I’m still pissed at Al about that. And I’m still hugely pissed at “Bonnie Prince” Kerry too, for conceding while black voters were still lined up in the rain.

It’s all so fucking collegial until someone gets their rights punched out.

Kerry was up bright and early the next day, celebrating his fat database with numbers of future campaign donors, too — as if his fat recount fun to investigate election fraud and vote suppression didn’t exist. Well fuck his useless collegial self-serving pointless ass. I called his HQ that week and told them, in FRENCH, what they could do with that.

Please DO NOT PARDON MY FRENCH, which Kerry most certainly is not. Otherwise he’d be all about le smack, yet he is so not.

Americans Of Every Party In All States Demanding Our U.S. Congress And Senate Uphold Our U.S. Constitution

It was a very sad day for all the electorate and the Black Members of Congress were the real voice of us all. The refusal of any Senator to show
a true sense of duty and join the protest by demanding justice for the
voters is a stain on that body. Mr. Gore must have been in shock. The
continuing failure of the Congress to uphold the Constitution and be the
Check in Check and Balance is without a doubt the low point in this often
sinking country. That said, We are a country of dreamers and fools.

Both Gore and Kerry needed more of the resilience that their suppressed black voters have had to acquire. Surrounded by gibbering primate aggression, they folded to keep above it all. This voter won’t soon forget the incredulous sense of betrayal when the Dem candidate conceded like it was a meaningless fucking croquet match. And then again in 04. There’s voter suppression and then there’s wholesale voter shitcanning by cowardly concession.

Love her or hate her, Hillary didn’t fold.

They hated her as First Lady of Arkansas. She didn’t fold.

They hated her as First Lady of the United States. She didn’t fold.

They hate her as Senator from New York. She hasn’t folded.

Anyone see a pattern here?

I certainly concede your point in the three situations cited. But who exactly was she standing tall in support of? Looks like…hmmm…

Herself

Herself

Herself

I would be somewhat more impressed if she had stood tall against the AUMF. Or stood tall for worker’s rights to organize during the six years she spent on the board of directors at Walmart. Or if she had used her tremendous organizational and communications skills to make clear to the American people the hideous danger they are in from the doctrine of the unitary executive.

It’s that latter in particular that concerns me. Bushies are addicted to the term “tools” as in “we must have these tools (surveilance without warrants, cancellation of habeas corpus, Gitmo, torture)” to pertec Mercun pipple blah blah blah, but they almost always throw in another line that doesn’t get enough attention but which is even more alarming: “We must protect the right of future presidents to use these tools without all this pesky oversight and Congressional meddling n’ shit.”

That’s where Hillary seems to have her weakest fold line. Rather than stand up and say “This is wrong, it’s wrong for a monster like Bush to have these so-called tools and it would be wrong for me…er, I mean any future president to have them either. That way lies tyranny worse than any we have ever fought from an foreign foe” etc etc.

But she doesn’t say that. She may think it or, well, it doesn’t really matter as long as she keeps not saying it. Maybe she thinks it would make her seem weak or, gasp, womanly (which we all know are synonyms). But in any case her failure to speak on important issues, of which this is just one, rather undercuts any argument for her strength of character and nobility in non-foldingness.

I went to see her at the Constitution Center in Philly (coverage here) in a convention for young Democratic activists. My conclusion:

10. So as the afterglow fades—and there is a glow, no question, Hillary is impressive—I’m left with the impression that this speech was not about presence, but about absence. The speech was remarkable chiefly for its silences—Silence on Roe, silence on Scalito, silence on the VRWC, silence on Iraq, and above all, silence on the clear and present danger to our Constitutional system of government. Is this all there is? Surely not.

UPDATE 9:22PM

11. And another strange silence: Abramoff. Sure, this is a speech to young activists; seed corn, as I said above. But you want young people to engage in the process, and have nothing to say about Abramoff, or the K Street project? Am I missing something?

Either she doesn’t think there is a Constitutional crisis, which is, to say the least, not reality based, or she wants to use the powers that Bush arrogated to himself. Either way, I’m not particularly happy. Which is why I want to vote green locally.

No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.