Accepting apologies on line 1
There is no schadenfreude in the Smoking Lounge. Every single thing I wrote and predicted about Barack Obama in 2008 was true, true, true, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching the nightmare unfold. After all, the reason I cared so much in 2008 was because I was so desperate to stave off the disaster. Now that I’m living through the disaster, I’m not exactly enjoying it.
The news is so bad I can hardly stand to read it, much less blog about it. The president goes on TV to fellate the ghost of Ronald Reagan and apologize for being a Democrat; the Catfood Commission unveils its brainiac plan to starve old janitors to death; the White House agrees to keep the tax cuts on the aristocracy and announces it will work with the nutjobs in the House who are planning to grind the economy to an absolute dead halt.
This is what you get. It’s exactly what I said you would get. In one of those many, many posts in 2008 I wrote something like, “Obama represents the metastasization of the Republican cancer to the Democratic party.” People called me a racist for saying that. They accused me of being a wingnut racist Republican mole who was flinging mud to besmirch Obama’s name. Funny.
You know what else is funny? Nobody has ever apologized to me. Not that it would make a difference, but still. Not one of those people who accused me of being a racist and secret wingnut has ever said, “You were right about Obama. I’m sorry I called you those names.”
What they do instead is claim that no one could have known how Obama would turn out. He seemed like cream of Jesus on toast, so how could they know? Nobody could know! And as for the uncomfortable fact that a bunch of people, including me, seemed to know exactly how Obama would turn out and were saying so loudly in 2008—well, that was just coincidence. I’m still, according to this logic, a racist unfeminist wingnut on the Republican payroll whose 2008 rantings just happened, by sheer coincidence, to accord precisely with unfolding reality.
The other thing they do is claim that Hillary would have been even worse. To which I say: horseshit. Hillary is a moderate Democrat, but she’s unmistakably a Democrat, in both ideology and practice, with a lifetime of public service to prove it. Besides, her base was the working class, and she knew it. It is unimaginable that Hillary would preside over the economic disembowelment of the very people whose swing votes put her in office. Hillary is also a feminist, and after Stupak and Obama’s Executive Order No. Fuck You, all those twits who claimed Obama would be “better for women” need to do about five years of public penance.
But they can start by apologizing to me.
P.S. Actually, I did get one thing wrong in 2008: when I predicted, with more hope than conviction, that voters would reject Obama. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
58 Responses to “Accepting apologies on line 1”
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Grace says:
Totally agree!!! I actually suspected Obama as far as from the time he talked at the 2004 democratic convention and he made his famous statement: “there are no blue states or red states but the United States of America.” Since then, I have thought of him as an opportunist and a closet Republican. Later during the primaries, I also predicted that he was a fraud, a fictional character created by marketing, a made-up fantasy, blank slate in which people projected everything they wanted to see.
Everything that Hillary and Bill said about him was true, and the reason why they couldn’t destroy him was because they were afraid of being politically ostracized. If John Edwards would have been the contender, his affair with Hunter would have come up at that time (Bill and Hillary knew about it).
And by the way, Obama started “fellating the ghost” of Reagan during the primaries, describing him as a “transformative” president, “more than Clinton.” And nobody,with the exception of Hillary (I had a thrill re-watching the South Carolina primary debate in YouTube the other day) said anything.
Now that Obama showed his true colors, the same people who supported him need to justify their past choices with stupid rationalizations, like that Hillary would have been worse. It is always better to find any kind of excuse than to accept and realize that one has been fooled, lied to, and screwed. I am still waiting for the puppets of Ms. magazine (“this is what a feminist looks like”), NARAL, and the likes of Naomi Wolf to speak in TV and say what they think of the man who “shagged” them with their full consent.
November 11th, 2010 at 8:25 pm EST -
Sameol says:
I truly hate the “Hillary would have been just as bad” thing. Not only is it really, really unlikely, considering, most of those saying it weren’t exactly coming from a place of they’re both about the same. More like a place of Jesus vs. Evil Incarnate. Their judgment’s been proven to be worth less than a bucket of warm spit, therefore further weak avoidance of responsibility doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
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spring says:
Thank you for articulating this feeling. I was one of those with you. I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse.
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Falstaff says:
You and me, both — as we know. The stuff we were saying holds up remarkably well — http://falstaff-falstaff.blogspot.com/2008/06/feel-free-to-spare-us.html — with the same caveat: We didn’t see Lehman coming.
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myiq2xu says:
I will admit that I was wrong about Obama.
He’s even worse than I predicted.
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myiq2xu says:
PS:
I’m glad you’re back
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Violet Socks says:
Now that I mention it, I would be curious to know who has received an apology. I suspect that most of us haven’t. I haven’t, and I know for a fact that a couple of AA bloggers I know haven’t (and they were excoriated in terms I won’t repeat, but suffice it to say “mentally sick” “self-hating” were in there).
I vaguely recall that Lambert got a public apology from somebody, which is an amazing thing, but I don’t remember who was doing the apologizing.
Has anybody ever apologized to BAR? To The Confluence? To Egalia? To Anglachel?
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Nadai says:
But, Violet, you were right for the wrong reasons, which is the same thing as being wrong, and they were wrong for the right reasons, which is the same thing as being right. So really you should apologize to them.
Gaaaaah.
My only question to the ones saying Clinton would be as bad as Obama is this: Considering you were fucking stupid enough to think Obama was some sort of liberal, why in the name of all the gods that ever were should I ever listen to a single word you have to say?
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lambert strether says:
Violet:
Immediately after Obama flip-flopped on FISA, I got an apology from Gen. JC Christian, patriot, who I commend to your attention. And I recently got a “I was wrong, Corrente was right” mea culpa from Brad Reed of C&L (not really an apology, but really, so what?)
My argument on “Hillary would have been worse” is the same today as it was in the primaries: “When in doubt, vote the base.” Which, as you point out, included the working class, unlike Obama’s.
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Ciardha says:
I’ve received no apologies, the closest I’ve received to apologies are from a couple of people who voted for Hillary in the primary but let themselves believe Obama couldn’t be as bad as I warned them and voted for them in the general election instead of either writing in Hillary Clinton or Cynthia McKinney. Plus my dad, who favored Hillary early on, but let a bit of the koolaide get to him and fell for the media Obama adulation, now doesn’t disagree with me that Hillary would have been better.
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Falstaff says:
I don’t think “Hillary would have been just as bad” warrants rebuttal, or even anger. It’s the argumentative equivalent of “So’s your old man.” What I think it’s fair to say is that (a) the general mood of the nation would still be pretty sour (it is a Great Recession, after all); (b) the hurt feelings of the Obots would be flying in the wind (they and their Chauncey Gardner would never have made the grown-up accommodation Hillary did, and they’d be full-throatedly screaming about what a lost opportunity for progress her election was… a return to the bad old partisan past); (c) misogyny would be even more virulent than it is today (Jon Favreau would be President of MSNBC); (d) the economy would be in materially better, more hopeful shape; (e) we’d have something much closer to actual healthcare reform; (f) the Democrats would still be in control of both houses of Congress; and (g) Hillary wouldn’t be getting much public credit for any of the good stuff. Still, in the world of reality, things would be much better.
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sister of ye says:
To those who put forward the “Hillary would have been the same” argument, I counter: Look at the record.
In her entire political life, Hillary Clinton has pushed projects to help others. She did it as first lady of Arkansas, she did it as a private citizen, she did it as senator from New York. Even her much-criticized time on the board of Walmart was done with the motive of improving the lot of their much-exploited workers.
There was even the bill she pushed funding reseach on an illness suffered by the daughter of some friends – friends who later backstabbed her by supporting Obama. (Sorry, my Google search didn’t bring the specifics up – maybe some of you recall.)
Has there ever been an example put forward, much less a documented one, of Obama making an effort to help anyone but himself? Seriously. And don’t bring up that “community organizer” crap. That has “resume polishing political position” written all over it.
Anyone? No? I didn’t think so. Well, with no record of unmotivated help extended to anyone, why the bloody hell would anyone expect anything else out of Obama as president? Any why would they expect H. Clinton to sell out those she spent a lifetime working to help?
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JeanLouise says:
The friends that Hillary helped were Susan and David Axelrod. Their daughter has autism, I believe, and Hillary has done fundraisers for them.
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Grace says:
Sister of ye: The bill Hillary pushed funding was to help…guess who…the daughter of David Axelrod, Obama’s worshipper and loyal servant. Unfortunately I don’t remember the source.
Even marrying his wife was Obama’s way of helping himself politically: someone with no political ambitions of her own who would be an asset as a black, hard-working, and family-oriented woman. She could be an excellent “help mate” and provide a “nest” to the self-centered, self-absorved, charming Barack.
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Sophie says:
Grace said: Even marrying his wife was Obama’s way of helping himself politically: Could it not have been just a coincidence that Michelle Obama was his mentor at Sidley Austin and that her father, Fraser, was a Democratic Precinct Chairman and close associate of Mayor Richard Daley, recommended her for the job in Mayor Daley’s office a year before he proposed? No, I don’t think so either.
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Romberry says:
Wanna know why no one ever apologized to you? It’s because you (like me and countless others) committed the unpardonable sin of being right too soon.
Just tonight I ran across one of those unforgivers online. Even now, they are not the least bit interested in discussing what Obama is actually doing. They are not the least bit interested in answering specific objections, or addressing specific failures. Instead, they are still saying things like this:
It’s people who WANTED Obama to fail, because his failure would validate their perception of him. They don’t give a shit about America, just about their belief that they are being proved right.
Substitute Bush for Obama and does that not sound exactly like what we heard from the Bushbots from January 2001 to January 2009? It’s authoritarian cult worship.
No one is allowed to question or even doubt the Maxximum Leader. To do so is to want the Maxxium Leader to fail, to wish ill upon your nation and its people…all because you wanted to be right. What horseshit.
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Three Wickets says:
The closest thing to an apology I’ve received is a tweet from Joan Walsh saying, “we don’t talk about that” in reference to Hillary and the 2008 primaries.
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Matter says:
“Cream of Jesus on toast” ROFLMAO.
25 bonus points!
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The Sanity Inspector says:
I Stumbled this.
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bluelyon says:
No apologies received. The closest I’ve gotten were one or two, “you were right about Obama” mumblings. I’ve had one person tell me that if they had it to do over again, they’d have gone for HRC. But no. No apology. And no self-examination for the part they played in the whole debacle.
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dennymack says:
Make a Frosh Senator with no executive experience President…what could go wrong?
My disagreement with Violet et al. is over whether the results of a Hillary Presidency would have been materially different. I think she would have been more politically savvy, but not by much. She has more experience, but where is the evidence of her operating brilliantly at center stage?
Even if we assume that her administration displayed none of the amateurism of the Hopenchangers, what could she have achieved? The fundamental fact is that we are out of money. Actually, we passed “broke” trillions of dollars ago, we are now tip-toeing on that line where people are doubting our intent of paying back our borrowing with un-diluted dollars.
What great project could Hillary have delivered without blowing up the economy? I hope she would be smart enough to avoid that. If one can learn anything from Bill, it’s that presiding over a healthy economy makes you look like a genius, no matter what you do.Speaking of Bill Clinton, I doubt the misogyny would have been any less. Palin still had to be destroyed, and one of her major vulnerabilities was her gender.
As for bold moves to roll up the War on Terror, I doubt we would have seen her do much different from Obama. I wouldn’t be surprised if O’s policies are actually hers. Bold peace-talk is for when no one will blame you for letting fanatics take out the Chrysler Building. I think anyone who gets the full intel in their face is more likely to wonder how we are going to avoid fighting in Pakistan than pull out defenses back to our own porous shores.
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Three Wickets says:
@dennymack Bankers are having a party while the invisible working class suffers. Somehow I don’t see Hillary governing to that same outcome. She would certainly not have been as oblivious as this President has been, notwithstanding the economic realities. Oh and yes, she would have been a misogynistic leader, because of Bill Clinton and Palin. What planet are you from. What we need these days above all is a Potus with a spine on both domestic issues and foreign policy. Obama makes speeches. He doesn’t do spine.
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Rusty says:
If NOTHING else, Hillary Clinton, who according to Bob Woodward’s book was an unseen but major force behind getting the 1993 budget passed, would have restored the Clinton-era tax rates. Not just because they make economic sense and produced the most worker-friendly employment atmosphere of my lifetime, but because they are smart politics: what kind of idiot doesn’t realize that when you can pass a tax cut for 98% of the voters right before an election (extending Bush tax cuts for all but the <$250K’ers) you DO IT!
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myiq2xu says:
dennymack says
Who did you vote for?
I’m guessing you’re one of those Libertarian hawks who thinks a complex industrial economy can exist without any government except a military big enough to control the rest of the world.
Forget about Rand and Hayek and study Keynes, John Maynard. His theories actually work in the real world.
As for evidence of Hillary “operating brilliantly at center stage” you might want to check out the US Department of State. The world is a pretty big stage and she’s the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal administration.
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Violet Socks says:
The fundamental fact is that we are out of money.
I’m sorry, you have flunked the stick test. People, please do not encourage him. Thank you.
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tinfoil hattie says:
where is the evidence of her operating brilliantly at center stage?
every fucking day of her life as SOS, thankyouverymuch.
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madamab says:
Violet, Obama worshipers do not apologize to women. Women who “vote with their v@ginas” (as I was told I was doing) must be humiliated at all costs. Rule #743 of the “How to Correctly Worship Obama” Handbook clearly states as much.
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dennymack says:
I was wrong. We are not out of money, we are just boldly leveraging out future by investing in America. Does that pass the stick test, Violet?
Sorry to get everyone riled up. I didn’t intend to be a troll, so I won’t post on your page anymore. (Being compared to a septic tank entitles one to a free post. It’s in Robert’s Rules of Order, I think.)
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Grace says:
About no proof of “operating brilliantly at center stage,” I don’t remember any male presidential candidate in the past (about all) having to prove that “ability” as a precondition to qualify for the presidency.
Names like Mr.Obama, as our current president, Bush, Bill Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon,Johnson, and Mr. Camelot come to mind. Please correct me if I am wrong, with historical evidence, of course….
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Deb Grabien says:
No apologies from me, because I’m on the same bench you are: waiting for the people who called me a racist as far back as his dumb little “awesome god, blue states” snake oil speech in 2004. They wanted Obama because – well, let’s see.
1. He’s anti-war. (Um – same voting record on that as HRC, whom you’re calling a hawk, and what part of “I feel the war in Afghanistan is being neglected” don’t you understand,’trons?)
2. He knows how to fix the economy. (WTF? His mentors are assjangles like Lawrence Summers. Are you nuts?)
3. He wants to end partisanship. (With WHO, for fuck’s sake? The Tea Party whackaloons? The people across the aisle are war criminals, looters of Social Security, they want the remote control to your ovaries, and what’s more, dude, you want a racist? Look over there to the people he wants to sing Khumbaya with.)
4. He’s pro-choice. (Yeah, just like Bart Stupak.)
No one’s apologised to me either. I lost friends over it and my feeling is, if they’re that desperate to avoid iconoclasm, good riddance. I got told I was “too angry” about it. Why yes, dear child, I’m furious at the stupidity and lack of depth. Especially since I’m in my late fifties and my social security is about to disappear. And YES, that’s directly Obama’s fault. Sorry to get the feet of clay on the Big Shiny Idol all smudged, but I don’t want to live in a box in the park, ‘kay?
I’m with whoever said we committed the unforgiveable sin of being right too soon.
Sod ‘em. They won’t apologise. But at least they aren’t telling me he’s playing chess at a checkers tournament. I suppose that’s something.
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scott says:
We are not out of money. As a sovereign nation whose currency is the reserve for everyone else in the world, we’re not going to be defaulted on because that would screw them. As a percentage of overall GDP, our debt level still compares favorably to the early 90′s, when we didn’t default. We are also coming out of the trough of the worst financial crisis since the Depression, which (along with health care costs) is the proximate cause of our debt problem. As economic conditions (slowly and inadequately) improve, that will help the revenue side and the debt problem. What will not help are austerity maniacs screaming that we’re going broke, must cut everything now, and plunge us into another demand-killing recession that will make the debt worse. OK?
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lambert strether says:
@21 The fundamental fact is that we are out of money.
No, we’re not “out of money.” A nation that’s sovereign in its own currency can no more run out of money than a scorekeeper can run out of points — although the banksters and the austerians would like us to think so. Finance really is a feminist issue!
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lambert strether says:
What WordPress filters do to v@gina … Well, techies put down your coffee.
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Eric says:
Well, it should have been obvious from the get go that Obama was the chosen front man of the incredibly authoritarian Chicago machine. And backed by the very authoritarian mainstream media.
Of course that doesn’t mean we should continue the canonization of either Hillary (by the left) or W (by the right) that is currently happening. Hillary would only be a good president in the sense that she would not be the absolute disaster that Obama (or Carter for that matter) is.
If nothing else, this ought to teach you statist types (and I include both the GOP and the Dems in that grouping) that a bought and paid for authoritarian mass media gets you an authoritarian, over spending, state power loving president.
By the way, the misogyny of the mainstream democrats is a horrific thing to behold. The assault on BOTH Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin purely due to their gender was an awful thing to watch. And it cost the democrats even more to attack Palin than it did Clinton. The chauvinism became clear to nearly all women at that point.
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My enthusiasm gap « Blue Lyon says:
[...] right there with Violet. The news is so bad I can hardly stand to read it, much less blog about it. The president goes on [...]
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Violet Socks says:
Eric, your comment is basically a less crude version of the same thing in my mod queue post-Instalanche: “guess that’ll teach ya” “boo hoo stupid lefties now you’ve learned haven’t you?”
It’s fascinating that people really cannot read. They seem to think that I was an Obama fan who has now seen the light. There’s, like, one guy in my mod queue who was able to actually understand that my post was expressing exasperation with the Obamabots. And that guy’s living in some kind of B-movie thing, warning me about what The Left will do to my brain if They Discover I’ve gone astray.
It is really true that the wingnut propaganda in this country has created an entirely parallel world for these people.
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Violet Socks says:
And on that note (and I’m talking now to my regular guests and commenters), this is exactly what I think about as I mull over Jon Stewart’s “everybody make nice” approach. I haven’t seen the Maddow interview, so I don’t know what happened there. But in general, I can understand why he thinks that perhaps the first thing that needs to happen is just to tone down this wild-eyed atmosphere. Of course it’s completely true that the wingnuts are the ones who created the atmosphere, but pointing that out doesn’t seem to help.
The fact is, you have a relatively small number of people (entertainers, crackpots, paid wingnuts) who spew this stuff, and then you have the millions and millions of people who believe it. I don’t really think Americans are much dumber en masse than they were 40 years ago, but they now have an avid propaganda machine ready to fill up their ignorance with bullshit about how their neighbors are Marxist terrorists who are secretly plotting to destroy the dollar, poison the wells, and eat babies. I wonder if Jon Stewart hasn’t said to himself, “Okay, no way we’re going to get the propaganda meisters to rein it in, so I’m just going to focus on the regular folks out there. I’m going to try to persuade them—all of them, all the regular citizens—to not buy into the demonization, to not get riled up, to just tune this crap out and stop fighting and everybody try to go back to regarding each other as citizens.”
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Richard Johnson says:
The fundamental reason wingnut propaganda works is because the modern Democratic Party’s own propaganda is anti-working class. No, not against the economic interests of the class, but against the members of the working class itself.
You could sell them on the idea that right-wing policies are screwing them, but not if they’ve already tuned you out because you openly condescend to them. They’re not idiots; they can figure out who mocks Walmart shoppers, as if they were voluntarily choosing to shop there rather than doing so because of their budgets. They can figure out who keeps raising the taxes on their cigarettes and threatens to raise taxes on their fried food and soda, the inexpensive pleasures of people on a tight budget, while making paternalistic noises about health. (They already know the tobacco and fat and sugar is bad for them, thanks, but they don’t have the money to develop a cultivated palate for fair trade coffee.)
They don’t have the time or energy to learn policy details after a day of work, but they can quite easily tell who’s being an upper class snob, and it isn’t the Sarah Palins of the world. When it comes time to decide whose pitch to believe, why in the world would they start listening to the people who openly mock how they live?
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Nessum says:
It’s a given that I’m in awe of Dr. Socks’ writing and thinking… but Deb Grabien, your rant (#29) is awesome ! Too.
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blackcherryorchid says:
I’m not sure I can agree that it was the “wingnuts” who started the vicious rhetoric and divisive propaganda. I think a lot of it is defensiveness. I really think it was Obama and especially his backers (only because he is a phony who rarely gets his hands dirty). They were really just very…uncivil.
The 2008 election campaign and results were touted as some historic good, “hope and change”, but what I experienced and what I saw was one of the nastier, meaner elections in my memory. I was actually scared throughout most of it. Not that politics weren’t dirty before, but there was such a cult mentality to the Obama supports/true believers that they felt very comfortable using nasty, eliminationist rhetoric to describe ANYONE who was not on board the Obama train. Obama, bigger than Jesus, bigger than the Beatles, sullied by having to compete against people like Hillary Clinton (and her working class “rabble” supporters) and John McCain (although for some odd reason once Palin became the VP candidate the entire focus of Obama and his supporters shifted to her and away from the man who was supposed to be his opponent).
I feel like the Democratic party was severed from its roots and with Obama as its head it became something unrecognizable, completely corporate-owned and worshiped by a consumer culture.
A funny thing is that it is Republican conservatives who often quote Obama’s comment about “bitter” people who “cling to guns and religion”, but the comment was aimed at rural and working class Hillary Clinton supporters. It is many of those people who are the “Tea Party wingnuts” who just tossed the Democratic party on its ass (including in “formerly blue” PA, home of the bitter clingers). Of course I think they will soon see that the Republican party is infested with its own demons, but their support for wingnuts and enthusiasm for the TEA Party only came after the coronation of Obama. They had nowhere else to turn.
The wild-eyed atmosphere stems from desperation, fear, and a lot of very justified anger. But it’s not like things were calm before Glenn Beck rose to prominence or before the TEA parties. Obama and the Obamabots were the ones who riled things up and ratcheted up the rhetoric because that was an anointing. The religious fervor goes to them.
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Assistant Village Idiot says:
Well, I earn my daily bread as a social worker, which in practice is rather like being a troll – dropping in bits of obviousness and being attacked for it – so I’ll troll here.
No one apologised to you? It’s called adulthood. Enraged attacks on strawmen in the comments? Supporting evidence. Alt-history of chained events? Diagnosis confirmed.
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Nic Grabien says:
(coming late to the discussion)
Brilliant post, Violet, and absolutely no argument from me on any point.
I’m glad that various people have pointed out the underlying mysogny in botht he press coverage and the DCC ledership; it saves me the space except to say to Dr. Maddow that no, I’m still NOT over my “snit.”
While my wife Deb (see upstream) was listening carefully to what Obama was saying, I was watching what he was doing. The key mement for me came just 24 hours after Hillery withdrew from the campaign. Obama, aided and abetted by Dean and the rest of the party management, consolidated all patry fundraising for the election cycle under his organization in Chicago.
This gave the Obama camp efective control over a significant portion of the campaign funding for every incumbant Congressional Democrat and a huge number of state and locals, as well.
Each and every one of whom was a Superdelegate.
In all the talk about a “Hillery coup” at the convention, there was never a chance in hell that there would be one. Obama bought the nomination on that day, and all the Hillery-bashing that happened afterwards was merely a distraction from the consolidation of Obama’s power within the party. (That’s not to trivialize the sheer hatred levelled at Hillery; merely to observe its effect.)
Once I saw that happen, I had to ask if Obama, having done that, would ever even think of shedding the obscene Executive Powers that Bush had absorbed into the Office of the President.
Of course he wouldn’t. And he hasn’t.
People kept telling me that Obama would be better than McCain. In hindsight, I seriously doubt McCain would, in fact, have been quite this bad. He’s not intelligent enough and, for all his glaring faults, he’s neither imaginative nor Machiavellian enough to manipulate the machine the way Obama and his team have. And he would have had a slightly more motivated Congress opposing him, instead of one bought and paid for by Obama.
People keep saying that they’re waiting for Obama to stand up and be forceful about pushing “his” Progressive Agenda. He doesn’t have one. He’s gotten just about everything he’s actually wanted in the way of legislation, and has not had to compromise his own beliefs and desires on any single point.
I knew that progressives were not his philosophical base the day he declined (on Rahm’s advice) to experience “a San Francisco moment.” San Franciso is the epitome of the progressive base, and Obama was afraid to even be seen in public in this town?
If he’ll take questions from and make very nice with nacent Tea Partiers, but not from genuine Progressives, what does that say about his actual policy beliefs?
And no, nobody has apologized to me, either.
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Unree says:
Assistant Village Idiot, you are not coming in too clearly, but if what you’re saying is that it’s childish to expect an apology from the 2008 Obama partisans, you probably weren’t on the receiving end of their abuse. What happened wasn’t a standard-issue disagreement over which candidate to support. Skepticism about Obama as a candidate was greeted with misogynous rage. His supporters blithely called critics racist, bitter knitters, vagina voters, and other scurrilous names. Their Precious has been a disaster. Yes, some of ‘em need to apologize.
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Violet Socks says:
Mr. Richard Johnson:
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Violet Socks says:
Sorry about that Village Idiot getting through; seems the spam filter flubbed up. He’s a hardcore wingnut, white-male-supremacist variety.
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Petro says:
OT, but I thought Dr. Socks might like to check out this post over at “Behind The Stick”:
http://behindthestick.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/for-she-has-no-name/
See you in the comments! (Right?)
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Deb Grabien says:
(aside to Nessum) Well, I’m a writer. It’s what I do. But I’m also a bullshit-caller and I called the Obama BS back in 2004.
You know what really lost me a few friends? Remember when the Obamas’ pet pastor stood up in church and snarled “Hillary Clinton ain’t never been called a nigger!”?
I would have given a LOT to have been in that church that day. My immediate reaction, when I read that piece of stupidity, was “Very true. Of course, nobody has ever called Barack Obama a bitch, a dyke, a cunt, a ho, or a lezzie for not living up to some man’s expectations of him, so what’s your point, you sexist jinglebrain? And by the way, what are the women in this building doing, nodding along with this rubbish?”
Of course, I would probably have been lynched or something. Worth it, though.
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MojaveWolf says:
I realize this isn’t quite like getting a direct apology, but after I linked to your post in my live journal earlier today, one of the more ardent Obama supporters from 2008 still on my lj “friend” list replied in comments “you were right.” With no disclaimers. So that’s something.
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monchichipox says:
I never got an apology. Not even from the man who came up to me at the firing range(not a wise thing to do but I was in a good mood) and told me Hillary was waging a Jihad against Obama.
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Grace says:
Expecting an apology from people who were blinded by Obama or their delusions about him, is a lost cause. A sweet revenge before 2012 would be the creation of a progressive equivalent of the tea-party’s movement. With the Obamabots and the democrats having to kiss ass to gain its support, like the Republicans are doing now. I am personally not interested in apologies; what I want is respect and empowerment.
I was at a professional conference right after the 2008 election, and some people (inappropriately) started to pontificate about Obama, how good it was, bla, bla…, instead of talking about the subject of their presentation. I believe that I also risked being lynched or something, but I said that as I considered myself to be at the left of Obama, I have voted for Cynthia McKinney and her running mate, Rosa Clemente, two black women who stood for the right things.
I wonder what those same people may think about Obama these days, but I hope that what I said that day may have made some impact.
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votermom says:
I have an lj account, and most of my “friends” (rss feed) there are sf/fantasy fans and as it turns out 99.9% are BO voters, 89& PDSers, and 50% CDSers. So instead of an apology, I think they just ignore me now.
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Hattie says:
I thought he was an empty suit, but to my eternal disgrace I was taken in by some of the PR. I did vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary.
What infuriated me the most was the way Obama co-opted Move On. Ismael Reed said it best, that he was a pretty face hired to save capitalism.
He was groomed and put forward with intent. -
FembotsForObama says:
@Assistant Village Idiot says:
“Well, I earn my daily bread as a social worker, which in practice is rather like being a troll – dropping in bits of obviousness and being attacked for it – so I’ll troll here.
No one apologised to you? It’s called adulthood. Enraged attacks on strawmen in the comments? Supporting evidence. Alt-history of chained events? Diagnosis confirmed.”Wow. The first step to getting better is admitting there IS a problem. Obots want to jump the first step, admitting their mistake, and move on to blame everyone but themselves & their denier, juvenile-in-chief. So what they do instead is sink into the depression of things not turning out the way they expected and that there is nothing they can do but to accept the mean nasty things Republicans (Tea-partiers) will do to them. And they will just focus on their self-actualizing instead of coming up with a plan to stop the screw job from happening. I’ve been hearing this since Nov. 3rd. How can we stop them? blah, blah, blah
Enter the grown-ups. Primary Obama’s ass and save the working class.
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lambert strether says:
@52 self-actualizing
Ditto. Top of Maslow’s hiearchy, and not the bottom, which is, ya know, stuff like food, shelter, having a job, all the things that the “creative class” thought would take care of themselves…
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Bess of Hardwick says:
Agreed, as long as we note that Mrs. Obama has personal assets that would make her appealing to anyone. Michelle gave him a home base in every sense. It’s not surprising that, given his ambivalent relationship with his mother, he would be attracted to a woman who was grounded in community and family. He was an aspiring politician with no constituency and Michelle helped him there, too.
The O-bots will never admit that HRC could have been any different.
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votermom says:
Speaking of lj, just now saw one post discovering, as if it were news, that BO asserts the right to assasinate any US citizen, anywhere. And one clueless commenter saying sadly that it’s time to put away that happy feeling when BO beat McCain
Seriously? Talk about not paying attention! -
“He seemed like Cream of Jesus on Toast”? « The Confluence says:
[...] (“Cream of Jesus on Toast” is Violet Socks’ invention. Read it all here.) [...]
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CB says:
Riverdaughter had a post about the DNC’s move to Chicago. Renting the lavish office space and preparing for the move as soon as Hill could be strong-armed out was in place back when most of us life-long Dems thought the nomination would have been somewhat fair, gaming of the caucuses and other cheating non-withstanding.
Did Soros’s investment in Move-On pay off, or has it skidded with all the other lost Axelrod campaign rhetoric?
I read that Gov. Blag was the first choice of the Ill. Democratic machine. Whatever happened to Rezko?
Has anyone ever found anything that Obama did for the average person during his part-time political career representing his district? There are records of how he helped those who greased his palms. I tried to find out in order to be able to vote for him without gagging– nastiest followers ever and one can be judged by the company one keeps, no experience–the Senate bored him, no convictions. One woman who was instrumental in local politics told me that Obama was in a position to do good, but did not.
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