CASTING CALL:
I have a Puma PAC member who wants to shoot a “So You Don’t Want To Vote For Obama” commercial, something simple and direct. There are a lot of women who don’t want to vote for him but are feeling pressured to do so. She would like to create something to encourage them to go with their instincts and let them know they don’t have to tell anyone who it is they vote for. Give them some substance to back up their inclinations and hope it goes viral.She’s looking for someone who lives in the LA area, and who wouldn’t mind putting their face to this stand. They need to speak well and be able to memorize lines. The shoot will be simple – they’ll be sitting in a chair facing a camera. I don’t care about age, gender or race. They don’t need to be conventionally pretty or handsome although that’s welcome as well. They just need to be interesting and passionate and able to memorize lines. Anyone who is interested should drop her a line at scythe at iq secure dot com and preferably include a photo. Tell her why you’d like to do the spot. Include your name and phonenumber.(I can enthusiastically vouch for this person — professionally and personally. If you would like to speak with me about it, email me at the usual location. )
Y’all are a bunch of racist, disgusting, despicable morons.
McCain is a senile douch who has picked a running mate that charged women for rape kits. You think Hillary is happy about that?! McBush is tanking, Obama 08!!!
Although Nitwit doesn’t know how to spell “douche,” I have a feeling he knows EXACTLY what it means and savors using it to degrade people. Isn’t the liberal underbelly pretty?
In other news, the Billionaires’ Bailout heads to the House this morning. GWB was up EARLY this morning talking to reporters and warning the Congress and the country to wake up and smell the $80-dollar a pound coffee. Heckuva job, Bushie!
Watch this ONE MINUTE SMACK-DOWN in the House! woo-hoo! (thanks to Jawbone at Corrente)
Krugman gives Obama tepid support for NOT GETTING IN THE WAY (inspired yet?), and hammers McCain for being reckless and misguided. The next 24-48 hours will be VERY interesting — watch for both sides to be scrambling to both claim credit for AND reject the plan. Obama called the current plan “an outrage, an outrage” and then said he’d vote for it on Wednesday. Huh? McCain is regrouping. Which means he’s losing ground. It’s the Independents who matter to the candidates this week. The basic question for them is:
Who do you trust more to rescue and grow the economy? Barack Obama or John McCain?
David Sirota has a good primer on why the plan stinks, HERE (thanks to Lambert at Corrente). Obama loses this one politically if he appears to be out of his league and/or uninterested (he is both). McCain loses this one politically if he appears short-fused and blustery.
Bottom line for us: HARRY THE DEMOCRATS! We need to call, call, call our reps in Congress and tell them to STOP THE BAILOUT!! Call Obama’s Campaign and insist that he impose safeguards for homeowners.
Our job is to try to force Obama’s lofty hand. It’s not that we don’t want him to pull another FISA on us. In fact, we want to force him to pull another FISA. He must stand up and lead or step OUT OF THE WAY.
Read the full text of the Billionairz’ Bailout bill HERE (The Sunlight Foundation from our lovely ACTION Center). Call Congress now! Repeatedly!
Call one of these Toll Free Capitol Hill switchboard #’s:
What’s PPP getting at here? Obviously, that a -12 point collapse in Palin’s net favorability will have an impact on McCain’s numbers.
With Palin neutralized (and there’s a reason they’re hiding her from view), it’s much easier to knock down McCain on the economy, his desire to deregulate healthcare just like Wall Street, his lies, and so on.
Again, for those who counseled leaving Palin alone because she was too popular and because it took attention off McCain, had we done so, she’d be entrenched as a woman of the people, propping up the Republican ticket. Instead, she’s been relegated to the far less glamorous (and helpful) task of keeping the GOP base intact, nothing more. She may be popular with the base, but people outside wingnut circles aren’t impressed.
Um, Satan, I know your job is to deliver the DONC Talking Points (Unqualified! Slut! Bimbo!) but damn! that must be one hell of a dose you have to take to quell the cognitive dissonance. “Hiding her from view”?? You mean like this,
Over 10,000 waited up to 5 hours to hear Palin yesterday in Florida. Biden’s biggest draw has been about 2,500. (Oh, and Biden, or King Gaffer as I like to call him, is now forced to walk back yesterday’s remarks about Obama’s “terrible” decision to air an ad ridiculing McCain’s war injuries. For some reason I have an image in my head of a dog chasing its tail in a panicked, out of control spin. Sigh. Should have picked Hillary.)
Jeralyn, for one, has heard her marching orders clearly and is “100%” on board with continuing the onslaught:
Palin Post-Peak: Favorability Slides
By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Tue Sep 23, 2008 at 01:33:00 AM EST
PPP will have a new Colorado poll out this morning. They offer one stat as a teaser. Palin’s favorability rating in the has dropped 3 points and her unfavorable rating has increased 9 points.
I’m 100% with Markos of Daily Kos on this. . .
Great, you can safely hold your breath while we wait for the first round of slime to be hurled from the Democratic Keepers of Swamp Misogyny. This is a good one, an ad currently running on several of Da Boiz’z blogs:
(get it? A “BUSH” we can’t trust? ha-ha! we said “bush”! Thanks to Melissa McKewan)
Oh, and the Freudian projection is almost too much to bear these days. Naomi Wolf, card-carrying member of the So-Called Reality Based Community (SCRBC), raises the Panic Flag about, get this, how our open society is being threatened by a weak figurehead candidate backed by a mysterious cabal and inserted into office using election fraud and corruption! Lordy, lordy. She also lets loose a Freudian slip at the end, corrected in my brackets:
You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand “Palin Power.” A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections — but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you [can't] have freedom.
Are you a woman considering a career in politics? Are you a woman with ambition? Would you like to participate in government or other forums for the powerful and influential? Well, Girls — be prepared! The Democratic Underbelly sees you like this:
Dear Puma PAC,
This is the first of today’s PROWLS. It’s not exactly hush-hush, as you can see, but I want this one to reach far and wide. Today we are talking back to the Mainstream Media and the Democratic Underbelly.
Here is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s article in the latest Rolling Stone:
Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the base energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
–snip –
She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly-sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who “five children later,” is “still my guy.” It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
Here’s the PROWL:
1. Send an email to rgscustserv@cdsfulfillment.com and tell them what you think of political discourse that uses sexist stereotypes to belittle women candidates. Give them an earful.
2. Call the Rolling Stones office today and demand an apology from Matt Taibbi and his “editors.” Telephone: (212) 484-1616. Give them an earful.
3. Blog the Democratic Underbelly. Let them know what real Democrats look like, think like, and talk like. Click on this link and post your comments. Let’s take this fight back to where it started so we can nip this ugliness in the bud every chance we get. Blog the Puma message HERE. Give them an earful.
Here is today’s Second PROWL. First, read Riverdaughter’s excellent take-down of the condescending Obots who desperately, though ignorantly, in classic concern troll fashion want to teach us about “what the Democratic Party really stands for” and why it is so crucial that we submit to their superior understanding. Then read THIS heartfelt post on the Democratic Underbelly by a woman who really wants to get it right. I don’t blame her — she did her best (though why in the HELL she is blogging at the Democratic Underbelly when she is clearly an intelligent and subtle thinker I’ll never know . . .). The point of this BLOG PROWL is not to confront the author, but the madness she provoked in her Underbelly readers. If the author hasn’t been PUMATIZED by the reaction of her supposed allies to her post, then she is likely beyond help. This is an Open Invitation to NikkiStone! Join Puma PAC and become part of the solution you so clearly and sincerely wish to facilitate. For the rest of us, get over there and COMMENT! Take the fight back to their Swamp! Give them an earful.
Forget about the Blogger Boiz. They are soo Bush-Era. With their blind and rabid obsession with all things Rovian and Republican they made themselves irrelevant. Rather than making the practical and principled political decision this primary season to back the most qualified Democratic candidate (as did the prescient and precious Riverdaughter, waaay back in January), the Boiz were so deafened by their own snarky echo chambers they could only hear the panderings of politicians cynical enough to speak their language.
John Edwards and Barack Obama lulled them with promises of RETRIBUTION, packaged up in boxes of hope and tied with pretty ribbons of change. The Blogger Boiz wanted PAYBACK. Payback for “being right about Iraq.” Payback for “being right about terrorism.” Payback for “being right about FISA.” Payback for “being right about the housing crisis.” And Katrina, and Guantanamo, and global warming. Obama (Edwards faded early), the Boiz believed, would be their white and shining knight aloft a rearing stallion of Change, smiting the Enemies of the Left with his righteous sword of glorious RIGHTNESS. Ha!
Obama would sweep into the White House like a mighty river of intellectual vengeance and the Boiz would get what they have always and only ever longed for: the ability to say with a face-splitting smirk, “We were right and you were WRONG.” nyah-nyah-na-na. That’s it. That’s ALL they care about.
And a look at what is important to them makes it clear why they will lose. The reason the promises of Hope and Change seem so empty to the rest of us is because they ARE empty, and more importantly, Obama and Axelrod and Dean KNOW this! The Boiz never wanted anything concrete. They didn’t want universal health care. They didn’t want sensible legislation for immigration. They didn’t want lower taxes or higher taxes; or good public schools or a solid plan for Iraq. They didn’t want reproductive choice for the women of Tennessee. They didn’t want adequate equipment for the troops. All they wanted was a Gold Star. An A+ for Stating the Obvious. Which is very easy to bestow. All Obama had to do was attend Yearly Kos and mouth the words FISA, Iraq pullout, and Guantanamo. All he had to do was DEIGN to write (or direct a staffer to write) a couple of posts for Huffington Post.
And then the Boiz and their minions would howl and stomp for him through the internets, the polling places, and the streets, drunk on the joy of being recognized as SMARTER than the rest of the country. And, in a strange and subtle twist, because of their own unexamined racism, spitefully glad that they would be using a BLACK Man and his even “blacker” wife to thumb their noses at the rest of us. A strange image, no? Barack and Michelle Obama as thumbs to prop up the collective noses of a bunch of self-righteous white men.
But the rest of the country has always been smarter than that. Always been more seasoned and practical. HATRED of George Bush and Dick Cheney is the habit and the hobby of the over-employed and the pampered. The rest of us have to get the kids to school and the bills paid. Yes, we know George Bush is a disaster. While driving to work or to the grocery store we sometimes fantasize about him being hauled before the World Court for crimes against humanity. But seriously, what has that got to do with which candidate will be able to make health care available for our mothers-in-law?
The Republicans, savvy strategists that they are, figured a toothless Obama would be easier to work around than a dead-serious Clinton. So they watched with glee as the Boiz savaged the more fearsome opponent. Ancient history now. But then came Sarah Palin, riding a REAL motorcycle, carrying a REAL rifle, and grinning a REAL grin of righteousness (yes, she scares me — I’m strong enough to admit it!). And now the Republicans have new hope, new energy, and new reason to believe that not only will they win the White House, they might change the political landscape for a generation. A little tweak to their reproductive choice platform and they may lose ten million fundamentalists but gain 50 million soccer moms. Hmmmm…
But, don’t lose heart O Stalwarts of the true Democratic Party! 2008 also marks the birth of the Puma Era in American politics. A movement in which average, every day voters like us started paying attention and taking action. We’ve been turning off our tv’s by the millions, putting down our newspapers, and heading out into the far reaches of the Internet like political pioneers, searching for common sense and practical solutions. We found outposts of sanity at The Confluence and Corrente and Shakesville. But we needed more. We started our own blogs, our own political action committees, our own virtual town squares.
On November 5th the Boiz will find themselves in the same position they’ve been in for a decade: with their heads spinning and with nothing practical to do with themselves except for looking back in anger — spewing ugliness and working their followers up into a froth of impotent, vile mania.
But not us! We’ll have WORK to do. Useful, pragmatic, and inclusive work. The work of rebuilding our party and electing representatives who put voters FIRST. The work of changing the media landscape so that NO woman who runs for office is subject to anything like THIS (from the liberal, progressive Blogosphere, natch). The work of Paying Attention and Sticking Together.
Oh, and don’t worry about the Boiz. They’re the kind of guys who bring a report card to a fist fight. They’re the kind of guys who might forget their mother’s birthday, but NEVER forget their own SAT scores. They’re the kind of guys for whom being RIGHT is always more important than being GOOD.
And people like that are easy to beat.
This is the Puma Era.
Welcome to the Pumaspere!
Please welcome these wonderful new additions to the Pumasphere. Several of these blogs and websites were founded by members of our very own Puma PAC! Visit and comment often. Remember what we’ve been saying since June 3rd? We are either all in this together, or all outside alone. Every inclusive voice is important in our Puma Movement. Every inclusive message is part of the Puma Platform. Start a blog. Start a radio show. Comment and write and think and act. We are American citizens. This is our JOB.
UPDATE 9/16/08 AT 10:05am, eastern: BARACK OBAMA CALLING OUT THE SWIFT BOATS. ACCORDING TO JOSH MARSHALL AND NAMED PARTICIPANTS IN AN “URGENT” CONFERENCE CALL AMONG BIG DONC DONORS AND OPERATIVES LATE LAST WEEK, GROUPS ABLE TO PRODUCE “DRASTIC” ATTACK ADS AGAINST MCCAIN/PALIN HAD “GOTTEN THE MESSAGE FROM OBAMA THAT HE DOESN’T WANT SUCH ACTIVITY – [BUT] NOW RECOGNIZE THAT TEAM OBAMA IS PRIVATELY HOPING FOR SUCH EFFORTS TO GEAR UP IN EARNEST.” SO MUCH FOR THE HIGH ROAD, HUH? (NOT THAT MR. PERIODICALLY SWEETIE WAS EVER ON THE HIGH ROAD, BUT, HEY PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING, AS OBAMA NOW LEARNS TO HIS EVERLASTING SHAME) (h/t to greenfun in comments.)
Today’s polls show a tie in Virginia, and McCain leading Obama in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado. Here’s the thing though: Obama’s lead in New Jersey is down to THREE POINTS. New freaking Jersey?? Wow. Remember back on June 5th (BEFORE it was too late; BEFORE Hillary was forced to suspend) when we said that Obama was headed for a LANDSLIDE 50-STATE LOSS? Here’s what we said then:
We must be united against the DNC’s usurpation of the will of Democratic voters. If they appoint Obama as the Democratic nominee, he will lose in a 50-state landslide. Don’t listen to the pundits or the polls. Listen to your own mind, your own common sense, and your own determination to turn this thing around.
All Pumas, please send an email to Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic National Committee right now @ howarddean@dnc.org
Tell him that we are Democrats who will not vote for Barack Obama for president. We will not support a “Unity Ticket” with Hillary Clinton as the vice-president. We will not donate one thin dime to the DNC or any of its affiliate organizations until they wake up, listen to the voices of the voters in ALL 50 states, and start distancing themselves from this disastrous nominee.
Please copy and paste this letter into the body of your email and write “Puma democrat” after your signature so he knows who we are. By August he’ll be ruing the day he ever tried to dismiss our votes and our voices.
Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? We sure have been consistent. Hey Obama and the DONC! Don’t blame Sarah Palin. We’ve been warning you for months exactly what we intended to do if you continued on your path to destruction. And we WILL do it. Barack Obama will lose on November 4th because he attempted to destroy the strongest candidate our Party has seen in a generation (yes, she IS a stronger candidate than Bill circa 1992) and offended every decent Democrat in the United States with his divisiveness and disdain for the VOTERS.
One of the things I focus on at my own blog is telling the stories of Women’s History. As a teacher, it became obvious to me early on that there was a lot of focus on black history and practically none on women’s history in grades K-12. In fact, I myself had to attend college to learn anything about this fascinating trajectory within history. I was 22 years old before I ever heard the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul. I swore then that I would do my best to educate as many women as I could about their own compelling history. With that in mind, I offer you the tale of one of the most controversial American women to ever grace our great nation. A leader in business and journalism, she came from a poor and questionable background, but she eventually made her way so high that she directly challenged the existing status quo. That’s what gadflies do.
Victoria Woodhull is a special case, and no other time in our history has been more appropriate to a lesson on her than right now. Maybe it’s because I share her wildness, having come from similar poor and roaming roots. Maybe I have an affinity for her because she was ahead of her time. Whatever the reason, she’s one of my all time favorite historical figures. She was controversial and courageous in so many ways. So indulge me a little if you will (it is Sunday after all), as I tell you the story of a poor girl exploited by her family, who then took on the world with her doe eyes, her rosy cheeks, and her mental acuity, and actually made some progress for women in America.
In her most controversial act, fearlessly, Woodhull declared her candidacy for U. S. President in 1872 (Equal Rights Party), and she had the money to support such a campaign, though not the vote. She was the first woman ever to run for that high office in America. But her origins were much different, and along the way, she left a trail broken barriers. She was nothing like Hillary Clinton, who has always played it straight every day of her life, but she was similarly defiant in the face of criticism, and every bit as accomplished and inspiring.
Victoria California Claflin was born in Homer, Ohio to a rough and ready family. Her father, Reuben, eventually took Victoria and her sister Tennessee on a traveling medicine show, exploiting them for “psychic healing.” Tennessee and Victoria grew very close during this tumultuous, uncertain time, and would remain together throughout their lives. At 15, Victoria married a doctor, Channing Woodhull, whose name she would keep even after they divorced ten years later. They had two children, Byron and Zulu.
Before the divorce, though, Woodhull had moved herself, her sister Tennessee, and her two children to New York City where she began to make connections among wealthy New Yorkers. One of these connections, a certain Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, helped finance Victoria in the very first female-run brokerage house in New York City in 1870. Calling it Woodhull, Claflin & Company, she proceeded to expand her empire from there, establishing the Woodhull & Claflin Weekly newspaper shortly thereafter. After success in their brokerage firm, the sisters were given the nicknames “Queens of Finance” and “Bewitching Brokers,” and they quickly earned a notorious reputation for the content of their newspaper. As if it were perfectly normal, the newspaper published articles on “free love,” divorce, sex outside of marriage, and, famously, was the first publication in America to publish the Communist Manifesto.
Of course, this entire time, rumors were swirling within the privileged NYC community (and beyond, due to tabloids) that the sisters were promiscuous or worse, prostitutes, and how their rhetoric was irreligious and immoral. But the sisters didn’t care. They recognized that any publicity was good publicity for women’s rights. And they wanted to be a part of that. Others within the women’s movement disagreed. They thought Woodhull and Claflin were bringing shame and notoriety to the cause of women’s rights, and that it would set it back. I contend that as a matter of history, the sisters were right. They set the margin, quite frankly. Give us rights, or you get more of this. And apparently, it worked, because by 1871, Victoria was giving a speech before Congress.
In fact, she preempted the opening of the National Women’s Suffrage Associations 3rd Annual Convention in Washington D.C., which immediately convened to go see her speak. There she argued such a revolutionary idea–that women already had the right to vote because woman was man’s equal, and thus covered under the Constitution–that many Suffragist leaders, including Stanton and Anthony, immediately invited her to represent their cause. Just as importantly, the argument was powerfully logical to several of the Committee members to which she delivered her speech. Thus, politics was the third realm, after business and publishing, that were traditionally men’s realms, that Victoria had taken on and won.
Reminder!
We have 51 Days to stop the DONC.
We will be mounting a weekend Fundraiser starting later today to raise funds for Canvassing and Outreach for our Protest of the Election. Get a jump now and donate this morning if you can, and THANK you! You can Contribute HERE!
Fair warning: Expect assumptions to be challenged in this post. It’s part of my gadfly approach. That approach is probably the result of my working class upbringing, filled as it was with all the right values propped up by all the wrong lies, as well as my eventual over-education (for my class), which provided me with strong research and reasoning skills, an instinct for critical thinking, and the ability to articulate well. What that education did not provide me with was unvarnished truth, only a means to pursue it. And so it is that we go about the business of peeling off the lies here, of locating that center amongst the petals of rhetoric. Whatever the cause, I am driven to seek core arguments, to push away the decorations and trappings of our discourse, and to try to assert what really matters.
What matters today is the roiling exposure of authoritarianism on the left. It is symptomatic of the Neoprogressive reach, which is itself symptomatic of the neoconservative reach. Most of those who self-identify with the left, and that includes disaffected Clinton supporters (DCS), would agree that one of the goals of the neocon faction was to drive the center into solidly conservative territory. Parties who succeed in getting their opposition to join them don’t have to compromise much, do they? As I have noted in many posts at P&L, this election season is littered with what must look like delicious irony from the outside. It hurts like hell from the inside, but those with no vested interested must be howling their asses off at how quickly things have flipped.
Sadly, the Democratic Party, long billed as the Party for Women, has attempted to drive the ultimate wedge to prevent a feminist revival. Ironically, while they have succeeded in their own party, they have failed in the culture at large. PUMA and the choices DCSs make November 4th, as well as the attention they have gained and the momentum they have achieved have already constituted a revival among some women. The New Democratic Coalition, a.k.a. the Progressive Dude Nation, has already demonstrated its tolerance for sexism and authoritarianism, as well hypocrisy, which they display so aggressively and to such effect when they pursue Republican strategies they were railing against four and eight years ago. And they continue to be oblivious to their own weaknesses. The consequence is fuel for that feminist revival.
A couple of days ago I published a post called More Politics of Fear. I hesitated to publish it at the time because it was critical of two of the more respected bloggers in the DCS-sphere (doesn’t quite have the PUMAsphere ring, does it?). I think it was a good post and people responded to it, but I hadn’t realized at the time I posted it that I wasn’t done fleshing my issues out. This morning I realized two things: a) I am hurt by the argument that anyone who casts a vote for John McCain can’t possibly be a progressive, and b) what troubles me most about the argument is not the hurt, but what the argument says about the infiltration of authoritarianism on the left. To argue that one’s identity is tied to one vote, like the helix in mortal coil, is to make an authoritarian argument. As I said in More Politics of Fear, it is akin to the old one-drop rule, or the structure of the Indian caste system. There’s also another institution that practices that kind of rhetoric; it’s called a church.
But there’s a softer side to this authoritarianism too. It is personified in the I-could-never-vote-for-a-Republican-but-I-can’t-blame-you DCS. I know a lot of people like this, and I don’t judge them either. Everybody owns their vote. But I must take this moment to ask you if you are of this mindset: Do you think the Democratic Party will suddenly feel like home November 5th? Do you entertain fantasies that all of this madness will go away once the election is over?
How quickly we forget, sadly if we ever knew, the struggles of Stanton and Anthony, and Paul and Burns. Do you think that any one of those great, fearless women would have hesitated to cross a party line in the effort to secure a right for women? Did Alice Paul ever say, “I’m sorry Mr. Wilson, but you belong to a war-mongering party, so I can’t possibly petition and lobby you for relief”? And isn’t respect for and power for women, the opportunity for them, finally, a right worth securing? Women have the opportunity this year like no other to emerge as a super-constituency, to force both parties to notice and respond to us and some of our issues. It’s already working on one side of the aisle, even as it exposes deeply troubling sexist rhetoric on the left. That sexism will not magically disappear on November 4th. If Obama wins, the beast will just be caged until he and his faction need it again. If he loses, it will get worse, much worse for a while, before it gets better.
If we are an Army of Monsters in the eyes of the left, why does it matter if you cast a protest vote for John McCain? Have you ever considered that a huge feminine swing toward McCain as a result of his Palin pick may be all that is necessary now to achieve that super-constituency? And have you considered what a valuable opportunity this might provide Americans to reform the Republican Party? What if we could tame those beastly factions within it, and jerk the Republican Party more to the mainstream? What delicious irony, right? I certainly think that’s a much more (and truly) progressive strategy than adopting wholesale corrupt Republican strategies to win, all the while hypocritically claiming to hold on to liberal values.
I’ve recently given some thought to this whole notion of labels. I said in Barry and The Neoprogs that progressive was a good word for them because all they cared about was naked progress in the form of winning. They weren’t concerned with the long-term in the least. Joseph Cannon over at Cannonfire recently articulated the better argument against progressives. To wit:
As readers know, I am careful to describe my politics as “liberal,” not progressive. What’s the difference?
ALL PROGRESSIVES LIE. ALL.
Bolding his. I think that’s generally, though not so stridently, true because I can understand the distinction now between a liberal and a progressive. It’s basically the difference between the Stevensonian and FDR coalitions Anglachel articulated so well a while ago. And the Stevensonian faction, make no mistake, has been the one consistently flirting with conservative values and candidates over the last 40 years. Now that the convention is over, though, it’s not just that faction that is expressing its authoritarian beliefs. Unwittingly infected themselves, some of those on the left, especially those who left working class culture in the dust when they succeeded in bettering themselves, but who have preserved an affection for it, are now spouting these ridiculous purity arguments, either for others or for themselves.
As a Midwestern Democrat-turned-independent, a voter in a swing state planning to vote McCain/Palin, I have to ask myself, are we going to be expected to do the heavy lifting this November, even as we get no credit, and suffer ridicule for it? In case you weren’t aware, in the wake of the sham Convention, you have only two choices: Obama or Nobama.
If Obama wins, his faction gets credentialed and their values get adopted in the DP, but if Obama loses, and regardless of what happens in the Republican Party, none of that other stuff happens in the DP. This election has already proven to be the strangest in my lifetime and a lot longer, and I really can’t believe anyone in any red or blue state can feel certain they know how their state will go. How can they just kick back and rest assured that they won’t have to violate any personal values to achieve their goal of Nobama, without even trying to self-reflect on whether or not the value that argues all Republicans are evil is even rational? Leave it to the close-minded hicks in those swing states, right? Ain’t that the mother of all ironies?
Note: Whatever minor issues I may have with Anglechel over this particular rhetorical aside, I still think she is the best political analyst in the DCS-sphere by far. I do not speak for Murphy or other PUMAs either, only for myself.
Originally posted at Peacocks and Lilies. (I thought y’all would like it too)
Reminder!
We have 52 Days to stop the DONC.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to Sheila Jackson Lee yesterday. I will post the final tally later this morning.
We will be mounting a weekend Fundraiser starting later today to raise funds for Canvassing and Outreach for our Protest of the Election. Get a jump now and donate this morning if you can, and THANK you! You can Contribute HERE!
Good morning/afternoon folks! Hope you are all well and working your prowls, or enjoying whatever it is you’re doing this lovely Saturday. I know all eyes are on Texas right now, where it is anything but lovely. Whatever goodwill you may offer, whether you pray or send good thoughts and hope for a better tomorrow, I’m sure it is much appreciated.
Today we’re offering a blog roundup for those interested in what’s being said in the quiet little corners of the Internet. This is where the coal of our discourse is being pressed into diamonds as we speak. There are a few diamonds in the rough, but most of these sparkling gems are already finished, they were just waiting for someone to dig them out. These are our foot soldiers in this war of rhetoric, so give ‘em some traffic and some comments, if you can. So without further ado, modified and re-posted from Peacocks and Lilies:
I don’t know about you, but I’m about outraged out. Of course, I haven’t turned the TV on yet, or listened to radio’s boarhounds yet. But I have found some pretty good stuff around the Internet.
We’ll start this blog roundup with Joseph over at Cannonfire. He’s documenting the atrocities coming from Democrats this year. Remember way back when documenting atrocities was Atrios’ job?
But back to Cannonfire. You really want to read that post. Here’s a teaser:
In decades to come, objective observers will look at today’s pseudo-”progressive” movement with unmitigated disgust.
Since silence equals complicity, I hold ALL Obots responsible for these smear campaigns. I have never seen a major post or editorial by a left-wing writer excoriating these lies. Instead, the Obots dare to accuse McCain of engaging in “swiftboat tactics,” even though the Obots themselves have manned the swiftboats since December.
You aren’t going to want to miss all the debunking going on over there, including the debunking of this shocking smear tactic right here, from Obama’s campaign itself. (Since updated)
Next up is Bud White, from Bud White’s World, in which Bud snarks on the 50-State strategy, which has become another casualty in this election-war. Then he analyzes why they had to kill it, and why they should have known it was just ear-candy for Progressive Dudes. A sliver to whet your appetite:
A narrative was developed in the blogosphere that Obama, unlike Hillary, would be able to touch the hearts of red state conservatives and turn them into Democrats. Hillary was too polarizing, it was argued, and she would be fighting for Kerry’s states plus 1.
It was mandatory at dailykos to believe that Obama was a map-changer. A diarist from North Dakota named Ab2kgj, in a post which would be funny if it weren’t so painful, suggested that Obama had a real shot at grabbing that state:
Yep, basically what I’ve been thinking about for a while now.
Steinem compounds her problems by making the same mistake so many other so called defenders of women’s rights have made over the past few days. She discards all logic and states that because she (Palin) agrees with McCain, that somehow makes her unworthy of being a vice-presidential pick. In other words, if you aren’t Democrat, or if your views might stray a bit from what the Steinem viewpoint is, then instead of vying to become vice president you should be home baking an apple pie, putting on a negligee and taking care of your man.
That pretty much nails it for me. The Democratic Party is so sexist, even its so-called leading feminists will join the pile on, trying to keep conservative women tied to their children and their kitchen. Well, we did ask for more transparency in government, but I don’t this is exactly what we meant. Now we know. Democrats suck for women, and apparently the party turns them into some sort of twisted Stockholm Victim-mentality mannequins. No thanks, Gloria.
Don’t miss LadyBoomerNYC’s offering, a fantastic take on life post-anti-Convention. Here’s a slice of her wonderful and moving narrative:
I hesitated protectively, having lived undercover using my handle for so long that I had to consciously produce my real name in my head before saying it. “Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of writing most of the year, political writing. Do you know what blogs are? I have a blog and contribute to other sites and efforts.”
They continued the conversation as they scurried about their business, “Oh really, and who were you supporting for President?”
My personal self gulped inside my political self having been so underground and divided, “Actually, I was supporting Hillary Clinton, working to get her elected. I still support her and believe she would make the best President.”
They both jumped to attention and gravitated back to the counter to face me, “Really? We’re for her too!”
(See why I can’t stop?) “That’s great,” I cooed, as I came clean, telling them about my blog and links to others, our efforts prior to and during Denver, and our work to ensure a roll call, a floor vote, and a record of the truth about this election.
They pointed out to me, “It’s just like 2000, Gore and Bush!”
But go read the whole thing. It’s the kind of analysis-couched-in-personal-stories that has been driving the Creative Nonfiction genre for several years now. Wonderful stuff. LadyB, you so deserve to be published and paid for what you do.
For all you McKinney-supporting PUMAs out there, Tennessee Guerrilla Woman has a post up on McKinney speaking about election integrity. You remember elections integrity, don’t you? Lack of it is what we used to blame Republicans for in 2000, before the Dem guy did it too in 2008, and not even to the other side, but to one of his own.
This little gem from SugarNSpice must not be overlooked. This post comments on the meaning of and reaction to Palin’s use of the term “Community Organizer,” then takes a really close look at Obama’s accomplishments as a community organizer. Read it, know it, re-tell it. That’s how narrative-building works.
The Democrats are in a panic. In a presidential race that is impossible to lose, they are
behind. Obama devotees are frantically giving advice. Tom Friedman tells him to “start slamming down some phones.” Camille Paglia suggests, “be boring!”
Meanwhile, a posse of Democratic lawyers, mainstream reporters, lefty bloggers, and various other Obamaphiles are scouring the vast tundra of Alaska for something, anything, to bring down Sarah Palin: her daughter’s pregnancy, her ex-brother-in-law problem, her $60 per diem, and now her religion. (CNN reports — news flash! — that she apparently has never spoken in tongues.) Not since Henry II asked if no one would rid him of his turbulent priest, have so many so urgently volunteered for duty.
But Palin is not just a problem for Obama. She is also a symptom of what ails him. Before Palin, Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate. For no presidential nominee in living memory had the gap between adulation and achievement been so great. Which is why McCain’s Paris Hilton ads struck such a nerve. Obama’s meteoric rise was based not on issues — there was not a dime’s worth of difference between him and Hillary on issues — but on narrative, on eloquence, on charisma.
The unease at the Denver convention, the feeling of buyer’s remorse, was the Democrats’ realization that the arc of Obama’s celebrity had peaked — and had now entered a period of its steepest decline. That Palin could so instantly steal the celebrity spotlight is a reflection of that decline.
It was inevitable. Obama had managed to stay aloft for four full years. But no one can levitate forever.
QUICK UPDATE: Be sure to listen in tonight to The Lion’s Share on Puma United Radio (PURrrr) at 8pm eastern. Sheri, Riverdaughter, and I have a jam-packed show planned for tonight. Listen live HERE!
They are so scared. More scared than they’ve been since Hillary Clinton moved into the White House. They do this every time they get this scared, and they never get this scared of a man. Other people might wonder how politics and the media can be filled with so many pearl-clutchers when there are so few women in either profession, but such is the case. Some might suggest these folks were a little too close to mamma to grow up to be functional men, if you know what I mean. Still others might suggest it’s an intimacy-issues thing, the result of being cuckolded by empowered, irritated, unsatisfied wives. Whatever the source of this neuroses and dysfunction, the result is always the same:
Gary Kamiya’s article in Salon was graced by that picture of Palin. That picture of Hillary is from Spy Magazine, circa February 1993, just a month after she and Bill arrived in Washington. This is the Fourth Estate’s enfeebled attempt police the political class. But it only shows how distorted and mentally diseased they are, how much privilege they’ve been able to secure, which is to say, way too much. Maybe we need to run a Psychiatrist for president, so we can have these images translated for the media as they publish them.
What they don’t think about, because it’s so far outside the limited borders of their bubbled brains, is what effect this sort of propaganda has on some people, especially people aware of and open to feminist sentiments. That Spy Magazine cover made me a life-long fan of Hillary Clinton at the tender age of 22, and articulated in one image what she’s had to fight as a woman in politics all her life. It also made me shed the bullshit rhetoric swirling around women in my age group at the time that feminism wasn’t necessary anymore, and was odious to boot. The sympathy it created in me spurred the birth of a barrier wall in my brain, which grew with every dirty trick Republicans of the 1990s threw at Hillary or Bill. A lot of other Americans experienced this too. This wall of static sound developed for a lot of people, so that by 1995 all most people heard when they listened to Clinton critics and naysayers was a whole lot of what Lucy and Charlie hear when adults speak in a Peanuts cartoon: Waa-WAA-Waa-WAA-WAA.
But there was a danger I wasn’t aware of at the time, and the thought of that missed danger plagues me today. The kids of the 1990s weren’t able to build that wall of static, they absorbed and internalized all of those unfounded charges and characterizations. And because they were too young to understand what was going on, because parents felt uncomfortable talking about it to them because of the Lewinsky-sex issue, the little seeds of hate Republicans were trying to sow at the time landed in a lot of young, fertile hearts. And look where we are today. We’ve got young women so stupefied from all the confusion they can’t even see overt, rank sexism before their very eyes. We’ve got other, older women so hooked in to the white male power structure they’re unwilling to risk losing anything, to risk being put into leather and chains themselves, even if just in pictures. We’ve got a lot of young men monkeying those Republicans from the 90s, even some young men ostensibly smart enough to know better. These are monsters built in the ideological ovens of the 1990s. This is the legacy of 1990s, of all those Republican hit jobs.
This is the also danger we face today. Make no mistake about it. You cannot just go back to your couch, to watching Lost and House and whatever reality TV show it is you follow. Young women and men today, my 14 year old daughter among them, are absorbing the heat of the hit jobs this year. It is baking into their very flesh. IF Hillary runs in 2012, my daughter will be old enough to vote. What choice will she make after all she’s seen this year? So far she’s still an Obama fan, even though she now understands what Hillary had to deal with, and sympathizes with me over the sexism she herself can now identify. But just yesterday, as she sauntered off to bed, she couldn’t resist snarkily throwing this little gem in my face: “Why do you want four more years of Bush, Mom?” This is where she is after living her whole life with a feminist Hillary Clinton supporter. After all she knows about what happened this year, and because I am her mom she knows the whole sorry tale (and is sorry to hear it again), this is still the argument that works for her in her politically budding mind.
This is why we fight. We fight for my daughter and the millions of girls like her who are endangered by the sexist rhetoric that passes for media these days. We fight for the millions of boys who are looking at the Progressive Dude Nation right now, at their style, their pazzazz, their irreverence, and who are wanting to posture the same stance one day if they haven’t adopted it already. There is more at stake than just this year, this election, or the next four years. There are legions of young minds being shaped, and we must inform them, using rhetoric that is natural to their intellect, of what is going on right now and what is possible for the future.
Reminder: We DO need funds to keep our momentum. Our budget has always been lean and mean — no salaries, consultants, lobbyists, etc etc — but even the grassiest grass-roots effort needs help. Please consider a donation today. You can contribute HERE, and THANK you!
CASTING CALL:
I have a Puma PAC member who wants to shoot a “So You Don’t Want To Vote For Obama” commercial, something simple and direct. There are a lot of women who don’t want to vote for him but are feeling pressured to do so. She would like to create something to encourage them to go with their instincts and let them know they don’t have to tell anyone who it is they vote for. Give them some substance to back up their inclinations and hope it goes viral.
She’s looking for someone who lives in the LA area, and who wouldn’t mind putting their face to this stand. They need to speak well and be able to memorize lines. The shoot will be simple – they’ll be sitting in a chair facing a camera. I don’t care about age, gender or race. They don’t need to be conventionally pretty or handsome although that’s welcome as well. They just need to be interesting and passionate and able to memorize lines. Anyone who is interested should drop her a line at scythe at iq secure dot com and preferably include a photo. Tell her why you’d like to do the spot. Include your name and phone
number.
(I can enthusiastically vouch for this person — professionally and personally. If you would like to speak with me about it, email me at the usual location. 
)
Hey! Where’d everyone go?!
