Here's A Warning To The Two Campaigns

[KingOfLostSouls]

theres a lot of bad things being said about governor richardson over his endorsement.

you need to stop now. seriously.

governor richardson made his choice. its not about loyalty or whatnot. he's got a great gig as one of the best governor's in the union. he could run for senate and win that too.

bill richardson has proven his loyalty to this party, to the democratic cause, and our principles. he's a supremely qualified statesman who only has shown a willingness to support our causes. he's a representative of the largest minority group in america.

now, I supported joe biden but governor richardson was my second choice. theres still many undecideds out there amongst us, but from the slander against governor richardson, you really are making it obvious who to support instead of you candidate.

when and if joe biden decides to endorse someone, then what? are we biden supporters not loyal enough for you? or how about john edwards, who ran a helluva race and got a bad treatment from the media, how bout his supporters? or the kucinich supporters? or what about the fans of al gore, the man who should be president? there wouldn't even BE a campaign going on if Gore had jumped in, so maybe thank your stars and garters he didn't.


just a little warning, you aren't making friends by slandering people who have earned the respect of many of us who take politics more serious than cheap shots and petty problems. governor richardson made his endorsement. it was his decision. the voter's will decide in pennsylvania and so forth, but again, alienating and name calling to democrats who are fans and did support other presidential candidates isn't going to score you any bonus points. it WILL, however, cost you votes.


so just cool it from now on because you only have two options at this point


you can lose with class

or just be a loser.

[ThatBozGuy]

1. Richardson, definitely earned solid respect.

[slinkerwink]

2. Carville just called Richardson "Judas"

[pocoloco]

3. pot meet kettle!!

[KingOfLostSouls]

5. Carville is a traitor

richardson has earned his spurs TIME AND TIME AND TIME AGAIN

carville tried to stab dean in the back.

the man has no business in this party.


he's one reason why its been so hard for me to want to get behind hillary. I LIKE Hillary. I think shes a phenomenal woman, politician, and an EXCELLENT senator. shes an awesome speaker.

carville is trash.

[99th_Monkey]

12. Carville is literally married to the opposition. He's the LAST person who should talk.

Carville has the least credibility of almost anyone I could think of to make a charge of someone
being a "Judas" because they pick the clear front-runner for the nomination with the most Democratic
voters, caucus attendees, and delegates. Screw Carville.

[TML]

17. Oh my

James Carville, you have officially jumped the shark.

[JVS]

4. You say this is directed at both campaigns, but it clearly only applies to Clinton's campaign.

If Biden endorses Obama, welcome aboard. If not, no biggie. I don't know why anyone would think that any campaign is owed endorsements.

[KingOfLostSouls]

7. I don't appreciate the trashing of Richardson

if he endorsed clinton and the obama camp was doing it, I'd be saying the same thing

Richardson isn't some political neophyte making a decision on a whim.

he's EARNED respect.

[calimary]

6. I still put it down to the near-insane desperation so many of us here feel, after

almost eight years of being "waterbushed."

It's been a VERY miserable time. I can imagine the mind-fucking feeling that prisoners in isolation feel, or those confined to a tight space for a long time, or those being slowly tormented to death.

I think it's been so maddening for many of us that some of us may just be exploding by now.

We all need to be a little more gentle with each other. It will be over soon. One way or another. The hostage hold will finally end. Hopefully in a most satisfying way.

[Mooney]

10. You're totally right.

8 years of Bush does strange things to people's minds. This was never meant to be.

[Melinda]

15. Well, that brought tears.

Common sense and objectivity seems to have vanished from this place... and the turning on each other is just beyond reason. There really hasn't been much "reasoning" on DU the last few months, and it's becoming uglier and uglier. Dividing us in so many ways, and I feel as if I'm having an out-of-body experience when reading here lately.

Anyway, your post moved me, and I can deeply appreciate where you're coming from. Thanks for letting me feel a bit less alone on DU tonight. :)




*On edit; damn contraction!

[calimary]

20. Hey, Melinda! Here's a hug!

:hug:

I think that's what's driven us to turn on each other. Because we have nowhere else to turn. You know how it is when you just lash out - without really thinking - when you've just been forced to eat so much shit that it damn near makes you crazy?

I had a mom like that. She had been publicly humiliated for so many years by a philandering husband who maintained separate living arrangements. The only ones home day in and day out were herself - and me. She would NOT get therapy or go talk to anyone, and somehow, I guess commiserating with a girlfriend here and there just wasn't enough (assuming she dropped her state of denial with any of them). She had only one outlet for her torment: me. Let me say here and now that she NEVER hit me. EVER. Never touched me in anger. Took a wild swing once or twice in my entire life that was so far from connecting that it might as well have been thrown in the next house. But the verbal attacks were INSANE!!! I know in her own way she loved me and she just couldn't help herself and didn't know any better. But it stung. She took out ALL her hostilities on me, all her anger, all her resentment, all her pent-up years of that kind of insult and neglect. She never had the nerve, much less the inclination, to confront the actual source of her misery. Passive-aggressive, I guess. But she sure took it out on me. In spades - and shovels and rakes and everything else in the garden shed. She had no relief, and no place else to put it, too proud to seek counseling or even medication to dull the pain, and it drove her nearly mad. And she lashed out at me simply because I was the only one around, so I bore the full brunt of it. Tons o' fun.

I think that same syndrome is manifesting here among many of us. I mean, I wake up every morning since December 12th, 2000, feeling like a hostage. And we here on DU have spent those years fighting, trying to get to and then spread the truth, trying to get someone to listen, whether it was someone in the media somewhere, or some Congressperson, or even a coworker or neighbor or in-law. We've met with spotty success at best, because the on-going efforts and their incomplete effectiveness have NOT relieved us of this bastard and his criminal regime, and don't seem to have done much to bring him or anybody around him to justice. The best we've gotten for all those years of dissent and activism and struggle has been scooter libby - and even THAT was an incomplete pass. These schmucks, many of them refugees from the Watergate era, learned that era's lessons well, about stacking the deck, covering your tracks, gaming the system, sneaking around more effectively and making sure to take the duct tape off the door latch. They've built entire institutions around it to support and cover for them and further their interests. All we've had is ourselves and a few other ragtag groups in the grassroots and the progressive underground. And they've had a 30-year head start in building this huge and nearly invincible infrastructure into a veritable Goliath who hasn't met his David yet, while we're stuck in the role of a David without a slingshot.

Result? FUCKING MISERY!!!

We don't have smilie symbols like this one: :banghead: for nothing.

But all I can say is that it may finally be over. It WILL be over to one extent or other, and we will be delivered, if we finally get a Dem securely in the White House. And as Howard Dean once said - the only way you lose is if you give up. And we really can't give up, can we? Which makes it all the harder when we've worked so hard and struggled for so long and still don't have a huge lot of victories to show for it yet, besides skin-of-our-teeth majorities in both houses of Congress - that aren't robust enough to get much of anything done.

That's one reason why I still find DU valuable. I try to avoid or ignore threads I think may bring me down. And I try to think of it in this context - that we're just utterly maddened by this misery and not our usual selves under this seven-and-some year long state of duress. Hang in there, okay?

:pals:

[ClassWarrior]

8. "You can lose with class, or just be a loser."

I'm almost tempted to put that in my sigline. But I've got such a good one already.

:toast:

NGU.

[Frustratedlady]

9. It had to be difficult for Richardson to call Hillary, not to mention the reception

he'll get in the future. He spoke from his heart and was exactly what Obama needed. At one point, I thought Obama had to fight to regain his composure.

Let's get busy and get a Dem in that WH.

[KingOfLostSouls]

11. I'll be honest

I've been leaning towards obama the past week or so.

I'm like, I feel, a lot of biden supporters. kinda just sitting back and watching and not really getting involved, kinda watching the childishness unfold

but two things have done it for me are the speech on race. as a minority/mixed race, it really hit deep inside of me. it spoke to things, living in a conservative primarily white region, I deal with daily. how we've allowed race to divide us from the real problems and its been used to keep people apart. it didnt seem contrived or anything, it seemed like a still relatively young politician stepping up and stepping outside of the spectrum and really saying something that people NEED to hear. it really did remind me of the great speeches by my heroes, FDR, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, Abe Lincoln.

the second was the Richardson endorsement because I have a tremendous respect for bill richardson. he doesn't try to be flashy or use catch phrases, he's a diplomat. he's a smart guy who really believes in the fair handedness of our party. he's a tremendous political force and really a strong bedrock of our party, one of those true blue democrats, like biden or russ feingold or teddy kennedy or my governor, chris gregoire, who really only bring strength to our party. who really know how to speak candidly and openly and aren't afraid to talk to people and really serve as a role model for us.


and now the reception from people like james carville and mark penn has really made me a bit angry. carville has no place to talk, because I am a true Deaniac, howard dean got me into politics and I still think he's the best man in politics today, a true believer in the goodness of america. so james carville already has my enemity.

[Speck Tater]

13. Republican technique: Either you're with us or you're an evil demon from hell.

It's so sad to see the same technique showing up so often here in DU.

Some candidates seem to bring out the worst in people. So sad.

[KingOfLostSouls]

14. I know

this is bill richardson we're talking about here, not joe lieberman.

I'm hoping that what richardson said will happen, more and more of the superdelegates will step in and help moderate some of the nastiness. maybe not give endorsements or take sides, but just kinda help get things back onto the higher ground.


if anyone can do it, richardson can, he definitely is the great negotiator of our party.

[napoleon_in_rags]

16. Here's a warning to the two campaigns: You can lose with class, or just be a loser.

To which two campaigns are you referring?

[Dogmudgeon]

18. That knife cuts both ways -- and belongs to no one.

First, I find it interesting that Obama supporters are so keen to tell everybody what they "need to" do. I hope your leader does not share your own excesses in this regard.

And you are seriously mistaken to think that people won't see this as an act of personal betrayal. The Clintons have been extremely loyal to Richardson. How can anyone decide that "my candidate is running, so all considerations of long-time allegiance are null and void" -- and believe that the whole world will think it's cool? I can understand if you do not hold loyalty as a value, but most people do; ignoring that dynamic is perilous in politics.

It is also amazing that the smallest slips the Clintons make (usually judged so by interpretation rather than reality) are regarded as outrages to the honor of Humanity itself, but Obama's surrogates' slips are called justified and justifiable. If Bill Richardson wants to piss on a 16-year relationship, that's a rational decision made for The Good Of The Party And Country -- right? Wrong. Some people look at that kind of behavior (and let me be charitable) as puzzling, to say the least. And a few get livid.

The reason given for Bill's actions is that Barack Obama is so gosh-darned special. Sorry, but I don't buy it, and an act like Richardson's does not sell me on it. It makes me ask questions about why the hell a decent fellow like him would do something that most people find personally offensive.

Imagine if it were YOU. A close friend at work, for instance, supporting your rival for a promotion -- with enthusiasm, and in public. How would you feel? How would you feel looking at such a situation if it wasn't you, but it was in your real life? I strongly doubt that you would claim fair's-square and be glad that the best person was promoted and your own efforts were in vain and somehow tainted.

You've given me two options, but I think you're looking at me through your own perceptions. You support Obama, and are caught up in the thrill of the impending victory. And I can lose without too much trouble -- or "with class", as you put it. I've usually been on the losing side. It's not fun, but it's politics, it's a part of being a Democrat, and I support my party.

First, I'd like to understand not only the Tommy-like behavior over Obama, but the zeal to destroy Hillary and her supporters. People say she is evil to the bone, but can't produce an x-ray, or even a single verifiable story of her special evil.

Second, here's a dilemma for you: You can WIN with class, or you can just win.

Consider, for a moment, the fate of poor winners.

--p!

[revolve]

19. Ahh so loyalty is paramount and skill is secondary

That seems like someone else. Don't tell me I'll get it here in a second.