A view from the back of the party bus

It has become rather clear that the talking point making the rounds is: "stand by YOUR man", but shouldn't it (at least at this point) be "stand by OUR man"? I haven't voted and neither has a single Democrat, yet we are to accept this blatant attempt at 'king-making'. If those floating this notion want their candidate to be taken seriously and receive any sort of respect for his viability, shouldn't he be nominated based on real support and votes instead of exhortations to "get this formality over already"? Or are the folks that would like us all to vote THEIR (lack of) conscience afraid that when the ballots are all counted that they might be stuck with a mandate that their crowned fair-haired boy cannot possibly support with his record? Or is it that they will not be able to keep convincing us that there is not a mandate for progressive policy within the party if we actually get to vote as we would without all the guilt and fear of the liberal boogeyman?

The wag has taken form in pushing the notion that "certain" candidates should bow out or be ousted before the waters are muddied by something as messy as voting. I have seen far more times than I care to count that "certain" candidates and their proponents are harming the party by speaking their minds and expecting democracy to sort out the choice of nominee. How do those of you who are floating this abomination of an idea think this resonates in the minds of those who are not quite ready to march in lock-step until we have a damned good reason to think that the choice of the people has been made, like an election or something old-fashioned and quaint like that?

The only message that is sent by all this pressure is that the "choice of the people" cannot win without poisining the well and stuffing the box with arm-twisted votes for some sort of imagined unity. This is how it resonates with me anyway.

Unity is not simply playing a national game of "Party Sez" and pressuring voting according to the gauges the media and others would like to present as a mandate. It is letting the factions of the party speak for their constituencies and forming a national platform based on the REAL support of those factions' candidates. It is standing in defense of the right of every part of the party to have their vote for the policies we will be asked to support in November. It is not telling them that they are unreasonable to expect that their votes are no less important than ABCs, Al Gore's, and the ubiquitous nascar (&*%$#@!) dads.

Unity is built, not ordered via supreme edict, strongarm tactics or parroted threats of 'the cost of waiting". Isn't this how we got into the hateful position of enabling GW to subvert the Constitution re: war powers and our "representatives" handing those powers over out of fear of being seen as "not going along" with the "need to support our leader"? I would hope that the Democratic party, if nobody else, understood that.

I'm not saying that folks should not advocate for their candidate and platforms, just that everyone has the right to without pressure to fold before the hand is even dealt. The "front-runner" may have wound up winning on his own without all this interference, but now we'll never really know, will we?

Real support is built by convincing people, not by bullying them.

Too many people are treating this contest like a high school football season, thinking the object is supporting your school and saying all the others are losers. But this is not a pep rally and the winner is not determined by who shouts "We're Number One!" the loudest.

In politics, if the pre-season winner can't unite the party, he won't be a winner at the end of the season.

It also has shades of a Tony Robbins seminar, designed to get people all psyched up that they are important because they are in on the next big thing. There's a hint of Amway and Dale Carnegie too.

Come to think of it, it's like every sales seminar I have ever attended. All that's missing is the spiffy acronym.

It's a psy-ops kind of world out there. *sigh*

I recall a time when it was about the issues rather than the candidates. Now we see focus groups of uninformed Americans talking about how they are still undecided by the last debates and basing policy around them and using it to sell candidates like everything else, on how it can be packaged. Like much else in our ever-increasingly self-indulgent culture, we are ignoring substance and elevating commercialism.

When does it get to be about ideas?