...anyone who still mouths the tired old messages of the PUMAs are irredeemable.  No outreach is necessary as they are as intellectually bankrupt as those who still maintain that the moon landings never occured.

we have an election to win, so no time to waste on the electoral version of the flat earth society

Actually, to be fair, Alegre says pretty clearly that she will NOT vote for McCain.  She also says she won't - ever-  vote for Obama & encourages her followers to vote as they choose.  (Though the inference is that choice must not include Obama, the Democratic nominee.)  There are a few mildly dissenting voices such as a commnter named "Catfish" who says she/he will definitely vote "against Obama", thus for McCain.  

Here lies PUMA  
    RIP  
August 29, 2008

Sniff.

There are a lot of democrats that don't like what Obama and friends did in the primary.

They pissed on democracy and generally treated Bill Clinton like less than Reagan.

I have no problems with them if they stay away a cycle.

Many of them have been loyal democrats for decades and deserve the benefit of the doubt that you so disdainfully expect us to give Obama like it is his god given right.

Our response:  "Mm, okay"

But they didn't go away. Instead we got "We really mean it.  We're really going to do it."

Our response:  "Buh bye"

Any bets on whether they will just go and vote for McCain now?

You really don't help anything by continuing to post with a name that mocks Clinton supporters.

Nothing spells UNITY like a diary bashing Hillary supporters.

Well, here's a twist... a private jet from Alaska landed in Dayton 4 hours ago...

McCain must feel that he's in real trouble... it's going to be female Gov. Palin from AK...  

That's going to shake things up, now, isn't it?

I don't know, I'd leave the central cast of characters at Alegre's blog out of it.  They're not undercover Republicans like SoCal and Susan Hu are.  They've just got some serious issues.

I think they're drunk tonight.  Every post is misspelled, and half the posts are apologizing for having let loose the night before or whatever.  I think they're taking this all really, REALLY hard.

no oxygen, no fire.

If we had just reached out and tried to understand people like Catfish and Susanhu, they wouldn't be voting for McCain now.  

And, wow, just read that excerpt from Susanhu's diary...  she actually believes that Obama can be defeated because of his gun-control and anti-abortion positions.  Do you see what we have done!  By not feeling Susanhu's pain over the loss of Hillary, we haven't just driven her into McCain's arms.  We have made her a pro-lifer and a gun-rights advocate as well!  

My god, we better reach out to her, and fast, or else she will start wearing jackboots and designing her own thousand year reich.  And it would all be our fault!

Over at noquarter they're mocking Obama's "purple lips".  Apparently they've never seen an African-American before.  We called them out for the racists they are and we were shouted down and some of us were even banned back in the day from mydd.

Look at the way they mock Kerry and his wife too.  The whole lot of them were Republicans to start with, they were only for Hillary as far as she was useful in stopping Obama.

It's weird to see them praise Hillary and Bill Clinton's DNC speeches so much but completely ignore everything they were saying.

I had to look at Alegre's blog after reading this. These people have made a cult of their own disappointment and rage and are worshipping it like a Golden Calf while concocting a "stabbed-in-the-back legend" worthy of the Freikorps circa 1920...

Alegre gets enthusiastic about puerile  smears her cohorts come up with like "Obama bin Biden." These folks are gone. They basically belong someplace like Free Republic.

search of a new hobby.

Next hobby:  licking John McCain's $500 Ferragamo loafers.

I am not a PUMA.  Repeat, NOT A PUMA.  That being said, I understand where they are coming from- and you obviously don't.  To them, this primary was a travesty.  The DNC acted completely without scruples, and Hillary Clinton (who won more votes that Obama)- was pressured to drop out of the race even while winning almost every major primary.  Florida and Michigan were handled completely terribly- and the RBC Meeting was a sham- giving Obama delegates from a state where he wasn't even on the ballot!
So, you see, to the PUMAs this is a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.  They want fair primaries- no more caucus shenanigans- where party fanatics overwhelm "normal everyday" voters and elderly are expected to spend 3 hours in a gymnasium trying to have their vote counted.  No more party leaders pretending to be unbiased while clearly pressuring a winning candidate to drop out of the race (hello Dean and Pelosi).   I could go on here- but I won't.

The point is- we must try to understand where the PUMAS are coming from lest we allow this portion of our party to split away forever.  I know that so many of you want to be mad and arrogant about it- "oh those menopausal women"- or "repubs pretending to democrats" - or "there's only a few of them".  Well, believe what you will- be arrogant if you will.  That will not solve  the problems.

Most of Alegre's behavior has been indefensible, and continues to be, despite her protestations of being a "lifelong Democrat." She's been a disingenuous, even dishonest blogger, morphing from a Clinton backer to an Obama hater at sites like this before launching her own forum around which to gather a flock of admirers while filtering out any voice that contradicted her illusions.

Those real Clinton supporters who gravitated to her site got sucked into a vortex of hatred and irrationality, spurred on by republicans and racists who clearly delighted in sowing chaos and confusion among sincere Democrats. Their presence was obvious: they're the ones who leapt at any comment which bordered on reason and respect, spewing venom against Obama and attempting to shame and malign any Democrat who suggested that Obama was anything but unthinkable.

Alegre monitored a forum which enabled malicious individuals to mess with the heads of real Democrats. The pain and confusion of the woman in that CNN clip from the other night is, to a great degree, the fault of Alegre and her ilk, who put their own agendas first. That she plans to carry on in the same vein demonstrates that she, like McCain, doesn't get it.

Sadly, Alegre is herself a casualty, a victim of the internet limelight to which she became addicted. And the prominent enablers at this site bear some responsiblity for her damage, as well, IMO.

but that could be said of other bloggers with some "internet" limelight.  You only see the hate on one side. I see it on all sides.  

There were other sides, one with a lot of orange, that permitted hate and misogyny on a regular basis.  Let's not play the "pointing fingers game"; the personal attack game.  It does not heal, it only escalates.

is playing into the republican hands.  So please let it go.  There will always be extremes of every movement that will be loud.  But they do NOT represent the majority of Hillary supporters, or Hillary herself.

Please let it go.

Don't care.

IF, big IF, Obama had lost the nomination by a hair ....

AND since both Obama and Clinton supporters feel that the opposing campaign was "not nice", with false accusations ...

Does anyone think that African-Americans in at least SOME numbers would be angry, disillusioned, feel betrayed, you name it????

Would I call that select group of African-Americans who had seen their strongest and best candidate Un-Democratic Party people ... say they were never truly Democrats?   NOT ME, not in a million years.

I'm not saying that staying pissed off about Hillary's loss is the way to go.  I'm just saying this:

When a person is angry about a situation or event, telling that person they are WRONG to be angry ain't gonna get it.  Telling that person to just "put the past behind you" ain't gonna get it.  Listening, understanding, yes even to the rants, without a whole bunch of "you are wrong because of ..." will help angry people to see what it is they are angry about.

Quite frankly, I feel some anger about the treatment of Hillary - and I wasn't even an ardent Hillary supporter from the top.  That anger won't make me not vote, or vote for McSame, because I'm a woman and he is not a person who displays the values that I hold.  

But I recognize my anger and am ready to deal with it - in increments - and I can understand others' anger - even at me.

All I'm saying is that if people keep kicking angry Hillary supporters in the teeth, there will be fewer chances of reconciliation, understanding, coming together for the common cause.

I'll go back to my little life where I've struggled for years to deal with rage - sometimes struggled successfully I might say.