What to make of the Clintons....

I don't know if all this buzz about Bill Clinton's anger and Hillary's machinations is coming from the Clintons, who have a reputation for wanting to be in the spotlight, or if it's coming from the media because they want to stir up controversy before the convention to increase ratings come August 25th.

If the media can get enough voters worried and/or curious about whether or not Hillary's PUMAs will cause an upoar demanding she be nominated, or whether Bill will whole or only half-heartedly endorse Obama, they can get more people to tune in.

It's a terrible thing not to be able to trust the media who have become nothing more than corporate shills.

On the other hand, it's not beyond the pale that the Clintons could be wanting more attention. Attention is the air they breathe.

The Clintons at one time were the future of the Democratic Party, the more centrist Democrats, straight out of the Democratic Leadership Counsel. The enthusiasm for the new baby boomer generation he represented propelled Bill Clinton into the White House, rejecting the older WW II generation of Bush Sr. and then Dole. But that was a generation ago.

Now, the Democratic Party primary voters have decided it is time for another new generation, a post boomer generation. They could have gone for identity politics, and many wanted to. Almost half of the primary voters thought it was time to put a woman in the White House. But the desire for generational change won out (though just barely) and it is time to move on.

This desire for change and the move to a new generation propelled Kennedy as well as Clinton into the presidency, and it is likely to do the same this year (although Obama's race is a wild card in our still-too-racist society.)

The best thing the Clintons could do from this day forward, if they want to see a Democrat in the White House, is stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about the Party. As much as Democrats admire the Clintons and are grateful for the good they did in the nineties, it seems the Party wants to move forward to a new generation, and as the elder statesman and stateswoman of the Party, it is their job to help facilitate that with their support and mentoring.

This is the way of life, the way of the world. Older generations mentor younger ones and prepare them for the roles they must take on. The Party has decided Barack is ready enough, and the Clintons can help tremendously by supporting that decision and being there to assist him when needed.

If, instead, they want to make this race about them, especially if they want it to be an "I told you so" moment in November, as Obama loses to a weak and floundering opponent, they will not be forgiven. Should Obama lose and Democrats believe the Clintons didn't work hard enough to help him win, Hillary's potential 2012 candidacy will be and should be dead.

But I say, let's wait and see. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. I do believe they are patriots and I don't think they will sabotage Obama's candidacy. However, if all this speculation gets more people to watch the Democratic Convention, and both Hillary and Bill work their magic to unify the Party and get enthusiastically behind Obama, then more people wills see the Party and the candidate at their best, which could translate into millions of votes.

The night I became a Democrat

On this, the fortieth anniversary of the death of Bobby Kennedy, I remember the night I became a Democrat:

From my 2007 essay:

I began my journey towards the Democratic Party in the early morning hours of June 6th, 1968, two weeks before my twenty-first birthday. Although I didn't register as a Democrat until many years later, that morning as I listened to the commentary surrounding the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, I began to hear things I had not heard from my Republican family.

I had been married six months, and my husband and I were both in college. We were paying $100 a month for a tiny one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, furnished with some hand-me-down furniture from my parents and a rented refrigerator. Although Bobby Kennedy was shot in the early morning of June 5th, after winning the California primary, because we could afford neither a telephone nor television, I only heard the news of the shooting when I went to class later that morning. And while I hadn't really followed Bobby Kennedy's campaign, I knew immediately that this event had enormous significance to the country.

Robert Kennedy was gunned down just five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated, and just two months after the assassination of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. You could not deny the reality that something was terribly wrong in our country. It was a time of war, of civil unrest, and of enormous challenges to the country, and many voices for change were tragically being silenced. So I interrupted my studies, stayed up all night listening to the radio, and got an education I might otherwise never have gotten.

Throughout the night of June 5th, as the young Senator lingered near death, his words, replayed by radio stations around the country, filled my tiny apartment. I heard the words Kennedy used to calm a crowd after Martin Luther King's death, and learned that he promoted private-public partnerships rather than welfare as the most dignified way to bring people out of poverty, that he sympathized with the plight of low paid farm workers in California, that he had a passionate desire to bring about racial justice and to insert a new idealism into the political discourse.

(Read the rest here)

Joe Andrew, superdelegate, describes the Democratic Party

The words of Joe Andrew, former DNC chairman, in his letter supporting Barack Obama:

The difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is that you are always welcome in the Democratic Party.

Because Democrats don’t care if you are black or white or brown or a nice shade of green, you are welcome in the Democratic Party.

We don’t care if you pray in a church or a synagogue or a temple or a mosque, or just before math tests, you are welcome in the Democratic Party.

We don’t care if you are young or old, or just don’t want to tell your age, you are welcome in the Democratic Party.

We don’t care what gender you are, or what gender you want to hold hands with; as long as you want to hold hands, you are welcome in the Democratic Party.

We don’t care about the size of your bank account, just the size of your heart; and we don’t care where you are today, just where you dream you want to be tomorrow.

That is your Democratic Party.

That is Barack Obama's Democratic Party.

That is the Party that will win in November

A kinder, gentler Hillary? Nah!

The media went nuts over the end of Thursday night's Dem debate when Hillary turned all soft and conciliatory and, in an attempted repeat of her New Hampshire tear-up moment, said she would be just fine no matter what happened, and that she had family and friends to support her, and that all she really cared about was whether the American people would be fine.

Immediately pundits speculated that Hillary saw the writing on the wall and was being a good soldier for the Party, willing to concede after March 4th and not go negative on Barack so as to give McCain any ammunition to use on him in the general election.

Oh Please!

Hillary is about as soft as a pile of scrap metal.

That little display was as insincere as her New Hampshire moment. She has no intention of falling on her sword for the Party. That little display was just a tactic to get attention, and to have people see her as an actual human being.

I have no doubt Hillary is an actual human being. And I'm sure right now she is feeling a lot of fear that the Clinton's long term plan for two co-presidencies is threatened. But when Hillary feels fear she turns ugly. For Hillary, there's no such thing as a "flight or fight" response, there's only a "fight" response. Anyone who thought she was going to give in and flee from the nomination battle is as delusional as she claims Barack's supporters are.

And sure enough, the very next day she renewed her demand that the discounted Michigan and Ohio delegates be counted, even though she agreed with the rules committee that they not be counted.

Hillary will not go gentle into defeat. She will fight, as her husband used to say, "until the last dog dies." And her strategists and supporters like Mark Penn and Terry McAuliffe will insist that she does. There's a lot of power and money for a lot of people riding on this, and Hillary isn't going to give up until Barack's numbers make it impossible for her to win the nomination, even with Michigan and Florida.

This isn't the woman we need as the first woman president. This isn't a woman we can trust to care about the American people, no matter what she says at the end of a debate.