Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Note from the Cult (Dennis)

Alright, I have just about had it with Krugman and others who have begun to characterize Obama's following as an irrational cult bent on electing their favorite candidate, apparently implying that Camp Hillary is for serious grownups in the party. For one, it seems they conveniently forget press releases like this and this which read more like the whiskey-fueled rants of a jilted lover ("He chose the new guy over us!") than statements by a major state-level organization; opinion pieces like this, which accuse female Obama supporters of being self hating women; and Krugman's own posts which have characterized uneasiness about making people buy health care which they may or may not be able to afford as being anti-progressive (yes the government will say you can afford it, but anyone with experience with your friendly local Office of Financial Aid knows that can be subjective).

Moreover, there's the fact that, according to most exit polls I've seen, the Obama vote has been the old anti-war, pro-Lamont, and pro-Dean crowd while the Hillary vote has (generally) been the pro-war, pro-Lieberman, anti-Dean crowd. So, these were the people who looked at the plan for the Iraq war and thought "good idea!"; who looked at Kerry and thought "he's electable"; who looked at Lieberman and thought "a real Democrat." Now I'm not saying that there weren't good reasons for these positions at the time, because there were, I would just be wary, if I were them, about calling the people who opposed them on all those points "unserious" and "irrational."

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