Throughout the 2008 primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it was not uncommon to read online messages featuring the most outrageous insults against Hillary coming from the most extreme of Obama worshippers.

The least vicious of these insults was that Hillary was supposed to have felt entitled to the nomination and eventually to the presidency. It was her turn, if you were carefully reading the dismissive and derisive message of people inside and outside the Obama campaign.

---

Well now it is just a few days before the Democratic convention in Denver on Monday, 25 August.

Obama is frustrated and angry. Russia invaded Georgia about two weeks ago, when Obama had just started a period of rest and relaxation—in Hawaii, to visit his maternal grandmother who lives there—before the intense couple of months of campaigning to follow.

McCain and his campaign team have long since gone negative. In many paid political advertisements and on the cable news channels, McCain representatives have been attacking Obama, his experience (or lack thereof), his policies, and his dubious associations.

The negative-attack approach seems to be working, which is not inconsistent with historical results showing this to be so. The tracking of national samplings of voters' opinions and analyses of how those opinions translate into the all-important Electoral College votes indicate that McCain has caught up with Obama. Some polls even show McCain ahead of Obama while it is true, of course, that some polls also show Obama still ahead of McCain.

The Obama campaign has not been helped by Russia having invaded Georgia. This kind of event dredges up all that anti-Communist paranoia that brought us the Korean and Vietnam wars and lives lost, not to mention trillions in taxpayer spending to the military-industrial complex whose evil Eisenhower warned us about.

It also makes the American voter think about whom is best able to stand up to Russia, which is exactly what the McCain campaign wants voters to think about, since Republicans have traditionally prevailed on the global and national security question.

One thing is certain though, and it is something that should disturb Obama. And that is that with an unpopular war whose involvement most certainly was based on lies to the American people and their representatives...with an economy in collapse not entirely due to external factors (that is, factors beyond control by the U.S. government or its people)...with corruption in government probably the worst it has ever been...with McCain saying there is not a single major policy of the Bush White House that he would change...how can Obama look behind himself and not see McCain at a distance McCain could never hope to cover?

Surely some heads in the Obama campaign should be wondering if they are going to roll. Who would blame Barack a fit of temper, overturning desks, punching holes in walls, kicking over the water fountain, for why his staff has dropped the ball in this run up to the general election?

Isn't Obama really entitled to the presidency, after all?

Oops!

---

In the coming days, the behavior of the Obama campaign will be scrutinized very closely. The criticism of a candidate having a sense of entitlement to the nomination and presidency which the Obama campaign used against Hillary will now be used by right wingers and the McCain campaign against Obama, as it should.

It is already in evidence.

Bloggers and other assorted worshippers of all things Obama are already whining on the Internet that Obama's fall in the polls is because of Hillary's supporters not getting behind Obama.

After all, Obama won, didn't he? Obama's supporters contend that yes, he did win just barely an infinitesimal measure of over half of the party's vote, but he won just the same! Thus, Obamaphiles demand that Hillary's supporters submit to the condition that Obama is entitled to call all the shots. He doesn't have to form a team with Hillary's group and let them contribute to policy. He is entitled to telling Hillary's voters to shut up and do what they are told, when they are told. Party rules, right?

So why aren't Hillary's voters getting in line?

Well for one thing, a lot of Hillary's voters are not registered members of the Democratic Party. They are independents and even some disaffected Republicans who voted in open primaries (for instance, California's Democrats use the open primary) because they remember good days with Bill Clinton and figure they are getting Bill-in-a-skirt with Hillary. (Okay, pantsuit, if you insist.) They are not interested in any other Democratic Party candidate—including and especially Obama—whose policies and principles they find entirely unpalatable.

And even if many of Hillary's voters are Democrats, it is the nature of the liberal who becomes a Democrat not to show blind party loyalty, but instead to vote on principle. In fact, haven't liberals, whether Democrats or independents or even Republicans, criticized right wingers in the Republican Party for being too ready and willing to be partisan rather than principled in how they vote?

The charge coming from Obama acolytes—that Hillary's supporters are not being good party loyalists and are bringing down Obama's poll numbers and possibly his win in November—thus smacks of rank hypocrisy.

Obama has not made an effort at all to win what he needs for November. What he pretty much needs is that nearly equal number of votes that Hillary won, as well as the votes of the center. A campaign that says, Hey! I won my party's nomination, according to the victor-goes-the-spoils rule, you just do what your told when your are told is probably not an approach that will win many votes. That sort of arrogance has just never set well with many people, even if they are losers, being supporters of the losing side.

---

The Oba-maniacs who are berating Hillary supporters are doing their candidate no favors. After all, he's won the nomination, but not the November vote yet. And Obama needs those Hillary supporters come November.

With Obama falling behind McCain in the polls, Oba-maniacs are already whining and blaming Hillary and her supporters for Obama's inability to do what he should be doing, and not trying to foist blame on Hillary. If Obama doesn't win in November, look for his supporters to be screaming at supporters of Hillary. The only thing this will achieve is to divide one half of the party against the other. A party with two camps not talking to each other usually means that the party is kaputt, forever in a shambles. That too might not be a bad thing.

If party unity and inclusion really means something to Obama and his campaign, then it is time for him, his staff, and his partisans to stop blame-shifting and exclusion, not to mention all the whining. He can show that he will be a president for all the people by being a nominee to all the party.

It is said that the Clintons were probably not going to get roles at the Democratic Convention until Obama saw his poll numbers going down, and then the campaign realized that it was dividing the party. If that was true, why would a candidate's campaign not consider including the other candidate that won just about the half the party?

If Obama does not want his good judgment questioned as to how he would be president, then he better be showing good judgment as a presumptive nominee.

Mavi Gözler
American Patriot

22 August 2008

All errors in content and style are mine. Remarks, compliments, criticisms, suggestions, and even proofreader's comments are all welcome; any revisions made to the text suggested by a proofreader will be credited on this page with name of proofreader, unless an explicit request not to do so is submitted.