WATCHING THE REPUG CONVENTION

I can hardly believe what I'm seeing.

There are more women speaking at the Republican National Convention (excluding wives of politicians) than at the Democratic convention.

Just saying ...

MUST-READ POST OF THE DAY

What scary-smart Anglachel said.

UPDATE: The ever-alert Charles Lemos spots a provocative post by Edwards' campaign manager Joe Trippi, who says that Dems should take the McCain/Palin ticket seriously.

SEXISM SELLS ... WHO'S BUYING?

Near the end of this film, the question is posed: If women constitute more than 50% of the electorate, why aren't there more women in public office?

It's a good question. Women can be sexist too. I've observed it in the workplace, where a female executive enjoys her privileged place so much that rather than mentoring or encouraging other women, she denies them access to the inner circle. I've experienced it with a female obstetrician who told me outright that since she had to endure female pain, she had no sympathy with mine. I've seen it, time after time, on the airwaves, when female reporters seemed so anxious for solidarity with their male counterparts or superiors, that they expressed some of the same sexist remarks or laughed nervously rather than calling them out for it.

When racism was a more accepted, pervasive phenomenon in our culture, we were told that to accede to or stand silently by, when racist remarks were made in our presence, made us complicit in that racist expression. That principle is no less true regarding sexism.

I remember when, some dozen years ago, my well-meaning and otherwise sensitive CEO (of a $10 billion Fortune 500 company) appointed four men to be facilitators for his pet project, and four women to be their co-facilitators (which basically meant we were to take notes on the flipcharts). The co-facilitators were Director of Sales, the VP-Corporate Communications, one of our corporate attorneys, and myself, Director of Communications, i.e., all executives, not administrative assistants. When we met for our first planning meeting, the CEO asked if any of us had any opening thoughts. I looked around the group and asked, "Has anyone else noticed that the facilitators are all male, and the co-facilitators all female?" The Director of Sales exclaimed, "I was wondering if anyone would point that out!" The CEO was astonished and then said, "I didn't even realize it." I believed it. Though the husband of a strong woman and the father of a CBS news producer, the habit of sexism was ingrained in even this fine man.

My point is, if we don't speak out against sexism when it rears its head, the HABIT will not be changed. The first step in eradicating any prejudice is to point it out, repeatedly, until consciousness is raised, and the habit is no longer culturally acceptable.

I FALL IN LINE -- PERSUADED BY HILLARY AND BILL

For those who don't follow this blog enough to know, The Sage and I are fiftyish lifelong activist Democrats. The Sage, my hubby, is often quoted here but doesn't participate in posting, but I often reference his wisdom. But here and now, as Big Tent Democrat often says, I speak for myself only.

I now declare that I'm ready to fall in line (reference: Bill Clinton has said, "Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.").

We have five grown free-thinking children, two sons and three daughters. My youngest son (27) has been an avid Obama partisan who has been totally disillusioned by his actions since securing the nomination. My oldest son (32) remains an Obama supporter. Two of our daughters are partisan Republicans, the third (the oldest) is apolitical but leans towards our (her dad's and mine) judgments.

I have been telling my acquaintance for the past several weeks/months, and on this blog, that I haven't "fallen in love" with Obama. I have serious problems with his character, his experience, his electoral tactics. I am a serious Hillary supporter who, surprisingly, started as an Edwards advocate until the debates, at which point I switched my loyalties. Hillary, I began to perceive, was clearly, the most knowledgeable, the most passionate, the most viable candidate to confront the Republican juggernaut.

I was incredibly moved by her speech last night. She pointed out so vividly the choices with which we are confronted. And as I've so often said, I cannot vote for the reactionary John McCain. Tonight Bill sealed the deal for me.

I have no illusions that Barack Obama is going to champion the issues most dear to my heart. I am seriously disillusioned by the DNC and its machinations during this election cycle. I am, indeed, furious at the DNC, its obvious efforts to distance itself from the most successful Democratic political and governmental legacy in the past half-century (the Clinton years),and have seriously contemplated changing my voter registration to Independent. I have been seriously insulted -- but that is not a personal thing, that is a challenge to the DNC -- by the meme that the Clintons are passe. Excuse me? The only successful POLITICALLY and actually successful GOVERNING regime in recent Democratic history?

Why, I wonder, are so many influential and powerful Democrats so eager to erase the Clinton legacy?

I feel completely empathetic with the old Gandhi meme that he would have embraced Christianity were it not for Christians. Similarly, Obama's supporters and the DNC have given me a disgust for their leaders and my party. But we cannot afford four more years of Republican rule. So I will cast my vote for Obama, but it will, in reality, be a vote more AGAINST the Republicans than in favor of BO.

WOMAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE

Oh, that Marie Cocco. Read it all.

It is not lost on them that in selecting Joe Biden to be the vice presidential nominee, Obama has chosen a Washington insider who voted in favor of the Iraq War -- two of the sustained attacks on Clinton that Obama used to devastating effect during the primaries.

The television cameras will linger on angry and tearful Clinton delegates in the convention crowd. The commentators will no doubt take this as a demonstration of disunity -- and not a few will, of course, blame Clinton.

But it is usually the job of the party nominee to build unity once a vanquished rival has conceded and made the right gestures. Unless the loser happens to be a woman. Then it's just like high school, and she must do the work.

WHY I WON'T VOTE FOR MCCAIN

In light of my previous post, I say this to my friends and fellow travelers who have urged me to vote for John McCain:

I understand what you're saying, and I'm very tempted to agree, but I can't. The situation reminds me very much of my youth in the sixties. I was passionately opposed to the Vietnam War and fervently in favor of the civil rights movement, but I took the road of working within the system and trying to amend it rather than the Bill Ayers path of trying to blow it up. I demonstrated, I sat in (even slept in, which is where The Sage proposed to me), I was even arrested at a protest, but I would not participate in violence.

To me, to vote for John McCain is a kind of violence in itself. It's a vote for more senseless war, it's a vote to continue the disastrous Bush policies the world has had to suffer for eight years. It's a violence against women itself. So I'll be protesting once again by not voting for either candidate. That's the only path I can see for myself at this point.

BIDEN CLOSES THE QUESTION

I've been totally consumed over the past month with A REGULAR JOB. But at the same time, I've been monitoring the machinations of the Obama and McCain campaigns and trying to make, in my own mind, some kind of sense of the presidential electorate.

Tonight I'm experiencing a totally visceral reaction to the announcement that Joe Biden is Obama's chosen running mate, and the news that Hillary was never even considered. For me, that's the end of the matter. I WILL NOT vote for Barack Obama, this phony, ego-centric, empty suit who has no record whatsoever of battling for the progressive issues that positively impact ordinary Americans.

No, I will not vote for John McCain. But neither will I vote for Obama. I'm tired of hearing how "brilliant" Obama is. Tonight when I was coordinating a major event for my company, I listened to an excellent, contemporaneous address by our youngish CFO. By contrast, Obama, absent a scripted, telepromptered-assisted speech, renders halting, incomprehensible speech. He has given evidence of a serious lack of understanding and/or principled stand on the issues. We are not voting for a pastor-in-chief nor a philosopher-in-chief. Obama has yet to publicly carve a concrete policy philosophy, and his record is so obscure, yet troubling, that it is incredible to me that this naif has ascended to the leadership of our party.

This is it for me. The "hope-y change-y" candidate has chosen as his running mate Mister MBNA, a rather cool guy in some ways but a man who has served in the Senate for over 30 years -- so what's with BO's anti-Washington shtick? Joe Biden has argued against Obama's judgment and his readiness to be president. He's wholly owned by a corporate lobby, which renders Obama's attacks against McCain's lobby connections vain, toothless.

By the way, though I had signed up on Obama's website to get the hyped email about his vice presidential running mate choice, I did not get any notification.

Did anyone get the vaunted text alert?

ENNUI AND ME

I'm in the end game of launching a new portal/intranet for my company. The days are long and the nights pretty close to sleepless. It's perhaps a good distraction from the continuing saga of Obama and his public.

I simply can't get on board the bus when I've already been thrown under it, and the more Democrats I talk to, the more I find that I'm not close to being alone. Most of us agree that we simply can't bring ourselves to vote for John McCain (at least, not yet), but I've never witnessed so much dissatisfaction with a Democratic Party (presumptuous) nominee. My take on it is, those who were with him before the end of the primaries are still with him; those who weren't, are not. Despite what the polls and the media try to tell us, my Democratic acquaintance are split right down the middle. And that bodes big, big trouble for the GE and the DNC.

"FALL IN LINE, YOU WHINERS!"

It would have been so much quicker for them simply to write "Either you're with us or you're against us." Because certainly, the Democrats' best chance to win the White House is to act just as patronizing, high-handed, dismissive, and sneeringly autocratic as the Republican administration our nation has grown to love so dearly.

I love that comment from Shakesville's post on the letter sent to Democratic fund-raisers and office holders by officials of the DNC. It sums up in a nutshell what is tormenting so many of us about the current leadership of our party and the direction in which they are taking it.

Go read Melissa's whole post.

LATE NIGHT MUSINGS IN THE NATION'S CAPITOL

I'm finally sitting in my hotel in Washington, D.C. after a loooonnnnggg day of meetings and a business dinner and reflecting on what I feel for this city. I travel here several times a year for work, which has always been a kind of thrill since it's the center of our government and the hub of our political system, and because it fills me with pride to look around at so many memorials and distinguished, even famous, edifices my company has built and contributed to the skyline of our capitol city.

But this trip I'm reminded of my visit during the 2004 presidential election, when one of my priorities was to make it to DNC headquarters and collect all the Kerry paraphernalia I could to take with me back to Dallas. Kerry was not my first (or second) choice for Democratic presidential nominee, but I had no problem throwing my wholehearted support to him. I have no such inclination now. I still haven't decided if I can even bring myself to vote for Obama, who of ALL those running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, wasn't on my list at all. At first I assumed that Barack was simply attempting to raise his recognition level in order to support a run in 2012 or 2016. It just wasn't credible to me that someone with such limited experience, thin resume and practically non-existent list of accomplishments (apart from two well-selling and self-serving personal journals) could be a viable candidate for the presidency at one of the most critical times in our nation's history.

But thanks to a venal DNC, cynical party leaders, and a once-again complicit and trivial media, we have what is perhaps the most unqualified candidate of a major party ever. Jiminy cricket, even the totally inept Ulysses S. Grant had better credentials!

I feel like I'm moving through a fog of unreality. At every juncture I see shades of W's campaigns in 2000 and 2004. The fact that we're talking about a Democrat now instead of a Republican doesn't change anything. Lack of governing, executive or legislative inexperience, ignorance of public policy issues, and personal arrogance and sense of entitlement are just as worrisome to me in a Democrat as in a Republican (even W had more experience than BO, though I think it's fairly obvious that Obama bests him in the arrogance sweepstakes). Nothing matters except that the media is fascinated and charmed by The Chosen One (whether W or BO) and despises the alternative (Al then, Hillary now), and when the victor gets the spoils the media revels in its power and the glory of Access. Too bad for the rest of us.

I've voted nearly straight Democratic (two exceptions that I can remember) for more decades than I like to admit, not as a knee-jerk reaction but because the values of our party were, to me, vastly preferable to those of the opposition party. I can't say that anymore. I just plain don't trust that those time-honored Democratic values are shared by Obama or our current party leadership. And I'm unwilling to associate myself with a candidate in whom I can find no compelling vision for the nation, no core principles, no new solutions for the many, varied and critical problems we face, and no burning desire to advance the well-being of the common people that can compare with his burning ambition to elevate his own status (don't get me started on the faux presidential seal, the Invesco Field convention acceptance speech, the Brandenburg Gate rally, oh my!).

So it's a sad visit compared to four years ago. I so remember the elation The Sage and I felt in 1992 when Bill Clinton was, against all odds, elected president. We've been waiting a very long time to once more have that kind of confidence in our national leadership, and we surely thought that this would be the year that was.
And as much as I admire, appreciate and support Hillary, it just ain't about her. It's about Obama. And if I hear or read one more implication that if I don't support him I'm a racist, I'll be more than tempted to throw a really, really big wad of money John McCain's way.

Has anyone else ever observed that hotel toilet bowls seem to be much smaller and lower to the ground than those in our homes? Been meaning to ask that question for about 30 years.

FORMER OBAMA SUPPORTERS REPUDIATE THEIR PRIMARY VOTE

Interesting new blog -- Former Obama Supporters speak out about their disillusionment.

More than one pundit has asked incredulously, "What did you think you were voting for? He told you who he was, you just weren't listening ..." as if all those who bought into the "new kind of politics" and the hope/change/unity shtick are just credulous morons.

I disagree. I think they're idealistic, that they're yearning for a more responsive government and a better way of getting there. I'm tired of people blaming voters for their votes instead of pointing the finger where it belongs -- at cynical, lying politicians who betray the trust of the people who believed they meant what they said. I don't like it when the Blogger Boyz, the media and pundits whine about Clinton supporters who won't fall in line, and I don't like it when the same people roll their eyes at Obamacrats who are distressed about their candidate's about-face on issues that matter to them and regret their primary vote.

Get this straight, you REAL cretins of the media and the punditry -- voters aren't the problem. YOU ARE, for not doing your duty in vetting the candidates on issues and ideology, on their track record and statements rather than handicapping the horserace and concentrating on the petty "character" dialogues and narratives you all love so much to invent.

TOO LATE THE INDIGNATION

Digby is miffed because McCain tells a story wrong and the press doesn't blow it up into a big story.

Sorry, Digby, but it's hard to work up a good mad-on, when Obama has gotten away with the same kind of thing over and over -- from his talking about being conceived after the Selma march (it happened after he was born) to the Auschwitz thing, to the Kennedys bringing his father to the USA to study, the errors and misrememberings and embellishments in his two books, the list is long. He's a kind of Forrest Gump, who loves to associate himself with great historic moments, only he makes the sh*t up. In the case you cite, the only McCain falsity was in the identity of the NFL team.

But yes, you're right, if Hillary had made a comparable mistake she'd have been pilloried (maybe we should change that word to Hilloried?) by the media and her political opposition. Since Obama's gotten pretty much the same pass from them as McCain in this regard, your indignation, at this point anyway, is IMHO misplaced.

As much as I have loved Digby since Hullaballoo began, I sure wish she'd aired a little more of her righteous anger while HRC was being belittled in the primaries. It's a little late for me to work up any heat against the media for their treatment of Obama now when he was so obviously the beneficiary of their regard and favoritism during the primary -- and none of the Obamacrats were crying foul then.

HE TOLD YOU SO (AND SO DID I)

Today on Morning Joe, Scarborough asked columnist Gail Collins if she was surprised that Obama had moved so sharply and quickly to the center. Collins expressed surprise at the question. I'll try to paraphrase from memory.

Haven't you been listening to him all along? she replied. How exactly did you think he was going to get all this "unity" without compromising with the Republicans?

The unity shtick has never worked for me, not from the beginning. It's smacked of more and better capitulation to the forces of darkness, and we've had enough of that from Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer and the like. What we Democrats needed at this point in time was a FIGHTER, not an appeaser. What did you THINK post-partisan meant, anyway? You can't have an after-partisanship candidate until there's no partisanship! The Rethuglicans certainly have no intentions of making nice with the Dems, so the only logical conclusion is that Obama has been advocating unilateral Democratic disarmament.

But BO's "transcendence," his oratory, his manly maleness, and most of all the fact that he isn't a Clinton, bamboozled the media, the DNC, and the Blogger Boyz to the extent that they ignored (or maybe they were just crossing their fingers) all the signs that he is a typical politician and opportunist extraordinaire who can show no evidence of actually doing any good for anyone in his entire life and career.

I am quite sure now that once the Democratic National Convention takes place, I will be checking out of the blogging world. The only reason I'm still around at this point is that I harbor an infinitesimal hope that something will shake out that will, after all, bring Hillary the nomination. Lacking that, I have no intention of or interest in being an active spectator of the mess that will follow.

The DNC and all too many Democratic/liberal leaders have betrayed the party and precisely half of its voting base. I never thought I'd live to see the day when Democrats would adopt Republican/right-wing tactics and talking points, and I have no intention of rewarding that bad behavior with my vote.

SWEETIE'S GOT THE BLUES

Marie Cocco is seeing red.

Somewhere along Barack Obama's winding road through the red states, he lost me. It happened when he talked about women who are "feeling blue."
...
But I do wonder why a candidate praised for his rhetorical gifts talks about women in the way that he does. During the primary campaign, he said Hillary Clinton launched political attacks on him "periodically, when she's feeling down." He called a Detroit reporter "sweetie" when she was trying to ask him about job creation. Now he has incorporated a myth created by the right -- that women who seek late-term abortions should not be allowed to do so if they are "feeling blue" -- into his own lexicon. And this is enough to make me see red.

Good stuff.

WISHIN' AND HOPIN'

Well, well. Bob Herbert is feeling the pain.

Mr. Obama is betting that in the long run none of this will matter, that the most important thing is winning the White House, that his staunchest supporters (horrified at the very idea of a President McCain) will be there when he needs them.

He seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders — as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters — will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard.

Maybe. But that’s a very dangerous game for a man who first turned voters on by presenting himself as someone who was different, who wouldn’t engage in the terminal emptiness of politics as usual.

Time flies and the Iowa caucuses seem a very long time ago.

Is it really too late to do something about this? Is there even the remotest possibility that party leaders could wake up, throw open the nominating convention, and enough superdelegates change their minds and throw their support to HRC, securing her the nomination?

Nah. But a girl can dream.

EASY TO BE HARD

Here's a Guardian tale of how the Left took pleasure in smearing Hillary during the primary by using right-wing talking points.

Throughout the course of the Democratic primary, it was neatly repackaged as "wildly ambitious person who will do anything in her voracious quest to win including destroying the Democratic Party while cackling monstrously and whose womanness totally doesn't matter we swear." The classic misogynist charge once used against Clinton by the vast right-wing conspiracy became the rallying cry of large swaths of the erstwhile reality-based community.

Without a hint of irony.

Clinton was suddenly a bitch, a witch, the Queen of Hearts "who has parasitically attached herself to the legacy and record of" her husband, the screech on the blackboard with an elitist trademark laugh. "Hitlery," "Hildebeast," and "Billary" - staples of 1990s criticisms of the feminist First Lady have returned with a vengeance. She was a monster, the devil in a pantsuit, targeted with dehumanizing and eliminationist rhetoric to which liberal bloggers used to object when the right used it against liberals, but apparently now consider okay, as long as it's only directed at a candidate they don't like.

In a spectacular ballet of aggressive misogyny, attacks on Clinton's femaleness masquerading as critiques of Clinton's policies and campaign failures (separate altogether from legitimate critiques of Clinton's policies and campaign failures), and indifference to the former, the liberal blogosphere - once a proud conglomeration of feisty challengers to Republican memes - embraced as its own one of the most pernicious strategies of the 1990s anti-Clinton conservatives.

And they didn't stop there.

But no, Nancy P., no sexism here except the upside. Nothing to see, move on.

UPDATE: Here's Part Two.

BUSHAMA 2.0

So Obama wants to outdo Bush in supporting and funding religious charities with taxpayer dollars.

My boss, the Massachusetts Democrat, just walked into my office with the news, asking, "So is Obama running as a Republican now?"

Folks, Obama is correct in this: "...I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work.." But that's a personal commitment, not a commitment you can make on behalf of other citizens and public monies. If Obama wants to serve the nation as pastor-in-chief, all well and good. But our president's chief duty is to protect and preserve the Constitution (not, as both Bush and Obama have said, to protect the people), and this commingling of church and state has got to stop.

Wonder how the Blogger Boyz will receive this one ... and what excuses they'll make for BO this time, after positively eviscerating GWB for doing the same thing. I guess we'll have to start a new acronym for them -- IOKIYO.