Does anyone really believe that the Democratic blood-letting is good for the Party

Or in this case, for America?

For online commentators there's no target quite like conventional wisdom to drive up readership. But often the urge to flout said conventional wisdom yields only pure crap, proving why the targeted wisdom was so conventional to begin with.

If you'd like to read the Platonic Ideal of this observation, then by all means scurry on over to The Politico and treat yourself to "Stalled nomination could be good for Dems." In general it's a seriously playful tugging at the tails of conventionality; specifically it is 806 words of absolute bullshit.

Written by Peter Fenn -- Democratic consultant, ubiquitous cable-network pundit, especially on the fallen "Tucker" of MSNBC, and seemingly all-round and genuinely nice fellow -- "Stalled nomination" stands reality on its head and attempts a lipstick application on this, the most swinish of situations: the endless, internecine war among progressive forces.

Peter wishes to deflate Republican elation, which conventional wisdom says is well merited: "My Republican friends are jumping for joy. Their dreams have come true ... Months more of discord in the Democratic Party." So it's curtains for Democrats.

But, says Peter, "Not so fast," for "there is a clear and persuasive argument that precisely the opposite may be true."

Well, I'd love to read it, wherever it is, but it can't be found in Peter's musings. His argument is clear enough, all right, but the "persuasive" part must have fled Peter's mind before landing on paper. His attempt to justify and even bless -- presumably for Hillary's benefit -- the blood being spilled from Maryland to California and on all battlegrounds in between is like a history of the Japanese war effort, circa 1945.

From caucus-to-primary island to island, doom descended on Madame Clinton long ago. But she just won't quit. She'll make "them" pay for this disgrace, and turn what began as perhaps an honorable affair into the most dishonorable of utterly unnecessary and suicidal bloodbaths.

In Hillary's defense Peter happily reports that "getting the bulk of the arguments out now about the pluses and minuses of the candidates may avoid a series of 'October surprises' sprung by the Republicans.... They will be better-known, better-understood and, I hope, better-appreciated than any candidates at such an early stage in the campaign."

That was Peter's Argument Number One, the first of four that I would itemize in some detail if they weren't pretty much identical. But they are identical -- the selfsame felicitous upsides to internal slaughter; a little positive thinking, folks; the unconventional vision to see the silver lining of this darkening storm.

In brief, Peter further writes that "Clinton and Obama will continue to be the story, and it will be tough for Sen. John Mccain to break through"; "McCain does not know whom to attack, how to attack or which way to go. And surely both Clinton and Obama will train their fire on McCain" (ask me not where that expectation came from); and last, "The excitement for, and appreciation of, both candidates has strengthened the Democratic Party. Polls consistently show that the Democrats (and independents) are much more energized and engaged than are the Republicans."

Even briefer, just a spirited, healthy debate between friends in which the victor -- Obama, which Peter doesn't concede -- will come out a better candidate. Yet it's those four little words -- "which Peter doesn't concede" -- that cause his arguments to fall flat on their abortive face. Hence we can not unfairly treat Peter's four arguments as one.

Barring some metaphysical intervention, Obama is already the winner, just as surely as the Japanese were the losers by 1942. It's true that the currently running war permits him to hone his fighting skills, but those sharpened skills would be more profitably attained by fighting his main opponent -- McCain -- rather than defending against "friendly" sniper fire from the rear.

Potshots, cheap shots and tawdry hardball politics are indeed thrilling, but they generally go down better when directed at the actual opposition. In Hillary's case they're aimed inward -- pointed straight at the heart of necessary millions in November. Rather than motivating, or enlightening, or "energiz[ing] and engag[ing]," they are designed to demotivate and darken, to sap the spirit of Obama's forces.

Already we see signs that they're finding their mark. Whereas, for instance, Obama not that long ago led McCain by a dozen points in a head-to-head matchup, he now leads, according to the most recent NBC/WSJ poll, by only three.

Yet Hillary's attacks will have the corresponding effect of sapping the spirit of her own forces as well -- potential, vital and profoundly logical Obama allies. For the brushfires she has ignited will smolder for months, if not years.

The most recent conflagration, for example, was designed to incinerate any of Pennsylvania's white, blue-collar vote for Obama, but the boomerang effect will linger far past April 22. You called our side racist, when of course no one of any thoughtfulness did any such thing. There's a chasmic difference between noting racist tactics and hurling pejorative labels. I, for one, no more believe that Hillary Clinton or Geraldine Ferraro is a closet racist than I believe myself to be Teddy Roosevelt. And on this side I'm far from alone.

But that rather notable distinction has gotten lost in defensive passions and tactical warfare. You called our side racist is all that many of Hillary's forces among assorted demographics now hear and will long remember. In turn it could easily cause either a deep urge to stay home in November or to cast a vengeful vote for McCain.

There's nothing breathtakingly keen about that observation. It's just conventional wisdom, but it happens to possess the unfortunate property of truth.

Desperate politics breeds enduring divisions. Therefore the prospect of party-wide hand-holding diminishes by the day.

And for what? An already lost cause.

Sorry, Mr. Fenn, but there ain't no upside to this senseless war. It's mutually destructive, although there is a beneficiary.

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bill Clinton Is Showing His True Colors.....

....and they ain't pretty.

What's Gotten Into Bill?

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, January 22, 2008; A19

Six months ago, Bill Clinton seemed to be settling comfortably into roles befitting a silver-maned former president: statesman, philanthropist, philosopher-king. Now he has put all that high-mindedness on hold -- maybe it was never such a great fit, after all -- to co-star in his wife Hillary's campaign as a coldblooded political hit man.

No, scratch the "coldblooded" part. At times, in his attempt to cut Barack Obama down to size, Bill Clinton has been red-faced with anger; his rhetoric about voter suppression and a great big "fairy tale" has been way over the top. This doesn't look and sound like mere politics. It seems awfully personal.

Obama's candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question Bill Clinton's legacy by making it seem . . . not really such a big deal.

That, I believe, is the unforgivable insult. The Clintons picked up on this slight well before Obama made it explicit with his observation that Ronald Reagan had "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

Let's take a moment to consider that remark. Whether it was advisable for Obama to play the role of presidential historian in the midst of a no-holds-barred contest for the Democratic nomination, it's hard to argue with what he said. I think Bill Clinton was a good president, at times very good. And I wouldn't have voted for Reagan if you'd held a gun to my head. But even I have to recognize that Reagan -- like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union -- was a transformational figure, for better or worse.

Bill Clinton's brilliance was in the way he surveyed the post-Reagan landscape and figured out how to redefine and reposition the Democratic Party so that it became viable again. All the Democratic candidates who are running this year, including Obama, owe him their gratitude.

But Obama has set his sights higher, and implicit in his campaign is a promise, or a threat, to eclipse Clinton's accomplishments. Obama doesn't just want to piece together a 50-plus-1 coalition; he wants to forge a new post-partisan consensus that includes "Obama Republicans" -- the equivalent of the Gipper's "Reagan Democrats." You can call that overly ambitious or even naive, but you can't call it timid. Or deferential.

Both Clintons have trouble hiding their annoyance at Obama's impertinence. Bill, especially, gives the impression that Obama has gotten under his skin. His frequent allegations of media bias in Obama's favor recall the everybody-against-us feeling of the impeachment drama, when the meaning of the word "is" had to be carefully parsed and the Clinton White House was under siege.

Obama hit back in an interview that aired Monday on "Good Morning America," saying the former president "has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling" and promising to "directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate."

For Obama, it's clearly an added burden to have to fight two Clintons instead of one. But at the same time, there may be benefits in having Bill Clinton take such a high-profile role in his wife's campaign that the missteps and disappointments of the Clinton years are inevitably recalled along with the successes. Whatever the net impact, there appears to be no plan for Bill Clinton to tone it down -- not with the nomination still in doubt. The Clintons don't much like losing.

So forget about the Bill Clinton we've known for the past eight years -- the one who finds friendship and common ground with fellow former president George H.W. Bush (a Republican, last I heard), who dedicates most of his time and energy to the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, who speaks eloquently about global citizenship, environmental stewardship and economic empowerment. Forget about the statesman who uses appropriately measured language when talking about transient political events, focusing instead on the broad sweep of human history. Forget about the apostle of brotherhood and understanding whose most recent book is titled, simply, "Giving." That Bill Clinton has left the building.

There's a battle to be fought against an upstart challenger who has the audacity to suggest that maybe the Clinton presidency, successful as it was in many ways, didn't change the world -- and that he, given the office, could do better. Some things, I guess, just can't be allowed. Bill Clinton obviously has decided that history can wait.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Presidential Brain Function: Should we Know Before Pull The Lever

The following is from an email I received from a colleague this week. It brought to mind arguments and conversations I have had with friends, family and colleagues for several years. I am in full agreement with Dr Amen on the topic of presidential brain health or the lack thereof and not only our right to know about a candidate's brain health, as we have a right to know about his/her physical health, but our duty, as citizens, to demand such knowledge, for the very reasons that Daniel points out.

I've learned a few things in my discussions with numerous people on this subject:

People who have a low level of education or tend to be right-wing and/or who show signs of pathology, themselves, tend to have no use for psychiatrists/psychologists and "don't believe in psychiatry/psychology," whatever that means.

People with a high education level or tend to be to the left of center or moderate, politically do "believe in psychiatry," and/or have either seen a mental health professional at some time in their lives or knows someone who has.

When I have put forward the notion that presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates, for that matter, should have to take a full battery of psychological tests and have every type of brain imaging that we know is diagnostic or gives us a picture of the brain from which we can actually draw conclusions about the brain-function of the candidate, right-wingers usually run, screaming from such an idea. Some will hang around to argue that psychology is not a science and cannot be relied upon in such a way; as in deciding about something as important as electing a president.

I find that a jaw dropping argument, but that's just me. Everyone has a right to his/her opinion. But I can't help but find it highly interesting, if not amusing, that the very people who have, for years, diagnosed, mostly without a license to do so, an entire group of people (liberals) as loony, crazy, psychotic, etc. either don't believe in psychiatry or psychology or don't believe that candidates for president should be tested for mental health or the lack thereof.

People who do "believe in psychiatry/psychology" agree that we should and could find a way to test candidates that is exploitation-proof. They also believe it would be like trying to move a mountain to make candidates submit to mental health exams just as they do physical health exams and I'm afraid I have to agree with them on that point.

After all, while people who flip burgers and work in convenience stores must submit to the "piss police" in order to be employed, we, the people, have not a clue what types of drugs, if any, the top two officials in our government are taking. Does that make sense to anyone?

As we know, the president and this vice president are very powerful people. They could quite literally destroy the world or make large parts of it uninhabitable in less than an hour. They could declare martial law and suspend the constitution for years, should they feel threatened by the people for any reason, like with impeachment for example, and I, for one, have not seen anyone in Washington willing and with the courage to stop such an act.

Actually, I began thinking about this subject during the Clinton administration. I, and most of my friends, knew that Clinton had had a problem with womanizing. Who didn't know? What everyone who voted for him should have known was that under great and/or prolonged stress he might well return to it. What none of us could have possibly known was that the man was going to be investigated constantly from day one; that he would have the constant stress of one congressional investigation on top of another and a special prosecutor dogging his every step. The Clintons were the most investigated couple in American history, with the possible exception of the Rosenbergs and that is stress, whether one is guilty of anything or not. Add to the stress of being investigated for what amounted to nothing all those years, the normal stress of being the President of the United States and we have a situation which would almost surely have led to a relapse into his favorite "coping mechanism" and a character defect he had struggled with for years and one about which we all knew, unless we were living in a cave during the 1992 election..

I have always wondered why anyone was surprised that Clinton slipped back into his old ways?

The main problem with all of that was that it distracted the country from something far more important: Osama bin Laden. This was a man with $ millions who had bombed our embassies, our ship and declared war on the U.S., but many, many Americans had not a clue who the hell he was on the morning of 9/11/01. Why? Because the news media, in particular, and the press was fixated on Clinton's sex life. It all seems so childish and silly now, doesn't it?

After the last nearly two Bush administrations, anyone who isn't concerned about the mental health of our two top leaders either hasn't been paying attention or is as whacko as the Neocons, themselves, also known as the "effing crazies." (Just ask Colin Powell)

It doesn't take a professional to see that there is something seriously wrong with George W Bush and Dick Cheney. Nevertheless, the mental health professionals in this country and other countries have probably been the most alarmed for the longest period of time.

It is time to seriously discuss the importance of the degree of brain health in our leaders and our right to know before we exercise our duty to vote.

If there is anything we all should have learned in these last years it is that we can not afford, as a nation, to have leaders who with questionable mental health, not to mention psychopathology recognizable for miles.

GETTING INSIDE THEIR HEADS

By Daniel G. Amen MD
LA TIMES Op-Ed
December 5, 2007

What do Rudy Giuliani’s messy personal life, John McCain’s temper and Hillary Clinton’s inability to seem authentic have in common? Maybe nothing. They just may be overblown issues in the otherwise normal lives of candidates under the political microscope. Such symptoms, however, may mean a lot — such as evidence of underlying brain dysfunction. Sometimes people with messy personal lives have low prefrontal cortex activity associated with poor judgment; sometimes people with temper problems have brain damage and impulse control problems; sometimes people who struggle with authenticity have trouble really seeing things from someone else’s perspective.

Is the brain health of a presidential candidate a fair topic in an election year? Certainly Dick Cheney’s heart condition wasn’t off-limits in 2000, nor have questions about McCain’s age been considered out of bounds. The White House issues a complete medical history of the president each year — detailing everything from his seasonal allergic rhinitis to his adenomatous colon polyps. Clearly we care about the health outlook for our elected leaders. Should we go so far as to do brain scans? Of candidates for the Oval Office? Some people might consider discussing brain health a ridiculous idea. Not me.

As a neuropsychiatrist and brain-imaging expert, I want our elected leaders to be some of the “brain healthiest people” in the land. How do you know about the brain health of a presidential candidate unless you look? The brain is involved in everything humans do: how we think, how we feel, how we get along with others, how we negotiate, how we pay attention in meetings and how we turn away the advances of White House interns or decide to invade a country based on contradictory intelligence.

Three of the last four presidents have shown clear brain pathology. President Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease was evident during his second term in office. Nonelected people were covering up his forgetfulness and directing the country’s business. Few people knew it, but we had a national crisis. Brain studies have been shown to predict Alzheimer’s five to nine years before people have their first symptoms.

President Clinton’s moral lapses and problems with bad judgment and excitement-seeking behavior — indicative of problems in the prefrontal cortex — eventually led to his impeachment and a poisonous political divisiveness in the U.S. The prefrontal cortex houses the brain’s supervisor, involved with conscience, forethought, planning, attention span and judgment.

One could argue that our current president’s struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology. The temporal lobes, underneath your temples and behind your eyes, are involved with language, mood stability, reading social cues and emotional flexibility.

A national leader with brain problems can potentially cost millions of people their lives. Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein give us recent historical examples. Both of Milosevic’s parents committed suicide, he had serious bouts of depression and reportedly drank heavily — all signs that point to brain problems. He was found to be unreasonable and unreliable in negotiations and heartless as a political leader. Hussein was described as paranoid and without empathy, also symptoms pointing to poor brain function. His mother suffered severe bouts of depression and attempted suicide while pregnant with him, which is known to affect a baby’s developing brain. He was physically and emotionally abused by his stepfather. All of these stresses must have been involved in shaping his paranoid brain into a mind that could torture dissenters, murder relatives and launch chemical attacks that killed thousands.

Functional scans, such as Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, provide a window into the brain. Doctors can now see healthy or dysfunctional brain patterns, much as we can assess the strength of a heart or measure hormone levels, and recognize trouble. All doctors might not agree on the interpretation, but there is a growing body of scientific literature establishing what these scans mean, such as a Attention Deficit Disorder or a predisposition for Alzheimer’s.

Ensuring that our president has a healthy brain may be more than an interesting topic of conversation. It can be important information to put into the election equation. A president with brain problems could wreak havoc on the U.S. and the world at large. Maybe we shouldn’t leave the health of our president’s brain to chance. We have the tools, shouldn’t we look?

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Clinton Attack On Obama may well backfire, Big Time.

This is really quite amazing. Given what the presidency means today, could anyone running for the job be accused of having no ambition?

Ambition is not the problem. All presidential candidates are ambitious people to some degree. More, our concern is where will the candidates' ambition take the nation. Who can start the long process of cleaning up the horrible mess in which we find ourselves after years of war-making and tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate types who are in least need of more money. Who can bail us out of the oncoming recession. Who can begin to reset America's reputation. Whomever we elect can only begin to turn the nation around. It may take generations to overcome what the Bushites have done to it.

This Clinton attack on Obama could boomerang

by Frank James

When a political candidate opens a line of attack against an opponent, it's usually wise to avoid the kind of criticism that will be viewed by many observers as the pot-calling-the-kettle-black, the sort of finger-pointing that can easily be turned back on the finger pointer.

That would seem to be the case with the renewed effort by Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to dirty up Sen. Barack Obama by accusing him of wanting to be president ever since he was just out of the womb and not being honest about it. The Clinton campaign issued a press release Sunday that included this:

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.’ "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07 ]

Yes, you can believe your eyes. The Clinton people are citing a kindergarten essay by Obama as evidence against him in a presidential campaign. Good thing he was born before widespread pre-natal ultrasounds. Who knows how they might've used that against him?

Clinton's people have thrown similar jabs before at Obama but it hasn't fazed him. So their seems to be a little more fury behind the punches as now that Obama's may have taken the lead in Iowa according to the Des Moines Register's most recent poll.

Obama, of course, has gotten under the Clinton campaign's skin by saying that unlike some in the race (read Clinton) he hasn't been angling for the White House for decades.

Coming from the same political school as her husband, who himself appeared to be eyeing the presidency since at least toddlerhood, a school which holds as a first principle that no opponent's charge can go unanswered, the Clinton campaign decided it needed to respond in kind.

Note that It hasn't gone the route of saying the former first lady hasn't been calculating her White House bid for years. That wouldn't be credible.

So the only other attack is to try a little political jiu jitsu, to turn try and turn Obama's attack against him.

One goal is to show that the senator from Illinois is no stranger to ambition, calculation and all those other attributes often ascribed to the junior senator of New York. That might help blunt such charges against Clinton if she can make it appear that she and Obama are really very much alike in this respect.

But it's also a play at catching out Obama as not the man of integrity he portrays himself as in order to turn down the wattage on that halo voters seem to see when he walks into a room.

The problem for Clinton is that her campaign's attempt to paint Obama as a calculating type who precociously hungered for the presidency runs the risk of reminding voters of some of the very questions they have about her, that she herself has wanted the presidency for decades and has plotted her course with that in mind. There's the real possibility of blowback because of perceived hypocrisy.

But the situation in Iowa has clearly gotten so dicey from the Clinton campaign perspective, that it's clearly willing to run that risk.

Here's a press release the Clinton campaign issued Sunday:

SEN. OBAMA REWRITES HISTORY,

CLAIMS HE HASN’T BEEN PLANNING WHITE HOUSE RUN

Today in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama said: "I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for.”

Oh really?

“Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for President,” Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer said. “Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality.”

Immediately after joining the Senate, Senator Obama started planning run for President. "'The first order of business for Senator Obama's team was charting a course for his first two years in the Senate. The game plan was to send Senator Obama into the 2007-2008 election cycle in the strongest form possible'...The final act of the plan was turning up the talk about a potential Presidential bid, which was greatly aided by his positive press and suggestions by pundits that he run for President." [U.S. News and World Report, 6/19/07 ]

His law school classmates say that Senator Obama has been planning Presidential run for 'more than a decade.' [A]ccording to those who know him, he has been talking about the presidency for more than a decade. "It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics," says Harvard Law School classmate Christine Spurell. [Washington Post, 8/12/07 ]

15 years ago, Senator Obama told his brother-in-law he was planning to run for President. Craig [Robinson] pulled him aside [in 1992] and asked about his plans. "He said, 'I think I'd like to teach at some point in time, and maybe run for public office,' recalls Robinson, who assumed Senator Obama meant he'd like to run for city alderman. "He said no -- at some point he'd like to run for the U.S. Senate. And then he said, 'Possibly even run for President at some point.' And I was like, 'Okay, but don't say that to my Aunt Gracie.' I was protecting him from saying something that might embarrass him." [Washington Post, 8/12/07 ]

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.’ "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07 ]

Posted by Frank James on December 3

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Hillary Is Not As Inevitable as Some May Think

August 6, 2007

Yearly Kos Has Endangered Hillary's Nomination

By Paul Hogarth

I wrote this for today's Beyond Chron, San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily

With 1,500 delegates at Yearly Kos, I only met two Hillary Clinton supporters. She is the current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and is hoping to get it by inevitability. But this doesn’t mean the blogosphere is “out of touch,” although blogger demographics clearly work against her. Hillary Clinton’s current lead in the polls comes from a higher name recognition, and a strategic muddling of her position on Iraq so that progressives don’t hate her.

Hillary was the biggest loser in the Convention’s August 4th Debate, as she defended taking money from Washington lobbyists and argued that we are now “safer” than on September 11th. While Iraq never came up in her pre-debate break-out session, that’s because only five people – including myself – got to ask her a question. Hillary’s response to my question about the Clinton years was the session’s “only moment of tension,” and confirmed she is a ruthless triangulator who will take progressives for granted. If Democrats realize this, she will lose the nomination.

“It is really no mystery why Hillary Clinton’s current lead is not reflected in the netroots,” said Chris Bowers of Open Left, and formerly MyDD.com. “The blogosphere is 60% male, and she does better with women. It’s 45% secular, and her voters are religious. Bloggers are younger, richer and better informed. In every single circumstance, it’s the worst demographic for Hillary Clinton.”

Of course, one media narrative to explain why bloggers don’t support the front-runner is that they are “out of touch” with Democratic voters, a common theme that is often used to marginalize progressive activists. But making the Yearly Kos Convention sound like a gathering of Naderites is absurd. When Dennis Kucinich said at the Debate that voters see “no difference” between the two major parties, he was loudly booed.

Another theory is name recognition – Hillary Clinton is a known quantity that reflects her lead in the polls, and less informed voters are most likely to pick her. Although 64% of New Hampshire Democrats recently said they are “still trying to decide” among the candidates, only 9% mark “undecided” when asked to make a choice. With voters less familiar with John Edwards and Barack Obama, Hillary’s the main beneficiary.

But while that’s a factor, Clinton has also modified her position on Iraq so that bloggers now thinks that she would make an acceptable nominee – though far from ideal. “She’s done a great job blurring on the war,” said Markos Moulitsas. Pandering on this issue is a strategy that’s been used before. In early 2004, when John Kerry was trailing Howard Dean because of the Iraq War, he started shifting his position – and it worked.

Clinton got a tame reception at the Convention – leading most of the media to wrongly conclude that it was favorable. But if the bloggers had been more aggressive in expressing their true opinions about her, Hillary would have called them rude and mean-spirited. Then she would have used that image to marginalize them as disgruntled lefties.

All things considered, I’m glad that the bloggers were polite. When Dianne Feinstein ran for Governor of California, she got booed at the state party convention for supporting the death penalty – and then used that in a commercial to prove she wasn’t a liberal. It is painfully obvious that Hillary wanted to get booed at this Convention; when she finally did, she said, “I’ve been waiting for this to happen.”

Hillary got booed during the Yearly Kos Presidential Debate because she refused to join Edwards and Obama and stop taking money from Washington lobbyists. Incredibly, she rationalized her refusal by saying that lobbyists “represent real Americans – nurses, social workers, and they represent corporations who employ a lot of people.”

Hillary dug herself in a hole with that statement, and all it took to bury her was Obama’s reminder of how the insurance lobby defeated health care reform in 1994. "You can't tell me that money did not have an influence,” he said. “You can't tell me that money was for the public good.” If anyone won that debate, it was probably Obama.

Hillary lost even further credibility when she said that we are now safer than before September 11th. Everyone knows that the invasion of Iraq has ruined our standing in the world, and her statements that “we’ve made a lot of changes” such as taking off our shoes at airports was both naïve and insulting. Edwards had a great response about how the use of torture and other attacks on our civil liberties has made us less safe.

Besides the Debate, delegates got to attend an individual break-out session with one of the candidates. None of the delegates asked Hillary about Iraq, but that’s because only five people got to ask questions. And unlike Edwards and Obama – who in their sessions blindly called on the bloggers themselves – Hillary had her Internet Director, who has heavily courted the netroots and knew who in the room was friendly, pick on people.

The first person he called upon asked a softball question about education, which Hillary proceeded to answer for nine of the session’s 30 minutes. While I don’t know if that question was a plant (and many people suggested that later), it’s clear that she chose to give a long-winded answer in order to kill time. But because I had strategically placed myself in a visible part of the room – and by dumb luck was wearing a bright red shirt that day – her Internet Director called on me during the last five minutes.

“Senator Clinton,” I said. “My name is Paul Hogarth, and I am from Beyond Chron in San Francisco. First, I’d like to thank you for having gone on the record saying that you would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell – which passed during your husband’s administration. I want to ask you about four other pieces of legislation that happened in the Clinton years, and whether you would be willing to advocate their repeal – the Defense of Marriage Act, the Telecommunications Act, NAFTA, and the Welfare Bill.”

Her answer to my question was absolutely awful. Like her statements in the Debate, it exposed her as an anti-progressive triangulator – and was the tensest moment of the break-out session. If Democrats wake up and realize that the Bill Clinton years (although far better than the Bush years) had some serious issues and we cannot trust Hillary to be a progressive leader to get us out of the wilderness, she can be defeated.

Here’s what each of the laws did and what Hillary’s answer was to my question:

Defense of Marriage: DOMA, passed in 1996 when Bill Clinton wanted to deprive Bob Dole of a campaign issue, allows states not to recognize an out-of-state gay marriage. “DOMA served a very important purpose,” she said. “I was one of the architects in the strategy of fighting the 2004 Marriage Amendment, and DOMA gave us a bright line to be able to pull back the votes.”

Telecommunications Act of 1996: The Telecommunications Act is one of the main reasons why Clear Channel and Hillary’s new friend, Rupert Murdoch, today own most of the airwaves. “I don’t know,” she said, “ask Al Gore.”

NAFTA: The 1993 trade agreement has been absolutely devastating to labor and environmental standards. “NAFTA did not realize what was promised for a number of reasons,” she said. “We need to have an ongoing evaluation.”

Welfare Repeal: Also passed in 1996 when Bill Clinton wanted to deny Bob Dole a campaign issue, the Welfare Bill denied legal immigrants the right to get Food Stamps and SSI. It was an awful piece of legislation, and her response was that “the positive consequences outweighed the negative.”

You can watch a clip of the break-out session here.

I could have been far more confrontational in asking my question, but that would have played right into her hands because I would have sounded shrill and mean-spirited. Which is why I made a point to thank her for agreeing to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Hillary’s campaign was ready to spin the Convention regardless of a warm or cool reception. Either she made peace with an important constituency that makes her nomination “inevitable,” or else she was harshly attacked by a group of extremists who “don’t represent” the party.

The truth – that the bloggers knew better than fall in that trap and were just being polite – is too subtle for the mainstream media to pick up. What’s news here is not what the bloggers said or did, but what Hillary did. She hung herself when asked tough questions, and exposed herself as an anti-progressive triangulator.

Readers of this website know that we are highly critical of the San Francisco Chronicle. In fact, our name – Beyond Chron – derives from the paper’s terrible coverage of state and local politics. But as someone who played a small role in this news story, I have never been angrier at the Chronicle for painting such a rosy picture of Clinton’s support at the Convention.

The Chronicle’s coverage was by far the worst coverage of Hillary Clinton and the Convention that I have read. Most newspapers like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times led with the Clinton-Obama flap about lobbying money, and the Washington Post said she got “mixed reviews.” None was so uncritically positive about the myth that Hillary made peace with bloggers.

The Chronicle also referred to me as “one blogger with a challenging question” – and failed to mention that I happen to be from their hometown. There was no excuse for the Chronicle to claim ignorance. I stated in my question that I was with Beyond Chron, and the Washington Post mentioned that I was from San Francisco.

Hillary Clinton did not get a warm reception at the Yearly Kos Convention, nor was she attacked by a shrill minority. Through the break-out session and her own ridiculous statements during the debate, she was exposed as an anti-progressive triangulator. And this is what could put her nomination in doubt.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Stay tuned for tomorrow's Beyond Chron, where Paul Hogarth will conclude his report about the Yearly Kos Convention. Send feedback to paul@beyondchron.org

Authors Website: http://www.beyondchron.org

Authors Bio: Managing Editor of Beyond Chron (www.beyondchron.org); Former Berkeley Rent Board Commissioner (2000-2004); UC Berkeley graduate (2000); J.D. at Golden Gate University (2006)and California attorney; creator of the "Wellstone for President" website
(www.wellstone2000.com)

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.