obama supporters, but the blame also belongs to some Clinton supporters. 

You see, it appears that a slice of Clinton’s backers (now mostly calling themselves PUMAs or Hillocrats or some such stupidity) agree with the above-mentioned Obama people that feminists are thin-skinned man-haters who spend their days hunting for examples of misogyny.  These folks not only practice this weirdness, they excoriate feminists who dare use the label without adopting their framing.  It’s very similar to the situation Josh discusses, wherein a small handful of stupid people who call themselves “Christians” have managed to convince most Americans (and, consequently, most American Christians) that Christianity is only for those who like snake handling, speaking in tongues, and directing one’s prayers to George W. Bush.

Unfortunately for these people, feminism isn’t what they think it is.  It’s actually a pretty simple concept: feminism is the belief that women are equal to men, that they should be treated as such, and that we have to work hard to make that happen.  Yes, part of that is recognizing some of the more subtle instances of misogyny that pop up constantly, and, often, pointing them out in ways that may or may not be abrasive.  But it’s also a lot of other things.  Not to get all cultural theory or anything, but we’d really be better off discussing “feminisms,” since such a wide variety of approaches, many of which are contradictory, end up under the feminism umbrella.  The point is, just because one “feminist” does things a certain way doesn’t mean that any other (let alone all other) feminists do too.

Of course, the problem goes far beyond Clinton and Obama supporters.  The worst of it has always come from the mass media (despite what the PUMAs seem to believe, almost none of the bona fide misogyny that polluted the primaries came from Obama, his campaign, or the vast majority of his supporters).  Take, for instance, this gem, wherein Scott Martelle of the LA Times suggests that Obama is a closet woman-hater because he referenced Ann Richards’s famous quip from her keynote at the 1988 Democratic National Convention: “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did.  She just did it backwards and in high heels.” 

Here’s Obama’s remark: “[W]omen can do anything that the boys can do – and do it better, and do it in heels.  I still don’t know how she [referencing Hillary Clinton] does it in heels.”  Apparently, Martelle thinks Obama’s mention of heels will be interpreted by “some” (oh, that pesky “some”!  They’re so touchy!) as misogynist because, well, I guess because some women wear heels.  I’m really not sure what offense Martelle expects women to take, and I think that’s because he doesn’t either.  Regardless of whether or not he calls himself a feminist (I doubt that he does), I’m 100% certain that he doesn’t understand what feminism is, if he thinks what he’s doing qualifies. 

Most of the comments on his post indicate that most people are smart enough to see this as shameless conflict-mongering and nothing more.  But the problem is that “some people” (in this case, the PUMAs) will undoubtedly pick up on this and add it to the list of other dubious infractions Obama has supposedly committed.  These folks will once again use this comment as a litmus test for what they call feminism, and, sadly, lots of others will take their word for it.  The end result is that, once again, we’re letting crazy people define feminism for us, and more and more potential feminists will turn themselves off entirely to everything bearing that label because they believe that feminism is always already batshit crazy.

The trick of it is, I can’t, in good conscience, go around  denying that these assholes are feminists, because it’s not my place to do so, and if I did, I’d be guilty of what I’m criticizing them for doing.  All I can do is offer my definition of feminism as an alternative.  So here we are: there are assholes everywhere, and some of them call themselves feminists.  Beware of assholes.  Sorry, internet, that’s the best I can do.

So, it’s clear that Jerome Armstrong is incredibly petty and an all-around prick.  The question is: did he become this way during the primaries, or has he always been insufferably assholish and we haven’t noticed because he had been on our side for so long?

um, senator? while you were congratulating yourself for winning the “popular vote” (sort of, kind of, in a manner of speaking, depending how you count it, if there were such a thing), we went ahead and decided for you.

somebody really should have told you by now. how embarassing.

about fucking time:

you had me worried for a while there, johnny.

meanwhile, in the parallel universe inhabited by the clinton campaign…

NEW YORK (AP) — Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed to remain in the presidential race until the final primaries next month while her campaign built a case that she now leads in the popular vote if the disputed contests in Michigan and Florida are counted.
…
“You don’t walk off the court before the buzzer sounds,” Clinton said on CNN. “You never know, you might get a three-point shot at the end.”

you’ve got to admire the consistency of the clinton playbook. some overpaid consultant decided some time last year that hillary’s biggest obstacle to the nomination was not her high disapproval, her war vote, or her abrasive personality, but her gender. the only way americans will vote for a woman, someone decided, is if she’s swinging the biggest, hairiest pair of cast-iron cojones this side of vin diesel. and so, ladies and gentlemen, meet the whiskey-swigging, hardhat-wearing, iran-nuking, sports-metaphorizing mister hillary clinton — not just the first woman president, but the manliest since teddy roosevelt.

almost a year later, and god bless ‘em, they’re sticking with it. obama’s lead is — let’s just get used to saying it — insurmountable. clinton, displaying a truly bushlike, balls-over-brains contempt for mathematical reality itself, not only vows to stay the course, but manages to posit the situation as a basketball analogy. yet, not unlike john kerry hunting pheasants, there’s something unconvincing about hillary’s emulation of blue collar machismo. in this case, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the rules of basketball.

i’m not a sports guy, but i’ve watched enough basketball to know that the proverbial 3-pointer-at-the-buzzer is only decisive when the game is extremely close — like, within 3 points. as of this morning’s count, clinton needs 308 delegates to clinch the nomination, while obama only needs 137. there are only 189 pledged delegates still up for grabs in the remaining primaries. even if clinton were to win every single one of those delegates, she’d still be 119 short. in other words, she needs at least 72% of all remaining uncommitted delegates, pledged and super-. she doesn’t need a three-pointer, she needs several dozen of them, in the court-time equivalent of about thirty seconds.

it takes a latter-day iron balls mcginty to demand, as hillary is, that superdelegates should withhold their endorsements until after the last primary, when there’s no possible way its outcome could tilt the balance. i’d really like to think that she’s just stalling for a face-saving opportunity to bow out, but every time i want to give her credit for having a little class i’m disappointed. remember the texas debate, when clinton was “absolutely honored” to be sharing a podium with barack? and then, not 48 hours later in ohio, shouting “shame on you!” at the top of her lungs? by now i’m inclined to believe her when she says she means to stick it out to the bitter, bitter end.

we’re well past the point where there’s anything intelligent left to say about the clinton campaign, so i’ll just close out this post by free-associating some of the words that come to mind: pyrrhic. delusional. egomaniacal. quixotic. scorched-earth. sabotage. suicide pact. Greek tragedy.

and so on, it seems, ’til august…

let’s stop kidding ourselves, the democratic primary is over. who do you like for VP?

running down a few of the short-list names that have been on pundits’ lips…

-Hillary Clinton, we’re to believe, makes up half of a “dream ticket” — maybe the most asinine thing i’ve ever heard. there’s no way the obama camp is dumb enough to buy into this farce, and frankly i’d be surprised if clinton were actually willing to take the #2 spot at all. let’s not even dignify this one.

- unsuitable as hillary is for the VP job, there’s no denying that her campaign has energized women and it would be a shame to forfeit that energy — one reason why names like Kathleen Sibelius (KS gov), Janet Napolitano (AZ gov) and Claire McCaskill (MO sen) are being tossed around lately. i don’t know much about sibelius or mccaskill, other than that they’re often cited as bellwethers of changing dynamics in formerly red-leaning midwestern swing states. but napolitano is competent and tested, and it would be interesting to see whether she’d give mccain a run for his money in his home state.

- speaking of beating mccain on his own turf… Bill Richardson is a smart pick for the experience he’d bring, especially in foreign policy; he knows his shit but doesn’t have the washington stank on him. then there’s the latino thing — hey, nothing says ‘change’ like a black-brown presidential ticket. more than that, though, richardson can deliver western states. obama is already poised to do well west of the rockies, but a popular western governor would make him truly formidable — and with CO, NM, NV, & MT in his column, he has some wiggle room in those big white eastern states hillary clinton keeps tellling us are so ungodly important.

- …which also makes montana governor Brian Schweitzer an interesting, if unlikely, prospect. he’s an affable good-ol’-boy and a colorful character — and green is definitely one of his colors, one i’d like to see more prominently displayed in the obama rainbow.

- then there’s your swing-state heavies like pennsylvania’s sen. Bob Casey, a major crossover obama backer who deserves credit for his role in cutting clinton’s lead there in half, or ohio’s sen. Sherrod Brown, or OH gov Ted Strickland. nothing against any of these guys, but their names are usually dropped in discussions of how to win over socially conservative, blue-collar, rust-belt types — y’know, the supposed economic populists who somehow always fail to vote their self-interest because they’re too distracted by wedge issues. frankly, chasing blindly after these votes to the exclusion of less populous but winnable states in the west and south is a big part of the failed conventional wisdom that’s cost democrats almost two decades of elections, with hillary clinton as its latest victim. please, no more lipservice for this foolishness. postpartisanship is all well and good, but if those elusive midcontinental swing voters aren’t ready to pull the lever for a democrat this year, slapping a pro-life white dude on the ticket isn’t going to change it.

- the same might be said of VA sen. Jim Webb, about whom i’m fairly indifferent these days, though he’s supposedly a frontrunner for the VP nod. i liked him in 2006 when he was running against macaca on an antiwar platform, but it was disappointing how quickly he backed off that position once elected — the old ‘we don’t have the votes, whaddaya gonna do?’ song & dance — and anymore his appeal as a potential VP candidate seems to be predicated on his military credentials, his republican past (!), and alleged appeal to antiwar conservatives.

- other names i’ve heard, ranging from the preposterous to simply “meh”: wesley clark, joe biden, chuck hagel or mike bloomberg (yeah, riiiight), tom daschle, john edwards.

okay, you go now. predictions? druthers?

on this site in recent months we’ve had lively debates over the extent to which the sean bell verdict was a racial episode, and over the racial identity of the geico caveman. for some reason, race seems to be the one issue we almost always find something to argue about.

but can we agree that this crosses a line?

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

without going into full-on egghead ivory-tower academic mode, isn’t the subtext here that “real americans” don’t want a black president, and hillary clinton is okay with that?

move over, kevin bacon:

The latest right-wing game is to pin controversial figures, who might have said or done anything objectionable at any point in their lifetimes, to Barack Obama. Then make him apologize for them. Then make him denounce and reject them. And then say he hasn’t done enough to “distance” himself from them…
So, let’s play the six degrees of Barack Obama game and see who else he should denounce and reject… I invite all of you to play along. See how many degrees it takes you to get to Obama and how enthusiastically and vociferously he has to denounce you.

as if it wasn’t bad enough that he’s only two degrees away from cenk uygur, there’s more bad news news for obama: since i shook his hand at a campaign stop last year, he is now also directly responsible for every outrageous, unpatriotic, foolish thing i’ve ever said or written. if chris wallace ever finds about about this site, obama is well and truly fucked.

in fact, there’s a good chance that just by reading this post, you too have been tainted, and any political ambitions you may have harbored are henceforth invalidated. sorry! if you feel the need to distance yourself, i’ll understand.

this is such a transparent good cop/bad cop ploy. the GOP continues flogging the jeremiah wright meme while straight-shooting john mccain pretends to be above the mudslinging, and subservient political reporters are only too happy to let him have it both ways:

Amid Negative Ads, McCain Claims High Road

“For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor,” an announcer says as the ad opens. That controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, then appears onscreen, saying, “No, no, no. Not God Bless America. God Damn America!” (The ad, which you can watch here, has been called “misleading,” since, according to Obama, he was not sitting in his pew when this particular sermon was delivered.)

Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, who has pledged to run a “respectful campaign,” quickly condemned the ad. He suggested in a letter to the state party chair, which was released to the media, that the spot “degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats.”

it’s win-win-win for republicans. the scurrilous anti-obama message still gets through to the mouthbreathing constituency for whom it was always intended. meanwhile, right-leaning voters with more highminded pretensions — who were never going to go for obama in the first place, but were never completely comfortable with the race-baiting tactics either — swoon over the old-school classiness of john mccain, who scores maverick points for ostensibly bucking his party (wink-wink) once again.

for its part, the republican party is thinking ahead to november and thrilled to have hillary clinton’s help in tarnishing the likely democratic nominee. but if all the poop-flinging should ultimately help clinton get the nod, so much the better — that the republicans would much rather run against hillary than barack is the biggest open secret in politics.

it’s painfully obvious that the national media are too complacent, or too much infatuated with BBQ john, or just too fucking dumb to put it all together. here’s hoping the democratic superdelegates are not.