Real Sexism

Thanks to the Clinton campaign, sexism in media is an issue. It’s not like it wasn’t there before, which makes some of the nouveau evangelistic zeal about it more than annoying to me. Still I hope sexist language will be less socially acceptable in media going forward.

However, if you want to see what harm real sexism can do, check this out. Apparently the new trend in “criminal justice” is not to allow rape victims to use the word rape, or even sexual assault, in court. Instead, a woman testifying against someone who has raped her is supposed to say “when the defendant and I had sexual intercourse.” In one case, the woman could not call herself a “victim” or the alleged perpetrator an “assailant.”

The reason given for this nonsense is that the word rape is prejudicial. By the same logic, words like theft, fraud, and murder ought to be banned from trials, too.

Yes, the accused has a presumption of innocence, but it seems some judges presume the complainant must be lying. Fair trial? I don’t think so.

The Real McCain

Via The Jed Report, here’s a video that was put together last February by a Ron Paul supporter. I think it goes off the rails a bit at the end, particularly where McCain is criticized for his behavior as a POW — a subject that, IMO, ought to be out of bounds in the forthcoming election — but most of it is devastating and ought to be played and replayed throughout the coming campaign.

There’s a lot of hand-wringing and worrying over polls that show a tight election, particularly in the Electoral College numbers. However, the campaign fight hasn’t even started yet. Thanks to the tight focus on the Obama-Clinton primary fight, most of the public has no idea how McCain stands on most issues. All they know is that he’s a “war hero” and a “maverick.”

Today, finally, the real fight for the White House can begin.

The Right will try to take down Obama with lies and smears. We don’t need to lie about or smear John McCain to discredit him. All we have to do is be sure the American people get a close, hard, honest look at him.

For example, the GOP complains that McCain never said the U.S. could stay in Iraq “100 years,” and the McCain campaign takes umbrage whenever the Dems bring it up. But listen to the video; that’s what he said.

His ridiculous, out-of-touch ideas about health care alone ought to cost him the election. Just explain what he proposes — he wants to shove everyone into an open market in which the health insurance industry can set the rules. Only die-hard wingnuts who’ve never had to deal with the realities of the “open market” could possibly think that’s a solution. The majority of the American people will not, I think, be fooled by this any more than they were fooled by Bush’s Social Security scam.

American voters can be bamboozled about events on the other side of the world, out of their sight. But when it comes to matters with which they have personal experience, they catch on pretty fast, especially if they get the facts and not just right-wing spin.

The challenge going forward will be to get them the facts.

McCain will try to run on his biography as a war hero and on the alleged superiority of Republicans on national security.

As to the latter — I think that lots of scales have fallen from lots of eyes over the past seven years. As I keep arguing, if you look at the actual record of Dem v. Republican administrations on national security from the end of World War II to 2000, it’s pretty much a wash. Presidents of both parties have had their successes and failures.

Republicans have claimed the national security issue as their territory since the late 1940s, but they did this by peeing on trees, not by getting superior results.

And after seven years of George W. Bush, I think people are ready to be persuaded that tree-peeing does not make an effective foreign policy.

As to the former — I’m sure only those who have been prisoners of war have any idea how horrible it must be. I would not denigrate McCain’s POW experience. However, the skills one needs to survive being a POW, however admirable, are not the same skills one needs to be President. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I had an uncle who was a WWII POW in Japan for more than three and a half years, and he was a lovely fellow, but he wouldn’t have been a good President.

Frankly, I don’t think the war hero persona is going to be enough to overcome McCain’s stands on issues, which are light-years out of touch with public opinion. After the Bush Administration, I think people are in the mood to elect a President who can do more than strut around on a stage with uniformed military as a backdrop and thump his chest. People want someone who can address the real problems that are impacting their lives.

So, while it’s always a mistake to take the right-wing smear machine lightly, I feel better about our chances now than I did four years ago. We can defeat the Right. It’s going to take vigilence and discipline, and it’s going to take a lot of work to counter the lies and deliver the facts to the American public, but we can win.

Identify With This

This morning I want to re-visit “identity politics” and why I hate it. But first, I want to clarify again what I mean by the term.

The Wiki definition of “identity politics” is “political action to advance the interests of members of a group supposed to be oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalized identity (such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or neurological wiring).” That’s fine as far as it goes, but there’s a critical aspect of IP that this definition leaves out. And that is the tendency of IP activists to care and work passionately only on behalf of the marginalized group with which they share identity (hence the name, “identity politics”).

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because the end result is a balkanization of advocacy groups that compete with each other for donations and attention and sometimes even work against each other. And that end result is one of the reasons the Right has been able to dominate American political discourse for the past quarter century or so.

I witnessed this splintering in the 1970s. Back then what was left of the old New Deal coalition broke apart, partly under pressure from the antiwar and various “New Left” liberation movements and partly because large numbers of whites allowed themselves to be race-baited into voting Republican.

The New Deal coalition had sustained the Democratic Party and constituted its soul for four decades. It was a broad, if flawed, coalition that successfully promoted progressive policies (see, for example, the Great Compression). Granted, by the early 1970s this coalition had gotten rigid and old and was not responding well to the challenges of the times. The time was ripe for a political realignment, in particular one that included minorities and women.

But when the New Deal coalition broke up, it left a huge vacuum within the Democratic Party, and the antiwar and various liberation movements did not form a new coalition to step in to fill that vacuum. Instead, young activists all too often remained in self-absorbed Identity Politics enclaves.

And divided, we were conquered.

In the 1970s, as the New Deal coalition was crumbling, a number of wealthy conservatives like Richard Mellon Scaife began to build the media and political infrastructures that have dominated U.S. politics since the 1980s. While too many progressive activists remained on street corners handing out xeroxed fliers for a narrowly focused cause du jour, a new right-wing coalition came together to dominate mass media and to drive their issues relentlessly.

And with no big coalition to support it, the Democratic Party had to turn to moneyed interests and corporate donors to get the funds to win elections. More and more, the Dems became indistinguishable from the Republicans. Progressives effectively were banned from power.

Fast forward to the 1990s. Bill Clinton won two elections not by challenging the Republican Power Machine but by finessing it. It was a remarkable personal performance that left the right-wing power infrastructure intact and did nothing to restore the Democratic Party’s lost soul.

I don’t fault him for that, because at the time Clinton was up against something that was, in its way, a lot more powerful than the presidency. Given the political culture and circumstances of the 1990s, his popularity and effectiveness were powerful testimony to his unique political skills.

But, ultimately, if we’re going to create a society and government that genuinely are open to progressive ideas and policies, the political culture has got to change and the right-wing power infrastructure has got to be pushed back hard. I don’t believe that was possible in the 1990s. Now, I think it is possible. Thanks to the colossal failures of the Bush Administration, and the new progressive infrastructure made possible by the Internet, we have an opportunity to effect broad, systemic change in American politics that will help all progressive causes.

This is an opportunity that must be seized now. A door is open now that might be closed to us by the next election.

Today, many of us are catching our breath hoping the Dem nomination battle really is over so that the general election fight can begin. But these past few months I’ve been dismayed at how quickly so many of us fell back into the old Identity Politics, equality for Me but not for Thee, patterns. Once again, we’re forming circular firing squads.

As a generic choice I don’t much care whether the First President Who Is Not a White Man turns out to be a black man or a white woman, or for that matter a woman of color were one running this year. When I look at senators Clinton and Obama, my questions are which one of these two gets it? Which one sees the possibility of creating a new political culture friendly to progressivism? Which one is more likely to walk through that door?

And the answer I come up with is Obama. I cannot say whether he will succeed. He is human and imperfect, not political Jesus. But his words and background and the way he has run his campaign tell me he sees the opportunity that I see and will, at least, try.

However, I don’t believe Senator Clinton sees the opportunity. My belief is based in part on her performance in the Senate, which on the whole has been disappointing, and on the way she has run her campaign, which has been the same old “finesse (but don’t challenge) the Right and divide the Left” politics. All her formidable political skills mean nothing if she doesn’t see that open door.

Yes, electing Hillary Clinton would make a grand statement for feminism. But then we’d sweep up the popped balloons and confetti and go back to Old Politics Business as Usual. And nothing substantive would change. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I see it.

Michelle Goldberg has a article at The New Republic called “3 A.M. for Feminism.” You should read the whole thing, but here’s a snip:

Hillary Clinton has lost the nomination, but some of her most ardent female backers seem unwilling to accept it. A strange narrative has developed, abetted by Clinton and some of the mainstream feminist organizations. In it, the will of the voters was thwarted by chauvinistic party leaders in concert with a servile media, and Obama’s victory represents a repeat of George W. Bush’s in 2000. It’s a story in which Obama becomes every arrogant young man who has ever edged out a more deserving middle-aged woman, and Clinton, hanging on until the bitter end, is not a spoiler but a feminist martyr.

This conviction, that sexism cost Clinton the nomination, is likely to be one of the more toxic legacies of this primary season. It is leaving her supporters feeling not just disappointed but victimized, many convinced that Obama’s win is illegitimate. Taylor Marsh, a blogger and radio host whose website has become a hub for Clinton fans, says she gets hundreds of e-mails from angry Democrats pledging not to vote for Obama. She’s started running posts from such readers under the headline DEMOCRATIC STORM WARNINGS. “I’m not saying that this is a huge voting bloc,” she says. “I’m just saying that there is a huge amount of talk and I’m convinced it’s a reality that needs to be addressed.”

Taylor — and let me say I’ve met Taylor and like her very much, in spite of, well, recent events — responded:

Michelle Goldberg’s subtitle couldn’t be more insulting: “Clinton dead-enders and the crisis in the women’s movement.” There’s enough anger and rancor. It doesn’t help. But not even progressives get it.

People just do not understand the rage.

I don’t understand the rage, and I’ve been as held back by sexism as much as most women my age, which is close to Taylor’s and Hillary’s age.

I’ve faced the harassment and double standards. I’ve watched incompetent men sail effortlessly up the management ladder while exceptionally competent women remained stuck in entry-level positions for year after year. I’ve had to train men to manage me who had half my experience. I spent years struggling with unequal pay while raising two kids by myself. I certainly understand being angry about that.

But, y’know what? People get shafted lots of ways. Lots of people other than women have good reason to be angry at the status quo. If we’re going to change the status quo, we need to stop shoving each other out of the way just to make statements. I’m done with making statements. I want change.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, equality by definition has no preferences. If you are fighting for equality only for your particular slice of the demographic pie, then you aren’t fighting for equality but for favoritism.

If we’re going to turn the nation in a more progressive direction, we must jettison Identity Politics and come together to work for Progressive Politics.

I know Senator Clinton complains that she’s been shoved out of the race. But in spite of a strong finish, she was mathematically out of the race weeks ago, and her “kitchen sink” dirty campaigning was only poisoning the water without changing the inevitable outcome. Further, the Florida-Michigan issue was nothing but a slick attempt by Clinton to pick up cheap votes, and the fact that Clinton supporters willfully fail to see this tells me they’ve got their eyes shut to reality.

You know what we’re really up against? Read carefully this opinion piece by Daniel Henninger at The Wall Street Journal.

The irony too bitter to swallow is that Barack Obama’s identity politics trumped Hillary Clinton’s identity politics. Put differently, what goes around comes around. …

… The hard version [of identity politics] introduced people, mostly college students, to an America partitioned into categories of race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. The softer version has flown for 30 years under all sorts of euphemized banners – diversity, multiculturalism, celebrating our differences. Only one campaign is celebrating our differences this week. …

… After South Carolina, the campaigns accused each other of playing the race or gender card. Obama deflected this charge. “I don’t want to deny the role of race and gender in our society,” Obama said. “They’re there, and they’re powerful. But I don’t think it’s productive.”

I’m not convinced. I think Barack Obama is more inclined to interpret American life in the formal categories of identity politics than is generally thought, or even than would older “conventional liberals” like Al Gore or John Kerry. Legal theorists have been a main source of its ideas; it’s hard to imagine that Barack and Michelle Obama didn’t hear a lot about “marginalized constituencies” at Harvard Law School. Sen. Obama may not be so conventional after all.

Speaking last July about picking Supreme Court nominees, he said: “We need someone who’s got the heart . . . the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.” This is the language of identity politics. It’s not just talk. It’s an ideology designed to produce . . . change. …

… John McCain by instinct, biography and upbringing is prone to see America as a common civic culture. The vocabulary of “unjust” class distinctions familiar to Obama is alien to the McCain worldview. Sen. McCain should think about this and figure out a way to talk about it. If Americans are going to affirm a president making appointments on the basis of race, gender, class and sexuality, they should know it in 2008, rather than 2009-2012.

To Henninger, any political activism that addresses the concerns of any demographic other than White Upper-Class Male is, by default, “Identity Politics.” White Upper-Class Male is the default norm that constitutes what Henninger sees as a “common civic culture,” never mind lots of us have been disowned by that “common” culture.

And as long as we keep ourselves divided into demographic splinter groups, and allow indulgent, self-centered anger to blind us to the bigger picture, Henninger wins.

[Update: I watched Senator Clinton’s speech this afternoon and thought it very classy. She did a lot to rehabilitate her reputation, and I hope the majority of her supporters can take her advice and support Barack Obama for President.]

Bush Lied, Etc.: More Stuff You Already Knew

Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report saying that the President, Dick the Dick and other top Bush Administration officials knowingly and willfully promoted the invasion of Iraq “with public statements that weren’t supported by intelligence or that concealed differences among intelligence agencies,” writes Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers.

The release of this report was delayed by committee infighting, and they let it loose yesterday when the whole world was focused on the Obama Nomination and the Clinton Petulance.

The real kicker — and again, this is Stuff You Already Knew — is that there is suspicion that the famous Iraqi Exiles like Ahmad Chalabi really were working for the Iranians all along and fed bad intelligence to Defense Department Doofus Doug Feith and others to goad the U.S. into taking out Saddam Hussein for the benefit of Iran. Better our tax dollars than theirs, eh?

This is news? you ask. Well, no, it’s pretty much what most of us suspected all along.

John Walcott writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

You’ll love this:

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials’ activities after only a month, and the Defense Department’s top brass never followed up on the investigators’ recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

It’s almost like … they knew they were being used by Iran but didn’t want anyone else to know about it.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Isn’t that, like, treason or something?

Anyway, I want to go back to Conservative National Defense Strategy, which (as I’ve said before) boils down to chest thumping and tree-peeing.

Have you ever noticed that in right-wing parlance, a “serious” foreign policy is one that requires invading someone? In rightie world, if a policy doesn’t involve missiles and bombs and stuff, it’s not “serious.” I’d like to float the idea that a “serious” foreign policy is one crafted by mature and intelligent people with thorough knowledge of whatever it is they are making policy about.

Instead, for the past going on eight years we’ve had —

George W. Bush’s Defense Department Working to Defend America!

You still see the TeeVee pundits intone that Republicans are “better” at national defense and foreign policy than Democrats, although for the life of me I can’t tell what criteria they are using to judge “better.” I think it’s way past time this little “better at national defense” meme was revisited.

The “Dems are soft on defense” bluff is one the Right has been pulling since the late 1940s. But it’s a bluff. If you look hard at U.S. foreign policy from the end of World War II to 2000, and compare effectiveness of Democratic and Republican administrations, seems to me it’s pretty much a wash. Presidents of both parties have had their successes and failures.

If John McCain wants to run on the innate superiority of Republicans in national defense matters, I say bring it on.

Rent Asunder

Melissa McEwan, aka Shakespeare’s Sister, has a post up at Comment Is Free on the acrimony in the Left Blogosphere between Obama and Clinton supporters.

Not just at Daily Kos and MyDD, but in many prominent blogs across the ‘sphere, the precise willingness to indulge or deny decidedly illiberal rhetoric, “jokes” and imagery has exposed just how much overt or thinly veiled racism or sexism is allowed to demean one or the other or both candidates. In some cases, there’s been an alarming amount of give, turning comment threads into hostile places for one candidate’s supporters, for women, for people of colour and/or all of the above. In others, safe spaces have emerged, where a premium is placed on providing room for debate free of harassment and silencing tactics.

I don’t know where those “safe spaces” were. On the blogosphere the only way you can provide room for “debate free of harassment and silencing tactics” is to use the ultimate silencing tactic and delete the harassing and abusive comments. Because there will be harassing and abusive comments.

McEwan continues,

The break reflects (broadly) two competing philosophies, the first valuing as much free speech as possible — an open market of ideas in which it’s every woman and man for themselves, where bravado will prevail — and the second valuing diversity of participation, and recognising the historical marginalisation of women, people of colour and the LGBTQ community from political discourse, thus placing a premium on the prevention of bullying. Not unexpectedly, the lefty bloggers yawning with boredom at “identity politics” tend to favour the former, while those who engage in “identity politics” (sometimes more favourably referred to as “fighting for one’s equality”) favour the latter.

Sorry, Melissa, but I don’t fit into either side of your dichotomy. I keep a lid on the comments and have, believe it or not, deleted a few genuinely abusive and sexist comments aimed at Clinton. However, I don’t yawn at “identity politics.” I intensely dislike “identity politics.”

Identity politics are not about “fighting for one’s equality.” They are ultimately about celebrating inequality and responding to divisiveness with more divisiveness. They are about attaching one’s ego and self-identity to a partisan group and favoring that group at the expense of other groups.

“Fighting for equality” is fighting for equality. Equality by definition has no preferences. If you are fighting for equality only for your particular slice of the demographic pie, then you aren’t fighting for equality but for favoritism.

Particularly given the nature of the Obama-Clinton struggle, it’s remarkable to me that so many women who are hyper-sensitive to sexism have been utterly oblivious to racism these past few months. People whose first concern is “equality” and not “me” do not pit one kind of bigotry against another. Bigotry is bigotry.

Identity politics too often devolve into indulging one’s ego and settling scores. For example, Marc Ambinder writes,

Matt Burns, the spokesman for the GOP convention in St. Paul e-mails to say that the RNC’s convention office in St. Paul has received numerous telephone calls in the last few hours from people who identify themselves as Clinton supporters asking how they can help Sen. McCain.

If true, this is insane. McCain want to criminalize abortion, for pity’s sake. If he becomes President he’ll get a chance to plug at least two more right-wing deadheads into the Supreme Court.

This tells me that, for at least some of these women, supporting Clinton wasn’t about feminism. It was about something deeper and more primordial and personal that Clinton, somehow, came to represent for them. This is what a “cult of personality” looks like, people.

McEwan continues,

Quite understandably, there are those who regard the internecine turmoil with no small amount of hopelessness, a “why can’t we all just get along?” exhaustion. But the emergence of competing philosophies can only be a good thing.

It’s possible that comment was partly aimed at me. I was more or less expelled — I left voluntarily, but the mob was coming with pitchforks and torches — from a leftie blogger listserv for trying to be conciliatory.

A group of Clinton supporters were collectively whining about how mean the Obamabots were being but at the same time were hurling absurd accusations about Obama, such as his secret plan to appease the Right by letting the Fetus People set reproductive rights policy. I’m serious.

One prominent woman blogger tried to censor another listserv member who had the nerve to promote his pro-Obama post — and the post was pro-Obama, not anti-Clinton — as if favoring Obama over Clinton was in itself a sexist act that could not be tolerated by civilized beings. And when I tried to smooth things out with a “let’s all get along” post I was attacked viciously by the Clintonistas for trying to shut down the “debate.” As if they hadn’t already tried to shut down pro-Obama opinions.

These were not “competing philosophies.” It was bullying. I was accused of being a sexist for using the word hysteria, but I can’t think of another word that better describes what was happening on that listserv.

Certainly there have been plenty of Obama supporters who have behaved very badly. But I think if you eliminate such inflammatory venues as Democratic Underground and just look at bloggers themselves, the bad behavior has been coming at least as much from pro-Clinton bloggers as from pro-Obama bloggers, if not more so.

Someday I want to write something more analytical about what’s gone on in the Left Blogosphere these past few months. I think I need to let a little more time pass, however. Whatever forces have been at work have been hideously destructive and personally painful for me. And although some wounds will heal, I do not think the Left Blogosphere will ever again be what it was.

A little more about comments:

I go farther than most bloggers to keep a lid on the comments here. It has occurred to me that this probably is what has kept me in the second tier, as far as volume of readership is concerned. People are drawn to ugly and acrimonious hate speech like flies to a carcass, and on many A-list blogs the huge volumes of comments are mostly one cheap, juvenile insult after another.

Over the past few months I have deleted a few anti-Clinton comments that were overtly sexist. In recent weeks there have been a few commenters here who have made comments about Hillary Clinton that border on sexism, although not overtly so, and after some struggle I’ve let them get by with it. I tend to be indulgent with regulars. Maybe I should have been stricter.

On the other hand, a couple of commenters who were long-time regulars are now banned for violating comment rule #2:

I respect and encourage substantive commentary, but comments that are nothing but insults of me or other commenters will be deleted. Repeated attempts to post such comments will get the commenter banned.

These commenters were Clinton supporters who could not write comments in support of Clinton. Instead, their comments consisted entirely of insults of me, other Mahablog commenters, and Obama supporters generally.

Occasionally someone would leave a comment saying “I support Hillary Clinton because …” and then provide reasons. These comments were not deleted. I might have responded to disagree with the reasons, but if the comment was written in a respectful and reasonable way I did my best to disagree in a respectful and reasonable way.

Such comments were rare, though. Mostly, Clinton supporters who commented here just left personal insults, often complaining about how nasty Obama supporters are.

Hysteria, I say.

Pathologically Selfish

On the day after an African American became the presidential nominee of a major party, most of us are still griping about the loser. Yeah, me too. She’s turning into ripe road kill, which grabs your attention even as you wish it weren’t there.

Chris Suellentrop has a roundup of various reactions to Senator Clinton’s speech last night. Quotes range the gamut from “Outrageous, Delusional” (Noam Scheiber) to “utterly unconscionable” (Matt Yglesias). I will add to that Michael Tomasky:

Once again, it’s all about Hillary Clinton, who delivered the most abrasive, self-absorbed, selfish, delusional, emasculating and extortionate political speech I’ve heard in a long time. And I’ve left out some adjectives, just to be polite.

Last night I was listening to speeches with one ear while compiling a beginner’s guide to major Mahayana bodhisattvas. Talk about disorienting. I wanted to charge into the mess on the television screen waving the flaming vajra sword of righteous disgust.

Michael Crowley makes some good points in “In the Clinton Bunker.” The first is a point Keith Olbermann also made last night — [Crowley writes],

How fitting that, on the night Barack Obama finally claimed the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton delivered her non-concession speech from a concrete bunker. To reach the Baruch College gymnasium where Hillary spoke with such surprising defiance her supporters had to descend two flights below street level. The thick subterranean walls blocked out cell phone and BlackBerry signals, and no televisions were provided in the main event hall, thereby insulating Hillary’s cheering supporters (intentionally, some theorized) from the dispiriting events unfolding at the Xcel Center in Minneapolis.

That much insulation had to have been planned. The other point is one that occurred to me last night. She asked her supporters to go to her web site and tell her what to do next, to which I wearily responded, “She wants her groupies to go to her web site and beg her to keep fighting. Best interest of her party, my ass.” Michael Crowley writes,

And so Hillary is embarking on yet another listening tour. She is asking her determined followers—like the one here wearing a “REAL MEN vote Hillary” pin—what she should do next. The kabuki listening tour is a hoary old Clinton device. When Bill Clinton ran for re-election as governor in 1990, he promised Arkansans not to run for president before his term had ended. Two years later, he was touring the state, asking for their “permission” to break his pledge. As luck would have it, Bill got the answer he was looking for.

And so will Hillary. Attending an event like tonight’s helps to explain how Hillary carries on in the face of it all. She spends her days surrounded by people who believe in her passionately–who “grab my hand or grip my arm, to look me in my eyes and tell me, don’t quit, keep fighting,” as she put it in a campaign email tonight–and all the moreso the more hopeless her cause seems. These people will undoubtedly tell her to carry on. That much was clear from the chant of “Denver! Denver!” which came up tonight, and which drew no strong rebuke.

Clearly, she is cynically manipulating the emotions of her followers to wring some concession out of Obama or the Democratic Party. Whether she still thinks she can be the veep — snowball’s chance in hell, I say — or whether she wants someone to pay off the $20 million campaign debt I can’t say.

Anyway, I went to her web site this morning to send her a message to QUIT NOW. But of course the site is set up so that you can only tell her to keep fighting. If you fill in the web form you are endorsing a statement that says “I’m with you Hillary, and I am proud of everything we are fighting for” (to wreck the Democratic Party?). So she’s not asking for opinions. She is gathering endorsements. Not that her groupies will notice or appreciate this distinction (and they say we Obama supporters are culties?).

However, there’s another web form on her site that doesn’t involve an endorsement. You know what to do. No threats, please. Here’s what I wrote, in case you’re at a loss for words:

You’ve lost. Stop destroying the country, the Democratic party, and what’s left of your reputation. Endorse Obama and go back to the Senate.

You can also send faxes to her campaign headquarters: 703.962.8600.

Update: See the Unapologetic Mexican:

REGARDING HILLARY CLINTONs odd non-concession speech last night: I do understand that Hillary, as a woman, feels she must appear strong to the end. And as a fighter, myself, I do respect that idea. And I do get that she is angling for cash and for a position in Obama’s administration. But I also know that a strong person, when beat fairly, can admit that they were bested. All else follows that moment of honesty and respect. For someone who loses to act as if they have not lost and then use that denial to lever goods or resources their way is not “feisty” or “strong.” It simply shows a lack of respect for the values that give weight to a “win” or “loss” in the first place.

A Historic Evening, Brief Live Blog

I’m listening to Hillary Clinton speak, and she’s still arguing that she’s the stronger candidate and she got the most votes. Lies, but she’s in a groove.

She’s also implying that she’s the candidate of American values. Gag.

She says she’s committed to uniting the party.

She’s been fighting for a better health care system for 16 years, she says. Her followers cheer this. They don’t seem to notice that she failed.

She’s making no decisions tonight. No concession.

She wants her groupies to go to her web site and beg her to keep fighting. Best interest of her party, my ass.

Keith Olbermann points out that the venue of Senator Clinton’s speech has no television monitors or blackberry service and the people there might not know that some networks have already declared Obama the nominee.

[On to the Obama speech.]

“I will be the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America.” Nice.

Did you listen? Rousing speech. I’ve been writing all day and am pretty much keyboarded out, but do leave comments.

Is the End in Sight?

[Update: Associated Press — Obama clinches the nomination.]

There is much speculation that by this time tomorrow Barack Obama will have enough delegates to claim the Dem nomination. There is also much speculation that Hillary Clinton will, finally, concede the race and support Barack Obama.

Regarding the latter: I’m not holding my breath.

Ben Smith writes that Clinton aides are rallying donors and telling them the fight isn’t over until August. Senator Clinton’s behavior in recent weeks has been so toxic there’s no way she publicly can support Obama without revealing herself to be an utterly cynical hypocrite. Some of her supporters are whipped up into such a frenzy of Obamaphobia they’re likely to turn against Clinton if she endorses him.

Of course, it’s possible the Clintons are still rallying donors because they want to reduce the $20 million or so debt they owe the campaign and will have to pay back out of their own pockets.

Josh Orton argues that Clinton will bow out gracefully. “I don’t think Clinton will divide the party further,” he writes. “As hard as it must be to concede that she lost a huge upset to a young up-start, I believe she’s more than capable of putting the party and country ahead of self-interest.” I’ll believe it when I see it.

On the other hand, Thomas Edsall says Clinton wants Obama’s help in raising the $20 million. Maybe there’s a deal in the works.

I’ll be reasonably satisfied if Senator Clinton suspends her campaign without conceding. What’s important now is to re-focus news media on the Obama-McCain contest rather than the Obama-Clinton contest.

Predictions? Will she concede?

Update: Noonish, there are news stories saying Clinton will concede when Obama gets the number of delegates he needs to win the nomination. Other news stories say she won’t.

The Magic Tape

[Critical update: FAFBLOG IS BACK!!!!]

For weeks some Clinton supporters on the Web have pushed rumors about a video in which Michelle Obama goes on a rampage against “whitey.” They’ve hung their hopes and faith on this video, certain it will be the salvation of the Clinton campaign, as soon as it gets out.

I’ve suspected there is no such tape, because if it existed the Clinton campaign would have given it to Matt Drudge by now. But today some Clinton bloggers are certain a TV network has it, because someone on Faux Nooz says so.

Now, apparently, a few on the Left have discerned what’s on The Magic Tape. The BooMan explains that Michelle Obama criticized the Bush Administration:

Why’d he cut folks off medicaid?
Why’d he let New Orleans drown?
Why’d he do nothing about Jena?
Why’d he put us in Iraq for no reason?

If you take this out of context, “why’d he” does sound a lot like “whitey.”

Now, I don’t know that anyone on either side has actually seen The Magic Tape, but if it exists at all this recent explanation makes sense to me. And it’s also why The Magic Tape remains hidden. It’s powers will dissipate as soon as people realize what Michelle Obama really said.

What makes this even more pathetic is that the individual on Faux Nooz spreading this rumor is none other than Roger Stone. As Steve M. points out, this same Roger Stone is responsible for “the 527 group formed solely to insult Hillary Clinton with a sexist acronym — Citizens United Not Timid.” And now some Clinton supporters are embracing Roger Stone as an ally.

This, folks, is what insanity looks like.

Ben Smith reports that the Clinton campaign is heading back to New York and shedding staff. Getting ready to concede? Kyle Moore says maybe, maybe not. (See also “Breaking: Larry Johnson Lost His Last Marble.”)

I want to go back to something the BooMan wrote in his post:

This election has ruined a lot of friendships. I have tried hard not to let it ruin mine. But smears of this type are unforgivable. I have been forebearing. Perhaps, in retrospect, I have been too forebearing. That’s all I say. This is too painful to me.

I know exactly how he feels. The Clinton poison has ruined a lot of friendships in the blogosphere. It’s terribly sad. I’ve chosen not to attend Netroots Nation (formerly Yearly Kos) this summer because there are too many people I’d rather not see now.

See also “Clinton may lose key supporters soon” and Michael Tomasky, in which he writes that, in many ways, the prolonged nomination fight has made Obama a stronger candidate.

Everything that’s happened since Wisconsin – the emergence of Jeremiah Wright, the flap over the “bitter” white working class, and so on – has constituted Obama’s trial by fire. Far better that he had to answer all those questions in March than in October, with millions more voters paying closer attention.

But at the same time, we’ve been hostage to the Clintons’ inability to come to grips with the fact that Hillary was going to lose. Her final descent into rancid demagoguery about Florida and Michigan, comparing them to Zimbabwe and likening the “cause” of seating the states at full strength to the civil rights movement was, for some observers, the last straw. It was a rules dispute over two states that broke the rules; no one was jailed or lynched, and if anyone disenfranchised the voters of those two states, it wasn’t the Democratic party or Obama, it was the political leaders of the states themselves.

We have no idea whether the fuming Clinton partisans at Saturday’s meeting represent thousands or millions. But however many of them exist, the fact is that Clinton worked them into this lather – Eve Fairbanks of the New Republic filed a stomach-turning report for her magazine’s website on some of the things said about Obama outside the hall – and Clinton is responsible as things move forward for working them out of it. That means, for starters, ending her quest soon and letting her backers know that she’s not fighting on to the Denver convention.

If she doesn’t do that, I think her position as a leader in the Dem party will be over.