Month: January 2008

The Threat Of Huckabee

No one should under-estimate the danger he represents: a significant ratcheting up of the theocratic tendencies in contemporary Republicanism. This quote is particularly alarming:

"I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards."

Hence the need to amend the constitution to prevent liberty and equality being extended to gay people. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are always subject to Biblical truth in the Christianist mindset. Gay people have yet to confront an enemy as potent as Huckabee.

The Clinton Logic

Hclintonchrishondrosgetty

Jill Tubman sees it:

If she wins the nomination, I would absolutely vote for her over whichever fascist fumbling jackass the Republicans select in their primaries. I might vote for her without much enthusiasm, but I would certainly choose her. And that’s what the Clintons are banking on.

Yep: that’s how they screw over gay people and still get their money, votes and fawning admiration. But I tend to side with many of the commenters on the site, the kind who write:

Voting for Hillary would just embolden this kind of campaigning in the future. If blacks vote for her in our regular numbers, this thing continues for all eternity and there won’t ever be a black president, period. Or a latino president or an Asian president, etc. You don’t have to vote for Hillary or Republican. Claiming that is the only option is simply a lie and you know that. You can write in a candidate. You can vote Green. You can vote Independent, Libertarian, etc. It’s not either/or.

(Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty.)

Campaign Days Of Our Lives

“This one is special. You have the Clintons, a powerful dysfunctional family — remember they were the ones that spoofed ‘The Sopranos’ — you have this out of nowhere handsome stranger in Obama that is straight out of ‘Heroes.’ John McCain, left for dead in a previous episode, roars back to life, and Mitt Romney, who is a dead ringer for John Forsythe. And I am not the first to point out that Mike Huckabee is Jim Nabors. And then it all ends in this amazing ‘American Idol’ big episode on Super Tuesday. How can you not watch that? My wife had some minor surgery the other day and the nurse asked her if she wanted to just lay there in the recovery room and rest a little bit. And she said, ‘No thanks, I have to get home and watch ‘The Situation Room.’ ” – David Von Drehle.

Cohen vs Obama

The more I think about it, the more disgraceful that column was. Pure identity politics paranoia. A Jewish columnist sees a black man running for president and the first thing he asks himself is: where is this guy on Farrakhan? And Obama has to disprove his connections, even though there is not even a smidgen of evidence connecting the two, and even, as Greg Sargent points out, Obama’s own spokesman explicitly disowned any support for Farrakhan in the same column.

If Obama has to disown a man he has never had anything to do with and a man whose toxic racist politics Obama has consistently and continuously opposed with all his might, then every black candidate is forced to jump through Cohen’s petty little racist litmus test. They’re all guilty of anti-Semitism until proved innocent. And Cohen’s transparent disavowals of such an insinuation make it worse not better.

We are learning a lot through this primary process – especially about some powerful white liberals and race. What we’re learning isn’t pretty.