For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.
A sudden change of heart? Hardly.
Since Senator John McCain effectively sewed up the GOP nomination last month, Republicans have begun participating in Democratic primaries specifically to vote for Clinton, a tactic that some voters and local Republican activists think will help their party in November. With every delegate important in the tight Democratic race, this trend could help shape the outcome if it continues in the remaining Democratic primaries open to all voters.
Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.
“It’s as simple as, I don’t think McCain can beat Obama if Obama is the Democratic choice,” said Kyle Britt, 49, a Republican-leaning independent from Huntsville, Texas, who voted for Clinton in the March 4 primary. “I do believe Hillary can mobilize enough [anti-Clinton] people to keep her out of office.”
Britt, who works in financial services, said he is certain he will vote for McCain in November.
About 1,100 miles north, in Granville, Ohio, Ben Rader, a 66-year-old retired entrepreneur, said he voted for Clinton in Ohio’s primary to further confuse the Democratic race. “I’m pretty much tired of the Clintons, and to see her squirm for three or four months with Obama beating her up, it’s great, it’s wonderful,” he said. “It broke my heart, but I had to.”
If my brain stem wasn’t all clogged up with cotton candy dreams and magical unicorn dust, it would be clear to me that this was SEXIST hateful bullshit written by someone who doesn’t want the MOST qualified and electable (and whitest) person to be the next president of the United States, the country Michelle Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright hate with red-hot, reverse-racism-fueled, black-souled passion.
The somnambulist media took guest star Tracy Morgan’s “defense” of Senator Barack Obama last night as an equal time gesture on the part of Saturday Night Live after Tina Fey’s defiant “bitch is the new black” stand on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Not shockingly, they’ve missed the story. Ya see, Morgan’s a comedian, fellas. He didn’t come to praise the campaign of Senator Obama - he was openly mocking some of his supporters. Take his now-famous “bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch” line. The right-wing Chicago Tribune called it “a blistering (and funny) response to Geraldine Ferraro’s comments about Barack Obama.” Uh fellas, Morgan was satirizing some of the blatant sexism that suffuses much of Clinton’s opposition - and quite brilliantly. You see, by referring to a still-revered female septuagenarian Democratic pioneer as “bitch” - by pretending to be an angry anti-feminist on SNL - Tracy Morgan was holding up a mirror to the hate, and he was nailing so many of the misogynists to the wall with the simple hammer of humor. Morgan took down some of the iron-my-shirt, likeable-enough, she-sipped-tea woman-haters in the crowd - and hard - while joining his good pal Tina in battling sexism. The great ones can do that. The Lenny Bruces and the George Carlins. But so many missed the message. Dudes, you ever hear of satire?
Tom Watson, I like you, I really do, but, dude, you ever heard of a vacation? Either than or it might be time for a Johnny Thunders post or two.
p.s. Yesterday Riverdaughter, who Tom said “always seems to nail what’s so important about the typical Clinton voter,” wrote the following:
Now, I am going to say something that will undoubtably be misconstrued and condemned as insensitive and racist. Of course, it is none of these things but it must be pointed out anyway. It is the great unspoken that everyone is thinking but no one will say for fear of bringing down another Keith Olbermann rambling, unfocussed diatribe on our heads. If Obama wins this thing by virtue of having obtained unearned delegates, he will become the Affirmative Action candidate.[my emphasis—ed.] Not only that, but he will have done it by gender discrimination as the candidate most qualified, having more experience, a greater knowledge base, dedication and hard work was passed over, along with all of the millions and millions of disenfranchised voters of the most populous Democratic states and several crucial swing states. That is the narrative that will haunt you all the way to November, Bill. It won’t matter whether he is a better candidate than John McCain or not. The thing that the GOP has been railing about for years will be out there for the whole country to see. And how do you expect the country, including independents and Republicans, to get behind Obama when this is the way your party treats its own voters?
In case anyone is confused and/or offended, I think Riverdaughter was satirizing some of the blatant racism that suffuses much of Obama’s opposition. Right? Someone get George Carlin on the phone. I think we need an expert opinion on this one.
At TM.com we honor the service, the heroism and bravery of all service men and women, regardless of political party. Senator John McCain is one of those men. Of course, this is not an endorsement of McCain or his politics. That I feel compelled to write that sentence saddens me, but that’s where our politics is today. This is simply a well deserved acknowledgment of the indomitable spirit of the American soldier represented by John McCain. [...]
But today we look beyond John McCain’s politics. On behalf of TM.com, we salute a real American hero, Senator John McCain.
Any liberal blogger who still blogrolls this loathsome attention-starved lunatic, who has recently used the ravings of Michael “Bill O’Reilly Jr.” Smerconish and Sean Hannity to bolster her constant anti-Obama not-so-swiftboating, should be ashamed of themselves. I’d say it’s pretty clear who she’s going to be actively supporting in the general election if Obama is the nominee.
RELATED: An Open Letter to Taylor Marsh, a job mercilessly well done by Robster 3:16, the most recent addition to our blogroll.
FINALLY: Two bloggers I have mocked here on Rumproast, Roger L. Simon and Ann Althouse, blogged about Obama’s thoughtful entry regarding Rev. Jeremiah Wright at The Huffington Post and had the decency to take him at his word. Bravo. And what was Democrat Taylor Marsh’s response to Obama’s post? One dismissive sentence: “Something tells me Senator Obama won’t have the last word on this one.”
And before anyone calls me a hypocrite for doing the same thing I accused Marsh of, Simon and Althouse were defending a Democrat. Smerconish and Hannity, on the other hand, were dragging a Democrat through wingnut mud ... while an alleged Democrat cheered them on.
RELATED: Set your Tivo’s/VCRs/DVRs ... Keith Olbermann is doing a “special comment” tonight on Countdown about Geraldine Ferraro and the Clinton campaign. Check your local listings.
MORE: Someone had better let Keith know that riverdaughterand riverdaughterdaughter are going to be watching tonight and, OH BOY!, are they ever going to be angry at him if he pulls the same shit they used to cheer on when he was directing it at BushCo. Do any of these Hillshills who “used to love KO and watch him religiously but NOT ANYMORE” ever suffer from fleeting and/or lucid realizations that Keith is not the one whose values changed in this equation? No, I didn’t think so.
What a nincompoop. If you haven’t been following Geraldine Ferraro’s stink trail of verbal diarrhea, here’s how it started:
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” [Ferraro] continued. “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
And then she followed it up with this [via a good update at Daily Kos]:
“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”
And then, unfuckingbelievably, she took her jabbering, bug-eyed freakshow onto Good Morning Americathis morning (video link) where you could tell Diane Sawyer was ready to force meds into Ferraro’s mouth using the ol’ hold-the-nose trick. Feel the burn (YouTube embed added):
If Hillary can’t manage Ferraro (according to Geraldine, Clinton hasn’t talked to her yet) and do something as simple as keep that trainwreck from rolling onto the fucking set of Good Morning America, I can’t wait to see how she’ll handle Ahmadinejad. Ready from day one, my ass.
MORE: Geraldine Ferraro unleashed the froth on John Gibson’s radio show last night. Wow, just wow. You know you’re out of control when you’re a Dem and Gibson is trying to talk you off of the ledge.
Ferraro Sample Quote:
I have to tell you, when my grandparents came here, they came from Italy—a lot of Italians were dark-skinned. If you want to know about racism, they could talk to you a little about it. It wasn’t as bad as it was with blacks, no doubt about it, but they were treated awfully.
As someone who’s half-Italian, let me just say, “Dear god, what a meatball.”
Larry “Flowbee” Johnson, who apparently felt like he didn’t have enough crazeeeeee crammed into every nook and cranny of No Quarter lately, has pried another lunatic loose from MyHRC and folded them into his house of horrors. This one’s name is “Fleaflicker” and recently they were seen barfing out inanity like this rant about alleged anti-Hillary Googlebombing:
Someone mentioned on a blog that she was having a difficult time finding accurate information on the web doing a search for Hillary Clinton’s legislative achievements. She tried a few different searches and all of them turned up results that were neither what she was looking for or accurate information. Instead she was directed to pages of “opinions” of her legislative achievements and all of them slanted against her. This practice is called Goggle bombing and it is an affront to our democracy.
Remember when the Obama campaign went after Edwards with the claims that he was racist for stating that he was the most electable Democrat? We should have paid more attention to them way back then. Because they succeeded in getting John out of the race. And that despite the vast majority of the polls that backed up Edwards’ claims. But apparently facts don’t matter because John is white and well, you know, those whites are out to bamboozle us again.
Those white devils, they are all racists.
Here’s a question from the comments:
Fleaflicker:
Can you give me a cite or a quote on that part about Obama accusing Edwards of racism?
Date or location would do. I tried googling it but haven’t found it.
Here’s Fleaflicker’s response:
At this very minute I am unable to provide any links. I am nearly falling asleep here. As I remember it, it wasn’t Obama himself that went after Edwards, it was his surrogates. Perhaps after some rest it will come to me. I apologize for not having the information right at hand.
While white devil (dog whistle! dog whistle!) Fleaflicker was all nestled in for some pre-3am sleepy time, I googlebombed around for evidence of the Obama campaign going “after Edwards with the claims that he was racist,” but came up empty. I did, however, find this:
Edwards’ claims are sensitive, given that he is asserting he has more appeal to voters nationwide than do the front-runners, a white woman and a black man.
“He may not be saying it, but he’s putting the argument out there that white male rural voters won’t vote for a black guy or a woman,” Taylor Marsh, a Democratic blogger and radio talk-show host, said in an interview. Marsh also recently raised the race and gender questions in a blog posting about Edwards’ electability claims.
I luvs me the internets.
UPDATE: Fleaflicker responded to the request for a link early today and guess what s/he supplied? A link that goes to the exact same article I found and linked to above which in no way implicates the Obama campaign in any wrongdoing. Intellectually. Dishonest. Douchebag:
Comment by Fleaflicker | 2008-03-12 10:10:36
It took me a little while but here is what you requested. I had to add do the search as: Edwards the most electable racism to find it. But there are several articles. here is one:
COLUMBUS, Miss—Sen. Barack Obama delivered an animated rebuke today of suggestions from the Clintons in recent days that he could run as her vice president.
“Now first of all with all due respect, with all due respect,” he said here during a town hall meeting. “I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So I don’t’ know how someone in second place can offer the vice presidency to someone in first place. If I was in second place I could understand but I am in first place right now.
He referenced comments from Bill Clinton in 1992 that his “most important criteria” for vice president was that person must be ready to be commander in chief.
“They have been spending the last two or three weeks” arguing that he is not ready to be commander in chief, Obama said.
“I don’t understand. If I am not ready, why do you think I would be such a great vice president?” Obama asked the crowd, which gave him a standing ovation during his defense. “I don’t understand.”
“You can’t say he is not ready on day one, then you want him to be your vice president,” Obama continued. “I just want everybody to absolutely clear: I am not running for vice president. I am running to be president of the United States of America.”
This is how Larry David’s latest post starts over at Arianna’s place:
Here’s an idea for an Obama ad: a montage of Clinton’s Sybillish personalities that have surfaced during the campaign with a solemn voiceover at the end saying, “Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?”
“I think that since we now know Sen. McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator [Hillary Clinton—ed.] told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.
“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.
Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold.” [Chicago Trib via TPM]
Adds John Cole, whose panties are bunched even tighter than mine:
Christ on a crutch, I am tired of the Clintons. And just as an FYI, being held as a POW and wrecking your plane on a ship and then being wrong about EVERYGODDAMNEDTHING in Iraq does not make you “Commander in Chief” material. Neither does being in bed next to your husband when he answers the phone at 3am. Please just stfu, Hillary.
Reason #2:
Someone should ask Jim Blanchard if he had anything to do with the flap about NAFTA involving the Clinton campaign, the Canadian embassy and a false press report accusing the Obama campaign of something instead done by the Clinton campaign. [via Daily Kos]
Too much to quote here. Read it all. That bullshit cost Obama in Ohio and probably lost Texas for him.
“When Senator Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Senator Clinton. I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president.” [via TPM]
I absolutely despise Howard Wolfson and in a perfect world I’d be allowed to headbutt that oily fuckweasel through three layers of drywall, but here on planet Earth I’m restricted to just referring him to as a C-list (and 2% more fuckable) version of Karl Rove.
I’m donating $100 to Obama to combat all of this wretched bottom-feeding. I’d suggest you give whatever you can.
P.S.: Must credit Rumproast if you use the phrase “Bitch is the new hack”:
Your search - “bitch is the new hack” - did not match any documents.
Call me misogynistic for making a funny. Apparently I’m automatically a male chauvinistic pig for supporting Obama in the first place. It’s a lose-lose for me. Whatever. Bring it.
I figured if I was going to be a sore loser today, I might as well have fun with it in Digby’s comment section:
One big funny just now was rachel maddow’s response to keith pointing out Obama telephoned clinton tonight after her Ohio win and when asked what they, the panel, thought of that, Rachel says “I’d have called her at 3am…..... just to see if she’d answer” LOLOLOLOL Now, that’s funnnnnneh!
No, that’s poor taste coming from someone that is supposed to be an IMPARTIAL observer. But then Clinton bashing never goes out of style does it? kenoshaMarge | 03.05.08 - 11:57 am | #
How many kenoshaMarges does it take to screw in a light bulb? Kevin K. | Homepage | 03.05.08 - 12:57 pm | #
I got called “disgusting” for that one by “dr molly” (even though she didn’t know what I meant by it), but this one was my favorite:
Oh brother. I can see that alot of the Obama crowd just can’t see what the rest of us see.
This guy is educated at Harvard Law School by way of Columbia, Los Angeles and Hawaii. I’ve been to all of those places (I live 3 blocks from Harvard Law and worked in the Law library in the late 70s).
Yet, he uses the language and cadence of a Southern Baptist minister.
[blah blah blah blah—ed.]
DickeyFuller | 03.05.08 - 3:23 pm | #
“Oh brother. I can see that alot of the Obama crowd just can’t see what the rest of us see.”
Dead people? Kevin K. | Homepage | 03.05.08 - 3:32 pm | #
However, if it goes on to the convention and Obama wins, I think in retrospect the protracted fight will be seen as a good thing. Like many pundits are pointing out, the battle is preparing Obama for what he will face when the GOP cranks up its slime machine in earnest. That’s conventional wisdom. But a second, less heralded advantage is the wall-to-wall coverage this battle is getting. McCain clinched the nomination last night, and there was a collective yawn. The Democratic race is sucking up all the drama, diverting the media, however temporarily, from giving full attention to the object of their collective adoration, McCain.
Digby gazes into the tank (the one the media is in for McCain) and documents the dry-rubbed horror.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. McCain will be the hardest Repub to beat in ‘08—there has never been any doubt about this—and Digby’s post highlights the uphill battle the Dems will be fighting when it comes to the media’s enduring puppy love for him. Hillary never, ever stood a chance in a punditry popularity contest against him. No matter how hard she tries (and I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that she has—I’m not counting continually playing the victim card, which is a thoroughly ineffective strategy), the cable news grunts and campaign reporters will never go to bat for her. Obama may be a bit of a crap shoot in the general election, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence to date that the media has a pretty big crush on the Big O (certainly more so than I’ve seen for any Dem prez candidate in my lifetime) and he’s the best (and only) shot we have at knocking the halo off of St. Maverick with weapons as inoffensive and hug-making as a wink and a smile. From a purely realistic perspective (one I know us Obama fans are supposedly allergic to), I just don’t see how anyone doesn’t think Obama is the way to go in November.
