Posted on 08/05/2012 5:26:49 PM PDT by neverdem
For a striking number of Democrats, May 31, 2008, is a day that lives in infamy.
That’s when the national party’s rules committee dealt a death blow to Hillary Clinton’s bid to win the presidential nomination over Barack Obama.
The committee, weighted with Obama loyalists, issued a unanimous decision amid whispered back-door deals.
The date “will not be forgotten,” according to Gayle Allegro, a Democrat from Pine Island, Fla. — which is why she was frosted by last week’s announcement that Bill Clinton will be the keynote speaker at the Democrats’ national convention next month.
“If Obama and his crew think that having Bill Clinton give a speech is going to sway all the Democrats that left the party in 2010 or just slipped into the shadows, they are mistaken,” she said.
“Do they really think we are that stupid, that we don’t see what is going on?”
Allegro, 60, is one of those women who break glass ceilings. She has lived in Europe, North Africa and Israel, and was one of the first female laborers on the Alaska oil pipeline while earning a master’s degree in economic geology.
In 2008, most Democrats sucked up their sense of personal loss regarding Hillary and voted for Obama because the idea of handing Republicans another four years in the White House was just too awful to bear, said Lara Brown, an Electoral College expert at Villanova University.
“Nevertheless, they had reservations about Obama’s leadership skills and experience,” she said.
By 2010, Clinton Democrats’ Obama allegiance waned and they were the deciding factor that removed Democrats from power in the U.S. House, closed the margin in the U.S. Senate and flipped state legislatures and governor’s mansions to Republicans across the country.
Now, on the threshold of the 2012 election, many are still angry with their party — mirroring how conservatives felt in the 2006 Bush midterm election and 2008 general election. They’re angry enough to not vote, or to vote for the opposing team.
To understand why, you must understand their roots.
In 2004, Bill Clinton loyalists, distraught over Democrat John Kerry’s defeat, hunkered down and planned for the next presidential election.
They fortified themselves with a few thoughts: Hillary would be the 2008 nominee, and Obama’s 2004 convention speech proved the party had a bright centrist future because both were pragmatists.
They didn’t plan on Howard Dean supporters (including the “netroots” and ideological progressives) believing Kerry lost because he wasn’t liberal enough.
They also didn’t plan on this faction starting a revolution in the party.
With Dean in charge of the Democratic National Committee, progressives worked to convince rank-and-file Dems that victory required a 50-state strategy and dismissing people in “flyover” states as not knowing what was good for them.
They believed government led by coastal (elitist) Democrats would be good for those people; it would educate them on environmental issues and help the “guns- and God-clinging” crowd vote on economic self-interest, not on cultural issues.
Moderates always have been skeptical of such arguments, Brown said: “They believed in trying to bridge cultural differences between the coastal and the interior Democrats.”
Angry Clinton Democrats not only lost the 2008 nomination, but Obama did not become the president they expected based on his 2004 convention speech. They felt their party betrayed them by installing its progressive wing and kicking out its centrists.
These voters, sometimes called Reagan Democrats, hold traditional values. Based on job (blue-collar), religion (Catholic), location type (rural) or region (Appalachia and Midwest), they prefer moderate government regulation of the economy.
In 2008, they supported Hillary in the primaries. They also gave Obama, the most liberal U.S. senator, the benefit of the doubt and chose him over Republican John McCain.
Today, Allegro has no more benefit-of-doubt to give Obama.
Nor do Jo Ann Nardelli, the Democrats’ former vice chairman in Pennsylvania, or Richard Furillo and son Matthew, two Youngstown, Ohio, Democrats.
Theirs are the voices that usually remain unheard, theirs the views typically not considered, in much national political analysis.
Yet they all insist they are not alone.
Salena Zito covers politics for Trib Total Media. (412-320-7879 or szito@tribweb.com)
BTTT! & a Ping
Bump another reason for Sarah Palin:
A great excuse just in case of Hillary...
A pox on both their houses.
Interesting.
Obama did not become the president they expected based on his 2004 convention speech. They felt their party betrayed them by installing its progressive wing and kicking out its centrists.
So in other words they are stupid. They didn’t bother to check who the man actually was but voted for him based on a speech. Hahaha shah!
Thanks for the ping nd. Salena, ya did it again. Fantastic article.
It would be interesting to know where these folks fit in the national polls.
Actually, it was March 21, 2007.
And it's still there.
their differences would be minor compared to the “elite leaders” of both power hungry party's
Speaking of Hillary, what happened to Hillbuzz?
“They fortified themselves with a few thoughts: Hillary would be the 2008 nominee, and Obama’s 2004 convention speech proved the party had a bright centrist future because both were pragmatists.”
Centrists? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Both Obama and Hillary are Marxists. Despite his position, she still gets more women than him. She got more than Bill.
seems to me that ole willie doesn’t seem as concerned or angry over his wife being kicked to the curb for Obama. So, why should they be upset???
The woman-scorned factor raises its ugly head.
Centrists. Yeah, about spit up on my keyboard on that one.
Hillary was told by her handlers she wasn’t running.
I'm with you. What's with this resurrected, antique "Blue Dog DLC Centrist" canard? That went out the window in 1993 with DADT and the beginnings of Hillarycare, which Beastie began whomping up in a locked room, Soviet-style.
What was centrist about anything the Klintonx did when they thought they were high in the saddle?
The only thing they did that was "centrist" was to listen to Bob Rubin at Treasury and not do anything to crash the 30-year T-bond market. And Slick was pretty unhappy about being schooled on that by Rubin, who knew what he was doing. (In between pulling his private chestnuts out of various fires he'd started while still over at his Goldman, Sachs CEO job.)
Slick Willie pouted at having to do small-scale, "deal of the day" mini-initiatives to try to control the news headlines, when he wanted to let 'er rip like Landslide Lynt'n.
Wonder who Zito's been talking to. They sure have a funny-colored Hall of Mirrors prism they're looking through.
Slick Willie was reasonably adept at maintaining his moderate image if you didn't inspect his appointees and actual policies. The DLC served his purposes with moderates in both major parties, actual independents and hereditary Jacksonian Democrats just enough that with Perot in both races in 92 and 96 he became a two termer without ever getting more than fifty percent of the popular vote.
Wonder who Zito's been talking to. They sure have a funny-colored Hall of Mirrors prism they're looking through.
She's talking to working class whites, a whole bunch of which are being economically killed by Obama's war on coal, oil and natural gas. Add in Obama's various and sundry attempts to revive the culture wars beyond Obamacare and the administration's corruption and incompetence.
The GOP got sixty percent of the white vote for the first time in 2010. I'll be surprised if it's not more than sixty five percent of the white vote in 2012.
We're going to have to induce massive remigration to Mexico, and somehow lure the Obamanoid tax-eaters onto vast transports (converted supertankers maybe) for the ride to West Africa to "get even" with the Ashanti and Hausas who sold great-great-great grandmother into slavery and exile. Offer them unlimited feasts of favorite foods, luxe accommodations, guns, gold -- whatever it takes to get them on the bus. Or just tell them that West Africa is a pile of gold and diamonds, and give them the guns to go take it. Payback's a bitch, and this way we pay back all parties.
I think we can't have what we've got right now. The divisions are just too much, and we have right before us two examples (Clinton, Obama) of our enemies using these doofus race-political and homosexual and lesbian and man-hating Shemale stooges to install their Manchurian tools in our highest offices. This has got to tear it, finally, beyond any party affiliation.
Identity politics is about the division and destruction of America, and we've got to go after it.
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