Reply #52: For crimeny sakes.

[Sapphocrat]

1. You're going to get all the change you want whether the next president is Obama, Huckabee, or a houseplant.

2. "Hope" is a not a platform. "Hope" doesn't mean jack on its own. "Hope" is meaningless without a plan of action. I can dig through that gigantic pile of horseshit on my lawn hoping there's a pony under there somewhere, but at the end of the day, I want to see the damned pony.

3. You make several astoundingly bigoted, narrowminded assumptions about the very people you should be "reaching out" to:

As a Californian, living in a very mixed area (Oakland-Bay Area), I had not suspected that Latinos didn't like Black people and wouldn't vote for a Black candidate.

Can that broadbrush get any wider? What a horrible thing to say -- you just called all Latinos bigots. If you live in the SFBA (as I have, all my life), you should (as I do) know many, many Latinos. Where did your perception of our Latino neighbors get so skewed? Do you hear any Latinos saying such a thing, even on DU? If so, who? what? when? where?

I had not suspected that there was a wide gi-sm between Black Religious folks and the Gay community.

Is that what you want to believe? Does it somehow comfort you to lay blame on LGBTs (as well as Latinos)? Or are you saying that all black religious people are prejudiced against all LGBT people? If it is the latter, I cannot make that kind of judgment -- but it sounds like a very unfair thing to say about black religious people. At the same time, you are again doing a huge disservice to gay black people (not to mention gay black religious people) -- who are treated as if they did not exist, as if they were "an inconvenient truth" that does not fit into everyone else's nice, neat, compartmentalized view of the world.

It was LGBT black people who brought the homophobia of SOME black religious people to light -- and who have my eternal gratitude for doing so, since without confronting this very uncomfortable issue head-on, there would be no way to even begin to try to resolve it.

I was not aware that Women would vote for a woman simply because she was, and that African Americans weren't allowed to believe the same about voting for a Black candidate.

If that's why you're voting for Obama, then every other argument you've ever made in his favor is moot. I wouldn't vote for or against him because he is black, I wouldn't vote for or against HRC because she is a woman, and -- brace yourself -- I wouldn't vote for a gay person because s/he was gay. I'm not jonesing for a black president or a female president or a gay president -- I want the BEST president. I do not believe your candidate would make the best president, thus will not vote for him.

I had forgotten that being of mixed race (as I am) would mean that I was possibly not "Black enough".

Sheesh... and everybody else is at fault for harping on the race issue? Talk to what's left of my Silician grandparents' generation about not being white enough. Christ, is everything literally black-or-white? To look at me, you'd say I'm white. But with the overwhelming Moorish history in my ancestral woodpile, I've probably got as much "black" DNA as Obama (maybe more).

The point: The people who talk the most about getting "past" the race issue are the ones most obsessed with it. Try to understand this concept I know you don't believe: A helluva lot of white people don't take race into consideration... unless you keep hammering them over the head with the idea of how "different" blacks and whites are. Honest to God, I don't think of you as Frenchiecat, the Black Woman -- I think of you as Frenchiecat, with Whom I Have Never Once Agreed -- and Who Gets Extremely Hostile with Me When I Challenge Her to Go One-on-One on DU.

I hadn't figured that students voting was a bad thing...and I certainly wasn't' aware that gaining traction with Independents and dejected Republicans was not the way to win a general election.

Skipping this, as I have no idea what you're talking about, but I assume you must mean that you are a (young) student. (Is this your first election? If so, I can sympathize a tad more with your intense passion, and vast disillusionment.)

In other words, I was unaware that a candidate discussing the politics of hope and Change was simply an empty of substance candidate with a corny sound byte that meant nothing to nobody and weight about as much as air.

Now you're getting it. "Hope" and "change" are empty, meaningless words. Not once has anyone -- least of all Obama -- told me what the man intends TO DO about anything. (Oh, please, Obama supporters, don't start posting all those links again. I've read them all, and more, and at the end of the day, there's no pony.)

...I realize that there is no such thing as hope....and if there is, the priority is to slowing squeeze it out of us, drop by drop. I realize that hope is too strong of a concept for us to be allowed to have. We should instead go with whatever we are told, and resign ourselves to whatever will be.

You've just nailed what sends me right over the top of Mount Frustration with you and almost every other Obama supporter: You look to Obama to tell you to "hope" because "change" is coming -- but when anyone else tries to pin you (or him) down to a definition of either "hope" (hope for WHAT, exactly?) or "change" (change WHAT, exactly?), you get angry and defensive, and bark back pre-programmed responses like, "It's pathetic YOU don't have any HOPE for the future! Why don't you want CHANGE?"

Why in the world would I vote for someone who seems to be saying, "Don't ask me what kind of 'change' -- just trust me that it will all be good." - ?

And there is the difference between the Hope-'n'-Change Obama supporters, and me: You operate on an undefinable FAITH, while I want specific, step-by-step PLANS for implementing whatever this great and mysterious "change" is supposed to be.

Hillary will not get my vote, because she was finally able to take away my hope.

Obama will not get my vote, because I want to know what I'm voting for.

So there is no need to pray, to wish, to have a vision, because at the end of the day, hope was taken from me for the last time during this election campaign.

Oh, FFS! That's exactly what I mean: Do you need someone else to give you "hope"? If you're going to pin your entire reason for having hope about anything on ONE MAN -- not a god, not an angel sent from on-high, not a superhero, but just ONE MAN, who is human, whose feet (his wife tells us) stink to high heaven, who belches and scratches his privates and functions just like every other human being on this planet -- how in the world have you managed to exist this long in life?

That is why I believe you, and most of the rest of the Obama supporters, react with such hostility all the time: You are pinning a lifetime's worth of dreams on this one man, who may very well end up disappointing you.

For once, I almost feel some sympathy for Obama: He's bought into the idea of being a demi-god -- but the first time he falters in the eyes of his supporters, he's not going to hate himself for it half as much as you will.

You want "hope"? You make your own. Stop expecting this just-a-man to fulfill every wish you ever had, or you're going to be devastated beyond repair when you get to the bottom of that pile and realize there's no pony there.