[Welcome, Oliver Willis readers. -- lambert]
I'm posting this because I've seen several comments about how much Obama duped us all. No. He didn't dupe us all. And while there is no way to have predicted Obama would be "this bad", there was ample evidence that says we shouldn't be surprised.
Obama and the Democrats rigged a fucking election. Obama ran Harry and Louise ads in the primary. Obama said one thing about FISA one day, voted differently the next. What other evidence do you need to have had to know that he and his Democratic enablers were not trustworthy.
I'm tired of pointing this shit out so if you don't believe me, look it up. It might also do you some good to revisit what so many don't want us to revisit. If I'm wrong point out where.
In every case where a state held both a primary and a caucus, Obama did much worse in the primary. Hell, just look at Texas. Hillary won the state by 100,000 votes, but Obama won by double digits in the caucus. Its hard to take seriously Obama's delegate lead--which was based almost exclusively on his caucus performance--based on this information. Add to this the paper trail on the Texas caucus and alleged fraud as well as union bullying in Nevada, and your stink filter should be on super high.
Then there is FL and MI. Forget the machinations that led to FL and MI breaking the rules and thus having their votes not count--which had nothing to do with actions by the actual voters. What kind of democratic organization makes up rules that will disenfranchise voters? Further, when Hillary and her supporters tried to pay to have revotes, Obama and his supporters fought it. Imagine that, fighting against having voters vote! The RBC was just icing on the cake. Votes were literally stolen--in broad daylight--from Hillary and given to Obama. Stolen votes.
FISA? Remember that? Look it up. Obama's Harry and Louise ads? Obama praising Reagan? The Ramen noodle fiasco?
If you bothered to look up what I just wrote, can you still say you're surprised? Its not just that some of this stuff happened. Its that it was carried out in front of everyone as if these actions were fine and dandy. That, as much as the actions themselves, suggest a lot about character. Obama and the Democrats didn't even feel the need to hide the shit they were doing. And guess what? They aren't even trying to hide the shit they are doing to us now: trillions for banksters, shit sandwiches for everyone else.
UPDATE Cited by Jeralyn, here's a 2008 study on the susceptibility of the caucus system to fraud. Here is a link to affidavits of caucus fraud in TX. Here is a link to videos from those who experienced caucus fraud in TX. Obviously, a party that cared about the legitimacy of its candidates would address these issues, but after the Rules and Bylaws Committee's work, there's no hope of that. Hey, icing on the cake: Guess who the chair of the RBC was? That's right: The CEO of Tufts, a huge health insurance company.
I do understand that, to an Obama apologist, it's only outcomes that matter, but process and justice matter, too. You know. Stuff like the candidate with the most popular votes winning if all the votes are counted, and so forth. -- lambert
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And this is why we can't let go of the primary wars.
"Its that it was carried out in front of everyone as if these actions were fine and dandy."
And to O supporters, they were fine and dandy (omelettes and eggs, you know). This suggests a lot about their character.
The past is never dead.
It's not even past. -- William Faulkner
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Bitter sea hag
Thank you for being fearless about keeping this alive. I am STILL disoriented from the primaries and from how I then understood the ugly side of the dems during the primaries.
The undying support (dare I say blind adoration) of Obama and the constant distraction of dissin' the republicans by so many has caused me to write myself and anger off many times.
I reduce my strong sentiments to that which they call my ilk - I'm no more than a "Bitter sea hag", Member of the Dry P*ssy demographic, Dead-Ender, PUMA", etc etc etc.
But the anger is still so alive that I have to look again and look deeper.
I'm angry that the group that I thought was "liberal" and good was no such thing. Cheaters. Liars. Haters. No core principles whatsoever.
They made the world uglier to me.
I am so behind on my internet terms! What is a "bitter sea
hag"? T/U
It's a reference to Disney's Little Mermaid
And the villian, the octopus Ursula.
So not only sexist, but a big huge heaping dish of fat hatred, IMO.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
I don't think I'll ever forget "Sandpaper Snatch"
Or the Hillary Nutcrackers. Or the "tea parties with leaders" comment.
The sexist shit bothered me, but I won't forget Obama supporters hiding behind "teh RuleZ" to justify deliberate disenfranchisement either.
I was a Democrat to the core and really had planned on a career in politics (campaign personnel type, staffer) when I finished grad school in '08. But a big part of me died during the primary. Enough that I stayed in my current profession while I sort things out. It *is* easy to write us off as bitter Hillary dead enders--I'm a dude so I don't have a snatch--but the primary in '08 was about more than Hillary v Obama to me. I've supported losing candidates many times before. It was about the process and the justification of the process. And too many people want to pretend a whole lot of bad shit didn't happen.
I don't expect the average person to know the details of what happened. Many of us rely on leaders and people we respect to tell us the truth, and that's fine. But I do expect readers of Corrente and other blogs to know what happened. What happened is a lesson we must learn from to move forward in a positive direction. You repeat history when you refuse to learn from its lessons.
Only tyrants rig elections.
Yes, yes, yes.
Somehow, some way, people who are serious about changing things for the better will simply have to admit that the PUMAs were right.
This is not to say that they're right NOW. But at the beginning, PUMA was a big, fat liberal REVOLT against the RBC voter FRAUD that handed votes and delegates to Obama that were either 1) based on exit polls (??? how many actual VOTES did he get in Michigan? NONE!) or 2) actually given to a different candidate.
5/31/08 was the birthdate of PUMA because that was the date of the death of our democracy as we knew it. Obama was a fraud. He did not win the nomination. Hillary did. The Party decided to give it to him anyway. That's what happened, and it must be acknowledged, digested and processed in order for us to move on into a better future.
I'm prepared to forgive and work with anyone who has truly and honestly learned the right lessons from this total disaster: that the process is broken, that neither Party can be trusted, and that we have to do something about it. (Oh, and misogyny is simply not acceptable in any way, shape or form. That's another big one, of course.)
But "move along, nothing to see here" doesn't fix anything, in any area of life. ESPECIALLY not politics. IMHO.
Never vote for people who hate you.
ERA Now!
The Widdershins
not quite
5/31/08 was the birthdate of PUMA because that was the date of the death of our democracy as we knew it.
the choosing of presidential candidates has never been democratic. primaries are a rather recent invention, and they came about more as straw votes than as real votes, and the candidate who 'gets the most votes' doesn't have to be the candidate who is ultimately chosen. we're slowly moving toward making the primary process more democratic and more transparent, and this round certainly brought to light a lot that most of us never knew about. on balance, i'd say it was a small step forward for democracy for that reason at least for a little while there, caucuses were falling into disfavor and real primaries gaining in favor, which would be a terrific move forward.
Primaries currently reflect actual votes
and the votes were ignored or changed.
If changing or ignoring votes is okay, then that's not democratic, is it?
And since "move along, get over it" people don't seem to want to admit that the fraud even existed, I'd say there has been no step forward at all. In fact, a giant step backwards. The fraud of Obama's nomination is a story untold and unknown.
Never vote for people who hate you.
ERA Now!
The Widdershins
i'm not a getoverit person at all
i raised holy hell during the entire florida debacle [there was a reason your blog's spaminator hated me :)], from the beginning and for a long time after too.
anyway, my point was not that this was good, or even needed to be got over, but that the process of choosing a party's slate of candidates has always been rife with shenanigans, back room deals, and back stabbing. what happened this time around was not a backsliding from genteel and transparent and open democracy, and indeed, since this was more blatant than what we're used to, it has actually shed some much-needed light on a process that a lot of people, until now, thought was only a little bit broken.
we need some serious election reform, and that reform needs to include primaries.
I wish they had told me the fix was in before I donated.
I could have bought lottery tickets.
me too
but hey! i've got some used lottery tickets i can give you a good deal on!
yeah, me too.
I donated over 1,000 buckaroos. lotta dough. but i felt so strongly.
The primaries have been sold as democratic
And many people believed that the delegate allocation would reflect the will of the voters.
This is another common argument made to downplay the primary fraud, in an attempt to justify the outcome. When it looked like Obama would win the popular vote, it was "the will of the people" that mattered. Remember the "don't let superdelegates decide" mantra? When it became clear that the election wasn't going to be a cakewalk for Obama, the pressure to make supers switch to Obama grew. Supers were supposed to go to whomever won the super's state unless hillary won the state. So even by their own distorted set of RuleZ, Obama's selection wasn't internally consistent.
FL and MI were state sponsored elections and the states had rules in place on delegate allocation. But those rules were changed by the RBC after the election had taken place. Furthermore delegates were given to someone not even on the ballot. If states knew the vote didn't matter they should not have had to pony up millions of dollars to run the elections. Don't waste our time and money with primaries if they don't matter. And certainly, don't say that the winner of the primaries will be the candidate. That's lying.
Only tyrants rig elections.
i want my money back!
FL and MI were state sponsored elections and the states had rules in place on delegate allocation. But those rules were changed by the RBC after the election had taken place. Furthermore delegates were given to someone not even on the ballot. If states knew the vote didn't matter they should not have had to pony up millions of dollars to run the elections. Don't waste our time and money with primaries if they don't matter.
with you 100% on this and maybe madder than you are [i live in florida]. i called my senators and representative and the democratic party and told them all i wanted the money for that election returned to the taxpayers. more than once.
that's the one good thing about caucuses -- the party has to foot the bill for caucuses, not the taxpayers.
still, it's legal [for now] for the parties to choose their candidate[s] any way they want to. doesn't make it right, and yes, they should either go to 100% real [binding] elections if they want to use taxpayer money, or they should go 100% back to caucuses and straw votes and use their own money.
And then, hilariously, Hillary won the popular vote anyhow
If you count all the votes. She won all the big states, too.
Which really is the bright spot in 2008. A solid half of the Democratic Party thinks that Versailles
, the pundits, the teebee, and the career "progressives" are full of shit. A good starting place for... something.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi