Practice Management

According to CBS News, during the annual North Carolina Democratic Party's Jefferson Jackson Dinner Hillary Clinton said she would not back Barack Obama if he is the party's nominee, and she will work hard for him.  That resulted in the Obama people to shout her down.

It is what we have seen from the Obama troops repeatedly throughout this campaign.  It is what the organizing is about.  It is reminiscent of the Bush-Cheney contingent constantly yelling down the well meaning Gore people in Florida during the recount.  It is particularly disgraceful.  It is the thought that you can win through intimidation. It is what makes Obama such a force in closed, in your face, and personal caucuses.

That and the assumptive close.  Acting like no matter what the opinion of anybody else might be, that the election is inevitable. That we the people do not have a choice.  In that he is intentionally condescending.  That is what is meant by elitist.  I recall it is just how Bush treated the 2000 election.

The question is do we need another Bush in the White House?  And, I do not mean from a philosophical standpoint, but from a strategy position.  We have had enough condescensions from this front runner. In person he discounts the self worth of everyone that simply does not agree.  In organization, he organizes his crowds to be thugs.

At the Jefferson Jackson Dinner the crowd of about 5,200 were about evenly split between Barack and Hillary.  The tactic is to shut down debate.  To shut down discussion.  You cannot have discussion and argument.  So, when you are evenly matched you yell, and disrupt, and allow the candidate to play the innocent.

In our caucus the Obama people were well trained.  They were trained to be rude and disruptive, as opposed to being constructive.

In Houston the Obama people tried to boo Shelia Jackson Lee off the stage at the country convention.  Someone that has fought tirelessly in Congress for nearly everything the Obama supporters want.

In 1976 I saw the Reagan people boo and chant President Ford out of prime time for his acceptance speech for no apparent reason than vindictiveness.

It is sore losership.  You feel your time has come, but somehow you just cannot seem to quite pull it off.  So you train your people and supporters in thuggery, and mask that as overwhelming support when it is not.

What you see on ground level is that this is not just about enthusiasm.  It is about the candidate getting up and preaching one thing, while organizing his enthusiastic supporters to do the polar opposite of what he is saying.  Again, the policies might be different, but that is Rove-ism.  That is Bush all over.  It is saying that you want to be a "uniter, not a divider", or you want to bring about a "kinder gentler nation", knowing that you are organizing around different principals for no better purpose than to win.

No matter how much I support the policies of the person running, I refuse to be shouted, intimidated, yelled, or mocked into supporting someone.  Being condescending and elitist in the sense that this is a forgone  decision and failing to be honest in dealing with the political environment does not help me.  If Obama ever wants my vote he is going to have to step down off of his pedestal, and out from behind his teleprompters, come out from the bubble in which he is living, be respectful to me and my own, and stop training his contingent to be thugs.