Barack, I forgive you for waking my ass up that early.

[luciazephyr]

HAHAHAHAHA, I GET IT NOW.

The phones rang at 3 AM. Get it? It's a slam towards Hillary and her bullshit ad!

Someone in my last post pointed it out. That's hilarious. :D

-Luce

Comments

[eh-notsomuch.livejournal.com]

Ya coulda just... left the phone in another room, like I did?

Yeah, now that I think about it, I bet the 3 a.m. thing was on purpose. Hee hee.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

But I wanted to know. I expected, like, 6 AM or something. That's reasonable.

[orbitaldiamonds.livejournal.com]

Depends on time zone, I suppose. 6am on the east coast is still 3am on the west coast.

[hanachan01.livejournal.com]

Don't remind me of that ad...xD

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Huh?

And also, I keep wondering why in the world you seem to dislike Hillary so much. I mean, she lost (so at this point, isn't gloating sort of pointless), she's supportive of Obama (and Biden), and if she hadn't run for President, there's a very good chance that my daughter would have had to be disabused of the notion (as I needed to be, growing up) that it was illegal for a woman to be President rather than it just being exceedingly unlikely for a woman to be President.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

I watched the election coverage every single day. She started out as a great idea and Mum and I were rooting for her. Then she became needlessly nasty and used some really bad tactics that I liked to think Dems wouldn't use on each other. It's not about her being a woman (and, frankly, I'm sick of being told it is by my bitter Hillary supporter RL friend). It's about her disappointing us the way she did.

[eh-notsomuch.livejournal.com]

I concur. It was things like her saying "Well, *I* don't know if he's a Muslim or not." When she KNEW what people were implying when she called him a Muslim. (Because all Muslims are terrorists, didn't we know that?)

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

I'll never forgive her for not smacking down Ferraro after the "he's only got this far because he's black" bullshit. Never heard such hypocritical BS in my life.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well, I guess I have no more faith in Dems than I do in Republicans, so I expect all candidates to fight dirty.

However, as for the Muslim thing, did you actually watch the interview in which she said that? I mean, really watch it? Recently? Because damn, she was speaking extemporaneously and being asked a really stupid question for 22 seconds--which is a damned long time to spend on a single yes/no question. And she kept saying, in various ways, "No," looking sort of baffled as her interviewer continued to press her to elaborate on her fairly straightforward, "No," clearly in the hopes that she'd turn her "no" into something else.

She was set the fuck up in what seemed to be a weird desire on the part of 60 minutes to manufacture controversy where there was none.

She said, "of course not, there is no basis for that" and "I take him on the basis of what he says" (which, again, religion is about what you say you believe, and to say that isn't to imply doubt but to imply trust) and then, "There isn't any reason to doubt that."

She's then asked again if she believes he's a Muslim and she again says, "No, no, why would I?"

And all of this comes before she slips up and admits "as far as I know."

The interview was a fucking cross-examination.

I mean, damn. Unless you believe the entire interview was scripted in advance (and I've seen no one paranoid or Hillary-hating enough to argue that she and 60 Minutes collaborated on that)... Hillary Clinton was screwed over, as was Obama, and I suspect that the point was to have the network come out on top by manufacturing news.

And I say this as someone who isn't and wasn't a huge Clinton supporter by any means, but that interview was one of those, "And when did you stop beating your wife" moments--appalling both in content (it was a wrong-headed, racist question to ask her) and strategy (putting her on the defensive about something neither she nor Obama should've had to defend).

And I'm sorry, but I get really pissed off when I hear people suggesting, on the basis of this interview, that she was purposefully trying to plant doubt in the minds of Americans or playing off of anti-Muslim sentiment.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

Her camp released the photo of Obama in Kenyan ceremonial garb (including a head turbin). I know the interview was crap. But between the photo leak, the incessant mocking of Obama because he dares to give speeches, praising McCain and herself for passing the presidential test but not Obama, the Ferraro Fiasco, and others? I was disappointed in her.

The final straw? Not fucking conceding when she'd lost. There was a key moment where everyone was watching her, waiting for her to give her concession speech which would unite the party and help us move past the bitter tension of the primaries. And she refused to do it. It was her job to do it and because she didn't, some 40% of her former supporters are threatening to go for McCain.

I have plenty of reason to hate her. Obama may not be perfect (god knows he's screwed up on some issues I deem very important), but Hillary was worse.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

See, from my own perspective, she was damned either way.

Obama supporters blame her for not conceeding and argue that, had she done so, she could have "united" everyone.

From a feminist perspective (rather than a Hillary-supporting perspective--and those are different things, I would argue), I think that the issue of her concession is very gendered, and had she been a man, she would have been admired for not conceeding (as was Gore, who held out far far longer even when it was clear he would not win).

As for the notion that she was responsible for uniting the party, again, from a feminist perspective, I think it's not an accident that the woman is bearing the brunt of responsibility for uniting. Women are expected to bring people together, make peace, make nice, make everyone feel better, and generally make sure things run smoothly. So, yes, I think that argument would look very differently if she were not a woman, and if there was a man who'd run against Obama, I think that the call to "unite" the two sides would have been meted out more evenly when one man lost to the other. The idea that she is wholly responsible for women Dems voting for McCain is, I think, problematic, as Obama is now representing the entire party and, as such, I think it makes sense to see that problem as one on his shoulders from the very moment that he accepted the nomination.

As for the Ferraro thing and the Kenyan thing? I don't think it makes sense to hold Hillary responsible in ways that would allow for gloating. Maybe hold her machine responsible, and the Democratic party as a whole, but her, personally as reason to hate her? That, to me, is unreasonable.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

I refute pretty much everything you said. It's not about her being a woman. If she was a man, I'd think the same way. When you lose, you have to concede, especially in such a bitterly fought primary. If Obama lost and had pulled what Hillary did, I'd be just as pissed at him. It has nothing to do with her gender.

Obama made a very solid effort to unite the party and to some extent succeeded. She should have done her part too.

And a candidate is their machine. They are responsible for their image and how they run. Obama's machine is admittedly better and, yes, Wolfson sucked and screwed Hillary over a lot. And she should have fired him long ago.

[viconiacat.livejournal.com]

Hillary lost me when she hired Mark Penn. Burson-Marsteller is the PR firm for evvviil, but beyond that he was just an incompetent loathsome character that made me question her judgment. Although to her credit she didn't use some of the more blatant racist tactics he wanted to.

Her whole campaign was run like crap - infighting, press leaks, inconsistent messages - and that stopped at Hillary. She was in charge and by all accounts failed to be the leader she claimed she was.

All that said - I think the country would be well served if she was Senate majority leader. Harry Reid has been a doormat and I think she could flourish in that role and make the Democratic majority ACT like they are the majority party.

[aelora.livejournal.com]

*facepalms*

I am going to blame the earliness on not getting the joke the way I should have. Oi.

[ahab99.livejournal.com]

But surely he didn't really mean it that way? If he's decided to now turn his campaign into a retread of the nomination fight I'll be very disappointed! Plus, the breaking news emails about it all arrived in my inbox long before 3am, so unless they picked a time zone in the middle of the Atlantic I really don't think that's what it meant.

Of course, I don't know what they did mean by sending everyone a text message in the middle of the night...

[viconiacat.livejournal.com]

The news was leaked and confirmed about 12:45, 1 am est - I was watching David Schuster talk to Keith via telephone about it. I think the text message went out at 3am so a large amount of supporters who weren't awake could receive the news first thing in the morning that way, to try and make the best of the leak and honor the promise they made.

[windatyourback.livejournal.com]

I have to say, he did lose a few points in my book for waking me up at quarter past three. But that's okay; I like him too much to stay mad for long =)