So I watched the witch, Hillary Clinton, give her speech last night. To her credit, she was the only speaker to breathe some life into this God awful convention. It's not just me, a conservative, who thinks so. The American people, liberal or conservative, do as well. Ratings for this week's coverage on ALL the networks have been abysmal.
I'm a movie buff and watching Slick Hilly last night, I couldn't help think of the 1950 film with Bettie Davis called "All About Eve". It's been a couple of years since I last saw it, so I went to Wikipedia to refresh my memory. I realized that, if you took the characters of Margo Channing (Bette Davis) and Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), replaced them with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, you see that life is really imitating art in this campaign.
So I did. Here's the switch:
Hillary Clinton is one of the biggest politicians in America. But despite her unmatched success, she is beginning to show her age. After a speech one night on the campaign trail, she encounters a young man named Barack Obama. He claims to be her biggest admirers from Chicago, but gradually, Obama shows that he is a scheming and duplicitous man who plans to take from Hillary everything she holds dear: her colleagues, voters and her political career and fame. Obama becomes a political star and is presented with the party's nomination.
I've obviously tailored other aspects of the plot description and if you want to see the real plot line just plug it into Wikipedia or just watch the movie. I suggest doing the latter if you have the time because they don't make movies like that anymore.
Last night, while party unity flowed from one side of Hilly's mouth, this was coming out of Billy's:
"Suppose you're a voter, and you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?" He's also said he will not attend Obama's speech on Thursday.
Sounds like some jilted mofos. I'd like to channel the great Bette Davis when she said, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night." Or, for Obama and the DNC, a bumpy couple of months. It is clear, not from her miele-mouthed speech about health care and women's rights, but from the supporters in the audience who demonstrated to Obama and Howard Dean that, once again, they've made a grave mistake. Because, as a God fearing conservative and registered Republican, the one thing I feared more than God was Obama picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate.
All this talk about party unity from Hillary or the Lib-Dims is bullshit. It's clear that WE, the Republicans and conservatives, are the only ones who understand unity. Most of us didn't want John McCain as our nominee and fought against him, but now it is he and it is WE who understand the common goal that we are fighting for here. WE, the conservative republicans, understand the danger of an Obama presidency and refuse a man with no experience and with ties to terrorists and WE WILL GLADLY take a man with a robust resume who served his country.
No matter who John McCain picks as his VP this week, at least his will not be chosen for him by Russia. That's right. It is clear to me that Obama choose Biden because of the problems in Georgia (as I write this, Russians are threatening to roll into Poland) and Obama's obvious lack of foreign policy experience. However, his camp is wrong again. While Sloppy Joe has been a so called "expert" on foreign affairs by the MSN, in reality, he's often been wrong on most of his foreign policy decisions.
And so what if McCain picks Mitt Romney? Who cares? So what if they had a tumultuous campaign against each other? At least Romney, or any other Republican candidates for that matter, never, EVER said that John McCain wasn't ready to lead and unfit for command. Biden has of Obama. Hillary stated it as well.
If John McCain was watching Hillary last night, as I'm sure he was, he will have a tough decision to either stick with the person who he's had his mind on all this time or, pick a female wild card to tap into the menopause vote.
If he does, it's clear to me that it will be "cha ching" for Yoda in November.
I referenced Barack Obama's body language in an earlier post that indicated Obama was potentially being "deceitful" in his responses to Rick Warren at Saddleback Church's Civil Forum. Apparently his deceit can be well-documented from at least April, according to PUMA.
This video is being proliferated by PUMAs in response to the allegations by Newsweek that the Obama Campaign needs to "fight the smears" perpetrated by the Corsi book. Similar comments were made by several PUMAs:
"Voters believe what they hear repeatedly, and there's a cautionary tale in McGovern's experience all these many years later." Wrong, now voters believe what they see or what they want to hear. "Voters " are not stupid, we can sort out what is bs and what is truth or as much as we can decifer what the truth is. The facts or lack of them that have come to light are what voters will decide based upon. Information not deemed relevant by the televised or printed media is available to internet users, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIJVLxhmbXw. New politics ,smolotics.
Obama has been defining himself by his actions; he doesn't need "swiftboat" actions to do it.
Here is the "infamous phone call video" in which a plethora of Hillary Supporters somehow found themselves registered as "Obama" delegates against their will. In the video, a Hillary delegate confronts the Obama campaign directly to challenge this abuse. As the registrations continue to be sold in return for crack cocaine, as we continue to see dead people voting, as the mass fraud which we saw perpetrated with wild abandon by ACORN, the organization for whom Obama worked "as a community organizer", echoes into 2008, these stories are likely to multiply much faster than the rebuttals against the Corsi book and these stories are, unfortunately, not fiction.
This started out as a comment in response to Missypris, but it grew and grew until it evolved into a post. I loved the idea of opening up that PUMAdora's box so much that I decided to prowl around a bit and see what was lurking around the water holes of the blogosphere during breakfast.
First, I found this on what's affectionatly referred to here on our site as a "Good Lefty Bog" posted by Geekesque from MYDD:
John McCain's campaign will stop advertising on several pro-Hillary Clinton Web sites that have attacked Barack Obama for being unpatriotic and, in one case, compared the Democratic nominee-in-waiting to Adolf Hitler. . . .
Remember that the biggest PUMA blog was founded by someone who was banned from Daily Kos for posting a virulently Islamaphobic diary and who refers to Barack Obama as the "Affirmative Action candidate.".
And, of course, No Quarter is an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, as is Hillaryis44.org.
But, other than that, the notion that PUMA is founded on rightwing hate and bigotry is a pure myth.
Well don't feel put off by that, all you cool PUMA cats, it's nothing personal - McCain is simply road testing whether a "positive campaign" plays better with the audience this year than "Islamophobia" does. Let's give him points for style, certainly. And if I've neglected to mention it, Welcome to the Vast Right Conspiracy! We may be dogs and (and bunnies) but we still love baby cats, mama cats, cute kittens and righteously angry, disenfranchised Demo-cats of all breeds.
I thought that Auntie Meme's comment on the Petulant Pumas post at Corrente was concise, cogent and telling:
Conventional wisdom that says PUMAs are just disappointed old broads who are sad that one of their own didn’t get selected. They’re not ready to get down to the nuts and bolts of governing, nor do they really have the stamina for it. It’s a battle of pie-in-the-sky vs. practicalities.
At a deeper level, the profound rift comes from the clash between Democrats who have paid their dues through long-term political activism and those who are new to the process. I’m not speaking of the candidates, per se, but of their supporters. Clinton supporters are not owed the candidacy. They are, however, owed a voice that resonates through the policies of the nominee and his organization. The Obama campaign deserves an 18-million voice yowl of protest. Unless their campaign makes substantial changes of tone and substance and strives toward truly hearing and acting on the concerns of those 18 million, the PUMA protest will take the form of not only not supporting Prince Charming, but of actively working against him.
To sum up: a) We’re harshing their mellow and that bums them out. b) We can outline our case for Clinton until we’re blue in the face, but we can’t make them hear us.PUMAS are perceived as bitter little ol ladies.The meme is propagated far and wide by both “progressive” bloggers and the SCMSM. And we know that women over 40 at some point become invisible. Proven fact—I can no longer see myself in the mirror. c) Worse yet, we can’t make them care.
Corrente looks like a site that I would like to visit again. These aren't the foaming-at-the-mouth comments of the fever swamp Left, no, no, no. These are the comments of real, honest-to-God thinking person's Democrats. Here are a few more that impressed me:
Barack Obama is UNSUITED to be President
1) completely lacking in the background and experience necessary to be president
a) less than 2 years national political experience before he decided to run b) no executive experience (i.e. he’s never run anything but his mounth) c) is egregiously untested in ’crisis’/hard decision situations (and what we’ve seen of him does not inspire confidence) d) campaign was based not on policies and positions, but on broad, amorphous, content free themes…
2) lacks the character to be president
a) an “opportunist” rather than an pragmatist — three years ago he acknowledged that he would not be ready for the oval office in 2008. b) ran an ugly campaign involving false accusations that his opponent was a racist c) had a hissy fit over the ’distractions’ that dominated the Philadelphia debate, and said that issues should be discussed — but Obama has never demanded that issues be discussed until people started looking into his background. d) refused to debate Clinton after the PA debate, even though she offered forums where ’issues only’ would be discussed e) while complaining about lack of “issues” discussion, his campaign has consistently urged the media to cover non-issue things related to Clinton like “Bosnian snipers”, “tax returns”, and “RFK/Assassination” f) when confronted with constitutencies in states that did not ’get’ him, rather than work at gaining their confidence, he treated them as morallly deficient g) tell women that they need to “get over it” and treats traditional democratic constituencies with contempt — telling them them they have ’nowhere elese to do”
and...
You’re supposed to vote for him because it’s Him. To even consider requiring any sort of political agenda is too vile for words!I never thought I would find myself agreeing with Rove but he writes we already know: Obama is only in it for himself. If anything, I’d put my money on Obama fighting against the rights of women and girls since those rights are usually at the center of “divisiveness.”
and...
—all rights are (including Constitutional ones like voting and equal protection too)—he won’t fight for any of them at all.
I thought the last two comments were pertinent to circling back to Jon Henke's post on the Libertarians swing vote for Obama. Barack's been so squishy on his Constitutional positions that I cannot think of any good explanation for those Rasmussen poll numbers, but oh, well. Maybe I'm just missing something. Or maybe those Libertarians are missing something - like their principles, their phosphatidylserine, their synapatic activity? But moving right along...
My personal favorite non-poll indicator comes from this comment on WaPo's Schmidt Takes Over Day to Day Leadership of McCain Campaign on The Trail:
Just say Nobama! We are PuMaS, we support Hillary. We are PuMaS, we have PMS. We are PuMaS, we will vote for McCain and then Hillary will win in 2012! Don't say we didn't tell you so!
Ah HA! So the strategy is to just sit tight for 4 more years of Bush's 3rd Term and then spring like a Trojan Horse in 2012. In this regard, PUMA's have so much in common with principled conservatives who are going to Just Say No Deal to McCain, install Obama and watch him flounder and fail like a flippy floppy fish out of water for 4 years while building the next Ronald Reagan to run against Hillary in 2012.
Here's the Fox/Newsweek national poll from the end of June (H/T to Real Clear Politics) indicating how Hillary Primary voters indicate they will vote in November:
Relative to other Dems, PUMA support for Obama falls, while support for McCain rises.
Here's the Quinnipiac swing state survey from the end of June that provides some clues about PUMA voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Florida closely mirrors the national numbers but the trend is more pronounced in Pennsylvania and especially Ohio, where the drop in support for Obama and increase in support for McCain is very substantial:
Women, particularly married white women, however, may be a problem for Obama, according to the Washington Post/ABC poll.
It showed that McCain has a 20 point advantage over Obama among married white women, a group that George Bush also won in the last two presidential elections.
Stephanopoulos told GMA that the figure was a "danger sign" for Obama. "This is a huge gap that Obama has to close if he's going to do well."
Whatever their motives, I like these PUMAs. They're smart, tribal, and they're not afraid to take an invisible bite out of an insincere, inexperienced candidate who lacks substance and has told them to just get over it.
