Everybody's favorite DINO

This is a diary that appeared at mydd. The author has given permission to use it in it's entirety.

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Jim Cooper, Obama's healthcare spokesperson's hit piece on Clinton was on the rec list on DailyKos. More info about Jim Cooper, Member of the "Blue Dog" Coalition of conservative Democrats.

1. Banning partial-birth aborting - YES
   
2. Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage - YES
   
3. Patriot Act Permanent - YES
   
4. Constituonally deine marriage as one man, one woman - YES
   
5. Prohib product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers - YES
   
6. Prohibiting suing gunmakers and sellers for gun misuse - YES
   
7. Build a fence along the Mexican Border - YES
   
8. FISA Amnesty - YES
   
9. Ban Gun Registration and trigger lock law in DC - YES
   
10. Continue intelligence gathering without civing oversight - YES
    

Cooper is in the pocket of Insurance & Drug Companies. More about this at the end of the diary.

Progressive Punch ranked him in their bottom 9% of progressive candidates even though his district is a blue leaning district.

Mike Lux on Jim Cooper - link here.

Cooper, a leader of conservative Dems on the health care issue, instead of working with us, came out early and said universality was unimportant, and came out with a bill that did almost nothing in terms of covering the uninsured. He quickly became the leading spokesman on the Dem side for the insurance industry position, and undercut us at every possible opportunity, basically ending any hopes we had for a unified Democratic Party position. I was never so delighted to see a Democrat lose as when he went down in the 1994 GOP tide.

Unfortunately, he came back, like a bad penny.
It is such a huge mistake for Obama to use a guy like this to defend their position on health care. The signal it sends to reporters, organizations, and activists like myself who know something about the old health care battles is that Obama truly doesn't care about comprehensive health care reform or universal coverage, and that the health care package you would propose if President would be a conservative, pro-insurance industry bill. The campaign ought to be trying to reassure folks who care about this issue, and using a guy like Cooper does just the opposite.

Cooper about Murtha

"Congress has no business micromanaging a war, cutting off funding or even conditioning those funds," said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.), a leading Democratic moderate, who called Murtha's whole effort "clumsy."

Cooper's email to Kossack jnhobbs

I voted against the House version of the FISA bill last Friday because I do not think we can risk our national security any longer. The House version accepted nearly all of the provisions contained in its Senate counterpart. It does not achieve more than the Senate version, but is instead the product of a partisan political contest.

The House version may not use the words "retroactive immunity" for telecom companies, but it does let these companies off the hook. Likewise, it will also not bring the Bush administration's wiretapping activities of the last six years out into the open. Anything the administration provides may only be reviewed in closed, secret court proceedings

Kossack McJoan about Cooper.

Could he sound more like Joe Lieberman in whining about partisanship? But at least Joe didn't just lie about what the bill does.

Jim Cooper is defending his bad vote by lying to his constituents. Don't let him get away with it.

UPDATED : From architek's comments below. NYT 1994 article about Jim Cooper.

It has also become a pocketbook issue for Mr. Cooper, and whatever the fate of his health plan, he is already a winner. In less than a year, the mild-mannered Democrat from the most rural House district in Tennessee has become the toast of health care providers and insurance companies, which have channeled tens of thousands of dollars of contributions to his campaign for a Senate seat. Mr. Cooper is only one of the many politicians benefiting from the fund-raising frenzy set off by the national dialogue over health care. Since drug companies, hospitals, insurers and doctors have so much at stake in the legislation that may emerge from the Congress, many are investing all they can in lawmakers whose proposals would be most favorable to them -- or the least damaging. They are showering millions of dollars in donations to members of Congress with prominent roles in the debate, like Mr. Cooper, whose plan is the alternative to President Clinton's proposal most often preferred by business because it neither requires employers to provide coverage nor limits insurance premiums.

This is similiar to why BlackAgendaReport feels Obama is Wall Street's Candidate - link here

Despite Barack Obama's claim that his campaign represents a mass "movement" of "average folks," the initial core of his support was largely comprised of rich denizens of Wall Street. Why would the super wealthy want a percieved "black populist" to become the nation's chief executive officer? The "Obama bubble" was nurtured by Wall Street in order to have a friend in the White House when the captains of capital are made to face the legal consequences for deliberately creating current and past economic "bubbles." Wall Street desperately needs a president who will "sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street." Who better to sell this "agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change?"

X-Posted at Dkos

The Fight Stuff

"NOTABLE in the Indiana and North Carolina primary results and in many recent polls are signs of a change in the gender weather: white men are warming to Hillary Clinton -- at least enough to vote for her. It's no small shift. These men have historically been her fiercest antagonists. Their conversion may point less to a new kind of male voter than to a new kind of female vote-getter.

Pundits have been quick to attribute the erosion in Barack Obama's white male support to a newfound racism. What they have failed to consider is the degree to which white male voters witnessing Senator Clinton's metamorphosis are being forced to rethink precepts they've long held about women in American politics."

Yes, IT has never made sense to say that men who previously supported Obama are now racist. That is not what is happening, she is winning them over and he is losing them. My opinion is that once white males got to know Obama they liked him less. Once they got to know Clinton better they liked her better. According to an old friend of mine "she is the toughest person in the race" and "has the "best poker face and we need a poker player right now". When I read this article I thought of him.

"For years, the prevailing theory has been that white men are often uneasy with female politicians because they can't abide strong women. But if that's so, why haven't they deserted Senator Clinton? More particularly, why haven't they deserted her as she has become ever more pugnacious in her campaign?

Maybe the white male electorate just can't abide strong women whom they suspect of being of a certain sort. To adopt a particularly lamentable white male construct, the sports metaphor, political strength comes in two varieties: the power of the umpire, who controls the game by application of the rules but who never gets hit; and the power of the participant, who has no rules except to hit hard, not complain, bounce back and endeavor to prevail in the end.

For virtually all of American political history, the strong female contestant has been cast not as the player but the rules keeper, the purse-lipped killjoy who passes strait-laced judgment on feral boy fun. (snip)

The specter of the prissy hall monitor is, in part, the legacy of the great female reformers of Victorian America. In fact, these women were the opposite of fainting flowers. Susan B. Anthony barely flinched in the face of epithets, hurled eggs and death threats. Carry A. Nation swung an ax. Yet they were regarded by men as the regulators outside the game.

(snip)

Certainly through the many early primaries, Hillary Clinton was often defined by these old standards, and judged harshly. She was forever the entitled chaperone. But that was then. As Thelma, the housewife turned renegade, says to her friend in "Thelma & Louise" as the two women flee the law through the American West, "Something's crossed over in me."

Senator Clinton might well say the same. In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender.

What's more, she seems to have taken to her new role with a Thelma-like relish. We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters, who previously saw her as the sanctioning "sivilizer," a political Aunt Polly whose goody-goody directives made them want to head for the hills.

It's the unforeseen precedent of an unprecedented candidacy: our first major female presidential candidate isn't doing what men always accuse women of doing. She's not summoning the rules committee over every infraction. (Her attempt to rewrite the rules for Michigan and Florida are less a timeout than rough play.) Not once has she demanded that the umpire stop the fight. Indeed, she's asking for more unregulated action, proposing a debate with no press-corps intermediaries."

I disagree that she is trying to rewrite the rules, she is actually asking the DNC to follow their rules which allow the votes to be counted if the state party does the most they can to fix the situation which they have.

"If anyone has been guarding the rules this election, it's been the press, which has been primly thumbing the pages of Queensberry and scolding her for being "ruthless" and "nasty," a "brawler" who fights "dirty."

But while the commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she's come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl.

Deep in the American grain, particularly in the grain of white male working-class voters, that is the more trusted archetype. Whether Senator Clinton's pugilism has elevated the current race for the nomination is debatable. But the strategy has certainly remade the political world for future female politicians, who may now cast off the assumption that when the going gets tough, the tough girl will resort to unilateral rectitude." (snip)

Susan Faludi is the author of "Backlash," "Stiffed" and "The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America."

linc here

To me, Obama trying to declare victory makes him look both like a bully and at the seem time very weak. But then that is the same thing isn't it?

He has refused to debate because he knows he doesn't do well against Clinton and he is trying to pretend that only pledged delegates count in the end and that he will have enough to win (he will not). He just keeps looking more and more like a prissy weasel. I think he needed to fire some campaign staff weeks ago when he started losing. He needs to stop looking by turns petulant and triumphant. It is a really bad strategy and if he should prevail at the convention it is not going to put him in good stead for the GE.

Read on the blogs

Here is what The Ghost of Dr. Violet Socks at "Reclusive Leftist" has to say:

Imagine this scenario:

The shoe is on the other foot, and Obama, not Hillary, is the punching bag of the media — a media that is blatantly and unapologetically racist. And I do mean blatant. Jokes every night on the cable news shows about Obama’s hair and his fondness for fried chicken. Pundits laughing about what a problem uppity Negroes are.

Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture. 501c groups invoke the most grotesque racist slurs with their advertising; T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport.

Online, Hillary’s supporters constantly refer to Obama and his supporters as n—–s and c— -s and all the other epithets I refuse to type out. Blogger Boyz blog about those stupid lazy Negroes who are still wallowing in memories of the Civil Rights era, too dumb to get with the program and vote for Hillary.

And the lies: Obama is constantly lied about, belittled, demeaned. His record is distorted, his character impugned. Every day the pundits and the Blogger Boyz urge him to drop out of the race, to remember his place, to give up his seat to the white woman. All in the interest of “party unity.”

And nary a word of reproach from Hillary herself. No denunciation at all of the relentless racism. In fact, she actually cracks a few racist remarks herself, albeit subtle ones. She jokes and nods with the media about “letting” Obama run as long as he wants to. And when she makes speeches about American values, she talks a lot about women’s rights but never mentions civil rights. She’s strikingly silent on the subject. Even when she delivers a major address on the importance of rooting out bigotry, she neglects to mention racism at all.

Just to make the analogy even more apt, let’s further imagine that some key civil rights issue is on the table — say, voting rights. For forty years the Democrats have been on the side of the angels with that one, but Hillary goes out of her way to say how much she admires and respects those Republicans who don’t think African-Americans should have the right to vote. She says judges with a record of opposing voting rights are good candidates for the nation’s benches — even the Supreme Court.

And the Democratic Party goes along with all this, pushing Hillary as the nominee, ignoring the anger of African-American voters, smugly assuming that they’ll “come back to the fold” by November. After all, say the pundits and the Blogger Boyz, where else are they going to go? The Republicans are even worse.

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If you’re an adult American with even half a lick of sense, you know damn well that there is no way black folks would stand for that crap. There is no way any self-respecting African-Americans in this day and age would take that from the Democrats. It’s inconceivable that anybody would expect them to.

Because dig it: if the Democrats carried on like that, they wouldn’t be any better than the Republicans. And they sure as hell wouldn’t deserve the African-American vote.

Why should it be any different with women?

If Barack Obama and his supporters become the new Democratic party, then the Democratic party will no longer be the party of women’s rights. There will still be women in the party, naturally, but basic respect for women as citizens will be a dead letter. It will be the party of John Roberts and anti-choicers and the most virulent outbreak of public misogyny I’ve ever seen. All the sexism of this campaign will be rewarded instead of repudiated.

And that Democratic party will not deserve my vote.

This priceless video was found at the Confluence in a diary called "The Buzzing boyz are sometimes Girlz:




Good God, we have spawned our very own Ann Coulter.

What has me most concerned is that I feel Obama is not ready for adulthood much less the Presidency. My party is about to go over a cliff because of people like Donna Brazile who thinks accusations of racism where no racism exists are a valid campaign tactic. Somehow Howard Dean has allowed himself to be shut down and his leadership has not been in evidence at all.

It was Donna who decided that gay people should not be included in the party unity umbrella and Howard went along. It was Donna who decided that SC had to be one of the first primaries to give African Americans a say in the nomination. And now we are going to discount the votes of millions of people in two other states to satisfy her need to control the primary schedule and help Obama.

Is Dean out of his mind? He sees what is happening and he is doing nothing about it. Here is the problem: Activists behind Hillary are not the only people or even the main people who will not vote for Obama. The people the party has to worry about are the people who are swing voters and have no problem voting for republicans. They did it in the last two elections and when Reagan ran. They will vote for McCain rather than Obama and his elitist "creative class" coalition.
Donna has said working class whites are no longer needed. Well I fear she is going to see how an election goes without them.

ps...There seems to be another attempt by Obama and his bots, including the media like Anderson Cooper, to paint Hillary Clinton as racist. To which I reply:

NO VOTE FOR OBAMA, I"LL WRITE IN CHELSEA'S MOMMA.

No Barack, you are wrong

Your win in NC is not a victory over the politics of division. It is a testament and monument TO the politics of division. You won in NC because way back in February you painted the Clintons as racists and African Americans in SC voted for you in huge numbers. Since then, African Americans have voted for you in a near monolithic block.

Say hello to president McCain because all of the people in the middle who are swing voters are going to vote for the adult in the race, that leaves you out.