How Badly Have The Clintons And Their Venal Surrogates Poisoned The Well?

Lucky for Obama that many mainstream Republicans, uncomfortable with the wildly extremist and hate-filled bent of their party of late, have decided to support him. He'll need that support to make up for racists and bigots-- many, though not all, harboring grudges because they couldn't get their way on Hillary-- among the Democrats who have decided that John W. McCain is their man. Today at Daily Kos Meteor Blades took a look at the disgruntled Hillary supporters, Joe Lieberman and the McCainocrats:

If your shrieking can be believed, you McCainocrats are premeditating ballot support for an exclusive club of racist, union-busting, woman-suppressing, bedroom-peering, rights-scoffing, warmongering, torture-backing, buccaneering, global warming-denying, privatizing, public land-grabbing, Supreme Court stuffing, empire-building, Constitution-shredding raptors. All for self-indulgent revenge. You’re unhappy that your candidate has not won the nomination. I understand that. Mine didn’t win either. But you’re not just unhappy, you're also willing to contribute to the election of someone who stands against most of what your candidate has been promoted as standing for. That, I don’t comprehend at all. Emotionally, intellectually or morally. I get the feeling you would vote for George W. Bush in 2008 if the 22nd Amendment weren’t in the way.

Yesterday Jane posted a very sad clip on YouTube that should help people understand this particular kind of derangement. It ain't pretty, but take a look because it is real:



A couple weeks ago we met the mother of a friend of mine. She and her gal-pals are all well-off Jewish ladies, of a delicate age, from South Florida. And all have decided not just that they love Clinton, but that they hate Barack Obama. Let me quote my friend: "They hate Obama so much they want to send a message to the Democratic party." When I told him his mother and her friends are a bunch of racists he took great umbrage (especially since he is too). "Some of our best friends are colored people and we help them all the time," he told me without a trace of irony.

I don't know what kind of an effort it will take from Hillary and Obama to bring the fraying party back together again and I don't know if the moderate Republicans and fed up independents who understand Obama's message will make up for the racist and selfish, disgruntled Democrats like the lunatic in the video and the one who gave birth to my friend. This morning Tim Shipman, the DC correspondent from the British newspaper, The Telegraph writes about a dignified exit strategy for Hillary. He'd be offering her an opportunity to take Mike Leavitt's job as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Doesn't sound like much-- her husband wants her in the vice presidency (just in case)-- but it would give her the opportunity to finish the job she botched so badly in the 90's: bringing universal health care to America, likely to be one of the grandest achievements of a Democratic administration.

Sam Stein was at the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting yesterday and he has some interesting observations about how the Clintons have indeed poisoned the well and helped turn some of their supporters into actual Republicans:

A sampling of their punditry:

"[Obama] is a cult. His campaign is an anti-woman cult."

"I will actively campaign against him."

"You know who is backing him is George Soros. It'll be George Soros, not Obama, who is running the country."

"South Dakota is totally rigged for Obama because of Tom Daschle. Obama's going to win South Dakota because he's buying it and rigging it."

"[Obama] is a socialist! You know what the Nazi Party was before it was the Nazi Party? It was the Socialist Party."

It was not all that different from the mood outside, where signs read, "At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen," and some pamphlets detailed Obama's supposed dealings in drugs and gay sex.

"Would you rather have a president who had an affair [Bill Clinton] or one who was a murderer [Obama]?"

UPDATE: DISTURBING ADMISSION FROM A CLINTON BACKER

Rob Andrews is a very conservative New Jersey Democratic congressman who was roundly defeated Tuesday after challenging progressive Senator Frank Lautenberg. Andrews had been, predictably, a big Clinton booster. No more:

A Democratic congressman from New Jersey accused Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign of trying to exploit tensions between Jews and blacks.

Rep. Rob Andrews, who supported Clinton, said in a newspaper interview that he received a call from a top member of Clinton's organization shortly before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary who explicitly discussed a strategy of winning Jewish voters by exploiting tensions between Jews and blacks.

"There have been signals coming out of the Clinton campaign that have racial overtones that indeed disturb me," Andrews said, according to a report in The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. "Frankly, I had a private conversation with a high-ranking person in the campaign ... that used a racial line of argument that I found very disconcerting. It was extremely disconcerting given the rank of this person. It was very disturbing."