Why Am I So Afraid
Why am I so afraid that the Democratic Party is shooting itself in the foot?
The Dems are far from perfect--in any time--but here we are in what has to be a Democratic year and it looks again like we are self-destructing.
We have two great candidates--one a hard working, never give up eager beaver, and one an inspiring, heart-leapingly brilliant stallion. Both have their merits. Both care for what Democrats are best at caring for--working people, children's and women's rights, financial realism.
Both acknowledge the health care crisis, the environmental depredations of the GOP, the huge lurking menace of a war that costs 12 billion dollars a day and gives us nothing--unless we are war profiteers or blow-yourself-up fundamentalists. Both are poised to take back the country from the plutocrats and their endless tax cuts for each other.
And yet we have had great candidates before--think Al Gore--and lost to the low-level conniving, smearing and swift boating of the GOP (Grandiose Old Plutocrats).
The GOP stands for nothing today but looting the national treasury for the rich. George Dubya Bush once addressed them as the "haves and have mores"--clearly he is one of them--but maybe he will have less now that the Carlyle Group is running out of money. Maybe he'll have a little rachmones for the have-less and have-nots, though I doubt it.
If anyone in Washington read history, they'd understand that any empire that spends more in war than on its people eventually goes down in flames. The Persians, Greeks and Romans proved it--see Herodotus--and the British, French, Belgians, Dutch and Germans proved it all over again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But does anyone care?
Apparently not. It's a rule of history that when an empire gorges on guns and forgets butter, that empire winds up on the scrap heap of history.
Dubya could have learned this at Yale had he not been drunk or stoned all the time and figuring out ways to avoid going to 'Nam.
But he doesn't know and doesn't care. He thinks, "The surge is working." Dick Cheney and Condi Rice tell him so. And now McCain echoes them. And our idiot corporate press--which has no time to read or think or dig for information (too busy getting pix of Kristen-Alexandra's tattoos) doesn't give a shit either. Leave that to the book-writers. That's safe enough since Americans don't read--especially not big thick books about history.
Meanwhile our two clever candidates have been sucked into the rigors of campaigning. They're tired. Dog-tired. The stallion makes heart-stopping speeches. And the beaver just beavers along. remembering how she won over upstate New York when everyone called that impossible. And called her a carpetbagger. And the stallion is drunk on his own rhetoric. Why not? It's great rhetoric.
We need beavers and we need stallions. Beavers get the work done. Stallions inspire us. And they both have limitations. Stallions have fragile legs (think Barbaro). And beavers are nothing without their teeth.
It's not a matter of choosing between inspiration and hard work. We need both. We need to be inspired and then we need those who will never give up till they execute the inspiration.
Any fool knows that. The Democratic Party ought to know it too. And the sooner they bring the beaver and the stallion together, the better off we'll all be. There is no choice here. There ought to be no ego, no genderizing and no racializing.
Americans are neither black nor white. We are all as mixed as Brazilians. We are a honey-colored race--with Africans, Europeans, Asians and Native Americans intermingled in our DNA. That's the glory of America. If Dick Cheney is genetically related to Barack Obama, what more do we need to know? DNA only goes so far politically.
So let's stop talking about race and gender and let the beaver and the stallion both serve our country--in their own inimitable ways.
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First, I cannot believe my last post was booted. Paranoia strikes deep!
Ms Jong is probably about the age of Obama's Grandmother. Her fears are understandable but they only pin us to that tired old paranoia.
I would chance to state Hillary has driven that bus into the preverbal ditch.How could Barak trust her and Bill in the WH,
I know "keep your friends close and your enemies closer " but with that twosome B would be in constant "danger will robinson"
You do realize your favorite Beaver, Hillary, is no Beaver or Stallion - she's a Bunny Rabbit.
Beaver??? Did you call her a Beaver???
A black stallion??? Did you call him a Black Stallion???
Sounds like a Rush Theater Production. Unbelievable!
lol ... I had the same thoughts but thought I was the only one... Jungian archetypes? ;-)
No, not Jungian archetypes, thinly veiled racist and sexist caricatures.
Hillary isn’t a beaver. She’s an Elephant.
Yes, it’s true that Hillary is a woman.
She’s ambitious.
She’s outspoken.
She’s willing to serve.
She’s hardworking.
She’s not afraid to speak.
She’s not afraid to sing.
She’s not afraid to express her “intuitive genius without apology”.
She inspires many women who like to fancy themselves as feminists.
She’s all those things.
But Hillary is also much more.
She’s a liar. Whether it’s her denial of supporting NAFTA –despite a bucket of evidence to the contrary- or whether it’s pointing fingers at others when it was she that told the Canadians to ignore her rhetoric about it. Or, whether it was making up a string of embellishments to add to her fictional story about landing in Bosnia under sniper attack, or a long list of other obfuscations, she’s a BIG FAT LIAR.
She’s also a Republican by action. She asks us to judge her by her years of White House experience. Let’s look-
-An illegal and immoral war in Kosovo and Bosnia with massive "collateral civilian
casualties".
- Lying to the gay community, almost out of the gate, by instituting "Don’t ask, don’t
tell".
- Promoting China’s MFN trade status despite a dismal record of human rights abuses.
- Caving-in to big timber interests.
- Showing no compassion for sick medical marijuana users.
- Destroying the social safety net constructed by FDR with "workfare".
- Approving no-warrant searches of private homes in federal housing projects.
- Twisting arms to get NAFTA passed, resulting in over a million lost jobs.
- Bombing aspirin factories in sovereign countries without approval of Congress.
- Refusing to sign the land mine treaty that over 180 countries have signed.
- Lobbing cruise missiles at a sovereign nation without any declaration or U.N.
approval.
- And most disgusting of all " turning his back as 850,000 Rwandan innocents were
slaughtered.
Add to this Hillary"s -
- Wal-Mart affiliations.
- Voting for a bill disallowing gays to have the same rights as non-gays.
- Voting in favor of restricting free speech (flag burning).
- Refusing to release tax records as all of her opponents have done.
- Standing in the Senate, proclaiming she was voting in favor of authorizing the
President to begin yet another illegal and immoral war and saying that she did
so "with conviction" " THEN lying about it for the last few years, claiming that
wasn"t her intention.
What you have here is a Republican. Apparently a Republican elephant cross dressing as a beaver.
If we want someone to promote GOP policies, we’ll VOTE for a real Republican, not a pretend Democrat.
You forgot her refusal to vote for the cluster bomb ban, and Kyl-Leiberman, but you're right.
think Al Gore
Sorry,Iv voted for Gore. He would have been a great president, but a great candididate? Sorry, I must disagree. No one has EVER called Barack wooden or inarticulate or not comfortable in their own skin. That's what did Algore in.
This year my party had a united and fairly good run ahead of them. However, our power brokers decided to misuse the strengths of the party that might have given that good run to do a power play. They probably destroyed our party's two top stars for their own petty reasons. Howard Dean, the party leader, took sides early on and made it all possible. First as a party we all wanted both of these people to have a turn at the top. We believed they would. First, our popular democratic workhorses would fix the damage to the nation. While the first stars achieved the repairs, our popular new star would get a bit more experience to be in a position to come up when he was needed in future years at the top of the ticket. Sadly our older leaders are not free of the prejudices they are claiming the American people must deal with in this election. Some of them did not want a woman on the top of the ticket, some of them did not want a clean Clinton legacy in history as it would again eclipse other democratic family traditions. So they put a plan in motion that has wasted our talent in an exhausting primary.
These selfish and shortsighted party "leaders" Kennedy, Kerry, Daschell et al. have destroyed our party over and over again for their own power grabs, but this is their worst treachery yet. Now they have forced the whole party to choose between the two great unforgiveable sins to democrats; vote one way, appear to be a misogynist, vote the other way, appear to be a racist. Just as the party was saying unite, in steps another power grabber, Pelosi, and pronounces unification is dead on arrival. Why? First, unpopular in our party and seeking popularity, she's made an open secret of backing Obama, second she does not want another female first. Currently she holds the first for the highest national political power seat for a woman. She is aiming higher at the Vice Presidential spot on the ticket. Now she has been trumped for that on the Obama ticket by Richardson. Powerful people in the party are destroying each other and climbing over the bodies to find a new leg up on a ladder falling away from the building.
Left over for all of us is the place everyone will most likely land. If our candidates make it on the ticket, bloody or not, we will vote for them. If not many of us will not vote or we will cross lines to try to change the other party. The damage is probably already too great for that slim margin of voters who actually win general elections to swing it to the democrats. In the end, all the candidates will retain their current titles and spend a lot more time in the senate as also rans. The party destroyers who have been buying the bullets for our circular firing sqads will start planning and restocking bullets to kill the next successful candidates that might expose them for the useless status quo supporters of their trust funds that they are, and President McCain will be under pressure to do the right thing and fix the damage his party did to our nation. Another turning point in history will have turned the wrong direction thanks to a revered democratic party traditon of power grabbing self destruction.
I'm probably just not following ... Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your point.
It appears that you're suggesting jealousy has led old-line party traditionalists (Pelosi???) to nix Clinton's generous offer of a veep slot to Obama. Clinton was of course ever so kind to offer the slot, given that she's behind in delegates, popular vote, and states won.
Or do you think Clinton would ever have accepted the veep slot?
How about just recognizing that Obama's broad popularity and delegate lead is his own achievement; the Dream Ticket is just that - a dream that was never going to happen. The person doing damage to the party is Clinton; she can't accept that she's not simply entitled to the presidency.
Don't forget....
I was told about these meetings on good authority.
Great post Erica. I agree 100%. But here is the problem. The second that Obama agrees to be the number 2 his career is over. The slime in the MSM will use this as proof that Obama just isn't viable as a president, and he had to cave. So if Obama decides to go as number 2, he potentially loses everything. Remember, the slime MSM will use it against him. So what if Hillary becomes the number 2? At first I thought there was no way, as Hillary and Bill have already been to the top. But maybe it is time she takes the number 2 spot. I support her. I like her. And I gave her money. Since it appears that Obama needs her almost as much as she needs him, maybe they can sit down and broker a deal. I hope something happens, because right now the Dems are falling into the same BS GOP traps they always fall into.
I'd go for that. I'd like to see Bill coming and going from the Naval Observatory.
Obama has already stated he will not take the vice presidency. He is the frontrunner in the Democratic primary. And he will beat McCain.
Obamas campaign has done the hard work of registering new voters and bringing all voters into the system. He will be rewarded in the end. Hillary has not done any of the hard work in this election, relying instead on her highly paid advocates to get out a message.
The message from me to Hillary is this, drop out in June with dignity or we will demand the superdelegates hold a vote. We WILL have a candidate by June, one way or the other.
Eric Jong is so very afraid of the black stallion.
Hmm...
It's not just the veiled lazy black man imagery Jong invokes that's troubling; but the old time sexualizing of black men.
The reference to Barbaro is also interesting. Reminds me of the Clinton's connections with Anthony Pellicano, currently on trial, with evidence of him threatening to break people's legs with a baseball bat. Jong's post is so typically Clintonian.
Coudl the Clinton supporters just pick a metaphor please, and stick with it? Personally I thought the Richardson-as Judas, Hillary-as-Jesus, Obama-as-Devel was at least interesting to talk about on Easter Sunday.
Who knew a Clinton supporter would be willing to reach back into imagery of black men from Jim Crow days?
Is there a polite way to say, "stuff it, potty mouth"?
First, we have one great candidate. Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton will not win because she is not a great candidate. Subconsciously, I think Ms. Jong agrees. Likening Hillary Clinton to a beaver is about as astute--and subtle--as a Beavis & Butthead sketch. Making Barack Obama the stud of the piece--oy. She knows the tropes. What was she not thinking?
I'm not liking being in this little corner of Ms. Jong's mind, where Americans have become a "honey colored race" equivalent to Brazilians. We're not a race, we're a nation, we're all different colors, and that melting pot schtick went out with Civil Rights. She traipses through historical references going back to Mesopotamia, yet somehow overlooks the U.S Civil War and the central role of race in the very identity of our country. If Ms. Jong really understood the issue, she couldn't say something as dismissive as "let's stop talking about race and gender." We weren't talking about gender, it was race. It IS race. If a white woman could have been lynched for looking at a black man, we might talk about gender on a par with race, but that never happened. Speaking as a white woman, I don't think any of us has the right to deny another American his or her rightful grievances. When it comes to black women, that goes double.
I don't know why Ms. Jong is so uncomfortable about the frank discussion about race that Barack Obama has framed so beautifully. I don't know why she wants to shut down the conversation before it's even begun. I do know that she's wrong on the candidates, wrong on the parties' roles, and she's wrong on the country. People are tired of the hoary old curmudgeon of Democratic discourse that demonizes every breath the Republican party takes, and fastidiously refuses to take responsibility for its own role in just about all of the debacles of the past 8 years--and I say that as a lifetime Dem. Jong's "hardworking beaver" assisted the plutocrats in sponsoring this war. Clinton was right there with the Republicans, backing them going into it, and supporting them as it went along. She IS the "them" when it comes to the worst policy decision of the past hundred years, just as she's aligning herself with their candidate today. There's good work, and there's bad work. Hillary Clinton's work has been bad for the people and bad for the country. Very bad.
The only good choice is Barack Obama. A Clintonless Obama. Hillary has failed the tests of strategy, tactics, and logistics presented by the challenge of running her campaign. Where Obama has grown in stature and command before our eyes these past several months on multiple levels, she has degraded. She has shown very poor judgment, and when outcomes showed she'd erred, she repeatedly failed to make the right corrective moves, if she made any changes at all. Finding merit in her executive decision-making over the past year is a salvage operation at best. Considering the Clinton and the Obama campaigns as auditions for the managerial side of the presidency, who's demonstrated administrative and fiscal savvy? Who's inspired confidence in the citizens, generated great energy, and motivated people to positive objectives? Only one, and it sure isn't the root-destroying, dam-building rodent.
Hey, Huffpo, this is worthy of a pick, didya read it yet?
Very nice post. Thanks.
Thanks PennP!! Posts like yours are the reason I come to HuffPost!
Ms. Jong, you've just been schooled in rhetoric!
Lovely piece of work!
Brava!
Tell the Stallion to stop strutting around and put together a time table for the troop withdrawal of all American soldiers from Iraq.
Uh, he already did. Obama gave a major speech on Iraq/foreign relations in Fayetteville this past week. It is on youtube. Watch this, it is his major accomplishment-way beyond his race/religion speech this week also.
The Iraq speech has been ignored by the msm. Wonder why?
You know, (as per your insinuation) for an empty suit, who has nothing to back him up but words and speeches, his campaign sure has done an impressive job of out performing your hard working/fighting candidate by just about every single measure. Working and fighting hard does not equate into working and fighting smart. And no, I don't think Obama's administration would be well served with Hillary on board. She has proven to be an ineffective and insular manager.
Erika,
Let me help you out.
1) Hillary Clinton, your candidate of choice , and her insane husband is tearing the Party apart and doing all they can to ensure 8 more years of a Republican WH, Congress and Supreme Court (just like they did in the 90s, its dejavu all over again)
2) Obama has managed to put together a 50 state grassroots coalition, block by block, county by county, state by state. This did not exist prior to his campaign due to political party bosses like the Clintons that insisted the Party could govern from a 5 state strategy. They were proven dead wrong. Tragically wrong.
3) Obama is not trying to 'win' a contest, he is trying to change the face of the Dem Party, politics in America and move the Nation forward. Thats a lot of work, hard work. He does go out and crow about it like some, he believes that educated people like yourself will get it.
4) Winning this contest, which is Hillary's only objective, will not ensure a governing body that will begin change. She has demoralized, divided and destroyed. Obama has untied, inspired and put millions of people that never participated to work. He is relying on the People, not the Politics. What a refreshing change.
5) He is winning, beating the unbeatable machine. Despite the kitchen sick, the racist screaming, the lies, being called un-American by a former Democratic President.
6) He has done it with the judgment, character, intellect, mental and emotional fitness and support of most higher thinking members of the party that he will need to be one of our greatest Presidents ever.
But to date, he is doing it without you. It is time that you, clearly a forward thinking woman of our times, need to see that it is time you help an not hinder. it is time that the nation hear from folks like you that reject the politics of destruction and division.
Fear not Erika. Hope.
Obama 2008
You are nuts..you WANT TO elect a man who took his small daughters to hear preaching of hate.
Is that the type of person you want..that would choose Wright as a spiritual advisor.??
Not me.....vot
He has NO CHANCE of winning a general election after this mess with Wright.
Women like me that are for Hillary ARE NOT going to vote for OBAMA...an
Hello Pres. McCain..th
Mich just gave away the election..
Of course, any party that would have that idiot HOWARD DEAN as its leader is also, truly
looking for a loss.
Obama in Nov is a done did LOSS for the nation and the party...
Hillary can beat McCain...O
golferling,
Wow, you're a little bit over the top, aren't you? Why are you angry?
Why is it that virtually every poll shows Obama ahead of Clinton and Obama beating McCain by a wider margin than Clinton? That wasn't true for a brief time right after the Wright scandal but its swung back again: http://tpm
You are right there are unfortunately a lot of racist people in this country still and Obama won't get their votes. However, 99% of those people are also rabid Clinton haters who would be unlikely to vote for any democrat and certainly not for Senator Clinton.
How was the voting in Florida and Michigan legitimate? Before those primaries every major democrat running for president agreed that they would follow the directives of the DNC and not campaign or expect to count the votes in both states. Hillary Clinton is even recorded on video saying that! Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in one state.
BTW, how exactly is Howard Dean an idiot? His 50 state strategy flew in the face of conventional wisdom from DNC leaders like the Clintons. Due to that strategy the democrats achieved unexpected victories in 2006 and won back both the house and senate, something few people thought was possible. If Dean is an idiot we need more idiots IMHO.
The shrill caterwauling of the anathematized HRC minion will only get more blustering and frenetic as the bow of her campaign vessel slips under the waves - not with the band playing, but with the boilers exploding.
-- You are nuts..you WANT TO elect a man who took his small daughters to hear preaching of hate. --
he wasn't there during that sermon but perhaps he wants his daughters to learn how lynchings (domestic terrorism), segregation, stereotypes can embitter otherwise good men, which is why equality is so important
-- Women like me that are for Hillary ARE NOT going to vote for OBAMA --
typical Clintonista ... then enjoy John McCain's pick for the tipping point Justice of the Supreme Court -- and it won't be one who respects the Constitution or the right to reproductive freedom -- because you''ll own it if the rest of us can't overwhelm your votes
GAWD...."l
No wonder little boys won't let little girls into their games.....
Exactly.
This is a comprehensive post and as good as it gets. You have painted the bigger picture, Jacee.
Erika, please carefully consider what Jacee says.
Ditto ... great post
What amazes me about the whole Wright episode is that it is that what Wright said, for the most part, makes perfect sense to me. The only thing that he said that wasn't factual was his reference to AIDS being some kind of government conspiracy (though it is fair to say that policy makers slow-walked responding to the spreading disease). US foreign policy has been brutal, murderous, misguided, and even genocidal for a long time, and there are consequences for this behavior.
I don't believe that most American's are capable of fully facing and comprehending this; they are, to a great extent, protected from this unfortunate history. It seems that, across the board, those in the mainstream media cannot break the bogus facade of US as primarily a benevolent force through it's history. Further, it seems that most of us fall prey to a narrow-minded nationalism-driven complicity that has been the norm for citizens of brutal imperialist powers through history.
We gave material support to both the Iraqis and the Iranians in their brutal war, we overthrew an elected government and installed the Shah in 1953, we have attacked Iraq twice and are now are occupying the country and now, it wouldn't be too suprising if there was an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office. What is so difficult about comprehending why the the Iranians and Iraqis would have only (very) hard feelings about this history?
In the case of al Qaeda, it seems that they were primarily motivated by our onging support of Israel which includes sales of weapons and a longstanding reluctance to criticize the Israeli's brutal repression of the Palestinians. US ships even shelled the PLO in Beirut in the '80s.
This is only a subset of the horrors perpetrated by the men with their hands on the levers of US foreign policy; a couple of million Vietnamese were killed by the US, we facilitated a genocide in Timor, we funded a mercenary army that terrorized innocent Nicaruaguans, we supported brutal regimes in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, etc., etc. Have you looked at a map of where Indian reservations are currently located?
My guess is that Obama knows pretty much all of this history and that he is lying when he says that he disagrees with Wright. He is saying what he has to say to get elected. I'm fine with that; I hope he does get elected.
There is your big picture.
Would Elizabeth Hardwick have actually pressed "post" after she had written these particular analogies and taken them to their uncomfortable nth degree? They obscure the point, or perhaps they are the point, but, well, maybe a little too pointed.
You see, we're not dealing with very sophisticated people here. Elizabeth Hardwick is not running the government; its George W. Bush and his band of losers. You might have to TALK REAL SLOW to get them to understand.
Yes, these were painful analogies.
First of all, she called the woman a "beaver" and the black guy a "stallion".
Yikes.
And speaking of extending them to the nth degree...
Bet she didn't know that beavers eat their own feces.
Here is the important point:
"If anyone in Washington read history, they'd understand that any empire that spends more in war than on its people eventually goes down in flames."
No wonder the war-mongers are over the top against Obama. They'll do anything to anyone who tries to stop their gravy train.
They and the other corrupt corporations will also do anything to destroy the candidacy of somebody who wins from the bottom up. Too scary for these control freaks to allow for THAT possibility. That is one of the reasons they Clintons sent out their minions to try to destroy Howard Dean.
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