Nothin's what you get for free.
You've gotta dig, dig, dig, dig for your dinner,
Never was a money tree.
And furthermore, my friends, I must repeat,
Nobody's livin' down on Easy Street;
And if you want to owe for groceries,
You're gonna get an awful lot of "No sir-ee's."
You've gotta dig, dig, dig, dig for a dollar,
'Taint as simple as you think.
-- "Dig-Dig-Dig for Your Dinner," lyrics by Mack Gordon, music by Harry Warren, sung by Gene Kelly in Summer Stock
Senator Hillary Clinton is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. The only other candidate still in the contest in Senator Barack Obama. The two are engaged in a dead-heat tie which is why neither will be awarded the magic number of delegates in contests that would allow them to claim the nomination. By DNC rules and guidelines, the matter goes to the convention unless one of the candidates drops out.
That means that the Democratic Party may not know who their candidate will be until the party meets in Colorado this August.
In terms of the markers, Hillary's won the swing states, the big states and leads in the popular votes. She's expected to maintain that lead through the end of the primaries.
Two weeks ago she won West Virginia by a huge percentage despite the fact that the media and the Obama camp was saying the race was over. Last Tuesday, she won Kentucky by over 35% and the media and the Obama camp (are they the same thing?) still claims that doesn't matter.
When the 'nominee' loses a state by 35% after being hailed as the 'nominee,' he or she is not a nominee.
"Once again tonight, you and I stood together and showed America what we're made of," Hillary Clinton declared Tuesday night in Kentucky. "Every time we win another state, we prove something about ourselves and about our country. And did we ever prove something tonight in Kentucky. We showed America that the voters know what the 'experts' will never understand -- that in our great democracy, elections are about more than candidates running, pundits commenting, or ads blaring."
What a speech. You just know if Barack had said it, Janine Jackson would be quoting it on CounterSpin (instead of the editorial accents she provided Friday indicating Barack was worthy and Hillary was trash through vocal inflections at the start of the show -- poor, little, frustrated actress).
But there's been no time for positive news of Hillary. It's been bash the bitch. That's only surprising if you're naive enough to believe these programs and magazines promoting Barack are staffed and run by Democrats. If you grasp the reality (and you should after CounterSpin ridiculed and declared war on liberals two weeks ago), you're aware these are "radicals." They love the gift of 'framing' which allows them to say, "We're Progressives." They're Marxists and Maoists.
They largely come out of the New Left of the sixties and that group wasn't Democratic either. Nor were they interested in women. Their attacks on women's rights was part of what fueled the second wave of the feminist movement.
You hear a great deal today from people sneering at those same feminists. The radicals (Communists, Socialists, anarachists, et al) don't get named. "They're fighting the same old battles," some say of the feminists. Who were feminists fighting those battles with?
In January of 1969, Marilyn Salzman Webb was one of the few women allowed (yes, "allowed") to speak at the National Mobilization's Committee's counter-inauguration held while Tricky Dick was being sworn in. Noting that women were oppressed led to Salzman Webb being yelled at, sworn at, screamed at to remove her blouse. And this was a left gathering. In 1969.
The late, great Ellen Willis was present and wondered not just over the violence being expressed by the crowd but also over the silence from the 'leaders' (males) who didn't call it out, who didn't ask that it stopped. (They grinned and enjoyed it.) That inclues Davey Dellinger who was lionized by Panhandle Media not all that long ago. The Peace King. He was grinning like a fool, laughing (Elaine, Rebecca and C.I. were present and remember it very well.) The left wasn't interested in peace or non-violence as was evident by the men's remarks then and after. Ask Jo Freeman about the 1968 NCNP's attempt to run a presidential ticket and how she and other women were received.
This is not a new problem, it's not a new battle. It's decades old and some men (Tom Hayden among them -- so noted for his sexism in real time that he was expelled from the Berkeley commune for it) are really enjoying this moment to again attack any woman who won't serve the coffee or serve them. Include Robert Scheer on the list and many, many others.
The disrespect for women was made very clear as Vietnam continued. The only 'good' women (the ones who wouldn't be targeted) were the ones who did what they were told. Of course, that didn't mean you remained with the in-crowd. Get pregnant by a man who wanted no responsibility and get kicked to the curb. Be the girlfriend ("old lady") of one man and have him find a new interest and get kicked to the curb. Put out and shut up was the message from the alleged "New" Left of the sixties. There's not a woman who lived through it that doesn't have a horror story.
But somehow, when these pathetic men come back to attack, everyone wants to play like it's women who have the problem and that they're fighting battles that they fought before but no one wants to name who with.
Robin Morgan remembers that time period very well. This year, she published "Goodbye To All That (#2)" (Women's Media Center) and the scorn heaped on her by men and women (see the self-loathing lesbian Laura Flanders' attack on Morgan and other feminists at The Nation's blog) failed to really note what was going on. What was the original "Goodbye To All That"? A few told you it was Robin's embrace of feminism and left it at that. Well actually Robin was a feminist for many years before she wrote the first ground-breaking essay. "Goodbye To All That" was bidding farewell to the "New" Left and all of its sexism. It would probably hurt too much for liars (and sexists) at The Nation to admit that. But Robin knew exactly what she was doing by revisiting that essay for the first time in years with her response for this election cycle and, thing is, the aged "New" Left knew what they were doing when they attacked her.
The "New" Left was the same rag-tag bunch of do-nothings that you saw in Steelyard Blues Granted, most of you didn't see it, it was a bomb and it's rarely viewed today -- a bad, bad movie and one that, no surprise, drove home to Jane Fonda for the first time the importance of feminism -- a lesson she claims to relearn every few years but one that's never taken enough of a hold to prevent her from engaging in attacks on Hillary. Using the Steelyard example, apparently Jane will never grasp the extreme sexism hurled at Hillary until Jane runs for president. (Never happen, she's 71 in December and needs to lose the wig, stop wearing cleavage plunging dresses in public and should grasp she's now the age that Lillian Hellman was when Jane loved to mock her by showing how Lillian sat in an effort to appear sexy. Jane, you used to find that not only hilarious but also pathetic. Now, at the rate you're going, most people in the film industry are wondering when you'll start appearing in public in Marlene Dietrich's old "body stocking.")
Some women were there for women, some women weren't and some women were there when it suited their own needs. The "New" Left males got away with their crap for so long because so many women refused to make 'waves' and refused to call it out.
So it's not surprise that the likes of Janine Jackson (the only female of CounterSpin's three hosts) not only ignores sexism in this campaign but joins in the Hillary-pile-on via 'editorial inflections.' It's no surprise Betsy Reed writes a piece that reeks of sexism. They're the Little Girls, regardless of age. They're the Daughters of The Ego Of Us All. The reds who embraced the idea popular in the Communist Party that women didn't matter, that women were an issue to be addressed when all other issues had been taken care of (and all other issues are never taken care of).
Then there are the actual little girls. They're in denial about the world around them and those little girls today had plenty of kindred sisters in the 'sixties.' What's so bad about being a sex object, they pout. Guys like me! Or, as the blogger at Glamor ridiculousy put it, she doesn't like Hillary because she reminds her of her mother. Glamor appears required to employ only those whose heart belongs to Daddy.
What an idiotic statement to write and what a sexist one and exactly how did Glamor, a glossy, consumerist women's magazine, think they could defend that crap?
They can't and it couldn't be defended all those years ago. But it rose up repeatedly. Little Girls biting their lower lips and asking, "Well shouldn't men be in charge?" Little Girls afraid of their own power.
You hear from some that a feminist doesn't have to support Hillary. We'd agree with that, a feminist doesn't support to Hillary. There are things in Hillary's long life that may offend some sensibilities. That's a given of any long life and, if that's the case for you, that's fine and dandy.
But NO REAL FEMINIST can support Barack Obama. Though many try to pretend otherwise, homophobia is not allowed in the feminist movement. Barack using homophobia in his desperate attempt to win South Carolina (after Hillary's surprising victory in New Hampshire) included using homophobia by reaching out to African-American conservatives by putting four homophobes on stage and letting them preach their hate.
That isn't allowed.
For some claiming to be feminists and supporting Barack, they don't know about that because Panhandle Media didn't make an issue out of it. (Though they would if it was Republican.) For others, they just don't care. The Daughters of Red Betty are just like their closeted Communist foremother, they don't like lesbians. (Even when they are lesbians.) They're smart enough not to use Betty's "lavender menace" phrasing, but they don't like lesbians and they don't like gay people and they didn't in the last century and that's why the aspect of McCarthyism -- the start of it which was about purging gays and lesbians from the government -- is buried so they can claim to be "Supreme Victim." It's as pathetic as some Jewish organizations refusing to note the many gays, lesbians and Gypsies killed in the Holocaust.
All this time later, Red Betty still really hasn't been outed. She's still the 'housewife' who wrote a book in her spare time and we're all supposed to never mention the Communist publications she repeatedly wrote for prior to the book or the fact that she made the decision to target the White middle class. That wasn't, as some have claimed, because she thought it would be 'easier'. That was because the book was put to the Communist Party and they saw it as a way to reach the masses. It was a badly written rip off/crib-sheet from The Second Sex but Simone was an original and had no need to hide herself in a political closet.
All the usual dregs of issue their usual crap from their closet doors and call them out on it and they get nervous (Hello, Bill Fletcher, Jr.!) and start insisting that you're "red baiting."
Guess what? Communism isn't illegal. There's no reason for any American to be in a political closet. It's not required and all it does is encourage future political closeting. But if they couldn't hide behind the meaningless term "progressive," they'd have to declare themselves what? Liberals? Peter Hart and Fletcher made it very clear they find liberals distasteful -- made clear on the air two Fridays ago. If they couldn't hide behind "progressive," they might have to use real identification terms such as "Communist."
They won't do that because if America got a look at how many Communists for Barack there were, his nomination would tank tomorrow. If they grasped for a moment that the media hype in Panhandle Media was coming from Communists, they'd rightly wonder why Communists were trying to butt the hell into a Democratic Party primary.
The Communist Party exists in this country and they could participate in their own party; however, that would require leaving their political closets and mending the fences their slash and burn tactics created last decade.
So instead, Laura Flanders pretends she's a Democrat and no one's supposed to point out that in 2000 she didn't vote for Al Gore and in 2004 she didn't vote for John Kerry. Like all of the other political closet cases, she refers to being for the 'movement' behind Barack. That's the 'movement' that Panhandle Media created by demonizing Hillary non-stop (beginning in 2006, just flip through the covers of The Nation) and gushing over Barack.
What's going on in the primary contest is Hillary's attempting to win the nomination. And she is leading in the popular vote
As Jonathan Last (Philadelphia Inquirer) pointed out last week:
Lost in the excitement of Barack Obama's coronation this week was an inconvenient fact of Tuesday's results: Hillary Clinton netted approximately 150,000 votes and is now poised to finish the primary season as the popular-vote leader. In some quaint circles, presumably, these things still matter.
[. . .]
If you believe that the most important precept in democratic politics is to "count every vote," then the sixth category is the most inclusive, and here Clinton leads Obama by 71,301 votes. Of course, this includes the Michigan result, where Sen. Obama had removed his name from the ballot. So while it may be the most inclusive, it may not be the most fair.
That's what's going on with voters. What's getting less attention is the efforts of non-Democrats to take over the party. We're fine with outing each and every one and they can whine and say, "You're red baiting!" all they want. The truth is when they pulled this crap before, when they tried to take over the Democratic Party, that's what pulled them into McCarthysim. They like to play the ultimate victim but that's not reality. They were (and are) welcome on the left. What they're not welcome to do is to pose as Democrats anymore than Republicans are welcome to pose as Democrats or centrists are welcome to pose as leftists.
They keep whining "red baiting" these days and trying to drum up some sympathy. They need to step out of their closets and stop trying to mess with the Democratic Party primary, stop trying to game it and stop trying to take it over. It is only natural that anyone who uses trickery and deceit to fool the people is inviting exposure.
A lot of people -- some good, some innocent, some good and innocent -- got hurt during McCarthyism but the reason the closeted Communists were drawn into in the first place and the reason the Democratic Party really didn't give a damn was because they'd pulled their current stunt one too many times back then. That doesn't justify the very real damage of McCarthyism (and the victims included gays and lesbians who were not Communists -- the Communist Party didn't want gays and lesbians). But they need to take some ownership for the fact that McCarthyism was a response and that the actions of some posing as Democrats and trying to subvert a political party that was not their own is the reason McCarthyism thrived.
It's a cute little revisionary tale where all the Communists in this country were just minding their own business and big, bad government went after them. That's not how witch hunts start. An incident sets the ball rolling. In this case, it was the fact that some thought they could be members of the Communist Party in private and work publicly as Democrats while attempting to tear the Democratic Party apart in order to control it.
Hillary's battling for the nomination. If you're a Democrat, you should be battling for the soul of the party.
You should grasp that Medea Benjamin (I-Need-Attention Benjamin) isn't a Democrat and she isn't a Green. She toyed with the Greens a decade ago. She's a joke in the Green Party today. And her little stunt at Hillary's DC fundraiser recently should just remind you that she's done nothing similar to Barack. Barack just attacked Hugo Chavez -- hero of reds throughout the country. Medea's not calling him out. She's like her kindred over fifty years ago, refusing to call out anything Stalin did.
They didn't stumble upon 'sexism,' they are sexist. It's a point that many miss in their commentaries where they try to insist that the attacks on Hillary are really just attacks on Bill. The attacks on Hillary are sexist and far beyond anything tried on candidate Bill. And they are waived through (The Nation prints Tom Hayden sexist attack hiding behind his nobody wife -- while living on his meal ticket former wife's divorce settlement) not just because it's a tool they can use but because it's an attitude they support -- male or female, they all support it.
Hillary's in it to win. She's running to win. And she's running for the American people. But if you're a Democrat, you should be paying attention to what's going on behind the scenes and where Barack's media support has come from. You should grasp that this is very much a fight over whether Democrats will control their own party or will be taken over by outsiders.
To be clear, we're not calling Barack Obama a closeted Communist. He's a corporatist Democrat. We are noting where his Panhandle Media support -- the support that put him on the map, the 'movement' hype behind him -- is coming from and what's at stake.
Here's Howard Wolfson's "HUBdate: 'Why I Continue To Run'" (HillaryClinton.com):
"Why I Continue To Run" Hillary wrote an op-ed in today's New York Daily News outlining her reasons for continuing to fight for the Democratic nomination: "I am running because I still believe I can win on the merits. Because, with our economy in crisis, our nation at war, the stakes have never been higher -- and the need for real leadership has never been greater -- and I believe I can provide that leadership." Read more.
Automatic Delegate Watch: Hillary received the endorsement of Georgia automatic delegate Verna Cleveland. "More than 17 million Americans have voted for Hillary Clinton in this primary election season and I am proud to continue to support Hillary with my delegate vote at the national convention in August in Denver," Cleveland said. Read more.
Puerto Rico’s Champion: At a campaign stop in Aguadilla, Hillary told a crowd of supporters that she will fight for Puerto Rican families: “My commitment to Puerto Rico did not start last month or last year…I will be Puerto Rico's partner as president and your champion in the White House." Read more.
In Case You Missed It: "Media Hype -- How Small Stories Become Big News" Read more.
Today on the Trail: Hillary hosts "Solutions for Puerto Rican Families” events in Penuelas, Carolina, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
On Tap: Hillary will campaign in South Dakota on Wednesday, with a stop already planned at the Pine Ridge reservation. Read more.
