The Confluence is a place for unreconstituted Hillary supporters who have not embraced our new president. I’ve never fully understood the true ideological and demographic makeup of the not-over-it crowd. I certainly understand lingering bitterness. If Hillary had won the nomination and become president, I would have had a hard time fully embracing her presidency. If she had made Obama her secretary of state, I think that would have helped a great deal, but I’d still feel pangs of regret and ongoing frustration.
The Confluence isn’t odd because it is a community of Hillary supporters. It’s odd because it is a community of factually-challenged Obama-haters. For example, they still think Hillary won the popular vote. But, she didn’t. Despite their delusions, I have to agree with them that it is ridiculous and unseemly for Evan Thomas to go on teevee and say this:
EVAN THOMAS: Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn’t felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We’re seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.
It echoes Chris Matthews’ comment about George W. Bush, that “it’s not always there, but sometimes it glimmers with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility.” It’s not the job of Washington journalists to shower adulation on our politicians. It’s their job to keep them honest. How can we possibly believe that Evan Thomas is an objective reporter when he is comparing the president to God?
The National Review is wanking pretty hard, too.
I have nothing to say about Evan Thomas, except that he is an example of what Somerby calls “our broken-souled” – and I would add broken-brained – news media.
But as to Hillary Clinton Democrats who have not yet accepted Obama as the legitimate leader of the nation and the party, it is time for them to get over themselves. We lost. Nothing, but nothing, is gained by dwelling on it.
This in no way means that the President and his Administration should be praised irrationally, nor that criticism of him when he makes mistakes – and he has made a number of them – should cease. But in proper perspective, this is about the success of the nation and the prosperity of all of its inhabitants, not careers or politics or history.
Nobility is not the first word that comes to mind in connection with George W. Bush.
well, maybe if you mean aristocratic privilege…
Arrogance, ignorance, stupidity, but definitely not nobility.
I’m an author at The Confluence and I have to tell you that my skepticism of Obama isn’t special. Frankly, I’ve never been that all fond of presidents whether Democrats or Republicans. This one though is a particular disappointment for me because I see the issues that matter to me (Universal Health Care for Everyone, Peace, Economic Justice) melting away — they’re barely on the table.
Throw our “delusions” about the primary back in my face all you want (As one friend says, “Obama stole the nomination but he won the election”). But, you are wrong that I don’t accept him as my President. Of course he is and I hope he does well — for all our sakes.
However, from the Wall Street Bailout to the expansion of the war in Pakistan to expanding Hallburton’s roll in Iraq to taking Single-Payer off the table — I’ve already had plenty of reason to feel let down by President Obama.
Booman, it would be a lot easier to “get over it” if he wasn’t making us beg for the things we looked forward to in the post-Bush world. Everyday, I spend time at my parents house and right next to my mom’s chair she’s got a button with a peace sign & the date 1/21/09. And my heart hurts.
I had very low expectations of Obama, and even then he has managed to disappoint me. And you think Hillary would have done better? Given her past record on foreign and military policy, and human rights, and her confrontational manner, I wouldn’t think so.
Not to mention that the only candidate to embrace single-payer was Kucinich and even he would never be able to pass it.
well, we all have our policy differences. I generally support the Wall Street bailout in most details and certainly think it averted a much worse economic situation. I am uncomfortable and concerned about our strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but I don’t oppose the policy outright. My disappointment with the Obama administration relates to civil liberties and accountability for Bush administration crimes. I’d also like to see them move more aggressively in LGBT issues, but I’ll judge that at the end of the first term.
The legislation they have already passed is mostly excellent. The budget is very good and includes a tax cut for 95% of Americans and a tax hike for the top 5%. That’s economic justice, as is the health care bill, which I hope is more Kennedy and less Baucus.
Obama’s pushing cap and trade and immigration reform this year, which I think is too much all at once, but that’s the opposite of doing too little.
I have some complaints but overall I am ecstatic that we have the best president in my lifetime (and, no, I don’t think it is even close).
So if Clinton had won then things would have been done ‘better’?
You set up a situation that is impossible to refute …. that Hillery would have been sooooo much better!
I doubt that very much, almost certainly the main parts of domestic policy would be the same. Foreign policy? No way she does as well as Obama in trying to heal wounds.
But how can I prove it? You have made her a saint. ‘Saint Hillery of the Perfect’.
She is no such thing. She lost.
BTW, that comment ‘stole the nomination, wont the election’. It’s stupid and shows a fatal bias. Nice trick in showing it was a ‘friend’ though. Not even a Clinton could be as smooth.
nalbar
I apologize for misspelling her name …. HillAry.
And yes, so far she is a fine SOS. A good pick.
But who here doubts she is under pretty tight control?
nalbar
His performance in office has totally changed my opinion of him. He’s doing a terrific job and I laud him for it.
But I’ll never forget the stupid, irrational and childish attacks on Mrs. Clinton from Obama supporters, many of whom reside here on a regular basis.
Her performance as Secretary of State has been exemplary. A fact rarely noted here. I guess it’s a sign of some maturation that she hasn’t been called a racist lately.
Now that some time has passed, I think Obama’s choice of her as SOS was inspired.
“I’ll never forget the stupid, irrational and childish attacks on Mrs. Clinton from Obama supporters“
And I will never forget the stupid, irrational, childish, and even racist attacks on Obama from Clinton supporters. And I was never a supporter of either one of them.
Give me quotes.
not that hurria needs any help in this regard, but, does geraldine ferraro ring a bell?
dog whistles, ed…dog whistles.
Here’s a sample:
Bob Johnson:
Bill Shaheen:
Bob Kerrey:
Geraldine Ferraro:
Bill Clinton:
Andrew Cuomo:
Campaign strategy:
Hillary Clinton:
Ed Koch::
Thanks for the memories:)
Good times.
thanks BooMan. I had forgotten the Ed Koch and the Bob Kerrey insults.
if you think that most of those quotes are examples of racist remarks you are incredibly thin-skinned.
Furthermore, the thrust of my original comment was directed at anti-Clinton rhetoric on this site.
Do you still think she’s a racist?
I think her campaign put Jesse Helms to shame. Do you think Jesse Helms was a racist?
Her campaign was even worse that I thought if she aroused all that hatred unintentionally.
Do you still think she’s a racist?
Yes.
I don’t think she’s racist in that she thinks she’s racially pure or that she is prejudiced. I think she ran a campaign that consciously tried to exploit white people’s fear and racism for her personal benefit. That’s racist, too.
Now try to sell that to heads-of-state of all ethnicities the world over who seem to have embraced her and her desire to make the United States part of the global community rather than it’s overlord.
it is not in my interests to try to do that.
You have GOT to be kidding me!
For starters you might want to take a look at this scene at the DNC.
But if you want to see a pretty complete collection of the stupid, irrational, childish, and even racist attacks on Obama (and his family), pick any day at random on Larry Johnson’s blog starting, oh, around late 2007. And don’t forget to check out the comments there.
The thing about Harriet Christian isn’t that she spoke for the Clinton campaign. It’s that the arguments that the Clinton campaign had been making and that many of the Clinton blogs had been promoting, fit right into that worldview. In many ways, they created that worldview. The sense of aggrievement, the idea that Hillary was being wronged by the DNC, the sense that she was being kept down because of her race and gender, the fact that Obama was inadequate and only won his delegates because he was a minority, that he couldn’t win because of Rev. Wright…
all of that stuff was coded in by the Clintons and/or their surrogates.
And so they got this kind of thing from their supporters.
And how did that work out for ya, Hillary?
yeah, I mean, Harriet Christian didn’t come up with those ideas by herself. You can see where she got them by scrolling through the examples I gave.
The Clintons have some kind of excuse for each and every one of those comments. They can rationalize them away. But they were sending a cumulative message. Obama might have dealt drugs, and how is that gonna look? He gives pretty speeches, but he’s just riding his race and he’s an inadequate black man. White people aren’t gonna vote for him because they’re racist, or because they’re freaked out by black church culture, or because he’s not a real American. Hillary’s losing because people are sexist. She should get all the delegates from Florida and Michigan or it’s a plot to anoint the black guy.
All of these strange or erroneous ideas originated with some or another spokesmen for her campaign.
I understand that they wanted to make the case that he was a risky choice, but going around and playing off people’s fears of madrassas and black churches and suggesting he was a drug dealer?
It was totally over the line. Trying to play on tensions between blacks and Jews? Not cool.
Obama won because he deserved to win. He (and we) hit back hard, but we didn’t engage in gutter politics.
I know that the Hillary supporters will say that we overplayed the racial angle. Maybe we did at times, but how else do you beat back attacks on the black church? And, I never bought that their attacks were specific to Rev. Wright, who’s comments were not particularly extraordinary.
As for any legitimate concerns that he wasn’t electable…they were just wrong.
Billy Shaheen
Andrew Cuomo
Bill himself
Geraldine Ferraro
Do I really need to go back into the archives to list them for you?
They have a post up trying to decide if the guy who shocked them by outsmarting the Clintons is really brilliant like some people say or if he’s a beneficiary of affirmative action. I’m not kidding. These idiots will never get it. One of the people saying he’s not so smart is someone named dakinikat who roused the rabble there a while back by blaming the mortgage crisis on black people. She blew all kinds of dog whistles in the post itself but forgot ACORN. She recovered quickly though by mentioning them in the comments. They’re a gang of not too bright sore losers with a dose of racial resentment thrown in to make them especially awful.
I have to tell you, I’m sitting at BJ’s in the ninth ward down here, round the corner from my house, and this post is getting so many laughs you can’t believe it.
The big question every one wants to ask is if you live in a gated community some where up on the east coast?
lol
Yeah, sure you are/were in BJ’s in the 9th Ward showing off your internet race baiting exploits. But if you are/were in BJ’s in the 9th Ward why do you feel that you “have to” tell me that? I’m guessing this is you employing the “I have black friends so I can’t be guilty of fostering racial resentment for political purposes” defense yet again. Correct me if I’m wrong but it’s the only way I can make sense of your response.
And no, I don’t live in a gated community but I am posting from a liberal elitist coastal enclave with chardonnay and latte on tap which we swill while looking down our noses at hard working Americans, white Americans so you’re close enough. Zing! You got me there. Rush Limbaugh would be proud of you.
Wow, you sure framed my comments with a lot of references to race? Have to frame everything in black and white? Any nuance in your life at all?
Keep blowing those dog whistles, you already know what will show up!
Wow I sure did stay on topic didn’t I? And forgive me for trying to make sense of your comment about being at BJ’s in the Ninth Ward. Maybe I should have left it hanging out there on its own in its non sequitiriffic splendor. You wrote that post more than 7 months ago now. Surely you’ve had time to think of a more coherent defense for it, no? Or you could stop hiding behind your alleged real world friends, back off from it and plead to having been in throes of bitterness and resentment when you wrote it.
I invite anyone who is confused by Dakinikat’s strange replies to me to go and read the post of hers that I linked to in my first comment and then wonder where she finds the nerve to accuse me of blowing dog whistles.
Also, before Dakinikat plays the “blargh, OBOT!” gambit or “KOOL AID!” maneuver, here are a couple of critiques of that post from strong Hillary supporters/Obama critics that Dakinikat never refuted in any serious way either:
Subprime lending and minorities
Anatomy of a Dog Whistle
The only term I would throw at you is uninformed and way off base. There were two parts to my explanation of the financial crisis and that one always gets the airplay because it doesn’t promote the correct left wing canard. It certainly doesn’t jive with anything remotely resembling the outrageous statement that I said black people caused the financial crisis.
Fannie and Freddie both certainly had a primary role, but the connection to the CRA IS a right wing meme. Fannie and Freddie were badly managed and their oversight was even more pathetic. The politics involved with all of that was a complete failure and wrecked havoc on the very people it was supposed to help. It is amazing to me that the entire oversight committee isn’t being sued by every holder of Fannie and Freddie bonds.
I am completely fed up with the condescending manner with which you respond to legitimate posts. Your denigration through vile name calling and yes, blowing dog whistles and setting up straw men can only be attributable to complete ignorance on the topic.
Maybe next time you can come up with facts rather than massive repetition of internet conspiracy theories.
I am completely fed up with the condescending manner with which you respond to legitimate posts.
You’re completely fed up with me making fun of you for responding to me by telling me you were commenting from BJ’s in the Ninth Ward and asking me if I live in a gated community? What kind of response did you expect? If I wanted to be condescending I’d make fun of all your misspellings and malapropisms but I’m not going to do that.
Fannie and Freddie both certainly had a primary role, but the connection to the CRA IS a right wing meme.
Yes, the connection to the CRA is a right wing meme and it’s pushed extensively in one of the sources you linked to in your post:
If you’d like to know more about the loosening of standards, here’s a really good study to check out: http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Liebowitz_Housing.pdf
Yeah, John Lott and Stan Liebowitz so don’t go pretending that you’ve got a problem with pushing right wing memes. It’s not necessary for you to specifically mention the CRA when you use that study as your description of loosening of lending standards. This is not the Confluence here. You’re not fooling anyone.
It’s really a nice social goal to increase the level of minority ownership in the country and to move the poor into homes of their own, but you can’t force it by giving folks loans they are not prepared to handle. The House and Senate Democrats, and specifically the Black Caucus, are squarely behind this problem.
Formatting emphasis mine. Dogwhistling emphasis yours. No, they’re not squarely behind the financial crisis. And I fail to see what the “second part” to your post is or what you even mean by that. It seems to have one theme, that the roots of the financial crisis are in the loosening of lending standards and that’s just bullshit. You also go out of your way to mention Franklin Raines’s ties to Obama while never mentioning his more longstanding ties to Bill Clinton. Why is that? Did you count on your readers not knowing the facts here? Did you think they would make a leap and think, “oh, look at that picture of Raines, of course Raines and Obama are tied at the hip, birds of a feather and all.” Or maybe you just didn’t know what you were talking about and made that leap yourself? Did the McCain campaign help you write that article?
yeah, it is a really, deeply dishonest piece.
Fannie and Freddie got nailed by the subprime crisis but it is utter foolishness to argue that they caused it.
It’s like they do not even understand what predatory lending is.
And they certainly did not identify the real culprits who designed the credit-default swap and set the mortgage lenders free to write mortgages with no hope of survival.
There is nothing wrong with a mortgage-backed security if it isn’t full of crap-loans with inflated ratings. There is nothing wrong with pushing for more minority home ownership if you give them loan terms they can afford rather than jacking them with loan terms they have no prayer of affording.
If you would actually spend time with the post you would see that I said it wasn’t just meltdowns in the subprime market that were occurring. And I NEVER ever EVER mentioned the CRA which became the later Rush Limbaugh talking point. When Fannie and Freddie started giving bonuses based on turning the mortgage business into a volume industry, the lending standards got incredibly lax. Because it suited and rewarded Pols, they went along with it. Also, use your very good brain to look where the contributions from Fannie and Freddie were going. They made political donations to those same people and they ensured that monies went back into their district and as long as the housing market didn’t blow up. Every one thought it was going to be a win win situation.
Fannie and Freddie upped the volume and downed the quality and every bit of research that I’ve seen to date shows them to be an integral part of the problem. The only worse offenders were the external mortgage loan originators who appeared to have committed fraud to keep the volume up. No one, including Fannie and Freddie did due diligence on those loans and just kept making money on them coming in.
My bottom line in all of this is that it’s not right to put people in loans they are ill-equipped to handle and it was just as much a prime as a subprime problem.
This gets painted as a problem of people taking out loans they couldn’t afford. At bottom, that is what was happening for the most part (although, many could afford them so long as they had the option to refinance). But it ignores two keys points that are both of major concern to groups like ACORN. First, the practice of approaching people who had no intention of buying a home and telling them they could, with no documentation and little to no collateral, be put in a home all their own. What renter wouldn’t like a home under those conditions? Second, they often lied about the terms of the loans (ARMs, etc.) or, worse, they deliberately put people in worse loans than made sense for them, and lied about that, too.
Thus, mortgage originators were drawing people into their own bankruptcy and misleading them into making poor financial decisions. As these loans built up, the ratings agencies looked the other way and the originators sold them off to unsuspecting investors who believed they were AAA securities.
Fannie and Freddie did get brought into this scheme, although they were late to the party. But their centrality to the problem is extremely dubious.
And then you had a whole other class of people who were just speculating on the real estate market, and who got nailed when the music stopped. They certainly contributed a big percentage of the large mortgage-failures.
Right which if you read my SECOND part to the thing, which LLG conveniently didn’t point out, you’ll see where I put that together.
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/who-let-the-sharks-out/
I’ve been a consistent voice for more oversight in the derivatives market and better regulation. The majority of my threads are on all of this because I’m a financial economist. I’ve criticized Geithner when he was Bush’s Lapdog and I’m not happy with him now that he’s Obama’s either. I blog continually about finding systemic solutions to the financial crisis and not just flushing money to a bunch of money happy speculators.
LLG is a poster on a blog that basically stalks PUMAs for some reason, I don’t know maybe a lack of a real life. I was a Clinton supporter, I did not support Obama but I’m not in some kind of weird denial that he’s not President. At this point I’m trying to stop the slide towards what’s looking like a 3rd Bush term. How would you like it if a bunch of loonies search for a reference to your blog, post things completely out of perspective, and incite blog wars between people with similar political agendas. Just because I see nothing special about this President doesn’t change my goals. I just didn’t believe any of those campaign promises at all and see more evidence all the time they were made to get votes, not to set a national agenda.
Anyway, go read more of my stuff. I can’t believe you’re going to disagree with the majority of it. I have no idea why CDS won’t go away and why it entails more than the Clintons, but sheesh, be real.
Who is LLG? I guess you must mean me. And I guess you must mean Rumproast where I don’t post but I do comment sometimes.
Were you and that unmentionable guy with the clown picture who posts at the Confluence stalking BooMan when you criticized him recently? If you don’t like to be criticized then find a new hobby because when people on the internet disagree with each other strongly they tend to say so.
Why does documenting the limitless idiocy of the PUMAs = Clinton Derangement Syndrome? As far as I can tell, Lawnguylander is pointing and laughing at you, Dakinikat, not Hillary Clinton. You don’t speak for Sec. Clinton’s 18 million voters and you certainly don’t speak for her. Get over yourselves.
I’m not disagreeing with any of this and in many other of my posts I say exactly this. I try to keep my posts to about 1000 words. I put this information out there in many other ones including this one:
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-wrong-right-wing-stuff/
But you are suggesting that ACORN enables that behavior rather than organizing against it, helping people avoid being impacted by it, and giving assistance to those that are.
You suggest that the root of the financial crisis was some scheme to put more minorities into homes, when, at best, that was totally tangential to the cause.
Minorities didn’t create derivative products, they didn’t abandon honest credit rating, they didn’t abandon all oversight. In many cases, they were told they could afford loans and given deceptively low initial payment plans.
You say you were not talking about the CRA, but you place the blame for the crisis on minorities who took our loans they couldn’t afford. So fine, you’re not talking about CRA, but that just makes your argument convoluted. You still wind up at the same place, blaming minorities and slandering ACORN.
I really think you’re jumping the shark on this one. Sorry,all these implications are in your head not mine. When I took about borrowers, I did not every say minorities. That’s why I made a point of saying, look, it’s not JUST the subprime market because it obviously occuring in all classes of loans including jumbos. I had a problem with fannie and freddie management and their congressional oversight committee. PERIOD. To say that implies that I was blaming black loan holders is just beyond me.
I NEVER said MINORITIES took loans they couldn’t afford. TONS of folks took out loans they couldn’t afford. You all keep projecting a race onto the borrower that I NEVER put there.
I said FANNIE and FREDDIE (with the helping of their oversight committee) in support of their political agendas created a morass.
What you never wrote.
Again, extending loans to folks that cannot pay for them …
Are you trying to infer that only minorities get loans that they can’t pay for? Is that what you really think?
Unbelievable! The two of you are reading race into everything and then say I’m the one with the problem?
No, I don’t think that at all but I’m not the one who wrote the post. Go back and read it.
What you also never wrote just in case you forgot that you never wrote it:
It’s really a nice social goal to increase the level of minority ownership in the country and to move the poor into homes of their own, but you can’t force it by giving folks loans they are not prepared to handle. The House and Senate Democrats, and specifically the Black Caucus, are squarely behind this problem.
If you didn’t write that, who did? And as I mentioned above, you’re not fooling anyone with the repeated mentions of Congressional Black Caucus. Your post was riddled with racial allusions.
That appears to be because you see things in terms of RACIAL FRAMES. Move the poor into homes of their own? You’re assuming only minorities or poor or all black people are poor? What? You’re reading things that aren’t there and twisting words. If you think it’s that’s riddled with racial allusions it’s because your projecting your own frame onto it.
This is turning into a meltdown. The shouting is not helping your cause.
I don’t think it’s a meltdown, but it’s not remotely convincing. I’d have to be unfamiliar with the meaning of ‘minority’ to miss the connection between that word and race.
I’d have to not understand that the the black CEO of Fannie Mae was black, and to consider the use of his picture (which kind of demonstrates his blackness in a way his name alone does not) had no racial meaning.
I’d have to set aside the mention of the Congressional Black Caucus as totally incidental and carrying no freight.
I’d have to take a phrase like “they were racist and that they hated poor people” and disassociate the targets of racism from the targets of poor-hatred.
I’d have to make myself intentionally stupid to not see the whole piece in racial frames, especially since the whole thing was written in the context of a black man running for president and having his supporters accuse the other side of racism.
The other missing point in this are the actual loans that defaulted in the “subprime” crisis were losses to the lenders in the order of 100,000 dollars. These were loans mostly with 2 or 3 year recasts and since the market peaked in late 2006 most of these have cleared the system with the trillions of dollars of damage they have done.
The next wave is where it gets real interesting. The US banks are insolvent. Geithner et all claim it is a liquidity problem but they are really just trying to buy time. They want the banks to book as much profit as possible to weather the next storm in defaults “alt-a” or no doc loans. They are just starting to go boom ( they have generally 5 year recast ) and will be going boom for the next 2 years. Then we are followed with the lovely option arm products which will be going boom through 2013.
These loans will loose a lot more than the subprimes did per mortgage. And, Fanny and Freddie don’t own these they are generally privately held and are mostly MBS now. My old company lived off Alt-A’s until Bear Streans killed them with an 800 million margin call in August 2007. This fiasco still has years to play out.
Remember when all is said and done the “subprime” crisis was the cheap part. These bad boys are the high end properties, the beach houses, the way overpriced bubble land yachts. This part is going to take down a bunch of much bigger banks. I don’t know how the FDIC is supposed to cover this. Although, they are hiring.
bille
Thanks for the link Lawnguy, that is one CRAZY thread!
There is a LOT of projecting going on there. I particularly like the Ted Bundy comparison.
Amazing.
nalbar
This is SO EFFING AWESOMELY comical and unhinged.
FWIW, as a Hillary supporter during the primaries, I do feel that there were a lot of out-of-bounds sexist attacks against Clinton, and that some Obama supporters used right-wing memes to attack her and Bill. However, in retrospect, I think that there were also a lot of out-of-bounds racist attacks against Obama, and attacks using right-wing memes from so-called progressives. Part of it was undoubtedly that we simply all wanted our candidate to win, for whatever reasons. There was a bit of race-condescension from Hillary supporters about things such as whether Obama’s electoral coalition would work (often labeled “eggheads and African Americans”), which it did. I personally am a bit ashamed of some of the things I said as a Hillary supporter — including speculating as to whether it would be better to not vote or vote third party in protest if Obama “stole” the nomination. He didn’t steal the nomination, he won it fair and square. I “got over it” after seeing the complete lack of bitterness on Hillary and Bill’s face at the DNC; I knew right then that there was no room in my heart for it either. It’s time for the (yes) bitter, clinging Confluence crowd to give up the goose, and quit living in the past. Look to the future that we want to create, and fight for that. Obama is our ally, not our enemy.
That said, I do wish Obama would be a bit more aggressive and straightforward in pursuing progressive policies. 11-dimensional chess tends to confuse people because it almost makes it look like he is on the side of Evan Bayh et al. But the truth is, Hillary’s policies would have been just as centrist and pragmatic, maybe moreso. Just as often the “hard-working white Americans” I stood next to at Hillary rallies opposed Obama because they thought he was a Muslim (they told me so), not because he wasn’t progressive enough on health care.
In sum, what am I saying? That we should use all this as an opportunity to learn, and to do better in the future. Liberals are supposed to practice empathy and understanding, and both sides of the primary dispute need to do that.
One more thing I wanted to say is that all this is an opportunity for self-examination and self-improvement. I will get the ball rolling by admitting that I had some unrecognized assumptions about whether a black progressive could win the presidency, and I also admit that I underestimated Obama and considered him naive because of “inexperience.” This is one of those situations where even people who don’t think they have racial or gender biases need to recognize that these things are not always conscious and can exist even in people who fight racism or sexism on a daily basis.