Reply #51: Seriously, you could start by taking your own advice.

[mojowork_n]

You conclude with the suggestion, if "you want to write a post alienating Hillary (or Obama) supporters, you go outside and play ball with your dog and then come back and write a more productive post than the one your ego was telling you to write."

Good advice.

So why does your headline read, You're not getting anywhere with the "it's over Hillary" and "let's move on to the general" posts?

As an Obama supporter, I kind of took that to be a sort of "step over this line" challenge, or provocation. Like waving the red hankie in front of the bull's face. A negative statement to Obama Folks, preceding two negative statements for Hill People, which are emphatically denied in the body copy. (Apologies to the Crips and Bloods.)

True, after the third or fourth sentence, you were starting to go with the "each candidate is half the party" line, which then kind of morphs into "we need each other's help if we're going to win."

But it all came off (to me, at least, maybe I'm reading into it) as a veiled threat. One that says, "if you don't stop being mean, we're going to take our ball and go home and then you won't have a game."

Maybe you didn't mean to say that, but that's the bottom line I inferred from your post. (The same old, same old; that's been messing up this forum, for how long now? You drop out; no, you drop out; no, you...)

Nothing to see here, move along.

I don't even think you're saying anything too serious with that "half the party" stuff. I don't believe that sort of narrow focus describes the current situation very well at all.

The 2008 election isn't going to be a popularity contest, like an election for prom king and queen, or which former car dealer is best suited to represent Grover's Corners in the state legislature. I don't think it's going to be all about the same old identity politics, either. Some traditional Democrats may end up voting for McCain, and others may pull the lever for Nader, or continue to write in "John Edwards", or "Dennis Kucinich." I'm personally hopeful that significant numbers of traditionally tight-fisted, principled, penny-pinching, anti-war Republicans will cross over to vote against a continuation of Bush-Clinton-Bush "business as usual."

Because that's been a catastrophic disaster. This country's B*R*O*K*E. The secrecy, high-handedness, you're-with-us-or-against-us ambition and arrogance of the most recent Bush administration are to blame.

From what I've been hearing her say in the debates, I don't (personally) feel like many Clinton supporters see their support of Hillary as necessarily reflecting the same degree of dissatisfaction with the current regime that I have. (I trace the roots of so many problems, back to that same source.)

In fact, when you've got Bill showing up on Rush's radio show, and Republican "movement conservatives" crossing over to vote for Hillary, in droves, in the last few primaries, how can they?

You wrote, "Face facts. Obama can't win the general without Hillary's supporters and vice versa.

I don't think it'll ever come to that level of hostility. After all, you can't judge all Barack supporters, or all Hillary supporters, on the basis of their representation in frequent postings to the General Discussion > Primaries forum. Whoever tells the American people the truth, and challenges the Republicans directly on their record, is the candidate that's going to win.