(( Y A W N ))

What a pathetic non-argument. What the hell do you people want? Of course Hillary is going to get attacked as long as she stays in the race. And she makes damn sure she can't be ignored.

The Hillary campaign is now completely schizophrenic. She won't quite the race because she's a "fighter", but when she gets into actual fight, suddenly she's a victim and everyone is being too hard on her?

Make up your mind already, drama queens.

It seems to me that the main point for liberals is to see that a progressive Democrat is elected to the White House. I was a strong Hillary supporter a year ago, ended up voting for Obama.

If Hillary were acting with grace and class as she is losing this race, the comments on this site and elsewhere would be very different. However, many of us feel that she is "saying anything, doing anything" to try to pull this nomination out, no matter how much she damages Obama's November prospects in the process.

Specifically, she and her husband repeat distortions such as claiming Obama can't win swing states against a Republican just because he lost them to another very strong Democratic candidate. She reinforces the Internet rumor mill about Obama ("He's not Muslim, as far as I know"). She and her top campaign advisors agreed to penalizing FL and MI, now go back on their word, while using inflammatory arguments (talking about voting rights, Zimbabwe, slavery).

The vitriol against her is because she has shown that she is willing to cause damage to the liberal cause in her selfish pursuit of the Presidency. As soon as she shows some grace in defeat, it will all change.

We're Democrats. We want to keep our party firmly reality-based. We 'believe that solutions emerge from ... judicious study of discernible reality.'

That means holding our candidates to their word, holding them to party principles, as best we can. If we allow it to become Calvinball, if we give Hillary a pass to make up her own rules as she goes along ... well, then we're enabling her to operate just like George Bush, who believes he belongs to a special class of actors who make history, while the rest of us are here to merely watch, study or help him fulfill his leading role.

I don't think most Obama supporters here who're calling Hillary on her BS are out to demonize her or divide the party ... some of us truly worry that if we don't raise our voices in protest, she *will* - in fact - damage our party.

And it's not only Hillary. Let's not kid ourselves about what Bill's been up to. He's fueling resentment, and for months now he's been out on the road constructing an alternative reality for resentful folks to believe in ...

I suspect that the Clintons see themselves no differently than the Bushies: they see themselves as powerful people in the reality-creating business.

Those of us who recoil at such a worldview will need to do whatever we can to provide reality checks as needed.

The paragraph below from Suskind's Oct 2004 piece in the NY Times should remind us to not get complacent now, not after witnessing Hillary's campaign ride roughshod over reality for several months now ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

...angry mob of villagers chasing Frankenstein's monster, perhaps some justification for their alarm, but crowd hysteria is not pretty....to place outraged victim every time....the need to demonize, dehumanize them....

Welcome to the dark side of the political blogosphere, the very strong tribal or gang culture that was evident from the beginning and just won't let go.

It certainly pre-dates this primary, one example:
Blog Rage by Jim Brady.
I am sure there are many scholarly papers out there on it for more since I last checked a couple years ago. But really nothing new, see the musical "West Side Story," urban people looking for a tribe.

Those who see it as it is but still support it argue that verbal violence and virtual mobs are better than real violence and real mobs. I guess, but it's still plenty ugly and depressing and not my preferred form of infotainment.

If it's not Clinton v. Obama gangs, it's pro-war v. anti-war. I saw some of the most extreme vitriol and gang behavior on discussion boards on HN51 bird flu virus. Manicheanism writ large, no shades of grey.

When you find a bloggy-type place on the internet where mobs aren't formed in cycles in reaction to the current zeitgeist, where people aren't proud of tribalism but instead are not ashamed of their cosmopolitanism (sometimes labeled "elitism" by those who think of that as a slur,) instead congregate to learn the shades of grey and to grapple with understanding things, please do let me know. I am eternally hopeful that one will develop. Sometimes they manage to survive for a year or two, like TPMCafe, but then, so far, it seems inevitable that they are engulfed by gangs. Because fights and the solidarity of team sports sell more tickets?

Where can we go to get away from the George Bush's of the world, i.e. "you're either with us or against us"? Analysis of politics without proud partisanship cannot form a marketable audience? A place where a few people are instead proud of not buying into the bread and circuses but looking to deconstruct them?

All I know is that there are no gangs or teams on the gardening blogs. People really do come to those to exchange information and knowledge and to share preferences and experiences in a non-inflammatory, honest way. They don't feel they have to spin themselves silly about a plant, they can talk about its good sides and bad sides without fear of being accused of an ulterior motive. Why is that? Perhaps because they are all struggling against one adversary, nature?

All I can say is that the Obama v. Hillary gang fight is the most absurd one I have seen yet. They are two Democratic centrists with the most similar records one could imagine. There is much potential for current graduate students in the Social Sciences and specifically for those interested in mob psychology.

Yeah, and your graceful name calling should smooth things over. The incredible hypocrisy of Clinton and her supporters is amazing.

A man once repeated something a wise man once said, "If you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen!" It is time for you to get out of the kitchen.

Obama has been fair game and the Clinton's took full advantage, admonishing anyone who commented on the interestingly nasty tenor of their arguments. She fought toe to toe and lost. Hillaryland won't quit, but can't come up with enough excuses as to why she's lost. It is tiring.

Many of us believe the GE is too important to continue catering to the wants, needs and wishes of any individual.

Clinton surrogates are quoted, acknowledging "the cold, brutal facts..." yet she remains in this race because anything, including an assassination, could still happen.

She herself, has offended and insulted many people and rebuffs each time that we got it wrong again. Debate her intentions all you will. I, for one, have am unable to give her the benefit of the doubt again. It is tired and it should be stopped.