You have tried to be fair. The people who frequently post comment’s here have tried to be fair. I have tried to be fair.

Hillary found her pro-middle class voice, making people realize the situation they’re in, and making them hope for change, too late. And that is what hurts her supporters. Had she run with it earlier, instead of “Ready from day one,” she could have run away with the nomination. Instead, it was Edward’s, and then Obama (picking up some of Edward’s message), who captured the public’s yearning for something new.
“Ready from day one” appeals to logic, not imagination. “Change” and “Hope” require imagination, and thus, are emotional, not logical. She ran first on logic, and then tried to appeal to emotion.
Here, I think, is the divide: Hope vs. Logic. Emotional vs. Rational. And all of the antipathy we’ve seen stems from this
internal battle that the Greek’s argued a long, long time ago; more recently Freud. And, I think, all of the divisive language that has been used has been used to prop up ones side in that debate. And, when she switched messages, she made her logical followers emotional.

Emotion vs. Logic is a literary theme, a classic one. And one of the best. Shakespeare used it; Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and my recent personal fave, Cormac McCarthy, have all used it.
We must learn, as a party, to tamp down the flames of that argument. We must, somehow, learn to temper that debate and realize that we, as humans, are walking contradictions and that despite these internal debates, we somehow or other manage to put another foot forward.
Now, let’s get together, and make it our best one…

But these bloggers extrapolated from this experience that all Obama supporters were evil and out to get them, and they were entitled to be mean back.

What made me crazy ca. last January was that the Clinton supporters I knew consistently spoke about and down to us Obama supporters with smug condescension. We Obama supporters were naive, brainwashed, unrealistic, not real Democrats, not real liberals, oblivious and losers.

And I’m thinking, you’ve known me for two or three years; is that what you really think of me? And I was still trying to be conciliatory, but it was like trying to be polite to an irritated skunk. Finally they told me what a horrible person I was and was not fit to be in their company. And yes, I am still a bit upset about it. These were people I thought were friends, and we haven’t been in touch since.

I honestly do not understand what happened.

There were a lot of “OMG, the Obamabots are so terrible!” sorts of allegations, but I never could find the concrete basis. Where is the prominent Pro-Obama blog that went nearly as far off the deep end as No Quarter, TalkLeft, Taylor Marsh, or even MyDD? Were Obama supporters going into comment threads and being jerks on Clinton-supporting blogs? I honestly don’t know that, as I couldn’t bear to wade into that unreal morass after a very small dose of it. I’m sure there was some abusive stuff going on, as this is the internet and there are jerks and trolls, but I didn’t see the kind of pervasive and overwhelming pattern that was being alleged, and I was trying very hard to keep my antennae tuned for that after what happened in NH.

There were definitely some moments on the threads of pro-Obama blogs that icked me out, especially at Balloon Juice. The difference to me seemed to be in what kind of tone the blogger set, and in whether or not the people on the threads self-policed on this stuff. At places that stayed reasonable(The Field seemed exemplary to me in this regard), other commenters were shouting down the person being a sexist jerk well before the banhammer had to come down. But that even happened much of the time at Balloon Juice. I can’t really speak to the megablogs like Kos and Atrios, because the comments are terrible all the time and I don’t even bother to read them usually. Worrying about sexism or racism on those is like worrying about it on 4Chan or Fark or something. It’s just too big to be a coherent community that self-polices or upholds a given set of values anymore, and any old crazy people could be commenting who really have nothing to do with us.

Hopefully most of this will just melt away and seem like a bad dream by the fall. I’d like to think we could learn from us and it would make us stronger and more self-aware and tolerant as a community, but think that’s getting a bit ambitious in light of how things have been going.

However, I was determined not to hold support of Clinton against some of my Liberal brethren. I knew that in the end they would come around or that I would eventually end up supporting Clinton. We’d be on one page again. We argue so hard, but eventually come together. Right?

Then I saw how some bloggers, which I respected as strong Feminist voices, began to allow rampant racism and overt sexism in their comment areas. Obama is the “affirmative action candidate”? The worst was when I saw on one of my favorite blogs “Michelle Obama is an ape“. They then went on to call her unfit for the White House because she’s so “angry” and her fashion sense is lacking. On a Feminist blog? They can’t wait for this “Whitey” bombshell to drop? Obama will purse his “big purple lips”?

I immediately removed that blog from my blogroll and have decided that I don’t want any of “those” people in my party. Good riddance to them. If these are the people fighting for my rights, I wish they wouldn’t. I believe in Equality wrt race, gender and sexual orientation. I can honestly say that this particular blog broke my heart.

Seriously, though, what if she’s genuinely enthusiastic in her endorsement of Obama? Will they turn on her?

I believe by working to get McCain elected they’ve already done that.

I’m on the verge of tears reading some of this stuff.

I really searched far and wide for Obama’s direct display/speech of misogyny or sexism at HRC, and could not find any!. Though I agree that the MSM was very guilty of this, and wrote many e-mails to MSNBC etc to that effect before it became popular.

Yes, I wonder if the aversion or hatred directed at Obama really does not have another basis outside of feminism.

Forget that ’second tier’ stuff. Blogs are like movies – most of them are made for adolescents but some are really adult. I mean that in a grown-up complimentary way, not XXX.

You are top o’ the list to me.

The best thing Hillary could do to redeem herself now would be to plead temporary insanity and forcefully refute her own comment.