Note to Hillary - Send Them Packing

I sketched this out as an open letter to Hillary Clinton last night, but that approach was unsatisfying. She's a US Senator and the most successful female presidential candidate in history, which would've required some measure of respect and courtesy. I'm not in the mood for that. I'm in the mood for opening the pressure release valve all the way and letting the steam whistle out.

Clinton will be conceding to and endorsing Barack Obama tomorrow and there are a few things she's going to have to address. In fact, there are a few points she's going to have to beat down with a sledgehammer. She needs to reign in some of her more stupid supporters, who plan to back McCain, and point out that Baghdad Johnny represents almost nothing Clinton stands for. She needs to point out that throwing more Iraqis and Americans into the meat grinder because of a childish fit of pique is stupid beyond all words. She needs to point out that more Alitos and more Thomases and more Scalias on the Supreme Court are not the reason she ran. She needs to point out that a defection from the Democratic party is a defection from herself. In short, she needs to talk some real freakin' idiots off the ledge. Just not all of them. Some of them can go ahead and jump.

The fact is that the Clinton campaign has been incredibly irresponsible in their tolerance of some real human turds. In May, the Washington Post reported:

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

A canvasser in Kokomo, Indiana was chased by dogs. A campaign headquarters in Vincennes was vandalized. There were three bomb threats to Obama offices in Indiana. West Virginia was hardly any better. Nor was Tennessee.

Throughout all of this hatred on Hillary Clinton's behalf, she's been largely silent. While I don't believe that Clinton's personally racist, she's sure been enabling racists on her behalf and, in practice, that's the same damned thing as being racist yourself. Hillary Clinton really needs to ask herself if she wants to be the rallying point for the American Nazi Party and the KKK. If her answer is anything other than "Hell no!" she needs to get out of the Democratic party, let alone the race for the party's nomination.

And this whole "Yay for racism!" wing of Hillary supporters is getting out of hand. FOX News put this story on their election blog Wednesday:

An angry and upset Rep. James Clyburn said Wednesday that his office has been deluged with nasty phone calls with racial overtones since his endorsement of Barack Obama a day earlier.

Clyburn told FOX News Radio’s “Brian and the Judge” that the callers identified themselves as Hillary Clinton supporters. Clyburn, an African-American and the third ranking House Democrat, said a white intern in his office was so upset by the calls that she had to be consoled by other workers and left the office early.

“We got more vitriolic, nasty phone calls, really racially tinged phone calls in my congressional office, so much so, until one of the interns, a young lady who is not a stranger to politics … and she is not a black person, she left the office, had to be consoled because of the kinds of phone calls from people who identified themselves as Hillary Clinton supporters,” he said.

Yeah, I know -- Faux News, the Liars' Club, yada-yada-yada. But Clyburn hasn't issued a denial. This is really happening. Since she needed every single vote she could get her hands on, she remained silent about the white supremacist faction of her own supporters. One would imagine that they were always just one comment away from voting for McCain. Retaining the racists had to be a deliberate consideration. The balancing act it would take to not be overtly racist yourself, while not discouraging these slackjawed throwbacks to the stone age, can only be described as a strategy. Hillary Clinton was the willing recipient of the benefits of the race card.

For myself, I don't think we need these fools to win. Republicans are going to lose big in down ticket races and John McCain hasn't been able to raise enough money to throw a good picnic. But even if I thought we did need racist votes to win, I'd choose to lose -- I'd lose a thousand elections over race and justice. There are some things you just don't compromise on and retain your soul.

As far as I'm concerned, Hillary Clinton has one chance at redemption. Where Barack Obama gave a thoughtful address on the issue of race, Hillary Clinton needs to give an angry one tomorrow. Racists are as stubborn as they are stupid and the vast, vast majority of them will remain racist until the day they die. She's never going to bring these idiots to reason. She needs to take up a pitchfork and chase them out of the Democratic party.

The onus is then on John McCain. Everyone knows the Republican party is the racist's party, but that unpleasant topic is never broached on the talking head shows. If Hillary Clinton actively sends the pinhead sons of bitches to McCain, Baghdad Johnny's going to have to either accept them or send them packing himself -- neither move can help anyone but Obama. Let Old Man McCain deal with the consequences of being known as the racist's choice.

The rest of the defectors -- the whiny sore losers who'd rather throw everything they believe in down the toilet than vote for the man Clinton's trained them to hate -- will be left to decide just how much of their own souls they're willing to sacrifice for their shallow little electoral tantrum. Either line up behind the nominee or join the racists. Let that be their unenviable choice -- either grow the fuck up or put on the hood.

It's that last group, those stupid sour grapes types with the temperament of a freakin' two year-old, who reason just might reach. You know how many times in my life I've voted for my first choice in a presidential election? Zero. In fact, Barack Obama's my third choice candidate in this election. I was for Kucinich, then Edwards, now Obama. If you don't get the candidate you want, you act like a damned grownup and move on. Democracy guarantees broken hearts. Get used to it. I'm not impressed by your stridency, shrillness, and petulance. No one else is, either. And your wounded sense of entitlement isn't all that attractive either.

Hillary Clinton -- who was the one who delivered the wound -- has a chance to heal her party tomorrow. And she'll have to put her nation first and herself second to do it. The day after the fortieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy's death, she might consider quoting these words:

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

That's the soul of America, that speech by RFK on the occasion of Martin Luther King's assassination -- E Pluribus Unum. Those who accept that get our praise. For those who don't, there's the door. Good riddance.

Get the hell out.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; John McCain; It's up to Hillary Clinton to chase racism and hate out of the Democratic party