'The ..|.. Finger of Hope, Change and Unity'

From The Left Coaster. Lots of good links.

In an earlier post "Campaign Fairy Tales", I addressed the outright lies about the alleged nature of Sen. Clinton's☼ and Sen. Obama's☼ campaigns from a couple of "top" bloggers with a severe case of CDS. Now, after Sen. Obama performed underwhelmingly in the ABC debate (see Boehlert's Revenge Part II - and, as a relevant aside, also check out Eric Boehlert's latest column for Media Matters), some of Sen. Obama's supporters have taken to rending their garments about Sen. Clinton using Republican style talking-points against Sen. Obama and one of the "top" bloggers severely afflicted with CDS has come to the Very Serious Conclusion that Sen. Clinton is therefore Not a Democrat. (Don't you just love all these Very Serious People!)

Now, Sen. Clinton is no fairy and I do agree that she has perpetuated some Republican style talking points against Sen. Obama - something that I disagree with. However, if that is now the key criterion for inclusion in the Democratic party (according to the Crown Prince of CDS), let's just say that Sen. Obama would have had to be expelled from the party quite a while ago. (To be clear, I believe Sen. Obama is a Democrat who requires no expulsion of any kind, but I'm pointing out what would have had to happen if we followed the illogic of the Crown Prince of CDS). All I can say is, if the Crown Prince of CDS and his like-thinking friends keep this up, Sen. Obama's already tenuous support amongst a significant chunk of Sen. Clinton's base (which is roughly half of the Democratic party) will start depleting even further and become problematic if Sen. Obama becomes the nominee. Their behavior is certainly not the kind that fosters any kind of hope, change or unity and it is sad that fact-free, irrational, hate-filled, blog posts - something that used to be the domain of Little Green Fascists and other lower life forms on the Right - have become part of the mainstream of Sen. Obama's blogger base on the internets (also see Turkana's post on this).

Sadly, Sen. Obama is also doing himself few favors with behaviors - see video, also here, here and here - not particularly befitting a Presidential candidate (unless you are Matthew Yglesias in which case this is the Change We Can Believe InTM - merely a page from the, um, book of Compassionate ConservatismTM). Taking it up a notch from here and here while pretending to be Troubled by his opponent for behaviors that have long been the defining characteristic of his own campaign is pretty silly. After all, not only does Sen. Obama have an impressive record of repeatedly attacking Sen. Clinton using classic, offensive and usually false Republican talking points, prior to Sen. Edwards' withdrawal from the race it used to be widely known among some of the same people who are now his supporters that Sen. Obama had an impressive record of using false right-wing talking-points against fellow Democrats. I have pointed this out many times previously on a variety of topics and for the record, I am going to point this out again, given the latest outburst of crocodile tears and false indignation from his campaign and some of his supporters in the blogosphere. Here is just a sample of the large number of Republican-style attacks from Sen. Obama or his campaign against Sen. Clinton (and sometimes President Clinton) just in the past 8-10 months . . . .