Oh for crying out loud. I'll even admit it, I own guns and I don't own them because I'm bitter. I'll even admit that making attempts to screw with that really pisses me off, and that has nothing to do with being bitter. What George W Bush has done to this country pisses me off, feeling like I have to apologize for my country does make me bitter. There you go, I'm bitter. Funny, it still has nothing to do with guns. I'll admit that George II's shenanigans make the Second Amendment seem a bit more relevant regarding my relationship with my government.
There is a funny thing about people being placed under pressure by people and events outside their control, they become a bit more attached to the things under their control. The things happening with the economy are more than a little bit outside the control of an average American, much less a blue collar American. As conditions worsen that lack of control becomes more evident to those suffering and they react more seriously. These folks have control over where they worship and over their firearms. They can go to exactly what version of religion they chose for their own reasons and everybody else can go hang, it is theirs. That firearm is not only something they can aim and place a bullet where they chose it is also a symbol of their freedom, their equality with those who run the show. If the upshot of the actions of the buttheads running the show is to screw my life to the wall, I'm going to hang onto the pieces I run. Damn, maybe the statement was accurate and its truth holds the absolute crap that passes as concern for the citizens for the past 40 years.
Blue collar wages sag for decades and two things are evident, corporations making lots of money bail on my job and when I look around other jobs are filled illegally and those wages are falling faster and maybe I don't like it one damn bit and I say so. Loudly. I play by the damn rules set up for somebody else's benefit and you reward the rule breakers and I don't like it and saying I might not is somehow bullshit? Now maybe I've put it a tad more bluntly than Obama did, but I'm not saying anything that he didn't point out. If you refuse to recognize this stuff you're going to make stupid mistakes. Like maybe chasing shots with beer and bragging up shooting a shotgun with a record that horrifies gun owners.
With a wealthy textile manufacturer father who could afford to send his daughter to Wellsley, an Ivy League college, and a life in government mansions and then millionaire homes of their own one would be forgiven if a connection to the blue collar might be questioned. It might be questioned in the face of a man raised by a single mother to also attend an Ivy League school, not on the back of wealth but achievement in scholarship. A candidate's inept use of language is fair game, a statement is a statement to be taken advantage of. There is in this a cautionary note, advancing your own cause is not the same as taking a candidate down. It is a real problem if the end result is to make both candidates less attractive since there is another election to follow. In this case the candidate attempting to take advantage of the situation is subject to so much question on the issue that the probable outcome is to devalue both.
This is the biggest problem I have with the Clinton campaign, their tone-deafness in this regard. I am entirely uncertain that they flatly don't care who is hurt, that somehow seems a bit Machiavellian even for them. It would seem unreasonable to think were it not for the fact that my voice in this regard is only one of many more well regarded and influential. At some point this Primary will be decided and the nominee will have to deal with John McCain and the Republican attack machine.
The idea that either of these candidates is a friend to gun owners is ludicrous, these are not friends, at best they are tolerable opponents. Obama has stated that he views the Second Amendment as an individual right, not a stretch considering the historical record but the rest of his record is not reassuring. Hillary can claim to have learned to shoot a shotgun as a child but given her record and advocacy she would have been better served to simply keep her trap shut. No aware firearm owner is going to find her agenda acceptable, and rubbing their nose in it is self-defeating. Leaving that issue entirely alone doesn't ignite a firestorm, but she's already managed to call for the reintroduction of the assault weapon ban and that is going to fire up opposition. NYC may not find her agenda so insulting as to vote against its own economic interests, but that is not the case of much of the country.
The Democratic Primary should really be about removing George W Bush and all his ilk from power and influence in this country. The damage they have done to the fabric of this nation should be the over riding agenda, it should drive every aspect of the Primary and it is not. The Republicans have shown the lengths they are willing to go to for the sake of winning, the Democrats really ought to be able to demonstrate the restraint they are capable of for the good of the nation. I'm not going to hold my breath.
2 comments:
It's very troubling to see the continued scortched earth approach to the primary the Clinton campaign is taking. But I don't think she is doing it because of anything persoanl against Obama. I think she's just doing it because he is in her way and she'd be doing the same to anyone who got in her way.
Remember those FBI files that were "found" lying on the table or the closet or whatever the bullshit story was. The pattern is there for anyone to see who cares to look with open eyes.
Obama was never my first choice, or second, or third. But Clinton is my last.
A friendly interpretation of her campaign would be that if these attacks hurt him badly now, they'd kill him in the General, so it's Evolution. This does ignore the fact that Democratic voters who are being split would most likely vote Democratic in the General, anyhow, and the impact on independents.
I would take a different approach, but it bears remembering that I got 11% of a Democratic Primary vote. On the other side, the winner got 34% in the General. These are concrete facts people can use to judge my analytic abilities on.
The thing is that this campaign season is driving Democratic registrations incredibly. Regarding the "bitter" thing, that was at best pretty poor and gigging him for it is probably called for, maybe with a bit more discretion.
Given her high negatives and divisiveness I don't see Hillary's "path" with supers. I particularly don't see it with the DNC delegates. If she promotes that point of view with them by her campaigning the issue becomes more doubtful.
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