I also seem to remember deciding who to vote for in the primary (I only finally decided for real as I was walking to the polls) based on who I guessed had the best chance of beating McCain. It was still only a guess.

I am guessing now, things have to get bad enough that the surge and civil liberties issues are protested as LBJ was, but I am not sure the historical conditions are the same at all.

The thing that worries me is that the people who are talking about rising up are the extreme right.

Right now there’s a surge in Afghanistan and Obama is supporting the renewal of the Patriot Act. I rolled dice and bet there was about a 1% higher chance that he wouldn’t do those things than that she would. I should perhaps have reversed that but it was and is a tough call.

Now he and HRC are on the same team (and really, they always were). One could look to her current record on, say, Honduras, to see where she is on things.

I think Emma missed or misinterpreted Toonces–I got it that Toonces wasn’t directing bile at Obama, because Obama didn’t do it all by himself. Toonces is not among those who were duped and are now complaining about Obama.

I agree with Toonces’s point that there was plenty of nasty Dem-on-Dem violence that many of us felt was expressed in sexist (or even misogynistic) terms. It was demoralizing to be called names and have ugly motives assigned to your political preferences. (Just check out some threads on this blog from February through May 2008!)

Do “most people” watch The Daily Show?

I think your main point is being bolstered by what I’ve written about misogyny motivating certain people who now claim to have been deceieved by Obama.

And it wouldn’t matter so much to me if I, and many other amazing people trying to work towards bringing the left back into the discussion, hadn’t suffered a full year of abuse for simply asking questions about why this guy came from nowhere and had the media so much on his side, or whether he was really anywhere close to being (seeekritly!) on our side. That the smug, sanctimonious, CLASSIST “progressives” who were high on their own hype are now trying to skirt any of the responsibility for being “duped” makes me angry. And it makes me think we’ll fall into the same trap next time and the time after that, etc.

What in that made you think my anger was directed at Obama? To me, it’s very obvious that my anger is directed towards many of his supporters who acted like bullies. I also repeated that this was why I was angry in the next comment. In case it (or anything else) still isn’t clear, however:

1) As I’ve said, twice now, I’m not angry at Obama but at the people who treated non-believers like crap. Obama was pretty clear about who he was from the time he was praising Reagan and touring with an anti-gay preacher.

2) People deceived themselves about him and deserve blame/responsibility for that.

3) Popularity of shows that criticized the MSM nooz prove my point that most people knew the media was crap, regardless of their schedules.Nowhere did I say that The Daily Show was an objective news source. It became popular after Jon Stewart went on Tucker Carlson’s show (whatever it was) and made a huge deal about how bad the media was. The video went viral. People were very excited about this rare occurrence. I think this is evidence that people were frustrated with and distrusting of the MSM long before the 2008 primaries.

I feel like my main point, that people were horrible bullies over nothing more than a mirage last year and need to take responsibility for that, is being avoided. Maybe that has nothing to do with listening or hearing. Maybe it’s just discomfort with the point itself.

I think there are voters, maybe a large chunk of them, who didn’t believe all the lies being shoveled about HRC. They just wanted this guy because he was their guy. Which I think is fine, meaning that’s as valid a reason as any other in my mind. And if he turns out to not be their guy, I think they’re right to be disappointed about it.

But I don’t get the feeling that it’s those people who are wailing about their “disappointment”. It’s the people who saw Obama as the Hillary-slayer who are. In order to give cover to their misogyny and CDS they had to turn Obama into the opposite of Hillary, at least rhetorically. And, you know, he’s not. And now their oxen are being gored on things like gay rights, Afghanistan, and so forth. And Hillary survived, she’s not dead after all. What was it all for? they must be wondering. The witch isn’t dead and the wizard really is just a little guy behind the curtain. It’s gotta hurt.

b) Many people were, as I said, “decieved” by Obama in deference to their misogyny and Clinton-hatred. Which is to say: compared to a woman, that woman!, being President any man would have been the best thing since sliced bread. Whether these people were in fact deceived or wilfully deceived or not deceived at all about Obama isn’t really the issue, IMO. I think, as you’ve correctly identified, the issue is the motivation. IMO – “It’s the misogyny, stupid” – to borrow from the Big Dog’s campaign.

c) How popular is The Daily Show?

d) And, in fact, The Daily Show is part of the media and the media dynamic that Obama used to market himself. I don’t think the popularity of The Daily Show — which I suspect you’ve vastly overrated — is in opposition to this media, I think it’s part of it.

I want people to feel bad about and rethink being such assholes, frankly. I want a little reflection. I want them to question why they turned into such rabid fans of this man, especially if they knew next to nothing about him. They were accusing Hillary of trying to kill him, for chrissakes. What happened there?

I also don’t buy that it was hard for even the busiest of people to discern who the media was in favor of electing, and that should have been a HUGE clue. We all knew how bad it was before the primaries started. Come on, even people who barely knew what was going on knew that the media had backed G.W. and Iraq. There’s a reason The Daily Show became so popular.