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.

Comments

[curiousape]

I think of Hillary Clinton, strong in voice and filled with a willingness to serve.
Yes, in spite of the crucifixions, women have stood, and they continue to rise, generation after generation, to call to other women: Do not be afraid to speak, sing, and express your intuitive genius without apology. We are more than body, we are soul, spirit, and genius. Human beginnings begin with two.
And so, today, I am thankful for those brave and resourceful foremothers, who rose to the occasion to remind me, their daughter, to sing, speak, and rejoice to life, and to its preciousness.

[mageduley]

Oh Yeah, she is brave and steadfast. Stubborn and hard headed is more like it. We have a president like that.

When war protesters met with Hillary 2 weeks before the invasion. She admitted GWB was an idiot, but regardless of the cost in lives, the economy, and treasure, she defended her vote for the war as well as any NEOCON!

Hear it from her own lips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZcY6TGfAxE

[blettau]

Erica has always been provocative. Now, she is making a case for Hillary disguised a children's how-to-get-along fable, by presenting a beaver and a stallion, one "hard-working" and the other inspirational. Aesop, she isn't. So what is the lesson? There isn't one. Erica is just afraid, and needs comforting superdelegates to assuage her fear that the beaver won't win, even though she was entitled and destined. Who finds the beaver complimentary anyway?

[beright]

Watch it, Erica. You're hinging on the "lazy black man" stereotype here. Sen. Obama wouldn't be where he is if he wasn't a hard working, get'er done type of man.

[hopeless277]

I really don't think anyone will take the Republican party seriously until they 'postpone' the elections. This nation, and in general, this planet are in trouble. When we see the Republicans in congress stand up and defend the presidents decision to 'postpone' the elections, it will be a HUGE wake up call. Will the Democrats in congress have the backbone to stand up the Bush? They have shown remarkable spine with the FISA bill. Will they be able to stop an executive order enforced by Bush's political appointees hidden throughout the government? It will take a sharp eye to spot them and then marginalize them. The fun is just starting, boys and girls. Stay tuned for part 966,

[sebocd]

Erica is becoming much more subtle in her pitch for Hillary. Inspiration vs. hard work? Nice try Erica. Erica has many fears: fear of flying, fear of mushroom topped appendages, fear of Hillary failing.. It's not a case of win or lose anymore. It's no longer a contest because Hillary abides by no rules. Eric needs to consolidate her fears into just fear of fear itself.
Try this fearful combination Erica: conscience vs. despiration.

[dawlishgal]

All HC has accomplished is getting a LOT of pork for NY state. Perhaps MS. Jong lives there and thinks that everybody everywhere is getting pork.

All Hillary "accomplished" for the rest of us in her 16 years of national political "experience" is to pretend to have opposed NAFTA and to screw up healthcare so badly so that we have gone almost a decade and a half in the clutches of the profiteering HMOs, the drug companies and the insurance companies who have figured out a way to no longer honor health insurance policies and wriggle out of paying even the most legitimate claims. We can NO LONGER TRUST INSURANCE! How bad is that!

To boot, Hillary has been rewarded for her failure by getting more political graft from these same healthcare companies than any other candidate., including Republicans. Makes one wonder if her secretive, crony-fueled healthcare failure was perhaps DELIBERATE!

This is her list of "accomplishments", her justification for running for president of the US. If this is it for "accomplished things," spare me from accomplishment.

Not only did she fail to stop Bill both when he lied about his intention to oppose NAFTA AND when he actually pushed it through, her health care failure dumped our workers onto the international labor market as the ONLY ONES without government sponsored healthcare. This may sound trivial, but what savy employer will choose to employ a work force for whom he or she is responsible for paying for their healthcare, when it is so easy to find one in places (ie EVERYWHERE BUT HERE) where their governments regard healthcare as a basic human right and therefore the government's responsibility? Here is where the working people get screwed AGAIN by the Clintons....they remember the better days of the 90s BEFORE the combined effects of the NAFTA and her healthcare debacle really kicked in. Hillary RELIES on people who are not abstract thinkers and who are not used to reading and paying attention to continue to support her. It is so sad that there are so many disemployed workers who still regard her and Bill as bleeping heroes, people whose jobs have vanished and who forget the Clinton's complicity in the disappearance..

Then let's take a look at what she has tried to do not for, but TO Democrats. She and her cabal held party meetings at which it was decided that it was OK for "Democrats in office (namely the ones elected to stop the war and the ones who were already in power before 2007) to marginalize the progressives and their Iraq war concerns in favor of sucking up to her DLC corporations (including the war profiteerers). Of course, this decision made it much easier on her to wallpaper over her machiavellian decision to vote for Bush's war, the war based on lies, greed and ego.

She used the excuse,as in her triangulating, that marginalizing progressives would attract Independents and maybe even Republicans. Nevermind that the polls showed that Independents are almost opposed to the war as are Democrats. I don't know why people haven't noticed that (as just one example) barely enough Democrats, especially the newbies in the Senate, voted for Bushie crap to get virtually all of the war-funding bills passed. This was after the decision was made to go along with Republicans because (as it was explained to me by an aide to a congressman), "who else are the progressives going to vote for anyhow." The purpose, he said, was to emphasize that more Democrats were needed in the house and senate. It was a clear trick designed to obscure the difference between Democrats voting for a Republican bill and Bush vetoing a Democratic bill. The Democrats could have stopped Bush with the majority they had, and any fool ought to realize that. Of course, Bush can veto Democratic stuff and stop that, but ought to be CLEAR to even a moron that this is not the same thing as Democrats voting for Republican stuff .

She has tried to get Howard Dean fired and to marginalize the DNC in favor of her corporate wing, the DLC. She even belongs to an elistist religious cult that preaches that she, the elitist, knows better what is good for us than we do. And she sends her slimers out to accuse Obama supporters of being cultists AND elitists. It is defensive, blame the opponent for your own faults, Bushrovian crapola at is lowest.

The scariest things about her are 1) her delusion that she knows more than anybody else and 2) her delusion that what she really wants to do is to help the little guy.

The Clintons have always wanted political power, and when they first came to DC, they were rejected by the power-structure that was already there. Their answer was to become as much like the power structure as possible, to become the ultimate corporate-serving slaves to the military-industrial complex. They STILL think of themselves as the wonderful, socially-conscious, saviors of the common man, and it is precisely this that makes them so dangerous. They can have meeting after meeting at fancy resorts with their corporate chums and make every concession in the book to corporate welfare, and they still think they are doing us a favor to run (and how can we be so ungrateful as to prefer another candidate).

I don't know why I didn't notice this during the 8 years I supported the Clintons. I guess maybe it was because the alternatives seemed even worse. Now the alternative seems better. So why are we allowing ourselves to continue to be bamboozled by the Clintons and their apologists like Ms. Jong? .

[ArchAngel]

Yes!

[uberlefty]

I find it interesting that Ms. Jong has tempered her pro Hillary rhetoric and now wants to unite the beaver and the stallion. It may be she has finally seen the light and realizes that Hillary cant get the nomination without destroying the party. Heres a blueprint for the proposed cooperation of B&S. Step 1: The beaver stops eating through all the dams and spends her time gnawing down the trees so the stallion can run free. Step 2: The beaver takes the trees and builds dams that create pools of cool clean water for the stallion to drink on his long journey. Step 3 When the stallion gets to the White House the beaver goes back to her day job in the senate. Its really very simple. What beavers dont do is mistake the stallions legs for trees and try to chew through them crippling the stallion. On the rare occasion that this does happen the stallion gets annoyed and backs off. If the beaver continues its aggressive behavior the stallion steps on the beaver. I know about beavers, I live in Oregon , The Beaver State, and I have yet to see one take down a stallion. We may be The Beaver State but we are going to put this stallion in the White House come November. Obama 08

[jackpinesavage]

Thanks for taking Ms. Jong's metaphor to its logical conclusions.

[allentown]

I may have read this too cynically, but I took this as her pushing a Clinton/Obama ticket as Hillary has, rather than Obama/Clinton. This is in keeping with the Clinton theme that Obama can wait until 2016 and using the 'dream ticket' myth to try to pry away some votes for herself under the theory that voters can have both of them by voting for her. I've not seen anything she has said that suggested she would be willing to participate in an Obama/Clinton ticket.

[dawlishgal]

I think it's time for the stallion to think seriously about kicking the pesky beaver in the head. HARD!

We used to have beavers when we lived in the country in CT, and it was perfectly clear that the beavers worked HARD, but the work they did was solely FOR THEMSELVES, although I suppose some corporate beavers may have benefited from the activity. It was certainly not anything that helped HUMANS. . And--here is the important part...their obsessive work habits caused lots of unforeseen consequences, loss of good trees, serious flooding for people who owned the land that the beavers were parasitic upon. Not only that, but the beavers were DUMB...they would construct a damn, and the property owners would have it removed, and there would be the beavers, building it up again, only to have it knocked down again. They could have gone somewhere else to build their damns, somewhere uninhabited by humans, but they tended to NOT LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE.

There was a time that beavers served a useful purpose in Danbury. People made hats out of them. That time is WELL past.

Now they are fun to watch, but all we can expect from them is damage to our way of life.

Kind of like the Clintons.

Nope, I don't want a beaver as president OR vice president.

[Uselessboy]

What planet do you live on? This one has created a contest where the candidates are the active figures creating the choices, and the masses have only the role of selecting between what the candidates offer us.

"And yet we have had great candidates before--think Al Gore--and lost to the low-level conniving" -- this defines a mediocre not a great candidate. Possibly a potential great leader, but he clearly was anything but a great candidate.

"And the stallion is drunk on his own rhetoric."
This statement is false.

[KRANKY]

Obama is our president. Get used to it, Erica. Wake up from your hillary fog of false idealism.

Honestly, you hillaryists sound more like evangical nut-jobs every day!

[TheEnticer]

This article is pure wishful thinking.. to think that Obama can not work hard or can not do without Hillary (probably cant do without all those Hill supporters). I wonder if Ms Erica would be suggesting the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot, ie., clinton had an unassailable lead and Obama needed her to get on the ticket.

Methinks, the real democrats should come over to BO's side and the Cintonistas, Femistapos and the rest of their ilk should start pandering to McCain... of thats right.. I forgot they already are!

[dawlishgal]

Ms Jong also ignores one VERY important point: Stallions can recruit specialized beavers and pelicans and dolphins, and chickens, and cows and sheep and evern nasty animals like wolverines and hyenas, each experts in their own fields, to help with decision making and to supervision when decisions are carried out. . It isn't as though the stallion or beaver doesn't have some power to delegate. You just don't see the beaver doing that. Those goofy lazy otters could be doing some of the work, but the beaver just won't give up the authority. Or the funny teeth.

[AdLib]

Stop me if you've heard this one. A Beaver and a Stallion walk into a bar and the Beaver says to the Stallion, "I'm a hard worker, you're not, if you work with me, you can be something other than the weak-legged, drunken on your own rhetoric, anti-American, Muslim that you are."

The Stallion thought about it for a moment then sat down on The Beaver who exclaimed, "You're crushing me!' The Stallion replied, "Now, you're counting delegates?"

[dawlishgal]

Soooooooooo funny. THANKS.

[mlaiuppa]

There will be no "dream" ticket.

Get over it.

[candlewax]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/21/164117/783/290/461422

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/20/201332/807/36/458633

Obama gets things done. Has Erica even bothered to check?

[candlewax]

With Obama you get both inspiration and hard work. How else do you think he managed to organize the country, each state that had caucuses, managing to fund his campaign without lobbyist money but from the people. He is the people's president. He went from being community organizer to being a country organizer. I've no doubt that he is going to be a great leader. He inspires with results. If he was a quitter, do you think he'd have gotten as far as he has? The hard work is there, he just doesn't talk about it.

[jsinclair]

Ms. Jong's comments are beyond ridiculous, but the comments in this thread are pretty funny! Thanks for the laughs.