Without Party? I Have My Doubts

In my quest to find blogs I disagree with who will still talk to me, I've been spending a little time over at Without Party. That one is run by two people named Richard And Alix who claim to be lifelong Democrats who were so disillusioned by Hillary Clinton's failure to win the Democratic presidential nomination that they are bitter and voting for McCain.

Look! I told you there were real PUMAs in this country! Except I'm pretty sure they aren't.

Maybe it's my own bias showing through, because I was never that thrilled with the idea of another Clinton running things. I liked the first one, but enough already. Had Hillary won she would have had advantages that Barack did not; chiefly a fierce and unquenchable lust for revenge against Republicans. I thought at the time that once the campaign took a predictable turn toward dirty she could out-dirty them. It didn't occur to me that throttling back might be more effective.

Still, as I say, Clinton wasn't my top choice. She was a big supporter of the Iraq war and cooperated a little too easily with the farthest far-right Republicans, like Joe Lieberman. (Rimshot). So when I say I'd have voted for her, it would be under the exact distaste that a lot of Republicans are planning to vote for McCain with. In the primaries, in fact, most Republican pundits were almost salivating over the idea of Candidate Clinton. She was a Democrat that even Ann Coulter could support.

And that is what is coloring my judgement of Richard and Alix. (By the way Alix, thanks for correcting my misspelling of "Reagan" the other day.) Here's Richard, laying the historical groundwork for his transformation from Democrat to... well, what the hell is he now? Interesting.

I admit it, I loved the Clinton years. I was not of age to have been able to vote for President Clinton either term, but I was excited to cast my first vote for Gore in 2000. I hated Bush even then and I truly thought he would never win. The events that followed in Florida those few months were almost enough for me to lose faith in the system. Gore was robbed of the White House, and we all know it. 

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Then came Kerry in 2004. Although I didn't really "like" him, we were finally going to get revenge for Gore and toss Bush out of office and stop this terrible war. Needless to say, my Kerry vote was more of an anti-Bush vote, but I remained a faithful Democrat. Once again, I was shocked that Bush had won a second term and was wondering if we were ever going to win another election.
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Finally came my girl, Hillary. I have thought she was awesome from day 1. Maybe she reminds me a little of my mother and I love that fighting spirit. I felt like we had finally found a winner and a candidate who was really going to take on the GOP and get the Democrats back in the White House. I did grow very emotionally attached to Hillary's run for office. She marched every year for gay rights and stood up for us (as best as any politician can) and she spoke for the silent. I freely admit I was crushed when Obama got the nomination. It's wasn't about Obama for me, it was that it wasn't Hillary.

It just doesn't seem plausible to me that you support McCain Nader in response to losing Hillary. Not only support Nader, who killed Al Gore's chances in 2000 - also trash Pelosi and Reid, argue that the press has a pro-Obama bias, and most tellingly, mock Rachel Maddow. If you're gay (Alix) and liberal you could still disagree with Rachel Maddow; but you probably wouldn't ever refer to her as "Rachel MADCOW." That's a huge leap to make, from Democrat to Ann Coulter. And of course, if they love Hillary Clinton so much, why not take the advice that she offered at the convention and support Obama?

So the whole biography unravels as you read the posts. Still, people are more complicated than their narratives suggest, and I can't say that I know what Richard and Alix think any more than I can say that they're real people in the first place, and not a library picture slapped onto a blog by Karl Rove's nephews. I just don't know. That's what makes them such a good read.