Divide and conquer

It occurs to me, as I look back over the past few posts, that I’ve been spending a lot of time complaining about Hillary Clinton lately, instead of going after the people who really deserve it: Bush, Cheney, McCain, and all of their little minions. Obviously, I am not alone in this, as anyone who has watched a news broadcast in the mainstream media lately can attest.

In a way, Hillary Clinton has recently been the best thing that could have happened to our alleged president, his lackeys, and his would-be successor. Because if we’re all in a tizzy about what Hillary is doing, it leaves them freer to continue their crooked activities. Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain, folks!

Well enough of that. As of now, I am back in my usual mode of going after the corrupt bastards currently running the show in DC. I may not get another post up before tomorrow, but I promise to get back to fighting the good fight instead of complaining about Hillary.

After all, I still believe that Bush and Cheney really ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

My letter to Hillary

Last night in her speech, Hillary encouraged voters to go to her website and leave messages with their thoughts on what she should do next. Here is what I wrote to her:

Dear Senator Clinton –

I’m not entirely sure what to say to you today. You fought a good campaign, but in the end it was your opponent who crossed the finish line first.

It’s been very frustrating these last few weeks watching you and your campaign team spin the results and crunch the numbers. Last night you spoke of winning the popular vote — trying to steal Barack Obama’s thunder on the night when he secured the delegates needed to clinch the nomination — but your tally left out millions of voters like me who live in caucus states where Obama won. Apparently, in your mind, we don’t matter.

Your speech last night did a disservice to the Democratic Party, and I believe it will later be viewed as tarnishing your legacy. Instead of gracefully congratulating Obama on his moment of triumph, you spoke only of a campaign well-fought, as if you were the candidate with the necessary delegates for nomination later this summer, not him.

You spoke of unifying the party, but I’m not sure how you hope to accomplish that given the overall tone of your speech. There were undertones to the speech that were distinctly threatening, as if you plan to take your 18 million voters and go home if you’re not given the Vice President spot. While I agree that a ticket with both you and Obama would likely be unstoppable come November, was last night’s speech really the best way of securing a spot on that ticket?

Your speech last night was something of a political masterpiece, I must admit, in terms of communicating a number of things without saying them outright. I’m sure the pundits are having a field day parsing it right now. But the very fact that it was a political masterpiece highlighted the difference between you and Barack Obama as presidential candidates:

You spoke like a politician. Barack Obama spoke like a leader.

Please, Hillary, stop playing the political games and congratulate Barack Obama on his successful campaign for the nomination. There will undoubtedly be a very prominent role for you in his administration should he win in November — perhaps as Vice President, perhaps in some cabinet-level post. Please, don’t make it look like you blackmailed Obama into giving it to you.

Give Obama your support and your endorsement, and encourage your supporters to do the same.

Best wishes,

-jane doe

The Clintons, space aliens, and bar room psychology

No, wait. They’re all connected. I promise.

See, I was checking out the blogs this morning, and I came across a couple stories in rapid succession that seemed to me closely related.

The first was this story in the Denver Post about someone who claims to have video of a space alien peering into the windows of his home. The story includes a copy of the video — dark and somewhat grainy, but seeming to show a face with enormous eyes peering into a window, which the story helpfully tells us is eight feet off the ground. The story also informs us that the homeowner had set up a security camera because he suspected peeping Toms of looking in the windows at his teenage daughters, and instead caught footage of a space alien.

The second was this story on Politico.com (h/t to HuffPo) about Bill Clinton’s “enemies list”:

With Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on the verge of defeat, Bill Clinton has been placing blame on enemies including a brazenly biased media that tried to suppress blue-collar votes, a powerful anti-war group that endorsed rival Barack Obama and weak-willed party leaders unable to stand up to either of these nefarious forces.

Now, I know what you’re saying, my dear, non-existent readers. “How can these two stories possibly be related?” But trust me — there is a connection in my warped little brain.

Let’s start with the space alien story, shall we? As you read the story, you find out that the guy who got the video was trying to see if there were peeping Toms looking into his house (thus explaining the videocamera pointed at a window). And you might think, “Okay, this seems unlikely, but the video isn’t obviously faked, so I’ll reserve judgment for the moment.”

But then, if you read a bit further into the article, you find out that the homeowner who captured the video images also “claims to have had more than 100 encounters with aliens” and asserts that he was abducted by extraterrestrials.

Suddenly you find yourself thinking, “Maybe this guy didn’t see any aliens. Maybe he’s just a complete nut[1].”

Because one chance unexplained occurrence from someone with no history of such claims might be legitimate, or at least worth exploring. But when you see someone who claims repeated encounters with aliens — when no one else of your acquaintance can make similar claims — you have to think that it’s a bit improbable, and that there is likely some other explanation, probably involving psychotropic meds.

It’s like the stranger you meet in a bar, who is ranting and raving about his ex-wife who (according to him) was a psychotic bitch-monster from hell.

Now, if you talk to this stranger for a while longer, he may provide evidence to support his claim. Maybe she really was a psychotic bitch-monster from hell. It happens.

On the other hand, a longer conversation may reveal that not only was his ex-wife a psychotic bitch-monster from hell, but so was the girl he was dating before he met his wife. And the girlfriend before her. And his mom. And his sister. And his secretary. And his boss. And his third, fourth, seventh, and tenth grade teachers. And…well, you get the idea.

You kind of have to start thinking, “It’s not the women who are the problem. It’s you, buddy.”

Which brings me back to the Clintons.

Throughout the race, they seem to have done nothing but blame and complain. It’s the media. It’s MoveOn.org. It’s black voters. It’s white males. It’s young voters. It’s sexism. It’s the caucus states. It’s the right-wingers. It’s the talking heads. And did I mention the media?

And I can’t help thinking, “Bill, Hillary, maybe it’s not the media. It’s not MoveOn.org. It’s not the Obama supporters. It’s not even the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Hillary started out as the media-anointed candidate, considered all but a sure thing to win the Democratic nomination. For a long time, all the other candidates, Obama included, were being covered by the press as “also-rans”. Because who could possibly conquer the Mighty Clinton Fundraising Machine(tm)?

But at the end of the day, there were just more people backing Obama where they were needed, netting him more votes, more delegates, and more donations. And those people had a lot of different (and legitimate) reasons for backing Obama. Reasons that may have had little or nothing to do with the media, or MoveOn.org, or whatever.

Game over for Bill and Hillary.

If Bill and Hillary are smart and willing to be honest with themselves (if not anyone else), maybe, just maybe, they’ll take a long look in the mirror, and think, “What could we have done differently, that would have turned the nomination our way?”

But I doubt it. It’s much easier, after all, to blame everyone else than to admit that maybe you could have done something differently to win more voters.

On an only marginally related note, I still think Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

[1]“Complete nut” being the technical, psychological term, of course.

Hillary Clinton: Time for an intervention

This is an open letter to any friends of Hillary Clinton out there.

It may be time to stage an intervention.

Clearly, the woman needs help to overcome her denial and see that her obsession with winning the presidency has become a problem not only for her, but also for her friends and family. And by “friends and family” I mostly mean the Democratic party – though I would imagine that Chelsea, at least, is getting rather tired of the whole dog and pony show by now, as well.

Yes, okay, fine, she had a strong showing in West Virginia last night. So what? West Virginia has, what, 28 delegates at the national convention later this summer? That’s not enough to change the race.

And she didn’t even win all of those delegates. Obama got 8. At this point, she would need to win, like, 90 percent of all remaining pledged delegates just to pull even with Obama. And that’s not even counting all the superdelegates who are now jumping onto the Obama bandwagon because they want to be seen as backing the winner while their vote still matters. Or the Edwards pledged delegates, who are likely to switch to the Obama column given the Edwards endorsement today.

At this point, all Hillary can hope to accomplish is to weaken the Democratic Party at a time when the party can least afford it.

And that’s why Hillary’s friends need to come together and gently, lovingly tell her to knock it the fuck off before she causes even more harm to her friends and family.

-jane doe

Oh, dear lord, they’re at it again

Yes, the Democratic presidential candidates are debating again tonight. I’ve lost count as to how many times they’ve done this. Keith Olbermann pointed out this evening that it really kind of depends on how you define “debate” — which is probably all you really need to know about how many of these things there have been, now that I think about it.

I will not be liveblogging. I started to, but I got sick of listening to Hillary. Not that I blame her. In their first responses to questions, Edwards and Obama went after her, and she defended herself. The third question was directly to her, and by then her voice had become sharp enough that I had to hit the mute button to hear myself think. She’s making good points (though so were Edwards and Obama), but her tone of voice was bugging me.

I am recording the debate, however, so I can fast forward through it later and pretend I am doing my civic duty. If anything particularly noteworthy strikes me, I will post about it.

Until then, allow me to reiterate that I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

The Democratic debate

I’m watching the debate right now, and am not going to attempt to liveblog, but I did have one thought that I wanted to get out there:

I know Gravel doesn’t have a hope in hell of getting elected, and I don’t think I would want him in the White House, but damn, I love having him up on stage in these debates because he is willing to take the other candidates to task for their votes on some of the big issues. I really enjoyed seeing him go after Hillary for voting in favor of the Lieberman bill on the Iran situation.

And yes, I still think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

In defense of Hillary – more on terror management theory

Hillary Clinton is getting a bum rap in recent days from both sides of the political spectrum at the moment for her remarks to the effect that another terrorist attack like 9/11 in the run-up to the next presidential election would help the Republicans.

It appears that many on the liberal side of the spectrum are accusing her of conceding that the Republicans somehow “own” the terrorism issue, and are the only party that can keep us safe. Meanwhile, at least one conservative goofball — Faux News’ John Gibson — is suggesting that by making these remarks, Hillary is trying to make a deal with the terrorists — essentially, that she is saying, “Hey, Bin Laden — lie low until after November 2008 and you won’t have any of those nasty scary Republicans to deal with. Instead, you’ll have a nice Democrat who will give you a free pass.”

In fact, all Hillary is guilty of doing is recognizing the reality of the situation.

As I have already discussed elsewhere in this blog, research in terror management theory (some of it funded by the Department of Homeland Insecurity) has demonstrated that when people are reminded of death — in psychspeak, when they are placed in a condition of mortality salience — most tend to retreat into more conservative political views and endorse more conservative, charismatic and/or authoritarian candidates.

Bluntly speaking, at the present time, in the United States, these candidates seem to be showing up more often on the right side of the political spectrum. Republican candidates are more likely to hammer the themes of traditional values and, at least in recent years in the neo-conservative branch of the party, a very strong central executive.

Bush has been a huge offender in this regard: he has done more to expand executive authority beyond the intent of our country’s founders than any president in recent memory. And Bush has been very savvy in his use of fear for political purposes. I know of at least one study that links his win in the 2004 election to his repeated hammering of the 9/11 drum.* Many of his political maneuvers that have expanded the power of the executive branch or narrowed or destroyed our civil liberties have been directly tied to his asserted need for such powers to protect us from the terrorists, bringing us to the point where it is very difficult for me to say who I fear more: the terrorists, or our own government.

The current Republican candidates are no better: Giuliani is expressly campaigning on a 9/11 platform, and Romney has said he wants to double the size of Guantanamo. Don’t even get me started on Tancredo.

So don’t get on Hillary’s case for recognizing the reality of the situation. A terrorist attack in the run-up to 9/11 the presidential election likely would help the Republicans. Many of the Republican candidates know this — that is why they are emphasizing it so much. The Department of Homeland Security has funded a number of studies in the field of terror management theory in the years since 9/11, and the Republican political leadership is aware of the results of those studies — I know for a fact that some of the university professors doing the research have briefed very highly placed military and civilian officials in the government on the outcomes of those studies.

We need to wake up to the reality that certain politicians are using our fears of terrorist attacks to manipulate us. Hillary gets my thanks for pointing this out in a larger venue than this tiny blog.

-jane doe

* The study is in a proprietary academic database, so I can’t post a link to it here, but if you are interested in obtaining a copy, send me an e-mail and I will be happy to send you its citation, or check the references listed at the end of this post.