Just how is Clinton different from McCain or the Bush policies? She supported the Iraq war, refused to oppose the bankruptcy bill and telecom immunity, supported Bush's phoney war on Iran, etc., etc.

There are two things that bother me about Hillary. One is that she wouldn't be the first woman president so much as she would be the first *wife* president. That kind of nepotism is for dictatorships and kingdoms--and it's most of the explanation of how we got stuck with Dubya in the first place. A second wrong is not going to make a right.

The other thing is that I am afraid she could lose the election. As far as the right wing hate machine is concerned, it does not matter who the Democrats nominate. You know they are going to be frothing at the mouth and very energetic about it. Hey, it "worked" against Gore and Kerry--but I think it worked because neither Gore nor Kerry could generate sufficient positive energy to overcome it. I think Obama can generate much more positive energy than Hillary, and that makes him a better candidate.

On the issues, they are basically the same. Hillary's a little better on some issues, but worse on others. Both of them are *FAR* from McCain's positions, and the gap will probably increase as the rightwing lunatics pressure McCain for various promises like V-P the Dick Cheney redux.

Anyway, the office of the Texas Secretary of State has said they will fight to prevent me from voting this time. Yes, I have a right and a duty to vote, but they have the pretense, and you can't fight city hall and Dubya's legacy in Texas. Each election those democracy-haters have made it more difficult for me to vote and more dubious that my vote was ever opened or looked at. If I had a vote, and if I had to pick between Hillary and McCain I would pick Hillary--but with no real enthusiasm.

"One is that she wouldn't be the first woman president so much as she would be the first *wife* president. That kind of nepotism is for dictatorships and kingdoms--and it's most of the explanation of how we got stuck with Dubya in the first place."

Not to pick on just you, because this appears to be a prevailing attitude. However, it completely ignores the entirety of Hillary's political life since her college days. It's true she hadn't been elected to office before she was first lady, but she sure was immersed in politics up until that point. Its not like she is riding Bills coattails into office. Gore couldn't even do that and he was the VP. Bill seems more a hindrance, at the moment anyhow.

What's more Hillary actually is a sitting Senator. She may need to convince voters to pull a lever for her Presidency like every other candidate. But she sure is qualified in her own right to hold the office of President, as much as any man is today.

It would be nepotism only if Bill were still in office and used that power to assist Hillary in succeeding him. If Hillary gets elected it will be because of who she is, not because of who she's married to.

That kind of treachery comes with a price.

But make no mistake, in November you'll see all kinds of people who claim that getting us out of the war in Iraq is their #1 issue voting for a candidate who put us there to begin with, and will most likely keep us there indefinitely.

I won't be one of those people.

I'm supporting Obama, but will absolutely vote for Hillary if she's nominated. There, now you've heard it from one. And, I suspect if you were willing to hear what you don't want to, you've heard it before.

Everyone has a lizard brain. And almost everyone pretends that they don't, only the other guy's supporters do.

This is the place that kept me from driving over the edge in the time leading to the runup, during the run-up, and during the invasion of Iraq. No, I don't want to vote for Clinton if she is the nominee becasue she did vote to authorize. I will NOT vote for any Republican on the national level, especially anyone connected to this batch of assholes thugs.

As Ian points out: "I have a slight preference for Hillary at this point, but it's so slight that I really don't much care who anyone votes for in the primary and I completely understand the pro-Obama arguments. Both the candidates are very flawed, in my opinion.

I don't know. This is really a tough one. I so dearly want to see a Democrat in the White House again, but Senator Clinton represents many things that go against my principles. Funny thing about principles, they're about all we get to hold on to in this short life.

I vowed to myself that I could never vote for Clinton long before Obama announced his candidacy, when she was first running for the Senate and pundits were saying "Well, she really wants to be president." Besides the votes in Congress that I found so offensive, I've decided that my support of a candidate is inverse to her desire to become president. The more he wants to be president, the less I think he's the type of person who should be president.

We get caught this way every election. Candidates who don't represent our values and viewpoints, and people who scold us and tell us we have to "hold our nose" and vote. But if we continue to do this time after time, how will we ever get candidates who represent what we want for our nation?

Sometimes, you have to get off the merry-go-round when it's just going in circles, you know? Of course, I don't want to see a Republican get 4 more picks to the SCOTUS, either. I feel like I'm being blackmailed.

So, the best I can do is support my candidate, the one I know the best, the one I trust the most, the one who represents the inspiration that is so badly lacking in America.

I'm not going to decide whether or not I can "hold my nose" or not until November. I know that I won't be sending any money Clinton's way though.

(That goes for adrena, too.)

Never, ever read DKos unless a poster you trust links there (and then stay away from the comments). I realized that years and years ago. Way before this campaign started. Markos himself is only marginally progressive (he does have some good frontpagers), but he's opened the door wide to all those who would be Freepers except for an ideological mirror¹. I'm not sure why he attracted the nutcases in the first place; pretty clearly advertising revenue makes them valuable.

No DKos is where the deranged go to howl. Pay no attention.

1. Mirrors reverse left and right. Duh.

dkos is but still swing through to see whats up and to look for news. Well there is no news there these days unless it involves the election and the tone over there is horrible. It reminds me of the dem/rep supporters tearing each other apart in 2004. To see this happening now is discouraging. And it isn't just there, but the good thing is it really seems to be a blogosphere and pundit phenomena. We have had our moments here, but have appeared to step back from the edge of democratic particide.

...is lizard brains. Just like a sports contest. Except there it doesn't really matter, at least not for more than a few days.

This year it seems to be more like 98%. But the principles have stepped back a bit. Of course, most who have ever shown their lizard brain will never admit that it was anything but completely logical reasoning, so the idiocy will continue.

Especially on DKos.

Doesn't matter whether it's a primary or general election - people have to take sides and feelings get hurt.

This is why we have political parties, to channel these emotions and control them. Sometimes it doesn't work, like in 1968 for the Democrats, and frankly 2008 for the Republicans (the invective on right wing blogs is transcendentally more vicious than anything on dKos).

So now we will see just how effective party leaders will be in turning our attention to McCain and the general election. I think it is happening already. Obama's victory margins are just too overwhelming to ignore. He's making inroads into her base and clearly drawing independents and even Republicans to his side. Talk is that Hillary is making her last stand in Texas and Ohio. That sort of talk means that should she not do very well in both states, party leaders are going to have to do two things: pressure the superdelegates to declare now that they support Obama, so that enough of them clearly will put him over the top; and pressure Hillary to wind down her campaign.

A lot of this will be done behind the scenes. I suspect the first steps are being undertaken now, and they are starting to be reflected in comments by the pundits. This process will give time for Hillary and her team to relax and reflect and gear up for the Denver convention when she and Bill come out in support of Obama.

That's my hope, at least.

By the way, Markos is a player in the Democratic party. We are too here at the Agonist in a smaller way, though I suspect we have a lot more independents and maybe Republicans joining in from time to time. It is up to Markos to control the emotions on his website, not by censoring comments, but by adding his voice from time to time reminding people of what's at stake in the general election. This will be an interesting test of his leadership.

because I support Hillary, I should start the grieving process now?

She's lost eight of the last eight contests and was trounced in all of them. I'd be discouraged if not grieving, but things can turn around quickly if she does very well in Ohio and Texas. So I wouldn't give up all hope.

P.S. I know something about grieving. I voted for George McGovern.

Although I'm beginning to experience battle fatigue I'll just soldier on. I will fight with Hillary to the very end.

few 'slightly favoring Hillary' posts is benign compared to the pattern of numerous virulently pro Obama posts and comments in the left wing blogoshphere.

Are the Hillary fans not allowed to have any positive sentiments expressed towards Hillary?

This is the first election in my short life where a candidate is running for president with whom I have some personal connection, though very slight. Living in Hyde Park in Chicago gave me the chance to get to know Barack Obama a tiny bit in a direct way. Not as a candidate, but as a neighbor, an academic, and as a lawyer.

I disagree with those who would say that Senator Obama is not a progressive. The little bit I know from personal experience with him (which is very little, but much more than I've had with any other candidate) tells me that he's the most progressive serious candidate that we've had since 1968, when a twelve year-old me got chased through Grant Park by a very fat Chicago policeman and couldn't understand why Robert Kennedy had to die.

Pat Robertson was selling the videotape.

... from MI then my vote won't have counted at all. So first, I'll be PO'd if they don't find an amicable way to un-disenfranchise me.

As unhappy with current politics as I am, that comment is the moment of clarity, sans telling people to kill themselves.

seems too strong, I can always post the other pictures I refrained from posting.

Like child casualties in Iraq. Women grieving. Gitmo. Abu Ghraib.

Real realities, real grief, for real people - realities against which such enunciations of "not voting on principle" stand starkly illuminated as the priggish, insubstantial, self-indulgent masturbation they are.

Billions of people planet-wide that would die - sometimes literally - to have a voice in the American policies that affect their lives daily, and one of the 5% of the planet actally enfranchised to vote to influence that policy, no matter in what miniscule way, is seriously going to tell me they plan to waste that enfranchisement as some petty ridiculous adolescent protest?

No, I'm in fact deadly f*cking serious. I strongly urge any shallow, useless, irresponsible, franchise-wasting parasite who won't act at the earliest opportunity to stop this madness to kill themselves immediately - preferably without first reproducing those genes. And I strongly advise anyone who, based on those principles, actually refrains from voting these people out to keep that fact a secret from me if they meet me in person.

and another one at the back door with a machete, maybe you should open your door the one you prefer. As for me, I won't be opening the door.

Don't forget that the candidates you are so deadly f*cking serious that I vote for, voted to start the clusterf*ck in Iraq. Voted to continue funding it, again and again. Refused to impeach the conspirators for the naked lies told to sell it, or for the suppression of those who would tell the truth about it.

They are not an opposition; they are collaborators. In a just country-- and I hope one day to live in such a country-- they would be lined up and shot alongside Bush, Cheney & Co for their part in the same crimes. But you think I exhibit some moral failing for refusing to be a part of their defilement of my country?

Pretty screwy logic, if you ask me.

Then you are funding the "clusterf*ck". You are a collaborator.

Your logic is that of the temper tantrum.

That's Bib Laden's line! ;)

and its relationship to "collective punishment" is a huge theme being grappled with worldwide right now - whether from the perspective of bin Laden's statements, or America's scourging of Fallujah and Iraq in general, or Tom Tancredo's exhortation to bomb Mecca, or Israel towards Palestine, or Palestine towards Israel...

The Bush-enablers should be allowed to drift farther and farther toward the middle of wherever the hell the road has been relocated to? Not with my support. Witholding my vote is the only power I have left. If they think we have to vote for them because they are a half inch to the left of Bush and we have no other choice, they must be informed that we are not going along with it.

The pictures that Escher wants to show us are EXACTLY the reason I feel this way. Hillary voted for those pictures. And, thanks for the advice, but I don't think I will kill myself.

Another one who thinks that punishing himself will cause others to change their ways.

Not voting simply means you join the 70% of Americans who typically don't vote. Sorry to say that no one knows how many don't vote out of deeply held "moral" convictions, and how many just don't care. No one knows, and no one cares.

It is permitted to leave the pres/VP line blank, and search for progressive candidates downticket. And wouldn't a third party be a nice option? (Cue Nader hatred... you MUST vote for the choice we give you!)

I'm not a Nader-hater. Though the schtick has gotten stale, so there's no appeal, either.

In the old days when I lived on the left coast and the networks could call it before the voting was over, I'd wait until the end of the day. If the Dem had lost, I'd vote the furthest left I could. But deliberately wasting your vote is just stupid.

The crucial point that anarchists fail to appreciate is that:

There is no bottom. It can keep getting worse forever. Any hell you can imagine, they can make wider and deeper.

They welcome chaos, because people will trade liberty for order. Has this not been amply demonstrated?

I know illusions die hard. But this is not a matter of Dramatic Choices Between Great And Iconic American Leaders.

The relevance of the Democratic Party is as a check on the Republican Party (and vice versa). You don't "trust" them or "love" them, you use one as a tool to constrain, and when necessary cleanse, the other.

Here's your ship of state in 2008.

This person is not leaning that way because they think that side "deserves" their weight, nor because they're punishing the other side of the ship by going the other way. They are not withholding their support for the side of that ship by staying seated in the middle.

Yes, absolutely, one side of your political ship is much like the other side. It would be absurd to invest a lot of emotional energy in "liking" one side of the ship more than another. But that's not the point. We aren't concerned with the sides and center of the ship here, which are static, and far less with emotional reactions to them. We're concerned with the center of gravity, which is dynamic and has been artificially skewed hard right.

If you want your ship to capsize, lean right.

If you want your ship to capsize, refuse to move one way or the other.

If you want your ship to capsize, stay in the center.

And don't waste energy blaming the ship if the counterbalancing side doesn't extend out far enough for your tastes. The person in the picture isn't wasting energy on that, they're too busy creating a solution.

which is worse: an overturned boat, or one that remains upright as it limps on to the Port of Houston? Ask any Austinite if you need help with this question. ;^)

This ship is built so heavy on the right that if we ever get it leveled out it'll only be able to sail in a circle. During my entire politically involved life, extending from the Reagan administration to now, our best efforts have made a difference only in the rate of its capsizing. It has only two watertight compartments, and one of them has been flooded for as long as anybody can remember. Even our dashing captain in the '90s kept his crew busy drilling more holes in the hull on that side.

To keep this vessel afloat just delays the inevitable. We need a ship with more compartments. And one that doesn't keep going to Houston.

things in the right direction, and they have declined-- not failed, but refused-- to do so.

What's the difference between political leadership that will make things slowly and inexorably worse and that which will make things worse fast? Setting aside boiling frog analogies for the moment, I think the likelihood that the American people will get some help from elsewhere in the world is dramatically improved by the latter. Give the US a slow decline into dictatorship and the rest of the capitalist world will have a long time during which they can gradually shift their investments and concerns elsewhere. But if we get a crackpot who wants to throw down with the remainder of the Islamic world (just as an example), then we face the opportunity for what in a city would be called "receivership"-- the equivalent to taking away a drunk's car keys before he can drive out of the party.

The USA is uniquely positioned for having its economy brought to a halt without a shot being fired. All that would take is the conviction by large stakeholding nations that they or their money are in more peril if they let things continue unabated than if they interfere-- or that they have more to gain by becoming the world's power player than they have to lose by "writing down" the value of those investments.

McCain is crazy. But if elected, he won't be remembered like Bush will be remembered, as a swaggering buffoon and arch villain. He'll be remembered like Hoover. He'll be the one who was driving the bus (like a jackass, of course) when the wheels came off.

You tell me: if what it will take to fix our country's built-in problems is "little things" like proportional representation and a tax structure that is actually progressive right up to the top of the scale, what do you think has to happen for us to get those things? We have a political beast with a proven downside like "undo the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta" and potential winnings like "let queers get married" and "increase SUV efficiency requirements". What will it take to change that?

And more to the point, what do you think today's top-ranked Democrats are going to do to change that?

... the Dems, its a specific and reliable list of them: Conrad, Rockefeller, Baucus, Webb, Kohl, Whitehouse, Bayh, Johnson, Bill Nelson, Mikulski, McCaskill, Lincoln, Casey, Salazar, Inouye, Ben Nelson, Pryor, Carper, and Landrieu.

For instance. These are the Dems who voted against the Constitution. In that list are names you find on virtually every Congressional capitulation to the Bush agenda. They are, simply put, neither Democrats nor progressives.

"what do you think has to happen for us to get those things?"

Vote these despicable persons out of government.

"what do you think today's top-ranked Democrats are going to do to change that? "

Not a damned thing.

"The USA is uniquely positioned for having its economy brought to a halt without a shot being fired."

No shots. Bombs. Your premise is based on the foolish assumption that on being economically defeated, the evildoers will quietly abdicate to spend the rest of their lives rubbing ashes in their hair.

If that's the outcome you want, you should probably vote for the milquetoast evil instead of 'roid rage one.

but Americans are not Russians. Their allegiances will cease along with their paychecks, military personnel included.

Note also that the USSR didn't go down in a blaze of glory when its economy unraveled either. Without a surplus to divert, it suffocated as quietly as if it had been oxygen in short supply instead of money (or credit). Who's going to keep the loans rolling when the US crosses the Rubicon in the world's eyes? Israel?

The US's current folly exists by consent of its uneasy allies worldwide. This is the glass jaw that US policy refuses to acknowledge. Elect useless Democrats, and the folly will remain but consent will solidify.

I don't intend to vote for any kind of evil. But that pretty much rules out the Democrats along with the Repugs.

Right. Russians didn't fire a shot.

"Their allegiances will cease along with their paychecks, military personnel included."

Wrong in at least 2 ways. The Russian people had almost zero allegiance. You went to work. You did almost nothing. You received pretty much useless rubles, good for waiting in line. You did get a place to live and a bus system, but that's about it. Much of their feared military machine wouldn't even start - it wasn't maintained. So I put American allegiance as a far stronger force than Russian.

Secondly, paychecks won't cease overnight. This is a big country with a lot of fat left to burn. If dollars don't work so good anymore, the US military will confiscate food. There is no way that a McCain would allow a collapse. It would be an existential threat, and therefor justify a nuclear response.