Chris Matthews calls out Rush Limbaugh

Last night I actually heard Chris Matthews say something novel, appropriate, and true.

When discussing exit polls in Indiana, which showed that about ten percent of the vote in the open democratic primary came from Republicans, most of whom voted for Clinton, he talked about Rush Limbaugh urging Republicans to vote for Hillary in Indiana to fuel the ongoing fight in the democratic nominating process. Indiana, like many states, does not require one to be a registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary (an idea which I think is asking for trouble and should change.)

Since Republicans already have their nominee, there is no reason to vote for a Republican in the primary, so Limbaugh sees this as an opening to prevent Obama from beginning his general election campaign against McCain. Like most Republicans, Limbaugh fears Obama with his youth, charisma and call for change, and wants to knock him out or weaken him so the tired, old Republican candidate might have a chance.

Ever since McCain secured the Republican nomination, Limbaugh has been urging Republican listeners to vote for Hillary in open primaries, where you don't have to be a member of the party to vote in that party's primary. We don't know how much Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" has changed the race, but last night the mischief he urged was probably the only reason Clinton squeaked out a narrow victory in Indiana.

So Chris Matthews, who normally is more interested in hearing himself talk than in saying anything of value to viewers, said something that truly needed to be said.

He chastised Limbaugh and those who voted for Hillary for nefarious reasons and said that they would have to live with that shameful vote for the rest of their lives. He reminded them that many have died for the right to vote in this country, and by using their vote just to cause trouble, they have sullied democracy and shamed themselves. He stopped short of calling them traitors. Certainly he pointed out how juvenile and anti-democratic they were.

Bravo, Chris Matthews!

Some will disagree with you, of course, because some see elections as just another game, a sport if you will, which is why so many, including yourself, use constant sports metaphors in your political commentaries.

The Clintons, too, see this as a game, which is why they stay in it until they think the clock has run out. Except the Clintons keep adding minutes to the game and attacking the timekeeper.

Political campaigns are surely hard fought contests, but they are much more than games. They are struggles to win, but they should not be struggles to win at any cost. A campaign for the presidency is a contest to secure the trust of the American people and to prove the candidate has the wisdom, courage, and intelligence to lead this nation.

In the end, it shouldn't be just about winning. It should be about winning honorably and competing with integrity.

That is not what Rush Limbaugh did, and not what he urged his followers to do. He made a mockery of democracy.

I would be willing to bet that many of the same ditto-heads who volunteered for Limbaugh's operation chaos think Obama is unpatriotic because he doesn't wear a metal flag decoration on his lapel. What one wears does not make one a patriot. However, voting just to cause chaos, and to change the outcome of an election to choose a party's nominee when you don't even belong to that party, says a lot about how little you value this country and its democratic processes.

You, Rush Limbaugh, are the traitor. Ditto for your followers.

Could we please just end it already?

Oh, please, good people of North Carolina and Indiana, could you please just help end this endless campaign?

I'm tired of thinking about it, writing about it, and having my blood pressure raised over it.

Every primary that doesn't finally determine the winner gives bored Republicans, who have no one to vote for in their own party, a chance to vote mischievously for Hillary.

Everyone knows she can't catch up in any of the metrics she has used to declare she SHOULD be the winner, even if she isn't. She can't catch up in pledged delegates, popular vote, states won, or even enough superdelegates to give her the nomination. Yet the media and especially Republican pundits want this to go on and on for their own job security. So they ramp up the Jeremiah Wright controversy, praise Hillary Clinton for being a fighter, and pretend she could pull off a Clinton miracle.

Well I think the Almighty only gives individuals one big miracle in a lifetime, and the Clintons already were granted one when the Senate didn't vote to convict Bill and throw him out of office. They're not going to get another miracle.

I'll tell you the miracle I want to see and it's one only the Clintons can give us. I want to see the Clintons finally come to their senses and get out of the race. I want to see Hillary go back to New york or Pennsylvania or Washington D.C. or Arkansas or Illinois, or wherever her true "home" is, after claiming them all, and get a good rest. Then I want to see the two of them get back on the campaign trail and work their tails off for Barack Obama.

I want to see them prove they really are loyal to the party.

I want to see them prove they really do care about the country.

I want to see them convince all those blue collar voters who were afraid to vote for Obama that they need to get over their racist tendencies and embrace one of the most brilliant and gifted candidates anyone has ever seen, at least since Bill was on the national stage. I want Bill to tell the country that they can and should elect Obama to be the real first black president.

I want to see them campaign actively in states she won and once said Obama couldn't win, and help him win Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.

I want to see Hillary denounce this silly gas tax holiday idea and tell voters it was just a pander when she still thought she could win, and Obama was right all along.

I want Bill to go to church every Sunday with Barack and convince everyone that his wife's former opponent is not only NOT a Muslim, but that he is a committed Christian.

I want Hillary to thank all of her supporters and contributers for backing her, and then tell them that Obama will truly change this country for the better and that she will be right there helping him do it.

I want Hillary to say she does not for one second think McCain would make a better commander in chief than Obama. I want her to apologize for her Iraq War vote and give Obama credit for being the only candidate who was right on Iraq.

I want Hillary to prove she really does care about this country, so much that she is willing to concede graciously, throw her support to Obama, and campaign her heart out for him, not just because she is a loyal democrat, but because a President Obama will change this nation in ways unimaginable a few years ago.

The Clintons are continuing to campaign because they want to win, but also because they don't know how to lose. They don't know how to give up, let go, and be gracious. It's actually much harder for some people to let go than it is to hold on. It sometimes takes more strength of character to acknowledge defeat, but that is what they must do now when continuing to fight is so destructive to the overall cause of rescuing the country from the Republicans who have done so much damage.

The Clintons may not be able to win this time, but they still have an enormous amount of power. They can help guarantee an Obama victory in the Fall. That is their patriotic duty, and will go a long way to redeem them in the eyes of many who have come to hate them for the way they have conducted themselves these past few months.

If the Clintons actually do this, if they turn around and campaign sincerely and whole heartedly for Obama, even I might change my mind about them.

One more thing before you vote...

This couple, trying to pull off a home invasion of the White House for the second time, have already done a great deal of damage to this country.

Besides embarassing all of his democratic supporters when he decided to let Monica service him in the Oval Office, Bill Clinton is single-handedly responsible for the defeat of Al Gore in 2000. In that election, as we all know, George W. Bush, with absolutely no valid governing experience (Texas doesn't count) was able to steal the presidency from a much more competent and experienced man because so many people were disgusted with Clinton and thus refused to vote for his vice president.

And the woman in this picture, Bill Clinton's wife, after saying she was no Tammy Wynette stand by your man type of gal, indeed did stand by her man, because she knew he would come in handy when she tried to enter the White House again.

Do your really want these people back in the White House?

Have you really forgotten how they sullied that venerable home and the office of the president?

Really?

Republican dogs: pay attention to the drooling

I must be a masochist because I turned on "Morning Jo(k)e" this morning and heard the usual pro-Hillary blather. A former Republican congressman, he has - for the current primary - transformed himself into a populist to praise Hillary's gas tax holiday proposal and other aspects of her campaign.

Now when you hear a Republican, conservative, anti-populist, former Hillary hater like Rush or Jo(k)e praising Hillary, even though she wants to tax oil companies, even though she wants universal health care, you have to know something is up - something that doesn't favor Democrats this November.

Why more Americans don't get this I don't know. Somehow Hillary has convinced a significant number of Americans that Barack Obama is unelectable, even though her negatives are much higher than his, and even though she has far more baggage than he does.

Yet the Republicans have become big admirers of the former First Lady. This can mean only one thing. The GOP can't wait to use its negative strategy against Hillary in the fall.

Pro-Hillary Republicans remind me of a dog I once owned, who used to steal my daughter's squeaky baby toys, and gently hold them in its closed mouth so we couldn't see or hear the evidence of its crime. Eventually, because it couldn't swallow with the toy in its mouth, saliva started leaking out the sides of its mouth, giving it away. I see the drool coming out of the mouths of Republican dogs, even as they try to act like human beings who are willing to be nice to Hillary.

We need to keep our eyes on the drooling and not the praise they heap on Hillary, because the drooling is the truth. Indeed they are drooling in anticipation of running against her in November because they have sixteen plus years of opposition research to use against her and the former president. You think we've heard the last of Monica or Oval Office oral-sex just because they haven't said anything in the primary campaign? You think we've heard the last of the lesbian rumors, the watergate and travelgate stories, impeachment, NAFTA or anything else they have waiting (and I bet they have some doozies)?

Don't be fooled by the quiet and well behaved manner of the Republican dogs. Pay attention to the drool coming out of their mouths. It's a dead giveaway.

Hillary Clinton does a disservice to feminism and to the women of this nation

What's with all this sexist pro-Hillary talk? A union leader says she has "testicular fortitude," a governor says she makes Rocky look like a "pansy, and now James Carville says if Hillary gave Obama one of her cajones, they'd each have two?

I thought Hillary was trying to break the "glass ceiling." I thought she wanted to prove that a woman could become president. I didn't think she was trying to prove that only a woman who is really a man is presidential material. I didn't think she wanted to be a male candidate, only masquerading as a woman.

I have long wanted to see the day when a woman could be elected president, but I wanted it to be a real woman, someone who is willing to use the very unique and powerful traits of womanhood to show men that there is another way to govern.

Now that Hillary Clinton is in the race, she and her supporters are trying to prove she is really a man, because in their estimation, apparently, those white, beer drinking, bowling, blue collar guys (what that idiot Chris Matthews calls "regular people") would never vote for a woman who wasn't really a man.

Back in the seventies, when I wholeheartedly embraced the woman's movement, I thought it was about more than equal pay for equal work. I thought it was about more than trying to prove that a woman was really the same as a man. One of the things I always promoted was the idea that men and women were different in many ways, and that is what was good about opening up lots of traditionally male jobs to them. Women had a different psychology, a different way of seeing and doing, and they provided a balance to the typical male way of doing things.

Having men and women work side by side strengthened the work force precisely because it brought new perspectives into the mix.

If Hillary Clinton were really trying to prove that a woman president would be an improvement on the male monopoly on the office of the presidency, she would be showing that different psychology to the nation. But she is not. She is trying to prove, by her "obliteration" remarks, her labeling of Obama as weak and elitist, and by her surrogates' use of offensive sexual innuendo about her anatomy, that she is really NOT a woman.

She doesn't represent me, she doesn't represent women, and she would be a ghastly first female president.

Hillary Clinton: fueling racism

There is simply no denying it anymore. A large segment of America is still, 145 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, steeped in hatred for and fear of African Americans. And nothing has brought it to the fore more than this year's presidential race.

Of course, ever since the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon, when Republicans actively began courting racist whites in the South, turning the once Democratic area of the country Republican, race has been actively used to defeat Democratic presidential candidates.

But this year, for the first time, two Democrats are using race so that one of them can defeat another Democrat. And it sickens me.

I've tried to catch snippets of speeches by Bill and Hillary and they have gotten really good at sending out coded and not so coded messages to white working class voters (code: voters who aren't so keen on voting for a black man). They call Obama "elitist," for instance. How could that be racial code, you ask. Well, a working class white who has always had racist sentiments, doesn't want to ever think that a black man is better than him. So if you say that black man acts or talks like he is better, or even imply that the black man looks down on him, you are igniting that white supremacist mentality, even if that white man would never admit these feelings in public. "Elitist" is code for "uppity black." All Southerners know what that means. Now we know that there are a significant number of people in Ohio and Pennsylvania who carry around the same prejudice.

I have also heard Bill Clinton talk about Obama's campaign being willing to "beat up a girl." While it may sound silly and even demeaning to call Hillary a "girl," Bubba, a child of the South, knows exactly how such language plays. And it, too, is code.

In the South, for hundreds of years, black men were lynched for even looking at a white woman, let alone treating her with any kind of disrespect. There is a long history of whites in the South fearing the (imagined) behavior of black men towards their women. To accuse Obama and his campaign of "beating up on a girl" brings up all those fears and is one of the most coded racist things I can imagine Bill saying.

Then, of course, there's what he said about Jesse Jackson winning South Carolina twice, and what Geraldine Ferraro said about Obama only being where he is because he's black, giving a nod to the hatred working class whites have towards affirmative action.

If Clinton somehow grabs the nomination from Obama, it will mainly be because in the second half of her campaign, she used her own "Southern Strategy" and appealed in both overt and coded ways to the racism of the voters. She will have not only destroyed the ability of one of the most gifted politicians of our time to move us past the remaining vestiges of racism, she will have fueled the racism that remains. In other words, she and her husband will have made us worse as a country.

And I will never, ever, forgive her for that.

All about race

A little over a week ago, I wondered on this blog why Bill Moyers was providing a forum for Jeremiah Wright, considering how politically explosive this man was to Barack Obama's campaign. I admit I was a little frustrated that he had started the whole distraction on Friday night, a week ago. But last night Moyers showed what an honorable, wise, and decent man he is when he made this comment on his show:

Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known - scholarly, smart, and gentle in person -- uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.

But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media — the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help — people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious
right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of a preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen
anything like this — this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers.

Has God blessed Hillary?

There is a debate in the blogosphere (granted it's a small debate) over what Hillary Clinton actually said when she sat down with Bill O'Reilly a few days ago. He was talking about how much alike they were in that, among other things, they were both rich.

It sounded like she said in response "God bless us," which sounds kind of snarky and arrogant, kind of like Bush's comment about his supporters being the "haves and the have-mores."

But Hillary's campaign chair, Howard Wolfson, insists what she said was "God Blessed us," which sounds pious and sweet. Cue the angelic choir!

Actually both interpretations should be condemned. The first for obvious reasons. The second because it is a reflection of the right wing evangelical "gospel of prosperity," the idea that God wants you to be rich and that if you are rich, it means God has rewarded you.

Give me a break! Does anyone really think that God has looked down with favor on Bill and Hillary Clinton and rewarded them, among all the people of the world who deserve good things, with riches? There is one thing I am certain of and it is where their money comes from: book publishers, lobbyists, big corporations, and Arab countries seeking favor in a second Clinton presidency. It would have been more appropriate had Hillary said "Yes, Bill, we're rich. Unregulated capitalism has blessed us."

This may seem like a small thing, but it is just one more example of how crass and willing to pander this woman is. She is posing as a home town girl, a gun toter, a beer and whiskey drinker, and now a born again Christian who believes in the gospel of prosperity.

I think I'm going to be sick.

If Democrats were Republicans.....

In an interview on Nightline, Hillary Clinton said:

If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee.

And as her good buddy James Carville famously says :

If ifs and buts were beer and nuts, we'd have a helluva party.

Let's take this thinking a little further.

If Democrats acted like Republicans:

We would threaten to obliterate Iran.

We would dismiss people of color and treat them as less important than whites.

We would support a gas tax holiday so we could lose more American jobs and put more money in the pockets of oil companies.

We would brag about our love of guns.

We would give George W. Bush authorization to obliterate Iraq.

We would cravenly pander to people whom we secretly despise.

We would care more about the votes of the "white working class" than the votes of the black working class.

We would pretend we were just plain folks even though we were multimillionaires.

We would lie about everything.

These are, after all, things George W. Bush and his Republican cohorts have done and continue to do.

Look closely, everyone. It is also what Hillary has done and is doing.

Perhaps Hillary Clinton should change parties.

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