Category Archive 'The Left'
26 Jun 2008

The Obama Left

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J.R. Dunn, also at American Thinker, remarks on how the Obama left is made up of the entirety of the American left, in all its flavors.

The American left can be divided into three distinct strands, each with its own characteristics, identifiers, and methods of operation: the wimp left, the weird left, and the hard left.

The wimp left is the largest, most amorphous, and least impressive faction. These are the people who are leftists because the neighbors are. They’re the NPR listeners, the PBS watchers, the slogan repeaters. They view the left as a lifestyle choice, one that makes you a better person (as they never cease telling you). …

To many conservatives, the weird left — AKA the wacko left or the loony left, is the left, the perfect representation of left-wing thinking and behavior. The wacko left can be defined as leftism as personality disorder, the contemporary expression of Orwell’s “nudists, fruit-juice drinkers, and sandal wearers”. They tend to be obsessive single-issue types, overwhelmed with paranoia and consumed with conspiracy theories. …

The hard left is the core left, the armature without which the other factions would fall apart. They are directly descended from the communist groups (the CPUSA, Trotsyites, and so forth) of the ‘30s and ‘40s, through New Left organizations such as the SDS and the Weathermen. The hard left consists of intelligentsia and activists, people who spend their lives reading Alinsky and Gramsci and trying their damndest to put those dicta into practice. They are usually found in universities and surrounding communities, though they are also present in left-wing think tanks and lobbying outfits. Most of us will go through life without ever knowingly encountering one of them. Through their intellectual control over the much larger wimp left (who would be utterly lost without their direction), they possess influence all out of proportion to their numbers. The prototype of the American hard leftist is Tom Hayden. …

Usually, a political candidate running on a left-wing platform will be associated with one strand in particular. …

The extraordinary thing about Barack Obama is that he’s intimately connected to all these factions in a way that may never quite have been the case before. The wacko left is represented by Jeremiah Wright and James P. Meeks, with their AIDS conspiracies and related yarns, and ACORN, the leftist fringe group for which Obama served as attorney for many years. The hard left is represented by his Marxist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who introduced Obama to left-wing politics at an early age, Fr. Michael Pfleger, an advocate of “liberation theology”, the application of Marxism to Christianity, and former Weatherman Bill Ayers, who was contending that America could be set right by a few bombs as late as September 11, 2001.

The wimp left is, obviously enough, the Obama voter.

Read the whole thing.

21 Jun 2008

The Democrats’ Logical Play, But…

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James Webb campaigning vigorously

Barack Obama has pop star appeal in the urban community of fashion, but his exotic background, his far-left liberalism, and his glib and polished Ivy League diction win few admirers in rural and working class America. Running as a peacenik against a war hero like John McCain also leaves Obama with deep vulnerabilities on national defense.

First-term Virginia Senator James Webb is bound to seem like a godsend to democrat strategists. A redneck, Marine war hero, and former Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, Webb has everything Obama lacks from Southern appeal to obvious masculinity.

The Wall Street Journal seems to be the venue selected for a serious “Webb for VP” trial balloon.

There’s not much doubt that Webb would do a lot to strengthen an Obama ticket, but the Webb ploy also raises serious questions: Would the democrat party activist nutroots base actually put up with it, or would they openly revolt? Even as a turncoat democrat and antiwar Senator, Webb’s personality, lifestyle, and very being represent everything calculated to offend your typical urbanista liberal.

And, even if Obama and the party backroom mechanics can successfully get the MoveOn.org wing to shut up and sit still for Webb, they have to ask themselves: Can they really control a person as willful and belligerent as Webb? Is Webb liable to challenge President Obama one fine day on foreign or domestic policy?

Even more frightening a question for democrats ought to be, will they have perhaps created their own Nemesis if they make James H. Webb into a national figure, and logical presidential candidate?

The post-1968 democrat party has had very limited national success, being a captive of its leftwing radical activist base, whose politics are simply unsalable at a national level. What would be the consequences of the rise of very different kind of democrat leader, one with a lot more resemblance to Andrew Jackson than to Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton? If I were a leftwing democrat, I’d find it all pretty scary.

21 Jun 2008

Protest Paralysis in Berkeley

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University of California at Berkeley’s efforts to construct a new athletic training center in the vicinity of its current stadium, basically atop the Hayward Fault, like any Bay Area development effort inevitably provoked protest from the local activist community.

The comedy, complete with tree-sitters and fences and police protecting them from annoyed Golden Bears football fans, has been running since December of 2006, and shows no signs of nearing an end.

The SF Chronicle finds that a long-awaited court ruling doesn’t mean a thing:

Wednesday’s ruling by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller that Cal’s long-delayed athletic training center is sort of legal and sort of not largely advances the legal notion that there really is something called “semi-pregnant.”

Put another way, when both sides effusively declare victory, what you have is a ruling that doesn’t really say much at all. But what did you expect? This is Berkeley.

Miller said that the $140 million project doesn’t actually sit on a fault line, although one suspects that the 3 or 4 extra feet of leeway won’t really mean much when the building slides into the bay.

Read the whole thing.

Background Dec 22 07 article at Daily Kos

TaoLive (moonbat-perspective) 8:12 video

09 Jun 2008

The Left’s Big Lie: “Bush Lied”

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Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, points out what should be obvious.

Search the Internet for “Bush Lied” products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic “Bush Lied, People Died” bumper sticker is only the beginning.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent,” he said.

There’s no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.

But dive into Rockefeller’s report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.” Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.” Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you’ve mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda “were substantiated by the intelligence assessments,” and statements regarding Iraq’s contacts with al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.” The report is left to complain about “implications” and statements that “left the impression” that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

In the report’s final section, the committee takes issue with Bush’s statements about Saddam Hussein’s intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: “There has been some debate over how ‘imminent’ a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can.”

The American left has re-written the history it just lived through in order to justify its current selfish and opportunistic opposition to the foreign policy and national defense efforts of an elected administration, which it refuses to regard as legitimate because of the failure of its leaders to subscribe to the same ideology which from the left’s viewpoint is indistinguishable from religious dogma.

09 Jun 2008

P.J. O’Rourke Apothegm of the Day

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Weekly Standard:

The problem on the left is, now that Karl Marx has forsaken them, they have no philosophy. Thank goodness. Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

From No Left Turns via the News Junkie.

08 Jun 2008

Liberals: “Friends to Goodness”

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Peter Schweizer, whose written a new book, titled Makers and Takers, about all this, contends that liberals are the kind of people who do not put their money where their mouth is.

Samuel Johnson once reported on a man who was privately stingy but publicly touted the merits of sharing. Dr. Johnson said sarcastically that the man was a “friend of goodness.” What he meant was that flesh-and-blood goodness is very different from supporting “Goodness” in the abstract.

Many modern liberals like to openly discuss their altruism. Garrison Keillor explains that “I am liberal and liberalism is the politics of kindness.” But it rarely seems to turn into acts of kindness, especially when it comes to making charitable donations.

Consider the case of Andrew Cuomo, current New York Attorney General and advocate for the homeless. He has, according to his website, “compassion toward the most vulnerable of us.” And this is how the New York Times described the courtship of Kerry Kennedy (of guess which family): “Ms. Kennedy-Cuomo, 43, said she fell in love with Mr. Cuomo, 45, when he took her on a tour of a homeless shelter on their first date and agreed to fast for the labor leader Cesar Chavez.”

But that advocacy should not be confused with actually giving to the less fortunate. Cuomo was a homeless advocate throughout the 1990s, but according to his own tax returns he made no charitable contributions between 1996 and 1999. In 2000 he donated a whopping $2,750. In 2004 and 2005, Cuomo had more than $1.5 million in adjusted gross income but gave a paltry $2,000 to charity.

Cuomo made no charitable contributions in 2003, when his income was a bit less than $300,000.

Cuomo IS NOT alone in this Scroogery of course. Barack Obama has a rather poor track record when it comes to charitable contributions. He consistently gave 1 percent of his income to charity. In his most charitable year, 2005, he earned $1.7 million (two and a half times what George W. Bush earned) but gave about the same dollar amount as the President.

The last two Democratic Party nominees for President have come up short on the charity scale. Al Gore has been famously stingy when it comes to actually giving his own money to charities. In 1998 he was embarrassed when his tax returns revealed that he gave just $353 to charity. …

According to his tax returns, Reagan donated more than four times more to charity — both in terms of actual money and on a percentage basis — than Senator Ted Kennedy. And he gave more to charities with less income than FDR did. In 1985, for example, he gave away 6 percent of his income.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have continued this Reagan record. During the early 1990s, George W. Bush regularly gave away more than 10 percent of his income. In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney gave away 77 percent of his income to charity. He was actually criticized by some liberal bloggers for this, who claimed he was getting too much of a tax deduction.

The main point of liberal compassion appears to be making liberals feel good about their superior virtue. Such are the rewards of being a “friend of goodness.”

05 Jun 2008

Left Won’t Tolerate Media Criticism of its Preferred Candidate

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What little evenhandedness exists in the mainstream media is found in the willingness of the press to report the substance of Republican attacks on democrat presidential candidates in the interested manner of an old-time radio broadcaster describing a heavyweight boxing match. “The Swift Boat Veterans just delivered a powerful right to John Kerry’s jaw, and he’s on the canvas!”

Conservatives like myself are always surprised, what with all the favoritism in coverage they get, that the left continually expresses outrage and indignation that the mainstream media is only 99% on their side. They know that they deserve 1000% support.

Well, the left is mad at the media, and they’re not going to take it anymore. From now on, you journalists mess with their candidate, and they are going to mess with you.

Media Matters reports.

The Associated Press last week got a preview of how this presidential season is going to unfold, and how online liberal activists aren’t going to stand down when the press takes cheap shots at Democratic front-runners.

After AP reporter Nedra Pickler wrote a news story highlighting how some fringe Republican operatives were raising questions about Sen. Barack Obama’s patriotism, angry readers dispatched nearly 15,000 electronic letters protesting the piece. Why? Because instead of providing balance and context, which is what good journalism does, the article simply offered a platform for Obama’s opponents to roll out their smears, to broadcast their dark doubts about the senator’s character.

That kind of media shortcoming has become predictable; reporters love to quote partisan Republicans about how deficient Democrats are. And in the past it would have likely produced angry denunciations online within the liberal blogosphere — a blog swarm, perhaps. …

But nearly 15,000 letters sent in just a matter of days in response to a single news wire article? That’s something else entirely and could mark the dawn of a new era in progressive media activism. The phenomenon has received very little mainstream media attention (journalists probably don’t want to encourage this sort of thing), but make no mistake: It was a very big deal.

Hat tip to LGF.

05 Jun 2008

Ann Coulter on Democrats’ Inconsistency

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Ann Coulter remarks in Human Events on the irony of media’s “Shut-up-and-go-away!” approach to Hillary’s primary popular vote victory.

When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College — or, for short, “the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents” — anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.

But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the “popular vote” has any relevance whatsoever. …

After nearly eight years of having to listen to liberals crow that Bush was “selected, not elected,” this is a shocking about-face. Apparently unaware of the new party line that the popular vote amounts to nothing more than warm spit, just last week HBO ran its movie “Recount,” about the 2000 Florida election, the premise of which is that sneaky Republicans stole the presidency from popular vote champion Al Gore. (Despite massive publicity, the movie bombed, with only about 1 million viewers, so now HBO is demanding a “recount.”)

So where is Kevin Spacey from HBO’s “Recount,” to defend Hillary, shouting: “WHO WON THIS PRIMARY?”

03 Jun 2008

Did Scott McClellan Even Write That Book?

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Copies of Scott McClellan’s original book proposal from January of 2007 were still floating around in the publishing industry, and the Politico was able to obtain and authenticate a copy. The proposal presents a very different book making very different accusations directed at completely different targets.

Originally, McClellan evidently blamed social conservatives and neocons for the Bush administration’s missteps, and made the liberal media a primary target of criticism.

EXCERPT:

I will look at what is behind the media hostility toward the President and his Administration, and how much of it is rooted in a liberal bias.

The public holds the national media in low esteem. I think there are several reasons why, and I intend to write about them in some detail while discussing ways the media could improve their image. It is more than just the perceived arrogance, cynicism, gotcha-journalism, and lack of accountability. The establishment media does not tend to reflect Main Street America, or spend enough time focusing on the issues that matter most to the general public, and too often sacrifice substance for process. They tend to reflect the liberal elites of New York and Washington that are part of the social circles in which they run, and it shows in their reporting. Yet, they live in a constant state of denial when it comes to acknowledging such an obvious fact.

Fairness is defined by the establishment media within the left-of-center boundaries they set. They defend their reporting as fair because both sides are covered. But, how fair can it be when it is within the context of the liberal slant of the reporting? And, while the reporting of the establishment media may be based on true statements and facts, is it an accurate picture of what is really happening? And, how much influence do the New York Times and Washington Post have in shaping the coverage? And, why does the media do such a poor job of holding itself to account, or acknowledging their own mistakes?

The obvious inference is that Peter Osnos, the leftwing founder of PublicAffairs Books did not just “work very closely” with McClellan on the book, but rather completely altered the author’s original intentions, and personally provided the perspective and conclusions featured in the completed text. McClellan accepted the cash.

02 Jun 2008

Godzilla Meets Mothra

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New Republic’s Dana Goldstein describes the war between Clinton and Obama supporters in the blogosphere.

These people are not pretty when they’re angry.

As anybody with high-speed Internet knows, MyDD and Daily Kos sit at the top of the liberal Netroots movement, which over the last five years has made astonishing strides in its campaign to transform the Democratic Party into a hard-fighting, proudly liberal, and, most importantly, victorious entity. Though their websites offer distinct communities and commentaries, and though they have very different personalities, MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong (a former astrologer) and Kos’s Markos Moulitsas (a former Army man) have always gotten along–the two co-authored a 2006 book, Crashing the Gate, about the rise of their movement. Their bond has been rooted mostly in common foes: Republicans, namby-pamby Democrats, the Iraq War, divisive “identity politics,” and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. But the harmony that existed between MyDD and Kos since the birth of the Netroots no longer exists today, and a bitter internecine struggle within the progressive blogosphere is to blame. Just as bilious in tone as previous fights with Republicans or Joe Lieberman, it has revealed fault lines in the movement that will be tough to cover back up. There have been charges of misogyny and of bullying, and some longtime members have walked away from their cause altogether. And what’s at the heart of it all is that most loaded of questions: Barack or Hillary?

The Netroots have been arguing about the 2008 campaign since the day after John Kerry lost, but the debate turned ugly when Armstrong revealed his vote in the February 12 Virginia primary. “In the end, what compelled me to vote for Clinton was looking at someone that seemed practical about the battle we have on our hands and looking ready to engage in the fight,” Armstrong blogged that day. “I’d rather be part of the fight than be told to stay on the sidelines because I’m too partisan.”

Armstrong had long voiced concerns that Obama’s campaign was too personality-driven and too reliant on the votes of Independents and Republicans. But his official endorsement made readers go ballistic. “Voting for the DLC candidate makes you part of the fight? Come on,” wrote one commenter. Another suggested, “If you aren’t a part of her campaign, you really oughta try to sign up and get some of those $$$ while you can”–a dig at Armstrong’s past campaign work for politicians like Howard Dean, Jon Corzine, and Mark Warner. A group of far nastier comments were deleted.

At Daily Kos, commenters were ripping Armstrong to shreds. One user wrote, “MyDD isn’t even a pro-Clinton site these days. It’s just a toxic waste dump dedicated to throwing slime at Obama and hoping it sticks. … I know that Kos and Jerome are friends and partners, but it’s perhaps time for Kos to reconsider linking to MyDD from the DK blogroll.”

Clintonites and Obamabots were ferrying between the two sites, “recommending” posts sympathetic to their favored candidate (thus ensuring more prominent placement on the page), and brutally attacking one another in the comment sections. In late March, Armstrong, upset by name-calling between Clinton and Obama supporters on MyDD, barred new user accounts on the site for a week. The sense of betrayal among fellow Netrooters after his Clinton endorsement was palpable. Armstrong was backing a candidate who, as Chris Bowers, another leading lefty blogger, wrote on Open Left, hadn’t fully rejected the DLC, hadn’t opposed the Iraq war from the start, hadn’t offered overwhelming support for Net Neutrality, and hadn’t campaigned in small caucus states.

22 May 2008

A Leftist Debunks Obama

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I think those poor confused little moonbats need some help, so I’m linking a serious article on Obame from an ultra-left source. Adolph Reed Jr. doesn’t like him, and he knows he cannot win.

(Obama’s) campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance.

There is also something disturbingly ritualistic and superficial in the Obama camp’s young minions’ enthusiasm. Paul Krugman noted months ago that the Obamistas display a cultish quality in the sense that they treat others’ criticism or failure to support their icon as a character flaw or sin. The campaign even has a stock conversion narrative, which has been recycled in print by such normally clear-headed columnists as Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt: the middle-aged white woman’s report of not having paid much attention to Obama early on, but having been won over by the enthusiasm and energy of their adolescent or twenty-something daughters. (A colleague recently reported having heard this narrative from a friend, citing the latter’s conversion at the hands of her eighteen year old. I observed that three short years ago the daughter was likely acting the same way about Britney Spears.) …

As many Progressive readers may know, I’m hardly a Clinton fan. I’m on record in last November’s issue as saying that I’d rather sit out the election entirely than vote for either her or Obama. At this point, though, I’ve decided that she’s the lesser evil in the Democratic race, for the following reasons: 1) Obama’s empty claims to being a candidate of progressive change and to embodying a “movement” that exists only as a brand will dissolve into disillusionment in either a failed campaign against McCain or an Obama Presidency that continues the politics he’s practiced his entire career; 2) his horribly opportunistic approach to the issues bearing on inequality—in which he tosses behaviorist rhetoric to the right and little more than calls to celebrate his success to blacks—stands to pollute debate about racial injustice whether he wins or loses the Presidency; 3) he can’t beat McCain in November.

Frankly, I suspect that Clinton can’t beat him either, but there’s no way that Obama will carry most of the states in November that he’s won in the primaries and caucuses. And, while it makes some liberals feel good to think that a majority of the American electorate could vote for a black Presidential candidate, we should keep in mind that the Republicans haven’t let one dog out of the kennel against him yet. The Jeremiah Wright contretemps is only the first bark.

Obama’s style of being all things to all people threatens to melt under the inescapable spotlight of a national campaign against a Republican. It’s like what brings on the downfall of really successful con artists: They get themselves onto a stage that’s so big that they can’t hide their contradictions anymore, and everyone finds out about the different stories they’ve told different people. And Obama’s belonging to Wright’s church in the first place was quite likely part of establishing a South Side bourgeois nationalist street cred because his political base was with Hyde Park/University of Chicago liberals and the foundation world. …

Because he’s tried carefully to say enough of whatever the audiences he’s been speaking to at the time want to hear while leaving himself enough space later on to deny his intentions to leave that impression, his record represents precisely the “character” weakness the Republicans have exploited in every Democratic candidate since Dukakis: Another Dem trying to put things over on the American people.

Obama’s campaign has been very clever in carving out a strategy to amass Democratic delegate votes, but its momentum is in some ways a Potemkin construction—built largely on victories in states that no Democrat will win in November—that will fall apart under Republican pressure.

And then where will we be?

Read the whole thing.

22 May 2008

Counting Every Vote

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Hillary is refusing to lie down, and has –as was predicted– finally played the Florida and Michigan card. After all, as we remember from 2000, counting every vote is vitally important to democrats.

Hoist by their own petard, the democrat party left is responding this morning in characteristic fashion to Hillary’s efforts to thwart their desires… by having a cow.

Andrew Sullivan does a particularly nice job of frothing.

The Clintons know no respect for rules or propriety or restraint in the pursuit of power. But Clinton’s latest speech in Florida should cause even veteran Clinton-hating jaws to drop some more….

How do you respond to a sociopath like this? She agreed that Michigan and Florida should be punished for moving up their primaries. Obama took his name off the ballot in deference to their agreement and the rules of the party. That he should now be punished for playing by the rules and she should be rewarded for skirting them is unconscionable.

I think she has now made it very important that Obama not ask her to be the veep. The way she is losing is so ugly, so feckless, so riddled with narcissism and pathology that this kind of person should never be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Hillary is sitting pretty, armed with the argument possessing the greatest emotive force, and as ABC NEWS reports, she is not afraid to use it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton continued to push her popular vote argument. As an example, Clinton mentioned what happened in the elections in Zimbabwe to illustrate what can happen when the popular vote is not observed.

Speaking in Sunrise, Fla., Clinton said: “You heard Diana talk about coming from a country where votes don’t count. People go through the motions of an election only to have it discarded and disregarded. We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe — tragically an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote.”

Clinton gave an abreviated version of her earlier speech, but made her argument for the popular vote to be the most important factor in this election again.

“Many of us believe that the candidate who got fewer votes was inaugurated president (in 2000),” Clinton said. “And we know that of all states, this state should have extra attention to make sure your votes are counted.”

How dare she! bleats Newsweek’s Jonathan Chait:

Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric today about counting the results in Florida and Michigan is simply incredible. Her speech compares discounting the Florida and Michigan primaries to vote suppression and slavery. …

They supported this “disenfranchisement.” Here’s a New York Times story from last fall, headlined, “Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States.”

Moreover, it’s obviously true that Obama not campaigning, organizing, or advertizing in those states hurt him, and helped the more familiar candidate in Clinton. She decided to campaign to change the rules only after it became her interest to do so.

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

It’s a pretty darn depressing election, what with no actual Republican running. At least we are getting some entertainment out of it, as the Clintons and their party’s leftwing base do the Vote Count two-step, hopping back and forth on “counting every vote” depending on exactly who is benefiting.

The nutroots left is adding another variation to its performance: the Clinton two-step. What fun it is to see the MoveOn.Org crowd which so passionately defended the Clintons through scandal after scandal, and then through Monica-gate and Impeachment, suddenly awake and discover the Clinton’s dark side.

We may have tragedy in November, but we’ve got comedy today.

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