I would love to hope that today’s Pennsylvania primary will somehow put an end to the increasingly toxic nomination fight. However, poll numbers are all over the place. I fear we will have no clear resolution tonight, and the fight will go on.
I’ve got an incredibly busy day ahead, but will post tonight if I’m not too depressed.
Update: Sorry; I’m too depressed. I’ll post something tomorrow.
Update 2: Steve M. has some thoughts on why working-class white voters prefer privileged elitist Hillary Clinton, and it isn’t necessarily racism.
Update 3: Editorial in tomorrow’s New York Times, which endorsed Senator Clinton:
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
Thank you.
“…history turns upon the tides and not the deeds of man…”
This is, after the last 8 years, very taxing. If you look at the poison that has been spread a million different ways by the right wing thugs you begin to realize how much has changed.
If tis goes on, if HRC manages to strong arm the nomination, maybe good. Maybe bad. Dems will vote no matter what but will it be enough? Mcslain is so hated by his own party that some will vote for HRC. Thing is there will be no passion on her side. No multitudes driven where before they were mute. She may win but it will not be the force needed to reverse our course. After her statement today of obliterating Iran one can only stare into the abyss and despair…
but then again it is a beautiful day today! Maybe we can have a cup of hope instead of a pound of fear…
Apparently, our long national nightmare will not be over. Based on the numbers with 45% of the vote in, according to the BBC.
Hang on for hours of talking heads bloviating about whether or not 6-8% is a big enough win. Or, find something useful to do.
I grew up in small town western Pennsylvania, and spent quite a few decades there. Was always frustrated by the lack of real progressiveness in most of the state’s citizens – and so I left for California, right when hometown boy Tom Ridge became governor, in 1994. The rest of my town was celebrating his win – and indeed Ridge channelled a great deal of state largesse our neglected, dying way during his tenure as governor – I, nonetheless was packing and California dreamin’. Ridge represented for me yet another moderate Republican governor – albeit a straight arrow, competent, honest, Harvard educated one: and at the same time boring, and extremely typical for Pennsylvania.
I didn’t pay hardly any attention to this latest electorial tussle, and so I am completely unfamiliar with all the nuances and tumults that led to Hillary’s win. Given that, it’s completely understandable to me that the state went for her over Obama. Just as I was frustrated with the state’s lack of imagination and progressiveness when I lived there, it’s completely understandable that they’d see Obama as too far out there, relative to Hillary, a very known quantity. Race may or may not have been a part of it (it probably was for many), but the root issue I believe is the state’s basic conservative, purple nature.
Demographics show that a huge number of young people leave the state as soon as they are able – anyone with a triple digit IQ is going to feel the call to leave, as I did. And so what’s left are those who are older and more conservative. Carville infamously quipped that PA is a sandwich with Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on the outside, and Alabama/Appalachia in the middle. There’s a lot of truth to that.
So Hill won by 10 points. Big fucking deal. Funny thing is she only gained 10 delegates. So Obama’s lead dwindles from 167 to 157. What exactly does that mean? It means that HRC is free to kill whatever chance the Democratic Party has for two more weeks. It means she can make a few more appearances on late night television (maybe another 109 million in book sales). It means that she has three more weeks until either she quits or her husband convinces the black guy to bow out. It means alot of things, but in the end it only means 10 delegates. It means another week of faux news, another week of killing the eventual nominee; it means alot of things that will keep things the way they are, and the way some of us want them to be. It means that she will try her best to maintain the status quo!
“she may win but it will not be the force needed to reverse our course”
Hillary can’t reverse our course, because she belives in it. She will protect the Bush Crime Family, she will spend her entire administration protecting the political ill’s of the last two administations. Wake the fuck up. Why do you think she is running? She is no different than the neoconsuperfratboys, she is a war monger, she is whatever works (she was real anti arab on 9-12-01) she sat on the board of the great evil empire (BillClinton-WalMart). I am confised by how and why you people (liberals) support her?