Hillary's Hearing Voices Again...
Representatives of the Obama and Clinton camps announced today that Clinton's name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month. Why? Damned if I know. Hillary, apparently, is hearing voices again, and wants us to hear them too as a means of "catharsis" for her former supporters. Some of those supporters, convinced despite fresh revelations in the Atlantic this week that their candidate headed a cluster fuck of a campaign in as inept a manner as any major candidate this side of Dole '96, remain convinced that they wuz robbed, and despite Clinton crony Lanny Davis' remark that the Senator will have "little sympathy" for those of her supporters who try and use this as a means of disrupting the convention, several of these folks are likely to have big stinky catharses all over the convention floor.
Meanwhile, Senator Obama, already having given Clinton and her ex-POTUS husband prime time speeches on two consecutive nights, has now devoted a third to, as the joint Clinton-Obama announcement puts it, "honor and celebrate these voices and votes." You know-- the ones who couldn't defeat him in the primaries, whose template for tearing down his candidacy has been adopted wholesale by McCain and the Republicans, who refused to acknowledge his victories and have never really given him his due as the nominee of the Party.
Why is he doing this? Again, damned if I know, but I can damn well guess. Disappointing as it is to admit, this reeks of the kind of Democratic timidity that has plagued the Party for thirty years, and suggests that among the things we overestimated about Obama were his guts and his intelligence. Disappointing? Sure. A reason to regret his nomination over Clinton, much less vote for McCain? Oh, hell no. Will it get played that way? Most bloody likely.