Monday, June 2, 2008

Hillary's Supporters at the Meeting are a Disgrace (Updated)

The Clinton campaign and all of her supporters everywhere must be embarrassed and humiliated by the rudeness of her supporters present in the meeting room.

These rude and disgraceful supporters do their candidate no service, indeed, they do her a disservice. If anecdotal reports from the meeting and the protest outside are to be believed, then these supporters are expressing their intention to embrace the Bush Administration and all of their failures and crimes by refusing to support our Party's nominee. If the same anecdotal reports are to be believed, many of the Clinton supporters present are passing out scurrilous flyers telling horrible right wing lies about our nominee, Barack Obama. These flyers are calling him an adulterer and a murderer.

It is inconceivable to me how these Clinton supporters could do such a thing given the fact that the same right wing they now embrace spread the same lies and smears about Bill Clinton during the 1990's. Indeed, the right wing called Bill Clinton a murderer back then. And now the same Clinton supporters are accepting the same lies about Barack Obama.

At the same time, these same supporters pounce on any perceived slight from any minor Obama supporter and demand immediate reparations.

And that is a disgrace and it is hypocritical.

If Hillary's supporters have at any time demanded repudiation and denunciation on the part of the Obama campaign and his supporters, then they now must denounce and repudiate their own supporters who have engaged in the most disgraceful actions today.

And they must do it now.

And if they do not, they are entitled to no consideration by anyone anywhere ever again. If Hillary Clinton does not condemn her own supporters who have acted so rudely and immorally today, then she must be entitled to no further consideration, as a potential Vice Presidential candidate, as a Democratic Senator from the great state of New York, and as a Democrat herself.

I am outraged today by the disgraceful actions of those supporters who have spread such horrible lies. They must be ashamed of themselves if they have any principles or morals.

UPDATE For proof of the ancedotal reports I mention in this diary, please visit this report by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post.

And from Eve Fairbanks at the New Republic:

Howard Dean may hope that the "healing will begin today," but two blocks away from the northwest Washington Marriott where the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting right now to try to figure out Florida and Michigan, the Hillary protesters are occupying an utterly alternate (and healing-free) universe: a universe in which one of the big lawn rally's speakers yells that the Democratic Party no longer is in the business of "promoting equality and fairness for all"; in which a Hillary supporter with two poodles shouts, "Howard Dean is a leftist freak!"; in which a man exhibits a sign that reads "At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen" and shows Dean whipping handcuffed people; and in which Larry Sinclair, the Minnesota man who took to YouTube to allege that Barack Obama had oral sex with him in the back of a limousine in 1999, is one of the belles of the ball.

"They almost made me cry this morning when they told me to get out of there," the blond Sinclair--who's looking roly-poly and giddy in a blue-and-white striped shirt with a pack of Marlboros protruding from the breast pocket--says, referring to several nervous protest organizers who tried to evict him when he first showed up at the rally site early this morning carrying a box of "Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex" fliers. Since then, though, he goes on, "I have been totally surprised by the reception I have received!"

...Clusters of people in Hillary shirts ask to take their photo with him, one woman covered in Clinton buttons introduces him to Greta Van Susteren, and he estimates he has handed out 500 fliers. "You could improve your credibility if you downplayed the gay sex and focused on the drugs," sagely advises one Hillary supporter with auburn hair and elegant makeup. But in this universe, Sinclair's credibility doesn't seem to be suffering too much. In fact, he's treated nearly as well as he might be at a meeting of the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy. ...

Of the eight Hillary supporters I quiz at the protest (six of them women), only one says she'd even consider voting for Obama in the fall. "It's sad. I'm a lifelong Democrat and the party's been taken over by these Obama people who say they want 'change,'" gripes Linda of Horseheads, New York, outside the Marriott as a honking car decorated with a painting of Hillary, a glued-on bust of Cleopatra, and a tampon drives by. Linda, she says, has already gone to the state Board of Elections to learn how to write Hillary's name in in November. "So much has been stolen from her."

"Would you rather have a president who had an affair [Bill Clinton] or one who was a murderer [Obama]?" Jeannie, the Greensboro Democrat, asks a fellow in a floppy Tilley hat and Hillary buttons. "That's a good point," he replies.

Thank you to the Kossacks who posted these videos in the comments. I hope you do not mind that I add them to the main diary.

And to be fair, my original title was "Hillary Clinton's Supporters are a Disgrace." Of course, that is not the main point of my diary, and indeed many of her supporters, like fellow Kossacks Angry Mouse and others here in the comments, are not disgraces. Indeed, they are very reasonable and enlightened as to the reality of this nominating contest, and they have rejected and denounced those supporters who would peddle in right wing lies.

Original here

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