Hillary and Obama: Unity

I spoke about Hillary Clinton's rise toward unity last March. Despite the mainstream media and blogosphere's hand-wringing for the past four months, I've felt that Hillary Clinton embraced the idea of unity all that time through small signals and gestures... despite her strong will to be top of ticket.

I think the idea came through in a big way today in Unity, N.H.

It's become increasingly obvious that this team of once-rivals should go with the momentum while the mo is the mo that it is.

I've been making this case for a long time at Daily Kos and have gotten the kind of reception you'd expect from people who were hoping passionately for an Obama nomination.But that time is good and gone and now it's time to realize that these two strong candidates not only get along just fine and appeal to disparate groups of voters, but that Bill Clinton is no threat (a fear-mongering talking point of the parrots of cable news), but is rather a very good politician to have on your side.

And Another Campaigner Resigns

The AP's political quote of the day reads,

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

'"It's not going to be the Barack and Hillary people who bring the factions together. It's going to be those of us who are still seen as neutral and have some standing in the party."

— Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat who represents Pittsburgh and has not endorsed either of his party's presidential candidates, Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton.'

As an ordinary citizen who is neutral, I feel the same kind of responsibility to guide my fellow Democrats (and the two campaigns) to come together or risk losing not only the Presidential race, but the integrity of the party. On this blog I keep telling the campaigns that, if the candidates care more for party and country than they care for their own ego and ambition, then we'll need to see two adults seeking fairness and urging supporters to stay positive and patient while they both (rightly) remain in this primary race. Heaven knows where the support they'd normally see from party luminaries to keep the party peaceful has gone! It almost seems that they've been left alone..perhaps purposely... to show their eventual capacity for unity when neither, after the voting's over and done, winds up with the number of delegates it'll take to snag the nomination.

Why does it seem that some newspaper editorials are setting wiser guidlines and promoting better ideas than some of the party elders? [See this one from today's Oakland Press].

I don't know where the party's wise elders and cooler heads are. I'm not the only one who's wondering. I think of Sen Ted Kennedy who admitted he made the endorsement that he made [for Obama] when he did because, in good part, he was angry with Bill Clinton's comments in South Carolina.

The exploitation of anger bleeds over on to almost every Democratic issue in the MSM coverage of the primary race now. I honestly think, with a woman and an African-American running so close a race, that the "party bosses" are afraid to side with either candidate for the fear of looking politically incorrect. They know they run the risk of being reviled by half the total number of Democratic voters if they make what they think might be the "wrong decision"...or ANY decision at all.

It's pitiful to even begin to suspect that should-be-leaders in the Democratic party who had a preference for one candidate or the other could've been responsible and guiding...but decided instead to hold back in a state of fear and/or muddled confusion.

The emotion and anger of yet another Democratic campaigner (this time Maxim Thorne, a well-educated and dedicated supporter of Obama) has gotten the better of him. Mr. Thorne's out of the campaign for sending out an email that looked more like something from the Ken Starr-inquisition era than a 2008 campaign commentary. I consider him, like others who've had to resign from these two campaigns recently, to be another all-too-human victim of a Democratic primary campaign with an all-too easy fallback on race/gender/personal issues; improper, slow, missing, and/or uncertain leadership from the party; unnecessary rage; and high emotion.

Until this thing works itself out [or until a Democratic Yoda appears], here's a recommendation from a fellow blogger with the screen-name wmthetriallawyer that says,

"Don't let the main stream media or the whackjobs out there distract you from certain realities. [..]..the host of people who have lined up to support or otherwise be media-defined surrogates of the Obama and Clinton campaigns. [..] People say really stupid stuff sometimes. And it is dissected ad nauseum [..] But I only really care about what the two candidates themselves say"

Speaker Pelosi Can't Say "Unity" Now, But....

Some Obama supporters in my party are hanging their proverbial hats against the idea of a party unity ticket based on what they read from Politico's Ben Smith, who, at the end of the day, is not participating in his professional endeavours in order to create arguments that will win for Democrats .. and is making a living in a business that showcases the most controversial issues of the day for an optimal amount of eyeballs looking at a money-making website. I think it's wrong to hang your hat on just one temporal quote from Speaker Pelosi bluntly dismissing a unity Democratic ticket [sparked by her current displeasure with a compliment Clinton paid to McCain at the expense of Obama].

At Real Clear Politics there's a brief analysis by Blake Dvorak that I found to be astute:

I'm going to call Pelosi on inconsistency here. She says the differences between Obama and Clinton are nothing compared to the chasm between Democrats and Republicans. But later on she dismisses a "dream ticket" as impossible because the Clinton campaign has said McCain would make a better commander in chief than Obama. Well, assuming the need to beat the Republicans in November outweighs the differences between Obama and Hillary, which is what I think Pelosi is getting at, then a dream ticket is not only possible, but preferable.

But we also know why Pelosi is being inconsistent. Endorsing in any way a joint ticket is a nod to Clinton right now, given the campaigns' difference of opinion on the idea. And Pelosi needs to appear "uncommitted."

Speaker Pelosi's playing the part she imagines she needs to play while remaining uncommitted to either candidate. Perhaps she knows what time can do, if both candidates' campaigns are listening, to erase the memory of bold albeit temporal statements like this one.

But everyone knows there's no such thing as "impossible". Using the word creates an easily-breakable frame. A worry for me, though, is created by such an unimaginative and hopeless-sounding statement from a party leader. Absent of vision at a difficult time for the party, it emits a sad signal to already-conflicted Democratic voters who, unlike some party extremists defending Obama or Clinton, genuinely like both Obama and Clinton. I can't blame Nancy Pelosi, though.I blame the lack of harmonious spirit betwen two extremely (and equally) popular party luminaries who are running for the highest office of the land.

It will soon be time for them both to grow up and start coming together for the sake of their party and for the change they both say they wish to bring to our country.

It's no wonder Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards have remained uncommitted.