Back in January I expected to vote for Clinton if Obama lost out in the delegate race. But Clinton's Rove-like behavior over the last month has made it impossible for me to vote for her under any circumstances. Although she faces certain defeat, she has put her personal ambition ahead of her party and her country. It is impossible to distinguish her actions from those of the right-wing attack machine she used to decry.

Listen, supporters do some nasty things. It dosen't matter who they support. You will run into the worst of them on the web. I have seen many HRC supporters attacking Obama supporters as well. Some really nasty stuff too.

However, everyone needs to look at the candidates and what they are doing. HRC has launched many many false attacks on Obama. Nafta-gate, Muslim smear, Mcain is better, etc etc. Obama has attacked back, but in a truthful manner.

Me? I got real tired of being accused of being a dumb ass brain washed cult member. I take the word cult pretty damn seriously.

stravu9 -
I agree with you that things often get out of hand .... in both directions. Not so much on TPM, but have you checked other sites and looked at what Obama supporters have to read and, somehow, get past? Beyond ugly - uglier than the worst I see thrown at Clinton. It was also ugly here earlier on, in about equal measure, but I get the impression most Hillary supporters have gone elsewhere. So some of us "vent" here and try to behave better where there are Clinton supporters we might alienate with the depth of our anger. I know I do, to be honest.

If your candidate, Edwards, had been the chief opposition to Clinton at this point, I suspect you'd understand a bit better. (I was originally for Biden myself and then sort of divided between Edwards and Obama; by the time it reached my state, Obama was the only alternative and I was proud to vote for him as I would have been for either of the others.) Hillary's technique against her opponent, whoever that is, is plain nasty, insidious, and unfair -- and it's awfully hard not to respond to that with very real anger.

Back when Obama said "I can get her(Clinton's) voters but she can't get mine!", he was only telling the truth: a truth that one would think is of some interest to the party, which would like to reclaim the White House. It isn't that we, at least those like me, are saying "Obama or no one" We are saying "not Clinton" ... and meaning it from the very fiber of our souls.

I have never voted for anyone other than a Democrat in a Presidential election - and I've voted in 11 of them! But I will not, cannot vote for Hillary Clinton. I'm not alone. She has adopted the techniques of the Rove Republicans in running her campaign and I have every belief that she will govern in the same fashion as that group's "finest achievement": George W. Bush. That decision has nothing to do with Obama; it would be the same if the other candidate were Edwards, Biden or anyone else. Heck, I might even hold my nose (and my head) and vote for Gravel if he wound up the nominee!!! But I will not and cannot hold my stomach and vote for Clinton after what I have seen of her during this campaign. This is new -- I've actually voted for her twice before (in NY), but never again, not after what I have seen during the last few months.

When you have someone like that, I'm sure even Obama knows that you don't 'unify' with them, not until and unless their power is blunted. You don't turn your back on them, and you don't give them the keys to your car, much less the keys to the White House. Can you coordinate and cooperate with them on certain things? Yes. I think that is one reason you don't hear this level of anger and disdain from Obama himself or his campaign (except when they think they are 'off the record' alas).

So, I agree with you that name-calling and bad manners isn't helping anyone and it goes 'over the top' too often. But I think you may underestimate the depth of our anger - our rage. Clinton is not just trying to kill the chance of a candidate we would like to see win - that's normal politics and no one could blame her. But she is also killing, present tense - as we speak, our party and its chance to win in Nov., and she is running away a generation of new voters who, thanks to true visionaries like Obama and Edwards and statesmen like Biden and Dodd, were starting to have a little respect for and faith in the system for the first time in a long time.

If you can't see her actions and effect in that way, then of course you can't understand the fierceness of those who oppose her candidacy. I didn't see it for a while -- didn't want to believe it of a Clinton or of my Senator, whom I have supported. But once, as they say, the "scales fall from your eyes" you can't NOT see it. And then you can't avoid the rage. If she succeeds in winning the nomination, in the way that she is going about it, many valuable and cherished things will be dead, perhaps the least of them being Obama's candidacy. -- The anger and anguish would be no different if the last remaining candidate was Edwards or any of the others.

Being without content the Obama campaign is all about feelings and sensations. Barack Obama offers nothing but wrapping. Emotional sensations of "change" for the sort of people that think that using a certain aftershave is a "statement". When this brought to their attention that get very angry.
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