Why Obama Doesn’t Want Clinton Democrats

~~By Grail Guardian

It’s 44 days until the General Election as I write this and after a long and hard fought primary season the Democratic Party, and the Obama campaign specifically, are still unable to get over their terminal case of CDS. I can’t help but ask “Why”? For the uninitiated, CDS stands for Clinton Derangement Syndrome, usually defined as the uncontrollable impulse to rail against all things Clinton (Hillary, Bill, Chelsea, Hillary’s supporters, and basically anything connected to centrist positions).

Team Obama not only masterminded the overthrow of the Democratic Party to form the “New Democrats” (remember the May 31, 2008 coup when all semblance of the rules were overthrown at a behind-closed-doors meeting of the Rules and Bylaws Committee), they literally declared the nomination belonged to Obama despite the fact that:

• Hillary Clinton won more of the popular vote than Obama (when the Florida and Michigan primaries are included as originally voted)
• Automatic (also called Super) Delegates are unable to actually cast a vote until the national Convention
• Obama did not actually have enough Super Delegates “locked in” to declare himself the winner when he did
• Hillary Clinton didn’t contest the illegal theft of earned delegates in Michigan, despite her legal right to do so

Clinton suspended her own campaign, as she had promised during the primaries she began to campaign for Obama, she asked her fundraisers to jump to Team Obama, and eventually Clinton herself served as the conduit to end her historic campaign by interrupting a roll call vote at the convention to ask for Obama’s nomination by acclaim. Yet still the Oborg continues to harass Clinton supporters. Team O bloggers continue to infiltrate web sites that had been pro-Clinton. Commenters continue to compare John McCain and Sarah Plain to Clinton, who they now conveniently claim as one of their own. Web sites continue to be hijacked and crashed. The Main Stream Media continues to fawn over Obama as messiah, ignore every negative story posted about him on the Internet, and call anyone disagreeing with their views a racist. And Middle Class voters continue to be insulted, marginalized, and discounted.

So at this late juncture, one must ask why it is that so many of the Oborg continue to fight dirty against the moderate, centrist voters that refuse to support Obama, rather than to sensibly go after them? After all, Obama went after the right wing and evangelical voters with his votes on FISA and promises to continue funding George W. Bush’s Faith Based Initiative, so why not court the center? It only makes good political sense that once the cries of “you have no where else to go” and “you’ll fall in line eventually” were obviously falling on deaf ears that the next move would be to go after this significant voting bloc with gusto and speed. But with just over 6 weeks left, the taunting and harassment continues unabated.

So let’s look at the possibilities:

Paul Lukasiak’s Post on THE RBC VIOLATION OF DNC “SUNSHINE RULES”

I was honored to have Paul Lukasiak read this blog and post a response on one of my own postings a couple of days ago (“Al Gore Resurface for the DSCC…[Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee]).

He has now posted his current piece on the RBC shenanigans of May 31 at The Confluence and Corrente.

In an effort to have this spread around, I am reposting the entire post, along with his tags, here.

The RBC Violation of DNC “Sunshine” Rules

The “Magic Number” is still 2025, or 2209. But its not 2118.

That’s because, in violation of the DNC charter, a secret meeting was held, and secret votes were taken — violations of specific Charter “sunshine rules” provisions. A deal was struck among Obama supporters on the committee to completely ignore what is known as the “fair reflection” rule (see note below), and to treat the constituency groups that had provided Hillary Clinton with considerable margins in two states (Hispanic/Latino voters, older voters, women, Jewish voters in Florida, older voters, working class voters, rural voters, and women in Michigan) as “half voters”.

These violations occurred with the direct knowledge and involvement of Party Secretary Alice Germond, and Co-chairs James Roosevelt and Alexis Herman. Because of their knowing and willful violation of Party rules, they should be stripped of all authority in the Party organization, and removed from the DNC entirely. And if Howard Dean or any other party official was cognizant of the violation of the Rules, they too should lose their jobs.

The Democratic Party Charter (Article 9, section 12) states “All meetings of…official party committees…shall be open to the public and votes shall not be taken by secret ballot.” Yet a two hour closed meeting in which business before the committee was discussed was held, and secret votes were taken during that meeting.

Here is the sequence of events:

Obama’s May 20 Bash: A Cynical Replay of Election Night 2000 (with update)

Think not??

I’ll take you back to that fateful night in a moment.

But first, listen to strategist David Axelrod on WCCO, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, MN the night of the May 8 Indiana and North Carolina primaries. (The video is the top left “thumbnail” located just above the video player in the event the current news plays rather than the Axelrod video; you will also have to endure a short Coldstone Creamery ad).

http://wcco.com/national/obama.victory.plan.2.719166.html

He talks about the “inside baseball” of the delegate situation, then pins Clinton with the upcoming “train wreck” which will happen if she stays in the race until the upcoming Rules Committee meeting. Then he gets on his high horse and indignantly proclaims that “the IDEA of Hillary Clinton contesting the validity of Obama’s DECLARATION as the nominee of the Democratic Party is really a near nightmare and for Obama it’s is just a thorn in his side” at a point where he should be focusing McCain. (This after admitting that neither candidate has the delegates to win outright (but he as the “majority” of them, Axelrod rationalizes) and that Obama himself hasn’t sealed the deal because of his own primary loses. The whole situation is really a great inconvenience and indignity being put in Obama’s way. Horrors if voters in the remaining states are allowed to actually express their preferences!

Now, let’s go back to Election Night 2000. This should refresh your memory:

Bush Cousin Calls Presidential Election

by Michael I. Niman
Special to Buffalo Beat (December 14^th, 2000) – AlterNet Syndication (December 14th, 2000)

The US presidential election was a celebration of the triumph of media over matter.

To an objective observer, two facts are clear: Gore won the nationwide popular vote, and according to a recent Miami Herald analysis, he was also in all likelihood the favorite of Florida voters as well.

George W. Bush’s claim to victory initially had a shaky basis in objective reality. The Florida race, or even the national race, was a statistical dead heat — a tie. There was no clear winner. Factor in the bizarre antiquated 19^th century vote tabulating technology used in much of the US and the wide margin of error inherent with these machines, and the difficulty of determining a winner was clear.

For most Americans, and for much of the global television audience, however, Bush was always either the presumed “winner” or at the very least, the likely winner. Al Gore was always seen as trying to either “catch-up” to Bush, or “overturn” the Bush victory. The Bush claim to victory always had the veneer of legitimacy while the Gore claim effused a certain stench.

This perceived Bush victory, the perception that the horse race finally boiled down to one stallion breaking through the finish gate, was a network news fabrication. We saw it on TV. The networks called the election for George W. Bush, projecting him the winner — in effect declaring him the President Elect. CBS News’ Dan Rather boldly told us late on election night, “Sip it, Savor it, cup it, photostat it, underline it in red, press it in a book, put it in an album, hang it on the wall — George W. Bush is the next president of the United States.” The networks anointed a President and no recount of actual votes will ever be able to undo that coronation.

At 2:16 AM John Ellis, called the election for his first cousin, George W. Bush. Ellis, a free-lance political consultant, had been enlisted by FOX News to head their “decision desk” on Election night.

Dr. Niman continues:

By calling the election for his cousin when he did, Ellis proved instrumental in turning Bush’s loss in the popular vote into an apparently righteous struggle to gain the presidency. With a constitutional crisis looming on the horizon, pundits called for Gore, and not Bush, to be a “patriot” and concede. In a fair count, without shenanigans or election irregularities, the Miami Herald estimated Gore would have won Florida by 23,000 votes. The Bush strategy all along was to prevent a recount and run out the clock — which he succeeded in doing, eventually winning the state and the presidency by a few hundred votes. The strategy only worked because Ellis coronated him the winner.

Weeks later, Ellis’ former colleague, Bill Kovach, while defending Ellis’ integrity as a journalist, reported that Ellis had been in telephone contact with both Jeb and George W. Bush on election night prior to his making the election call. Even Kovach admitted this was improper.

It’s a clear a conflict of interest for a presidential candidate’s close and loyal first cousin, the nephew of a former U.S. President, to end up in a position to call the election for the U.S. national media?

So, now in 2008 we have Axelrod shooing away voters and starting his blitz to convince everyone that Obama is the winner with the full co-operation of the media, just like the events of Election Night 2000 which were started on FOX and then picked up by the rest of the crowd. The above video shows the first salvo in the ensuing bandwagon that has become the main message for our consumption since May 8, the night of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.

Then there is the Democratic Party itself. While not displaying a true “conflict of interest” isn’t it nonetheless throwing its weight and manipulations around in favor of one candidate, Obama? When have you ever seen a party coddle one candidate like they are now doing with “The One”?

We also see superdelegates come out every time Obama makes a mistake or loses a debate or a primary to bolster him.

Doesn’t all this manipulation seem so much like we’ve seen before, but particularly, now so blatant this time around as it was on Election NIght 2000???

And May 20 will be the culmination point of this “coronation.” In the meantime, Hillary Clinton is being pilloried as being divisive and her key voters–working-class Americans, older voters, rural voters, and women (and if you’re an OLDER woman, God help you)–are being thrown under the bus. Having a real contest where real people vote is now an anathema to the party and the media.

And what about the media? After the 2000 debacle,

The networks engaged in much public hand-wringing in the weeks that followed the elections. Anyone who remembers a rueful Dan Rather saying,”If you’re disgusted with us, frankly I don’t blame you,” or who saw network executives go to Capitol Hill to explain themselves to Congress could reasonably have assumed that steps would be taken to ensure that such a debacle would not happen again. Network executives later acknowledged that cross-checking the VNS data with the AP’s numbers would probably have prevented the incorrect call of Florida for Bush, and they promised to make certain that a single source with bad information could never again create a media-wide failure like election night 2000. (From: The American Prospect, Publication Date: 01-OCT-04: Idiot boxed: one big reason Bush won Florida? Television (prematurely) said he did. By 2001, red-faced network news honchos promised big changes for 2004. Now we’re here. And guess what?)

Well, of course, nothing changed in 2004 as Kerry was slurred with the description of being “French.” (Among other things!)

At the start of this campaign season, media voices again solemnly proclaimed that they were really going to report fairly and wouldn’t be “GOR-ing” anyone like they’d done in the past, since this was such a vital election.

But, as we can see, this time around, we’ve had Edwards ignored out of the race and Clinton showered with negativity, misogyny and very little coverage of anything positive in her campaign.

The terrible difference this time, however, is that her own party has decided to join the media in their strategy of death by a thousand cuts.

Remember this, older, working-class, women, and rural voters when the media and Obama tell you that he is VICTORIOUS on May 20. Remember that you’re really NOT on the guest list for this coronation bash…

UPDATE

One of the “related articles” that has popped up under my post is from Business Week, November 30, 2000.

If this doesn’t sound like deja vu all over again….imagine referring to Gore’s fight to get the votes counted as “pigheadedness.” I suppose that description applies to Clinton as well…oh, no, she’s worse! She’s divisive and not noble enough for Teddy K….And see how cowardly the Dems were and still are??? And what can you say about the media? Nothing good…

But by attenuating the election, the Vice-President is walking a fine line between perseverance and pigheadedness. The unspoken fear of some congressional Democrats is that if Gore lingers too long in the land of chad, voters will turn on them in much the same way they turned on Bill Clinton’s impeachment tormentors in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. The backlash could undermine Hill Democrats’ plans for hog-tying President Bush and gliding to big gains in the 2002 midterm elections. After all, no one wants to be branded a member of the Sore Loser Party.

Obama’s Political eGFR…Calling Dr. Dean…

As most people know (or should know), there are all sorts of numbers that are indicators of a person’s health status. For example, as an indicator of cardiac health, if you have a cholesterol reading of 200-239 you are “borderline high” and may need treatment. Blood pressure has equally clear numbers in terms of what’s normal or what needs treatment.

But when it comes to the kidneys, things get murky, especially for general practitioners who look at the numbers and miss what’s really going on. In fact, kidney organizations have now raised a warning about how certain numbers which appear normal in routine blood tests, specifically serum creatinine levels, can mask a loss of 50% of kidney function!

In the last few years, a new number has appeared on basic blood test reports. It’s a computed figure based on other test results which turns out to give a very good estimate of kidney function. It’s called the eGFR (estimated Glomular Filtration Rate).

It turns out that many general and internal medicine practitioners don’t understand eGFR numbers. A level of 50 mL/min, which is only 10 units below the low end of the normal range level of 60 mL/min, is NOT OK. It’s not a “slight” difference, as one of my doctors commented to me. A level of 50 mL/min means that one’s kidneys are working at 50%…which translates into moderate kidney failure and needs watching and measures to be taken to preserve the function that is still left. Without proper care and diet modifications, a person with this level of function could wind up on dialysis or waiting for a kidney transplant as the percentage of kidney function drops.

How does this relate to Obama? Well, on the surface he looks in fine shape in terms of delegates pledged. He’s got the DNC helping him out by refusing to count the votes in FL and MI. He’s got lots of big names coming out to endorse him every time he loses a primary or flubs a debate. He certainly has the Mainstream Media pushing him along since they are loaded with pundits speaking out against Clinton and, and the same time, refusing to delve into Obama’s experience and relationships with any real seriousness. On the surface, it looks like his political serum creatinine is safely in the healthy range.

But all this masks what is really going on. Under the surface there is damage.